by Michael King
The Hunn Report of 1960 was a milestone for its time. It had been commissioned but not actioned by the Nash Labour Government: Walter Nash, who had become Prime Minister and Minister of Maori Affairs in his late 70s, was by this time a notorious procrastinator and simply put the report away in a drawer. It represented, and this may have made it unwelcome in the eyes of the minister, the first official recognition that Maori urbanisation was occurring and that the unpreparedness for it was creating difficulties in New Zealand towns and cities. Jack Hunn, Secretary of Maori Affairs, assumed, however, like so many of his predecessors, that the future of New Zealand’s two major cultures was to blend and that this was a desirable process.
Articulate Maori spokespersons attacked the report on the grounds that Maori themselves had been insufficiently consulted in its preparation and did not want to ‘blend’ with Pakeha culture. The National Government initially accepted Hunn’s recommendation that suburban Maori houses should be ‘pepper-potted’ among general state houses, but later abandoned the policy when Maori made it clear – as did many Pakeha who did not want Maori neighbours – that they disliked it. The report’s most successful outcomes were the setting-up of the Maori Education Foundation to help pupils through secondary and tertiary education, the extension of trade training facilities for Maori, and the provision for hostel accommodation and pre-employment courses for young Maori new to city life.
While all of these measures did some good, especially trade training, in total they were to prove an inadequate response to the magnitude of the problems created by urbanisation. In particular, there were no government initiatives at this time to arrest the decline in Maori language and the erosion of Maori culture. Nor did governments initially favour such policies, because they accepted the blueprint of integration. It was assumed, erroneously, that those who grew up feeling ‘less Maori’ than their parents and grandparents would by that very fact become ‘more European’. Instead, many such people simply grew up in a cultural vacuum and felt directionless and detached from the society into which they emerged as adults; and these formed a large proportion of those subsequently represented in crime statistics.
It was also taken for granted by most Pakeha, including the political leadership of the day, that ‘integration’ in fact meant ‘assimilation’. And assimilation required Maori to become Pakeha. Integration would have implied an equal obligation on the part of Pakeha to learn Maori language and customs, and there was no official encouragement to follow this path. Instead, Maori were expected to learn the English language and Western ways of living, and many Maori parents and grandparents accepted this as inevitable. As a result Maori values and institutions had a lower status in New Zealand life than their Pakeha equivalents. Even Maori who wanted to pursue Maoriness as part of urban life were in many respects prevented from doing so because Pakeha-oriented institutions – in education, in the health system, in the legal system – could see neither the value nor the necessity of such measures. When Maori in the Public Service, such as John Rangihau, advocated such measures, they were quickly dismissed as separatists and as potential sources of social divisiveness. The agencies of the state were committed to reflecting Western values, criteria, practices and priorities rather than Maori ones.
The more such factors were recognised and articulated in Maori quarters in the 1960s and 1970s, the more they came to be resented and resisted. And this resentment led to the rise of urban protest groups: Maori organisations which articulated Maori considerations and needs, but which adopted Western rather than traditional modes of expression, such as demonstrations, picketing, petitions to Parliament, press releases and appearances on television.
The first such group to make its influence felt was formed in the late 1960s in Auckland, where Maori numbers were by this time greatest and where the unpreparedness of the Government, local bodies and individual Pakeha for Maori urbanisation was most vividly apparent. Nga Tamatoa (the Young Warriors) grew out of the Auckland University Maori Club but its membership included young manual workers. Like the Maori Organisation on Human Rights, established in Wellington by Tama Poata slightly earlier, it was initially a reaction to the National Government’s 1967 Maori Affairs Amendment Act, which gave the Maori Trustee additional powers to take control of Maori land, and which provided for land owned by fewer than four persons to pass into individual titles. The Act was immediately attacked by Maori opinion as a high-handed measure lacking the support of the very people it purported to help.
Rapidly, both protest groups widened their campaign to include the teaching of Maori language in schools, Maori control of Maori land and Maori monies (trust boards could act in financial matters only with the permission of the Minister of Maori Affairs), legal assistance for Maori offenders appearing unrepresented before the courts and for Maori in prisons, an end to annual celebrations commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the severing of sporting links, especially the rugby association, with the apartheid-conditioned Republic of South Africa. They were joined by Te Reo Maori, centred on Victoria University, which concerned itself primarily with the promotion of Maori language and literature and with the performance of the media, especially television, in dealing with Maori issues.
