by Michael King
Apart from a brief eruption of geodesic domes in rural areas, the most pervasive effect of the movement was as a source of new ideas about living on land sustainably and working co-operatively in non-hierarchical ways. These ideas fed gradually into mainstream New Zealand culture, but were concentrated more specifically in the programmes of the Values Party of the 1970s and 1980s and its ideological successor, the Greens, who achieved parliamentary representation in the 1990s thanks to the introduction of proportional representation, itself an idea promoted by the counter-culture.
Women’s liberation in New Zealand also grew out of the American civil rights and anti-war movements. Women there, ‘fighting to free other peoples, found themselves relegated to making tea, typing and providing sexual comforts for men …’ And so they began, in the late 1960s, a process of ‘consciousness raising’ to heighten an awareness of oppression and to engender a feeling of solidarity with others of their sex. The ground for such a movement in New Zealand was fertile because of what most women – and many men – could see was the second-class status of women in such areas as employment opportunities, rates of pay, excessive domestic responsibilities and education. Again, overseas literature was important in helping individual women recognise and analyse the problems, and in developing a belief that oppressive circumstances could be changed. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch were especially influential, as was a visit to New Zealand by Greer in 1972, during which she was arrested and fined $40 for using the word ‘bullshit’.
New Zealand women organised themselves into small leaderless groups for consciousness-raising meetings. By 1972 around 20 women’s liberation groups were operating throughout the country, spawning a forest of new acronyms. NOW (National Organisation for Women) was a good one, as was WOW (Wellington Organisation for Women). A Southland Organisation for Women presented problems, however, and was quietly abandoned as an option. Most visibly, as far as the wider community was concerned, the movement organised four biennial United Women’s Conventions, in 1973, 1975, 1977 and 1979. In addition to providing New Zealand women with valuable networking opportunities, the conventions enabled locals to hear directly from some of the great figures in the international women’s movement, such as Margaret Mead and Robin Morgan. The conventions were aimed at women in the mainstream, but they eventually proved impossible to manage because of internal dissension within the women’s movement, particularly between gay and straight women, and between Maori and Pakeha.
The most visible public faces of the movement in New Zealand were journalist and researcher Sue Kedgley, whose striking good looks and gypsy outfits dispelled any notion that women’s libbers were sexless and embittered androgynes; Sandra Coney, a founding editor of the feminist magazine Broadsheet; Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, a Te Arawa Maori activist; Marilyn Waring, the charismatically intelligent and (usually) high-spirited backbench National MP; and the unlikely named Phillida Bunkle of Victoria University, who, with Rosemary Seymour at the University of Waikato, was most responsible for pioneering women’s history and women’s studies in New Zealand tertiary education. As the women’s movement grew, Bunkle would write, ‘more and more women began to insist that they did not want equality in a man’s world [but] the feminisation of society’. By asserting such values as nurturing and co-operation, feminists would seek to ‘overthrow the values of male dominance’.
Like the counter-culture, the main achievement of the women’s movement was its role in changing the attitudes of mainstream New Zealand society, but in this case to sex roles, equality of opportunity and equal pay. Many women in the Labour movement in particular carried its values into party and parliamentary politics, the fruit of which was such measures as the wider provision of daycare facilities for children, which allowed growing numbers of women to enter the workforce, and securing equal pay in principle in the 1980s. The fact that the early years of the twenty-first century AD would deliver simultaneously a woman Governor-General, a woman Prime Minister, a woman Chief Justice and a woman Attorney-General was one measure of the progress the movement had achieved in New Zealand.
Much of the excitement generated by the late 1960s and early 1970s seemed to come to fruition in the election of the third Labour Government in 1972. Keith Holyoake had retired from the prime ministership – though not from politics – at the beginning of the year, and his deputy John Marshall succeeded to the leadership. Marshall, however, like Holyoake before him in 1957, had insufficient time to establish himself in the position before the election. Alongside Norman Kirk, still in his 40s and by this time slimmed down and looking vigorous and hungry for responsibility, the 60-year-old National leader seemed tired and dispirited. It was no real surprise that he led his party to defeat.
