protection for secondary industries.^29 The 1984 disjuncture represented an
alleged Treasury‑supported‘coup’on the part of the interests of the urban-
based non-tradable sector, with special reference to the growing finance
industry.^30
The trade-off for rapid economic liberalization, by a Labour government,
was policy concession elsewhere. For this reason, politicians and business
leaders backing‘Rogernomics’supported an exceptional set of‘nuclear-free’
foreign policies, getting New Zealand into serious political difficulties with the
governments of the USA, the UK, and France.^31 Even property developer and
boxing promoter Bob Jones—whose New Zealand Party’s presence in the 1984
election would ensure a substantial defeat for Muldoon—astounded voters by
proposing an essentially pacifist defence policy (Trotter 2013).^32 These pol-
icies led to New Zealand’s suspension from the ANZUS defence pact.
Labour governments which came to power in Australia (1983) and New
Zealand (1984) were able to implement new sets of policies by presenting the
previous decade’s challenges as cases of government failure. Castles, Gerritsen,
and Vowles (1996, p. 2) note the exceptionalism of Labour governments
becoming‘neoliberal’midwives, when hitherto these kinds of policies had
been associated with radical conservative governments led by, for example,
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Labour governments in the twenty-
first century have matured rather than disavowed these respective 1980s
policy directions.
15.7 Parallel though Not Always Together
Immigration control was a central Federation issue in Australia in 1901. New
Zealand policy was more nuanced than the overt‘White Australia’legislation.
No dictation tests were imposed in European languages other than English
(O’Connor 1968, p. 305). While Chinese‘Asiatics’became a particular bogey,
(^29) These are represented, respectively, by Blyth (1966) as the‘competitive model, welfare style’
(‘colonial vision’) and the‘growth model’(industrial and planning styles;‘kiwi vision’). The post-
1984 epoch would represent a strong version of Blyth’s preferred‘competitive model; efficiency
style 30 ’.
Bertram (2009, p. 559) says:‘State agencies not aligned with the new political economy
were simply abolished, and those that were so aligned (particularly Treasury and the Reserve
Bank) were strengthened.’. McKinnon (2003, p. 289) says‘officials were determined to wean
ministers from Keynesian thinking’, and discusses the Treasury’s relationship with Roger
Douglas (p. 318). 31
In 1985 the French government covertly sank the Greenpeace shipRainbow Warriorin
Auckland, with the loss of one life. 32
Jones had already become popular with urban liberals by sponsoring ballet in New Zealand
(Dalglish 2005). While few social liberals voted for his party in 1984, Jones’s crossover defence
policy facilitated the subsequent acceptance of economic liberalism by‘sixties generation’Labour
supporters.
Keith Rankin