Whina Cooper’s Te Roopu o te Matakite (later called Te Matakite o Aotearoa) grew out of the Maori Land March of 1975. Separate groups formed to campaign for the return of the Raglan golf course to Maori ownership (the land had been seized by the Government and a community displaced in order to build an emergency landing-strip during World War II), and for the return of Bastion Point in Auckland to Ngati Whatua ownership. This last led to a seventeen-month occupation of the Point in 1977–78, and to the arrest of 200 protestors in May 1978 after the largest police operation in the country up until that time. In 1979 the Labour MP for Northern Maori and former Minister of Maori Affairs, Matiu Rata, resigned his parliamentary seat and contested it as leader of the Mana Motuhake Party, which presented a modest programme for a greater degree of Maori self-determination. He did not regain the seat, but Mana Motuhake achieved second place to Labour in all four Maori electorates, the most spectacular launch of a new political party since the appearance of the Ratana movement. Over the next decade Labour would progressively erode support for Mana Motuhake by adopting most of its policies.
The combined effect of the activities of all these groups was to focus media attention on Maori issues in a way that had never occurred previously, gradually to radicalise such establishment organisations as the New Zealand Maori Council, Maori parliamentary representation and the mainline churches, and to bring about major changes in the operations of such government departments as Education, Social Welfare, Justice and Maori Affairs. Kohanga reo or ‘language nests’ were set up for pre-schoolers, one-year teacher training courses were established for Maori speakers, public funds became available for the first time for the renovation of marae buildings, legal aid was offered for Maori offenders, and the Race Relations Act 1971 outlawed discrimination and established the Race Relations Conciliator’s Office to promote public education on ethnic issues, deal with complaints about discrimination and to mitigate racial and cultural conflict.
While all these measures were being discussed and implemented, the literature on Maori history and culture was burgeoning, indicating both a new Maori market for such publications and a growing interest in tangata whenua culture on the part of Pakeha. Work by Maori writers – Hone Tuwhare, Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku and Keri Hulme among them – was published more often. Maori artists – Para Matchitt, Cliff Whiting, Ralph Hotere – attracted increasing public attention. A Maori writers and artist’s organisation began to hold annual hui on marae around the country. Marae which had been derelict for decades were revived and renovated. By the late 1970s there was talk of a ‘Maori renaissance’ and ample evidence that a movement of this kind was gathering momentum.
Perhaps the single measure with the most pervasive influence, though
not greatly commented on at the time, was the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal by the Rowling Labour Government in 1975. This was set up to deliberate and rule on alleged breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi that occurred from that date. Little public notice was taken of its operations until 1985, when its powers were made retrospective to 1840. From this time, it became the focus of Maori resource claims against the Crown and the source of major settlements that would reinvigorate tribal activity over large parts of the country. It was one of a series of measures which so changed the face of New Zealand life in the 1980s and 1990s that their cumulative effect could legitimately be called a revolution.
Chapter 29
A Revolution Confirmed
If the 1960s was the decade in which New Zealand’s turning away from traditional allegiances and patterns of association first became unmistakably apparent, then the 1980s was the time when new directions were confirmed. The unprecedented disruption wrought by widespread opposition to the 1981 Springbok tour ensured that official New Zealand teams would never again play rugby with South African sides in the era of apartheid. And the 1984 general election turned out to be as much of a watershed for the whole country as those which had brought to power the Liberals in 1891 and Labour in 1935. And again it was Labour who would initiate both the deconstructing and the rebuilding.
Sir Robert Muldoon’s National Government of 1975 to 1984 was the last to involve itself in the New Zealand economy in a big-spending and heavily interventionist way. At different points in its term it imposed a wage and price freeze, controlled rents, directors’ fees and dividends, and tried to force down interest rates. It invested heavily and ultimately unsuccessfully in a programme to make synthetic petrol, ammonia urea and methanol out of natural gas – the so-called ‘Think Big’ strategy designed to make New Zealand self-reliant in energy and soak up unemployment. And it instituted a superannuation regime that the country simply could not afford. These were all policies and tactics favoured by the man who had chosen to be both Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and who was so strong-willed that nobody in his cabinet or caucus was capable of challenging him or deflecting policies he was determined to follow.
By 1984 Muldoon’s hold on considerable power was shaky, however. He had already had to sack one minister, Derek Quigley, for publicly questioning the value of the ‘Think Big’ strategy and the Prime Minister’s insistence on a high level of economic control. Two other National MPs, Marilyn Waring and Mike Minogue, were threatening to cross the floor and vote against the Government. And so Muldoon, showing the effects of both illness and alcohol, made an impulsive decision to call a snap election, which the Government lost. The swing of the electoral pendulum not only brought Labour to power again for only the fourth time in half a century, but also swept out of office a generation of politicians whose views and values had been formed by the Great Depression and participation in World War II.
Ministers in the new government, led by former Auckland barrister David Lange, were mainly in their 40s and brought new perspectives to bear on both government policies and New Zealand’s place in the world. They turned away from the kinds of economic strategy that had been standard in New Zealand since the 1930s. One of their number, Michael Bassett, an historian by profession, described their perspective in these terms: ‘[The] era of big government had largely been played out. The world economic downturn in the 1970s rendered further expensive extensions to the welfare state unaffordable, especially in New Zealand, where poor economic stewardship [had] caused the country to subside swiftly down the OECD performance ladder. In any event, doubts were growing inside the Labour Party about the effectiveness of big spending.’
