"Today marks 40 years since a visibly drunk Robert Muldoon called a snap election. It was a decision that, as The Spinoff’s new podcast Juggernaut examines in great detail, led to serious and enduring change in New Zealand."
#StewartSowmanLund, 14 June 2024
https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin/14-06-2024/the-parallels-between-1984-and-today
Grain of salt warning:
TheSpinOff aligned writers often seem to swallow the big lie of neoliberal coups; we're in a crisis, There Is No Alternative (sound familiar?). But their Juggernaut podcast about the 1984 election can be found here;
https://open.spotify.com/show/14elyKUvT9NNvkyGl6mTze
FYI It seems to focus on the Rogernomics labour government (1984-90), not the Ruthenasia National government (1990-99), which was just as crucial to the degraded state the country is in today.
Listen to Juggernaut: The Story of the Fourth Labour Government on Spotify. Forty years ago a brandy-soaked snap election set in motion a seismic chain of events in New Zealand politics. Across a series of extraordinary scenes, Aotearoa lurches from crisis to crisis, with strongman prime minister Rob Muldoon replaced by a Labour Party led by the charismatic David Lange and a finance minister, Roger Douglas, determined to shift the country from the developed world’s most regulated economy to the most embracing of the free market. An economic revolution comes alongside a battle with the US over nukes on the global stage, a terrorist attack in Auckland harbour, and sweeping social and cultural shifts. The reverberations are still being felt today – for many, the impacts remain raw. In a new six-part series, Toby Manhire interviews more than 20 people at the heart of those changes, dives deep into the archives, and presents compelling audio of David Lange that has never been heard publicly, to tell the story of an incredible, whiplash chapter in New Zealand history. Juggernaut was made with the support of NZ On Air.
Me:
> TheSpinOff aligned writers often seem to swallow the big lie of neoliberal coups; we're in a crisis, There Is No Alternative (sound familiar?)
As I suspected, the first episode of their Juggernaut podcast frames the debate as unsettled. I have my biases of course, but I suspect that this is false equivalence. From what I've observed - as with the debate over climate change - only a fringe of True Believers (eg ACT) don't believe neoliberalism has been a failure.
(1/2)
Even many of the politicians who were part of the Rogernomics and Ruthenasia governments (eg Jim Bolger) will accept neoliberalism's failure...
... except for the bits they were responsible for. Which of course were unavoidably necessary.
They can see that decades later, the results were not what was promised. But they're still enmeshed in the ideological web that caused them to see neoliberal policy prescriptions as the only possible solutions to the problems of the time.
(2/2)
Richard Prebble's Muldoonist authoritaranism is laid bare in a story he tells the Juggeraut podcast, about his decision as the first Minister of State-Owned Enterprises to close a list of community post offices. He knows this list has been prepared by his officials as a way of gently hinting that he needs to think about the social consequences of his mass closure policy. With no serious expectation that the offices on the list would be shut.
He shuts them all anyway.
Why does Prebble shut all these post offices, despite knowing that the list he's been handed wasn't advice that was meant to be actioned? To put the public servants on notice.
None of this handwringing about the public good, and warning your ministers about their hubris (ie trying to do your job). When Prebble says jump, you say how high.
Yes, Muldoonist authortarianism. The Rogernomics government wasn't a break with Muldoonism, but a continuation in liberal drag. Just as the Ruthenasia government was a continuation of the Rogernomics government.
The break with Muldoonism didn't come until the advent of MMP. When Finance Ministers (whether also PM or not) could no longer run the government finances like their own personal feifdom.
Just listened to the latest episode of Juggernaut, which covers homosexual law reform and the origin of "treaty principles" in legislation.
In the final analysis, the Fourth Labour Government was the first in NZ in which social policy was treated as separate from economic policy, rather than intertwined with it. A two-headed monstrosity, with a liberal social head led by Lange and Palmer, and a corporatist economic head led by Douglas and Prebble.
(1/?)
Ever since, died-in-the-wool neoliberals have told us that liberal social policy and corporatist economic policy go hand-in-hand. But the devolution of ACT into an ultra-conservative propaganda machine gives the lie to this.
(2/?)
In 2023, ACT were shilling for votes by being;
* "tough on crime". While pointedly ignoring drug prohibition, a socially unjust policy mess that continues to be a major driver of crime, especially violent crime
* micro-managers of public services. Much of the funding they've cut supported community-led, not-for-profit services with proven track records, or paid for the processes that approved and reviewed their funding. But none of this can be bought by foreign investors, so...
(3/?)
* anti-Māori, except when they play a limited role as owners of property or privatised public services. They like devolving public services to Māori when it looks like Charter Schools, but not when it looks like Special Character state schools. When it looks like outsourcing the functions of Oranga Tamariki to businesses owned by Māori, but not when it's co-governance of local OT with local iwi.
(4/?)
Corporatist economics disempowers democratic governance in favour of technocratic, top-down corporate heirarchy. Following the template set by the Rogernomics government, neoliberalism has always been the political strategy of dressing it up as a kind of "libertarianism".
So successful has this reputation-laundering been, that many people treat "neoliberal" and "libertarian" as synonyms. They are not, and it's time the opponents of neoliberalism stopped thinking inside their framing.
(5/5)
In the 1980s, despite more than a decade of dysfunctional Muldoonist rule, almost everyone in Aotearoa was fed, housed, and employed, and had free access to healthcare and education. Most infrastructure entities were public-owned, and trained generations of tradespeople.
Today marks 40 years since the election of the #Rogernomics government. The origin of a neoliberal paradigm that has destroyed that prosperity, under governments led by both legacy parties.
Time for change.
Strypey