Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Coming In, Coming Out
The 'recolonial' system was shaken several times after 1935, but managed to survive until
1973, when Mother England ran off and joined the Franco-German commune now known
as the EU. NZ was beginning to develop alternative markets to Britain, and alternative ex-
ports to wool, meat and dairy. Wide-bodied jet aircraft were allowing the world and NZ to
visit each other on an increasing scale. NZ had only 36,000 tourists in 1960, compared with
more than two million a year now. Women were beginning to penetrate first the upper
reaches of the workforce and then the political sphere. Gay people came out of the closet,
despite vigorous efforts by moral conservatives to push them back in. University-educated
youths were becoming more numerous and more assertive.
The Six o'clock Swill referred to the frantic after-work drinking at pubs when men tried to drink as much
as possible from 5.05pm until strict closing time at 6pm.
From 1945, Maori experienced both a population explosion and massive urbanisation. In
1936, Maori were 17% urban and 83% rural. Fifty years later, these proportions had re-
versed. The immigration gates, which until 1960 were pretty much labelled 'whites only',
widened, first to allow in Pacific Islanders for their labour, and then to allow in (East) Asi-
ans for their money. These transitions would have generated major socioeconomic change
whatever happened in politics. But most New Zealanders associate the country's recent
'Big Shift' with the politics of 1984.
Wellington-born Nancy Wake (codenamed 'The White Mouse') led a guerrilla attack against the Nazis with
a 7000-strong army. She had the multiple honours of being the Gestapo's most-wanted person and being
the most decorated Allied servicewoman of WWII.
In 1984, NZ's third great reforming government was elected - the Fourth Labour gov-
ernment, led nominally by David Lange and in fact by Roger Douglas, the Minister of Fin-
ance. This government adopted an antinuclear foreign policy, delighting the left, and a
more-market economic policy, delighting the right. NZ's numerous economic controls were
dismantled with breakneck speed. Middle NZ was uneasy about the antinuclear policy,
which threatened NZ's ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US. But in 1985, French
spies sank the antinuclear protest ship
Rainbow Warrior
in Auckland Harbour, killing one
crewman. The lukewarm American condemnation of the French act brought middle NZ in
