Economy(Rankin 1993). Later, back in the UK as a member of William
Morris’s Socialist League, Carruthers would criticize the Liberal’s state reforms
as half-baked.
It was another Scottish-born Otago engineer, William Newsham Blair
(Rankin 1993), whose economic policy prescriptions represented an outline
of what Blyth (1966) would later call the‘Kiwi vision’. It was a story of
pragmatic protectionist intervention, in line with the writings in theAgeby
David Syme (Macintyre 1991), yet another Scot, whose views were emblematic
of Australian progressive exceptionalism.
This non-conformist mix of egalitarian and socially conservative influences
was comparatively undiluted by Irish Catholicism.^20 New Zealand’s more
permissive Presbyterian legacy may have formed a basis for its political and
cultural distinctiveness from Australia. New Zealand became a country with a
dry egalitarian culture; a state of welfare with emphasis on comprehensive
education, health care, and income support that would be applicable to
farmers as well as to wage workers.
15.4 Dominions of Debt
Scots have a reputation for being concerned withfinancial matters, and this
clearly shows through the contributions tofinancial governance of a number
of those Presbyterian-influenced politicians. Scottish personal thrift would be
offset by deficits in business ventures and government. Both private and public-
sector debt featured substantially in New Zealand’s growth model; New Zealand
became an exceptional ‘Dominion of Debt’(Schwartz 1989). Public debt
expanded overtly in the early 1870s, covertly during the conservative Reform
era of the 1920s, and out of necessity in the Muldoon era (1975–84) when
external shocks hit New Zealand particularly hard. In other periods, such as the
late 1870s, early 1920s, late 1930s, and the‘neoliberal’period after 1984, private
indebtedness soared to fund land purchases or imports.
New Zealand’s circumstances, going back to the era of provincial govern-
ment, ensured that these governments would competitively borrow for local
development, with full expectation that progress and rising asset values would
offset that public debt. Subsequent national leaders such as Julius Vogel and
Joseph Ward carried on the tradition of borrowing on the London market to a
degree seen by many as incautious (King 2003, p. 277).^21
(^20) The early Catholic Church in New Zealand was French in origin, through Bishop Pompallier
(The Catholic Church in Aotearoa New Zealand; http://www.catholic.org.nz/our-story/
(accessed 20 November 2015)) and the Marist Brothers. The New Zealand Sisters of Compassion
was founded by Suzanne Aubert, a candidate to become New Zealand 21 ’sfirst saint.
The Australian-born Ward became colonial treasurer in 1893 at the age of 37, and was
personally bankrupt three years later. Ward was prime minister andfinance minister from
Australia and New Zealand