The leader of and major spokesman for the doubters was Finance Minister Roger Douglas, who had a background in business and accountancy. Persuaded by his arguments, the Labour cabinet set in motion reform of the Public Service, a transformation of some departments into state-owned enterprises charged with making a profit, and the sale of others, such as the telephone and banking sections of the former Post Office, New Zealand Steel and the Shipping Corporation. Where traditional Labour had sought to be as widely involved as possible in the business of running the country, the new Labour Government was ready to devolve or sell as much of its inherited business as it could.
Economic controls were also shed in an enactment of the kinds of policy that Quigley had been trying to sell to his National colleagues. Agriculture and consumer subsidies were phased out (‘It’s possible to grow bananas on Mt Cook,’ Roger Douglas had famously announced, ‘but is it worth spending the money it takes to do so?’). The financial market was deregulated, the New Zealand dollar floated for the first time, controls on foreign exchange were removed, new banks allowed to open their doors. Douglas also introduced a sales tax on goods and services, initially set at 10 per cent and subsequently raised to 12.5 per cent, and a heavy surtax on superannuation, which the previous Government had made universally available at the age of 60 and set at 80 per cent of the average wage. The marginal tax rate was reduced from 66 cents in the dollar to 33. The combined effect of all these measures, which amounted to a wholesale adoption of a monetarist programme, was eventually to reduce inflation dramatically, bring down national debt and increase economic growth.
Local government too was reorganised drastically. As minister responsible for this sector, Michael Bassett reduced some 500 local authorities and special purpose boards to less than 100. Geoffrey Palmer, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Justice and of the Environment, devised a Bill of Rights to protect civil liberties and the Resource Management Act, eventually passed in the term of the subsequent National Government (1991), to ensure greater environmental protection, more sustainable use of resources, control of development and acknowledgement of Maori traditions and values in local body planning processes.
There was a political price to pay for both the scope and the pace of these changes, however. Because of the suddenness of the 1984 election campaign, Labour had not laid out a coherent economic plan for the consideration of voters. The policies that were eventually enacted came as a shock to many Labour supporters, and to some MPs and cabinet ministers. Whereas Roger Douglas had been refining his monetarist ideas for years and had presented them previously in an unauthorised ‘alternative’ budget, many of his colleagues were strong on social policy but economically illiterate. They initially allowed the Douglas-inspired programme to proceed, because they were ill-equipped to argue with it and scarcely recognised at first the nature of what was occurring. By the time they had concluded that the social cost of the policies was too high – in tearing the heart out of small communities by post office closures and loss of forestry jobs, for example – it was too late: the policies were entrenched. The only other option then became fighting a rearguard action against a programme which they and many supporters outside Parliament viewed as inimical to Labour values. Former Labour Party president and by this time backbench MP, Jim Anderton, left the party over this issue and formed first the New Labour Party and then the Alliance, a grouping of small parties which also included Mana Motuhake and the remnants of Social Credit.
In addition, while Labour won re-election in August 1987 (with a measure of cross-over National Party support), a stockmarket crash later that year, triggered by falls on overseas markets, resulted in company collapses and a heavy loss of funds by small-scale private investors. This in turn led to a loss of confidence in the Government’s authority in financial matters.
A major split developed too between Douglas, who wanted to press on with deregulation, reduction of the tax rate and asset sales, and Prime Minister Lange, who was becoming less confident about the value and legitimacy of the Government’s economic programme. A powerful orator in the soapbox tradition, Lange had been Labour’s greatest asset in two successful election campaigns. By 1988 he nursed so many reservations about the effects of his Government’s policies on traditional Labour supporters that he sabotaged Douglas’s introduct
ion of a low, flat tax rate and called for a pause in the programme of restructuring and reform. After more than a year of feuding with Douglas and his strongest supporters, Lange resigned when caucus backed Douglas, whose own resignation had been forced by Lange. The now visibly damaged Government staggered on for another year under the leadership of first Geoffrey Palmer and then briefly the more populist Mike Moore. Ironically, the National Government that took office at the end of 1990 under the genial farmer Jim Bolger initially persisted with so-called ‘Rogernomics’ policies under the even more markedly monetarist Finance Minister, Ruth Richardson. Richardson, a ‘conviction politician’, persuaded her colleagues to reduce spending on welfare significantly, increase pharmaceutical charges and charge market rentals to Housing New Zealand tenants. In addition, National failed to lift the superannuation surcharge as they had promised, because of what they judged to be the parlous state of the economy.