Anyone under the age of 45 will not remember the New Zealand in which I grew up and was educated. Perhaps more to the point, I find many of my fellow Kiwis simply do not know that ours was once a socialist country and folk who have immigrated to our shores over the last four decades have begun their new lives in a very different society to the one I was brought to by my parents in 1956.
The New Zealand Government of the 50s and 60s saw it as their duty to make sure that as a child and then youth growing up in Aotearoa that I had healthy food to eat, a warm, dry, affordable place to call home and a virtually free education up to and including university. All of which gave me a huge start in life, free from student debt, for which I will always be grateful.
As part of my 2011 documentary Inside Child Poverty (which is available to watch for free on this site), I worked with the brilliant political cartoonist Tom Scott to create a brief watchable history of how we changed from a WE society into a ME society.
So today I thought it might be useful to post that clip for those of you who don’t know that New Zealand was once governed in a very different way.
From time to time I am accused by commentators on the political right of being a radical leftie journalist. My hope is that by watching the attached clip you might understand why the words of the English playwright Alan Bennett, railing against the changes he had witnessed in society since the Thatcherism of the 1980s, have resonated with me ever since I read them.
“One has only had to stand still to become a radical.”
Don’t get me wrong. I am not nostalgic for the past. There were attitudes we thought once thought were acceptable that I am delighted to have seen the back of – strapping and caning children, imprisoning gay men, denying work, promotional and aspirational opportunities to women simply on the basis of gender.
But I do think that since the introduction of the Neoliberal “economic reforms” of the 1980s and 90s, New Zealand has forgotten that the purpose of an economy is not to make a few people very wealthy at the expense of the many, but to create the greatest good, for the greatest number of its citizens over the longest period of time.
Bryan Bruce is one of New Zealand’s most important and respected documentary makers. His work is available on bryanbruce.substack.com
David Seymour said it in his interview on Sunday evening , we have to get our pronouns correct there is no “we”, just share holders and investors that own the banks. Everyman is an island. Pretty well sums up what we have become. Good luck if your house is on fire and its just you and a bucket.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/30-with-guyon-espiner/story/2018936159/david-seymour
I sometimes wonder if Seymour actually understands the impacts of the policies he champions. He often appears much like the possum in the headlights when questioned deeply about the impacts of neoliberalism – able to spout some of the benefits for the some but never being able to articulate how neoliberalism is good for the many. The truth, whether he know or accepts it, or not, is that this damaging set of policy imperatives only serves the relatively wealthy of the population it ‘serves’ and the rest can eat cake.
” He often appears much like the possum in the headlights when questioned deeply about the impacts of neoliberalism – ”
You’re onto it.
Deep questions like,
Question: Why Little Dave do you want to stick the shiv into annihilating ‘ customary law ‘ of governance in contradiction to your scholastic Libertarian Superiors’ views , such as Van Notten’s ?
Answer:
A) NZ journalists aren’t that deep
B) It’s Science Fiction Ideology and there’s as many rationale by David as there are imaginations.
C) David’s not that deep just an android puppet
D) Pick and Choose values for Power
Seemore is just a quirky puppet. Someone’s hands are up his vitals and he squeaks on demand.
Sorry Mr. Seymour, there is WE or there is nothing. You will create a NOTHING. A desert.
Bryan is right, you realize you have become a radical leftie just by getting older.
The world of Atlas Seymour forgets that people aren’t economic units, we are people. We are what the economy is there for. We created the economy for US, WE New Zealanders. That’s why so many people want to live here, because our forefathers created a pleasant fair land which is the envy of the world.
Seymour has been brain-washed with ideas from abroad. He’s fallen prey to grandiose propaganda spread by people who have so much wealth it’s unhealthy, for them and for everyone. He’s being used by those people to make NZ vulnerable to a hostile takeover.
There’s nothing ‘radical leftie’ about disagreeing with that plan. It’s simple survival. Many people need a hefty dose of our radical leftie-ism, so they are to be able to grasp what will happen, before it’s too late.
Growing up in NZ prior to 1984 young people didn’t realize they lived in a socialist economy. It was black and white you didn’t live in a communist planned economy you just lived in an economy. Occasionally someone would say “mixed economy” no one ever said “socialist economy”.
It seems that only an image is embedded, not the whole clip, ta.
Yes – socialism, when progress was a measure of advancement for the common good, not that at the expense of it, was the way we were. But then, sadly, rather than proudly proclaiming our Socialism, cold war propaganda was allowed to disparage its principles and we were seduced into embracing Capitalism, a beast which perennially eats its children.
Correct Malcolm.
I think I prefer the term ‘the decent society’ to socialism, which Americans are unable to read without frothing at the mouth. Certainly, had I a magic wand, none of Roger Douglas’s naked thefts of public property would survive.
We have become a stupid, backward, and unproductive nation – mirroring the quality of our leaders.
The one fact so often never mentioned about this country, is its entrenched racism.
I grew up in the 1950’s / 1960’s New Zealand ..don’t recall it being a warm, cozy, equal place to grow up in.
I do recall the blatant discrimination against Maori.
60 years on , seems like we’re going down that path again.
Socialists are always running out of other people’s money, so it ran out before the 1980s.
Since the 1980s capitalists have always stolen other people’s money and the more they steal the more they want to continue to do so.
It’s called the trickle up effect.
Socialism is the answer.
Socialists are always running out of other people’s money, so it ran out before the 1980s.
Now it seems we are paying taxes on yesterday’s principles? but today there are none, because THEY (those in business with rules that are bendy and twisty) are in touch with enlightened reality, and those who haven’t broken the Code are The Others. These others are condemned to grub around for grubs until they are very grubby which shows they are not of the Right Stuff, so can be ignored, except by the erstwhile Samaritan (thankfully still lurking in rarely accessed places).
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