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 products. 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.
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.
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
behind the antinuclear policy, which became associated with national independence. Other
New Zealanders were uneasy about the more-market economic policy, but failed to come
up with a convincing alternative. Revelling in their new freedom, NZ investors engaged in
a frenzy of speculation, and suffered even more than the rest of the world from the econom-
ic crash of 1987.
The early 21st century is an interesting time for NZ. Food, wine, film and literature are
flowering as never before, and the new ethnic mix is creating something very special in
popular music. There are continuities, however - the pub, the sportsground, the quarter-
acre section, the bush, the beach and the bach - and they too are part of the reason people
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