Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: It was 30 years ago today

Christopher Dempsey

Sun, 20 Jul 2014 14:37:54 +1200

I remember Muldoon appearing on TV, interrupting the regular programme, to announce the Wage and Price Freeze of 1982-4.

Ah yes. The Wage/Price freeze that everyone got around, such as Cadbury Chocolate who simply reduced the size of their blocks and kept the same price.

DexterX

Thu, 17 Jul 2014 11:39:23 +1200

I don't think an elected government anywhere has bettered the betrayal of the electorate more than the Lange Douglas Government.

I remember before the election people who could moved money offshore in anticipation of the dollar dropping.

On the day I worked as a returning officer in Mangere – and…

Joe Wylie

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 17:29:17 +1200

It’s interesting reading views about the time written by the children of Rogernomics, and what is accepted as fact.
Glad to have had the opportunity to read Harvey McQueen's The Ninth Floor (thank you Ian Dalziel), a far from self-serving account by an insider of the tensions within the fracturing…

Hebe

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 13:32:11 +1200

My cheekbones were high, my dark eyelashes were long and my hazel eyes were unusually pretty to the women-folk. It was a period in which I received an enormous amount of attention from the femme fatales and, so, strangely enough, I greatly miss it – despite the viciousness of the…

Hebe

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 13:24:23 +1200

at uni I wrote an essay on the fourth Labour gov’t and in one book (sorry, forgotten which one) a Labour MP was quoted as saying that the senior caucus was far too busy dealing with other policies and / or uninterested in economics that they just let Douglas have…

Luke Williamson

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 13:01:52 +1200

Thank you so much for that link Deep Red. One of the best bits of reading I've had for a while. Now if we could just find a way of managed retreat from the 'exponential growth' scenario, we might even rescue the planet.

Grant McDougall

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 12:41:08 +1200

Well, yeah, Hebe, but I’d suggest most of the 830,000 people who voted Labour were either unaware of Douglas’s newly-formed agenda or assumed, as my 19 year-old self did at the time of the 1984 Election, that the Lange Cabinet would rein him in.

Good call. A few years ago…

Euan Mason

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 12:21:01 +1200

"It was one of the best National governments we ever had"

It was the first Act government, economically. And they would never have got away with it if National had been their parasitic host.

It's very electorally convenient for National to have ACT as a coalition partner to take the…

andin

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 07:38:48 +1200

we were freed to just do what we wanted.
I Am Free and I Want. Ah these two miscreants, just cause trouble for prepubescent minds. Which is what most people possessed for decades leading up to the 1980's. And Randians were the most gullible, and childish in the worst sense…

Joe Wylie

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 06:20:19 +1200

When I think of my parents, on a relatively low income, putting all their spare change into these little white plastic Labour ‘78 and then Labour ’81 Election campaign ’piggy-bank’ boxes, with the aim of doing their little bit for the election of a social democratic government (and thousands around…

Mr Mark

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 03:14:43 +1200

Well, yeah, Hebe, but I'd suggest most of the 830,000 people who voted Labour were either unaware of Douglas's newly-formed agenda or assumed, as my 19 year-old self did at the time of the 1984 Election, that the Lange Cabinet would rein him in. (incidently, I'd at least partially question…

BenWilson

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 20:41:36 +1200

The Hydra meat works at the top of College Hill had "Pigs Disown Muldoon" scrawled on it for years.

Hebe

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 20:26:43 +1200

I welcomed the Labour government of 1984 without realising that, as one of my right wing friends puts it, “It was one of the best National governments we ever had”. Lange realised only belatedly what his Pandora box contained and by then he couldn’t close it.

On the contrary: Roger…

Sacha

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 20:05:25 +1200

It was one of the best National governments we ever had

It was the first Act government, economically. And they would never have got away with it if National had been their parasitic host. How union boss Ken Douglas slept at night I don't know.

Even the DomPost editorial regrets…

Joe Wylie

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 19:26:28 +1200

The pumping station that later became Kelly Tarlton's had a nice highly visible tag: NZ: DISCO DUMP.

william blake

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 17:32:47 +1200

Ahhhhhh. NOStalgia, the gas that makes the universe smell faintly of rubber.

Remember that piece of graffiti on Symonds St. C1984.

MAD DOG PREBBLE

well on to it.

Euan Mason

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:43:36 +1200

Muldoon has a lot to answer for, but when you see it from his perspective it is understandable, albeit disastrous. New Zealand’s way had always been government intervention. When something big was needed the government created a department and invested in it. This included railways, mail, telecoms, forestry, power, education,…

Josh Petyt

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:22:08 +1200

Lockwood Smith doesn't count?

Dave Patrick

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:35:57 +1200

the Wage and Price Freeze of 1982-4
Which was very much just a wage freeze. I was 22 in 1984, working for one of the Think Big companies (New Zealand Steel). I voted for the Labour candidate in Franklin (Bill Birch's electorate) which was about as useful as voting for…

BenWilson

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:33:36 +1200

Yes, it was a surreal moment, quite outside of anything I'd experienced before, to have an economic policy decision announced with the immediacy of a disaster or war newsflash. It couldn't wait for the news hour? It was, after all, news, and would have been the number one item, and…

Lilith __

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 12:58:47 +1200

Towards the end, his Cabinet and party wouldn't stand up to him as he drove this country into bankruptcy, and I will never forgive National for that.

