Visiting speaker Bryan Bruce knocked the stuffing out of neo-liberal economics in his Wanganui lecture on Saturday night.
The documentary-maker delivered the annual Quaker Lecture to about 300 people in Wanganui War Memorial Hall.
His starting point was the similarity between his early life in Christchurch and that of Prime Minister John Key. Both were helped by the welfare state of the time.
Mr Key lived in a state house because his mother was a widow with debts and three children. Mr Bruce's parents emigrated from Scotland, in 1956, where the family had lived in a two-room apartment seven stories up, with no bathroom or hot water.
They were amazed to get a flat in Christchurch with a bathroom, hot running water and a washing machine. It was the first time they had been able to save.