Kirk, a former stationary engine driver, had enjoyed a meteoric rise in politics since becoming mayor of Kaiapoi at the age of 30. He entered Parliament in 1957 representing Lyttelton, and quickly established himself as an articulate and forceful MP in a way that Walter Nash and his successor as leader, Arnold Nordmeyer, were not and never had been. Kirk replaced Nordmeyer in 1965, then led Labour to defeats in 1966 and 1969. By 1972 he was ready for high office, however, and the electorate was ready to put him and his party into government. Kirk had been groomed by his minders, grown his hair and by this time wore suits that fitted him. In addition to being dynamic, he now appeared statesmanlike. He was also a stronger nationalist than his political opponents and had developed into an eloquent rhetorician. ‘Circumstances dictate that, while we preserve the warmest ties and closest sentimental attachments between our country and the United Kingdom, we recognise that we have come of age and must now stand on our own feet to reject the role of the dependant and at every opportunity seize the initiative,’ he affirmed.
The realisation of many of the aspirations of the ’60s was apparent in the new Government’s withdrawal of the last of the New Zealand troops from Vietnam, cancellation of the planned 1973 Springbok tour, sending a New Zealand frigate to Moruroa in 1973 to protest against French nuclear testing there, and the encouragement of ohu to allow committed people to return to the land for their livelihood. The Commonwealth Games held in Christchurch in 1974, when Richard Tayler in the 10,000 metres won a gold medal for New Zealand on the first day, were seen by many commentators as a festival celebrating the country’s new self-confidence and optimism. Talented New Zealanders who had left home to work abroad were starting to return in significant numbers.
The mood did not persist, however. Norman Kirk failed to recover properly from an operation for varicose veins and died from heart complications in 1974. His successor, a decent but tentative man, Finance Minister Bill Rowling, was unable to harness the energies of the country and of his Government. In addition, he faced Robert Muldoon as Leader of the Opposition, put there by his colleagues largely on account of Marshall’s inability to counter Kirk. This time it was Rowling’s turn to be outmanoeuvred in debate and in strategy. Two massive and unexpected increases in oil prices underlined New Zealand’s vulnerability to interruptions in the supply of overseas fuel and fed inflation at an unprecedented rate. In 1975 an apparently panicking electorate called the National Party and its pugnaciously confident leader back to govern the country.
The warm positivism of the Kirk era was replaced by defensive negativism. ‘The New Zealand way of life,’ wrote journalist Colin James, ‘became antagonistic, mean and grudging.’ The power of the country’s executive in relation to Parliament increased noticeably, particularly the power of the Prime Minister, who also took the Finance portfolio. National, while continuing to profess loyalty to Britain – and Muldoon sent the Royal Navy a New Zealand frigate in 1982 to allow the British to deploy another vessel in the Falklands War in the South Atlantic – carried on the country’s search for markets outside Europe: in Australia (with whom New Zealand signed a Closer Economic Relations agreement in 1982), the United States, Asia and the Middle East. It also developed the country’s man
ufacturing and energy-producing industries. The need for all these measures had been increased by Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community (as it was then) in 1973.
Within New Zealand, however, some citizens were doing very well – in business, property speculation and the new cornucopia of horticulture, especially kiwifruit, which had been selectively bred out of the humble Chinese gooseberry and found to have a lucrative overseas market. Wealthier suburbs in Auckland looked and were even wealthier; ownership of yachts, cruisers and top-of-the-market cars increased. Urban shop windows displayed more luxury items. New Zealanders’ spending power was boosted by an extravagant Muldoon-devised superannuation scheme, which gave 80 per cent of the average wage to married people aged over 60. Diversity of culture and of appearance became more acceptable. The New Zealand cricket team, revitalised by the introduction of the era of the one-day game, began to win matches and to win series against traditional adversaries, especially in the period of Richard Hadlee’s pre-eminence as an all-rounder. A rash of formerly exotic foods – European, Asian, Pacific – became available in restaurants, and nightclubs proliferated. It was possible by this time, if one had the wherewithal, to enjoy a night life in New Zealand cities. The incidence of prostitution increased under the guise of strip clubs and massage parlours and Auckland and Wellington at least had what could be called ‘red-light districts’.
