A Brave New World

Abstract

Describing the New Zealand economy in the mid-1980s, Hawke observed:

The balance of change and continuity depends on a commentator’s choice of level of generality, as well as on the economy under consideration. At one extreme, the fundamental problem of using resources to provide incomes remained unchanged throughout the post-war years (and earlier); at the other, every individual decision about production or consumption introduced a change into the economy. Nevertheless, broader changes in trend can be discerned, as with refrigeration in the later nineteenth century and the imposition of import licensing and exchange controls in 1938.

No change in the post-war years easily stands comparison with either of those. But, in some important respects, the economy of 1980 was different from that of 1960, and the date 1967–8 is of more than symbolic significance.¹

Less than a decade later a reassessment of this view is necessary. The 1984 general election and the radical reform programme initiated by the Labour government in its wake clearly entailed a far more dramatic shift than any other event in the postwar period.