The 1984 election, 40 years ago this month, marked a momentous shift in direction for a country on the brink of bankruptcy. In this article, one of a multi-part Listener series looking at the political upheaval and economic and social effects that continue to define New Zealand 40 years on, Sue Bradford argues Rogernomics ushered an underclass that exists to this day.
The human impacts of the Rogernomics revolution are etched into my memory and my political soul. In 1983, I was part of the group that set up the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Centre on a kaupapa of “jobs and a living wage for all”. Little did I know that I would spend much of the rest of the 80s dealing directly with the real-life consequences of Labour’s neoliberal turn.
In the run-up to the 1984 snap election, Labour made a series of fine promises to unemployed workers. It vowed to make job creation a priority and pledged financial support to our organisations. Unemployed groups around the country spent many a cold winter’s night pasting up “Sack the Pig” posters around the town, doing our bit to help finally defeat Rob Muldoon and assist a Labour victory.
The betrayal was absolute. By early 1985, Labour was phasing out PEP schemes (full-time award-wage job creation), then-employment minister Kerry Burke was openly attacking unemployed groups, and the promised funding never eventuated. At every level and in every sector for the next five years, Labour enacted a programme that decimated manufacturing, rail, timber and the freezing works, dismantled much of the public sector and destroyed the heart of many rural towns and communities along the way.
The work of our unemployed groups was national as well as local. At our peak, there were about 31 organisations, and regular hui and actions were organised through our national organisation Te Roopū Rawakore o Aotearoa. We had a fairly comprehensive picture of what was going down.
And it was the people who were going down, literally.
Unemployment tends to affect everyone adversely, whatever their background. When people lose a job or can’t get one, there is often quite quickly a loss of self-esteem and confidence, which only gets worse as time drags on. It hits deep at the psyche, even for those of us who understand that the causes are structural, not personal.
The systematic and often racist stigmatisation of unemployed people, beneficiaries and work scheme participants was as bad in the 80s as at any other time. These entrenched attitudes only made things worse for people who were already vulnerable to deepening physical and mental health issues, relationship breakdown and domestic abuse, all exacerbated by poverty. Consequential impacts rippled out to wider whānau and communities.
Mass unemployment
This was the first generation to experience mass unemployment in post-World War II Aotearoa New Zealand. The consequences can still be felt today in many families and across generations to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those initially affected. Here are some of the people I remember:
• A middle-aged man who had been made redundant from the railway workshops. He thought he had a job for life. He was proud of his skills and his work and was very resentful at being sent to Labour Department workshops on how to turn up to work on time and dress properly for an interview. I don’t think he returned to paid employment at any point before health issues overcame his ability to enter the workforce again.
• Young Māori friends in Hokianga and Kaitaia districts who were denied the unemployment benefit because they lived in what were deemed “remote areas”.
Huge amounts of rural infrastructure were shut down in the 80s, including post offices, railways, hospitals and other public sector workplaces. The unemployed were expected to truck off to the big cities for work on pain of receiving no income support even when they were the next-generation lifeblood of their marae and community.
Young women who could not see any other occupational choice but sex work. This can be a chosen profession for some, but for others it was (and is) a necessity born of desperation. At times, there were even edgy discussions reported from Social Welfare offices, in which young women felt the staff implicitly and sometimes even overtly pushed them in this direction. The NZ Prostitutes Collective was first set up in Auckland and elsewhere in 1987.
Women of all ages were treated differently from men. We felt we were often not seen as “real workers”, as old expectations around having a male to provide and staying home with the kids were still widely prevalent. Lack of decent, affordable childcare was a huge issue blocking many women from accessing what paid jobs there were. The intrusive and punitive welfare system stood ready to deny welfare to anyone deemed “in a relationship”, adding another layer of hardship to those trying to survive on their own with children.
Older folk who lost their jobs and women trying to get back into the workforce after having children found themselves in a bleak situation. Employers in those years were highly resistant to taking on anyone deemed “old” and 40-plus was often seen as the slippery slope to decrepitude.
Community groups aimed specifically at helping the over-50s – or even the over-40s – get back into the paid workforce began to emerge, although they had their work cut out, given the depth of prejudice towards older workers.
But perhaps some of the most affecting interactions I had were with young workers. There were always high numbers of young people out of work during this time, and Māori and Pasifika people were disproportionately affected, as in every other age group.
I remember sitting in the Rights Centre having a coffee with a Samoan guy of about 19. He was trying so hard to find a job but there was nothing and never had been for him, despite constant efforts on his part. He said he often stood in his family’s backyard in South Auckland and looked out over the fence and wondered, “Who are the people who are getting the jobs? Why isn’t there anything for me? Why does no one want me? I’m strong and I’m young and I so want to work and earn money and find my own life.” Tears were running down my face. His face was the face of Rogernomics to me.
Because this was the 1980s, our unemployed group often looked back for comparison and inspiration to the Great Depression and the unemployed organising in the 1930s. One of the big differences between that earlier time and ours was that we now had mass TV. This meant that nearly everyone could see on a daily basis the life of the “haves” in a way that wasn’t visible in earlier times.
Until October 1987, the share market boomed. Even ordinary folks bought into share clubs. The “glitter soap” Gloss was on TV. The National Business Review started publishing its annual rich list. Wealthy white men began contesting the America’s Cup.
Two very different worlds were emerging. The shock and awe of the Rogernomics onslaught knocked any last notions of the egalitarian dream sideways, myth though it was. Tens of thousands of individuals and families began the descent into an intergenerational underclass, where deep family poverty, gangs and criminal life, perennial health difficulties and pervasive alienation began to take a serious grip. That descent has never ended in the decades since.
Sue Bradford is an activist, academic and former politician who was a list MP for the Green Party from 1999 to 2009.