At the same time there was a boom in local crafts, and writing and painting continued to swell in confidence and competence, thanks in part to increased government patronage – and in particular to a sympathetic National Minister for the Arts, Allan Highet. An indigenous film industry, whose first faltering initiatives had come from Rudall Hayward and John O’Shea, began to polish such actor stars as Sam Neill and to produce such directors as Vincent Ward, Jane Campion and, eventually, Peter Jackson. Colin James commented:
[We are] producing films, novels, plays and art and craft that are self-confident without being self-conscious. While our politicians have been locked into Europe … our artists and poets have been reaching towards a self-sufficient definition of European-descended New Zealand. Our habits, our customs, our attitudes [are being] measured for the first time against New Zealand touchstones … We have a vibrant if uneven local theatre; a developing book publishing tradition; the beginnings of a significant film industry; and a fine and inventive sense of craft that is spilling into art. Give us one, maybe two more generations … and we will feed no more through [Europe] … It is good, it is exciting to be a New Zealander now.
Throughout the 1970s the country was making a gradually stronger commitment to biculturalism in Maori–Pakeha relations, and to multiculturalism. In the education system, in the administration of some state institutions such as the Arts Council and the Historic Places Trust, the nation began to downplay its Anglo-Celtic heritage, which had previously been the only basis for public policy-making in the culture and heritage sectors.
These moves were partly a belated recognition of ethnic diversity within New Zealand. The population contained nearly 400,000 Maori and 100,000 Pacific Islanders by the end of the decade,[3] plus a growing number of Asian immigrants, including former Vietnamese and Kampuchean boat people. But the changes were brought about largely by Maori activists, who were determined that Maori ought to be able to behave as Maori in wider New Zealand life rather than submerge their identity in favour of Pakeha mores and values. By 1979 both major political parties had accepted this argument in principle, although the major institutions of the state – especially the law and the Public Service – were slow to adapt and to understand its consequences.
[1] In his poem ‘Election 1960’, James K. Baxter likened Nash to ‘King Log … an old time-serving post/ Hacked from a totara when the land was young’; and Holyoake to ‘King Stork’, who, in the fairytale ‘The Frogs Desire a King’, devoured his subjects and made them submissive with fear – a judgement which proved to be excessively severe.
[2] Air New Zealand operated with an outstandingly good safety record until one of its DC-10s on a scenic flight to Antarctica slammed into Mount Erebus on 28 November 1979 with the loss of all 257 passengers and crew. A subsequent commission of inquiry conducted by High Court judge Peter Mahon placed the weight of the blame on the airline’s administration, which had changed the route on the plane’s computer navigation system without telling the flight crew. Mahon’s report, accusing the airline of an ‘orchestrated litany of lies’, was criticised by the Privy Council for exceeding its terms of reference and breaching principles of natural justice. As a consequence Mahon resigned from the High Court.
[3] Western Samoa gained independence from New Zealand in 1962, and the Cook Islands became self-governing in free association with New Zealand in 1965. New Zealand continued to be directly responsible for Niue, and for the Tokelau Islands, which had been inside its territorial boundaries since 1948. The country’s Pacific Island population was made up principally of immigrants from these territories and from Tonga, and their descendants.
Chapter 28
Return of Mana Maori
Apirana Ngata and his contemporaries in the Young Maori Party had been largely content to see Maori living in rural communities separately from Pakeha. They believed that this situation provided the best opportunity for Maori culture, identity and confidence to recover after the trauma of nineteenth-century European colonisation and, in some regions, the effects of the New Zealand Wars and subsequent land confiscations. The farm development scheme and cultural revival programme of the 1930s were designed by Ngata to protect and reassert mana Maori in traditional rohe or tribal territories. While Ngata and Peter Buck hoped that other Maori would follow their example and seek higher education and a place in the country’s professions, they saw that path as being open to an elite who would constitute a national Maori leadership rather than as a choice that the Maori population as a whole could or should opt for. They also worried that most Maori were not adequately prepared to resist the ‘temptations’ of town life – alcohol, unsupervised access to members of the opposite sex, potential contact with a Pakeha criminal underclass.
