Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A Turbulent Decade
Modern Kiwi culture pivots on the 1980s. Firstly, the unquestioned primacy of rugby union
as a source of social cohesion (which rivalled the country's commitment to the two world
wars as a foundation of nation-building) was stripped away when tens of thousands of New
Zealanders took to the streets to protest a tour by the South African rugby side in 1981. The
protestors held that the politics of apartheid not only had a place in sport, they trumped it.
The country was starkly divided; there were riots in paradise. The scar is still strong
enough that most New Zealanders over the age of 40 will recognise the simple phrase 'The
Tour' as referring to those events.
The tour protests both harnessed and nourished a political and cultural renaissance
among Maori that had already been rolling for a decade. Three years later, that renaissance
found its mark when a reforming Labour government gave statutory teeth to the Waitangi
Tribunal, an agency that has since guided a process of land return, compensation for past
wrongs and interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi - the 1840 pact between Maori and the
Crown - as a living document.
At the same time antinuclear protests that had been rumbling for years gained mo-
mentum, with mass blockades of visiting US naval ships. In 1984 Prime Minister David
Lange barred nuclear-powered or armed ships from entering NZ waters. The mouse had
roared. As a result the US threw NZ out of ANZUS, the country's main strategic military
alliance, which also included Australia, declaring NZ 'a friend but not an ally'.
However, it was an event in the following year that completely changed the way NZ re-
lated to the world, when French government agents launched an attack in Auckland Har-
bour, sinking Greenpeace's antinuclear flagship
Rainbow Warrior
and killing one of its
crew. Being bombed by a country that NZ had fought two world wars with - and the muted
or nonexistent condemnation by other allies - left an indelible mark. It strengthened NZ's
resolve to follow its own conscience in foreign policy, and in 1987 the New Zealand Nuc-
lear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act became law.
From the Boer to Vietnam Wars, NZ had blithely trotted off at the behest of the UK or
US. Not anymore, as is demonstrated by its lack of involvement in the invasion of Iraq.
That's not to say that the country shirks its international obligations: NZ troops continue to
be deployed in peacekeeping capacities throughout the world and are currently active in
Afghanistan.