Important point that when Labour won in 1984, the NZ economy was on the brink of collapse. After the mad excesses of Think…

John Morrison

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 11:25:10 +1200

I'm 60 and remember how Piggy and National pulled every lever to divide the country and stay in power. Rob's Mob – if you weren't for us you must be against us. I see similarities in the current lot's strategy with #Teamkey

Towards the end, his Cabinet and party wouldn't…

Kumara Republic

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 11:05:12 +1200

I stronly suspect that environmental and societal breakdown may occur faster than most suspect, especially in the US of A, and heaven knows if we are capable of dragging ourselves out of that mess.

Nick Hanauer, who made his billions investing in Amazon and selling to Microsoft, knows the [[http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html|writing…

Craig Young

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 10:03:11 +1200

I was twenty two. I'd just finished my BA at the University of Canterbury. Bacon slicers, anyone? For me as a gay man, Lange also heralded long-delayed freedom and the passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Act, long overdue. That's one of the more positive legacies of that period. If…

BenWilson

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 09:56:22 +1200

Some minor quibbles

Yup, although loans were heralded before being introduced, and banks jumped in well before. I was offered a tuition fee loan in 1990. It was a hit, the line into the bank's sign-up booth was as long as many of the other orientation queues were in those…

Luke Williamson

Tue, 15 Jul 2014 09:27:31 +1200

I special voted from Australia where I was on the start of my OE. The 80s in Auckland were a great time for me, weird but great. I was getting my first real jobs after uni and flouncing around town. It would have been really interesting to see what became…

Josh Petyt

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 22:07:52 +1200

I was facing being the lucky first year to pay for it’s entire tertiary education by borrowing money for it, courtesy of the guy who in 1984 was quizzing my friends on his TV game show.
Some minor quibbles.
Labour introduced the $1250 fee, Lockwood made it so the universities…

BenWilson

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 20:46:35 +1200

I was 12, getting ready for high school, which couldn't come soon enough. It was clear even to a kid that it was pretty momentous to have got rid of Muldoon. The rejoicing was near universal. I went to Selwyn College (despite living in Herne Bay) the next year, a…

Caleb D'Anvers

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 20:02:54 +1200

I was 8 too. We were on holiday in the UK when the election happened, and I remember my parents — Labour/Values types from way back who hated Muldoon with a burning passion — making a special trip into NZ House in London to cast their votes. And so inadvertently…

Jim Cathcart

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 19:58:51 +1200

Ironically, the Lange Govt was against the Keynesian tendencies of the Muldoon regime and soon become the poster child for economic liberalization. Now, NZ is leading the charge for a global monetarist system where current account deficits are a mere annoyance and where MMT is the new religion (for every…

Chris Waugh

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 19:55:00 +1200

It was thirty years ago today,
David Lange sent Piggy away.

(where's Ian Dalziel when you need him?)

I'm the same age as Ana. My memories of a political nature all start with David Lange and the 4th Labour Government. I suppose I have that to thank Lange for.

Ana Simkiss

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 19:16:50 +1200

I remember it, and I was only 8. The full page picture of the new Labour members was proudly pinned up in the loo, and gradually defaced as time went on...

Josh Petyt

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 15:32:08 +1200

I was only 11 in 1984 but I remember the '81 tour and the general feeling of excitement at the election.
The thing that really stays with me is the memory of my late stepfather declaring that he'd break the habit of a lifetime and vote so that he could…

Kumara Republic

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 15:20:42 +1200

Yeh, but school pupils generally are anti-establishment whenever this is an option (regardless of the establishment's political hue).

Even Grammar boys & Dio girls? Not so sure about that.

Ethan Tucker

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 15:04:04 +1200

Yeh, but school pupils generally are anti-establishment whenever this is an option (regardless of the establishment's political hue).

Good point, although I doubt the same could be said today?

Richard Aston

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:56:08 +1200

I remember switching from Values to Labour and the elation when Labour got in, there was a different feeling around than when Kirk got in in 72, something else was in the air . Lange was different and kinda cool and was bringing new people in with him. Lots of…

Tinakori

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:05:10 +1200

Economically and culturally, Muldoon's quest was to preserve the world of his wartime post depression generation and in that sense his views on economic management and sporting relations with South Africa were closely linked. For most of them it was a very benign world compared with what they had lived…

Paul Campbell

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:53:59 +1200

I was passing through Auckland, it was the day before I left on my OE when Marylin Waring crossed the floor, sometime as I was traveling through the Pacific Muldoon called the election and by the time I reached LA there was an election on – I went out of…

Dastardly Bounder

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:27:18 +1200

1984 – Kraftwerk released Tour de France and Run DMC released their debut album. It was a year for change.

linger

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:22:28 +1200

Yeh, but school pupils generally are anti-establishment whenever this is an option (regardless of the establishment's political hue).

Ethan Tucker

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:15:34 +1200

Enormous changes to society were kicked off that day. One of my most eye-opening political experiences was when the Deputy Principal announced to the Onehunga High School assembly that David Lange had resigned (so that would be 8 August 1989). To my surprise, most of the students cheered loudly at…

Christopher Dempsey

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:48:44 +1200

Was in 4th Form. Biology teacher had asked class on the Friday who we would vote for, everyone said Labour. Monday's biology class had brief discussion about the outcome. I remember everyone feeling excited about the Labour win.

Richard Aston

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:42:12 +1200

George warned us about 1984 but perhaps Aldous Huxely's Brave New World was closer to the truth.

Public Address

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:42:12 +1200

Discussion from blog post.