After World War II, the Maori demographic and cultural landscape would change in ways that Ngata and his contemporaries could never have envisaged. There was an aptness in the fact that he, Buck, Te Puea Herangi, Bishop Frederick Bennett and other leaders all died between 1950 and 1952, just as a new set of circumstances was evolving. A steady and increasing rate of Maori urbanisation would mean that in the second half of the twentieth century Maori and Pakeha would come into widespread contact with each other for the first time since the 1860s. With that contact would come challenges, prejudice and conflict – and, eventually, an opportunity for Maori to participate for the first time in mainstream New Zealand social, political and cultural life. And these new conditions would require major recasting of the social contract between Maori and Pakeha, and between Maori and the Crown. That readjustment would be one more of the ways in which New Zealand in the later part of the twentieth century parted company with circumstances that had prevailed previously. And this in turn would require Maori and Pakeha to shed one set of reassuring myths and develop others to replace them.
For Maori, the dominant pre-war myth had been that people derived their identity from whakapapa and turangawaewae (a home place), and that those umbilical connections were best preserved by living close to one’s extended family, home marae and urupa (cemeteries). An associated myth, nurtured in particular by Ngata and the tribal leadership of his generation – Te Puea, Hamuera Mitchell, Eru Ihaka and others – was that living close to the land, one’s own land, was the best way of preserving whanau and hapu life, and that in most areas farming, especially dairy farming, offered the best means of retaining traditional family and community links. The myth would be challenged by some of the next generation who served abroad in World War II, especially those who made up the officer corps of the 28th (Maori) Battalion. These men, like their fathers and uncles i
n the preceding war, got a taste of other ways of life in other places, assumed wartime responsibilities far beyond those for which their age and previous experience had prepared them, and returned with altered expectations for themselves and for their people. Among them were men such as Arapeta Awatere and James Henare, both of whom had commanded the battalion, and others such as Rangi Royal, Charles Bennett, Bill Herewini, Moana Raureti, Harry Dansey and John Rangihau. They no longer believed in the inevitability or even the sustainability of the Maori rural idyll. That idyll was also challenged by the fact, apparent from the late 1940s, that family dairy farms were going to be too small to compete with the larger and more highly mechanised farm units owned and operated by Pakeha with access to more investment capital than was available to their Maori counterparts.
For Pakeha, the matching myth was that New Zealand had the best race relations in the world, a verdict Pakeha politicians trumpeted at every possible opportunity. That situation prevailed, it was believed, because the Treaty of Waitangi had been ‘the fairest treaty ever made by Europeans with a native race’, according to Our Nation’s Story, the set of books to which all New Zealand schoolchildren were exposed in the 1920s and 1930s, and because Maori were, in the words of one Native Affairs Minister, William Herries, ‘the finest coloured race in the world’.
According to these viewpoints, the only time trouble arose between Maori and Pakeha was when Maori wilfully misbehaved or showed something less than the gratitude expected of them for the gift of civilisation. ‘No other country in the world has such a record,’ the acting Minister of Native Affairs lectured Te Puea Herangi in 1940. ‘[Yet] I regret to say that many of our Maori brethren do not fully appreciate all that has been done for them in a brotherly, loving way.’ Even governors-general indulged in such sermons. Lord Galway, presenting Te Puea with a CBE at Ngaruawahia in 1938, told his Tainui audience: ‘It is a personal responsibility of each one of you to see that the conduct … of every man of the race is in every way above reproach. Any failings … might lead to the loss of that helpful assistance now being given to you and tends to alienate that sympathetic understanding which is so necessary to further progress.’