Rogernomics

There's more to come is there?

Eventually, like we're going to get to Rogernomics, but I feel like we've got still a lot to do to get to Rogernomics and Rogernomics is the payoff.

So I feel like we just need a little break.

It's us, not New Zealand.

And there's a kind of optimism about the new world that might be built out of this tragedy.

Unfortunately, what actually happened in New Zealand in the mid-1980s was Rogernomics.

It was still a revolution.

It was still this cataclysm that transformed New Zealand.

This fragmentation of the vote is huge.

Under MMP, the very first MMP election when people were angry about Rogernomics, MMP was brought in because there was this dissatisfaction with democracy and the way the system worked.

That was 61% of the vote went to the two major parties, and that's the lowest it's ever been.

It is around 55% now.

I didn't know what to say and I was listening and finally I got the courage to make a comment and Muldoon looked down the table at me right down the bottom and said, who's she? So I decided then if you didn't have a sense of humour in politics you weren't going to survive and honestly that was a good lesson for me.

1984 to 1990 then, Rogernomics era, a very complicated time.

Describe that for us and what your view was of Rogernomics.

Well, really, at the end of Muldoon's reign in 1984 when he was defeated, New Zealand was in a terrible financial situation.

We were going broke, basically, because he put in place a whole lot of freezes on wages, wages, prices, the exchange rate.

It was incredibly good and they devised the bumper stickers that you put on people's cars and of course my name helped because it had Murama needs a king, a king.

So those years before I went back were important in building my confidence but then I did go back and win a Wellington seat in 93.

1990 to 1999, Labour in opposition for much of the period, is that true? And then early to mid-90s, internal Labour tensions following the Rogernomics fallout.

work.

So you describe up until the Rogernomics reforms, you compared the New Zealand system.

How does the New Zealand system compare to the Mandarite system and the Max Weber world? Well,

it was derived, of course, of the British system, which, I mean, in Britain, of course, we also talk about Mandarins, modern Mandarins these days.

Anywhere that had kind of that big neoliberal 1980s revolution, as it were, the change, the things that happened in the 80s, has led to this.

And so you're looking at Reaganomics, you're looking at Rogernomics, you're looking at, I think it was Lutheranomics or something like that in the UK.

Yeah, it is...

Anywhere that neoliberal politics has taken over in that mid-80s, we now see our media follow suit in this way by creating this normal view of fiscal conservatism.

Yeah, yeah, much bigger.

Um, and it's also bigger than the downturn in the 1980s, um, that happened at the time of Rogernomics when we had big free market reforms going on at that time.

Is there anything-

Welcome back.

That mantra was instilled from the beginning in 1987 as New Zealand was going through major political and economic upheaval.

The Lange government of 1984 was known for Rogernomics, which was the massive deregulation of the New Zealand economy.

The government was rewarded in August of 1987 with re-election, and ZB took Lange's acceptance speech.

Proud that we are now in the next three years gonna seal those gains-