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David Lange: My Life: Difference between revisions
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I dare say that Douglas’ memoir of the same period, should he write one (and I hope he does) will provide a somewhat different and equally valuable picture of events. | I dare say that Douglas’ memoir of the same period, should he write one (and I hope he does) will provide a somewhat different and equally valuable picture of events. | ||
====Wage and Price Freeze==== | |||
Lange validates one extraordinary episode. In June 1982, faced with rampant inflation brought about by years of interventionist economic mismanagement — much of it his own — [[New Zealand]] Prime Minister [[Robert Muldoon]] bet the farm (''literally'': in 1982, [[New Zealand]] was one big farm, with 70 million sheeple. I mean sheep. In fact, 1982 was peak sheep for [[New Zealand]], with 70.3 million of the buggers)<ref>These days, there are 29.5 million, according to [http://archive.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/population/mythbusters/3million-people-60million-sheep.aspx NZ’s official statistics folk].</ref> on the most radical intervention a guy could make short of nationalising the means of production altogether: He ''banned'' inflation. By executive fiat, Muldoon announced a total [[wage and price freeze]]. Henceforth it would be ''illegal'' to increase wages or prices in [[New Zealand]].<ref>Where was the Minister of Finance in all of this, you might ask? Right there. “Chairman and CEO” Robert Muldoon was the Minister of Finance, too.</ref> | |||
Overnight, he said, inflation would be fixed! Easy, right? Things stayed this way for two and a half years until Muldoon was, at last, thrown out of office, after incautiously calling a snap election when drunk. By this time the economy was so demoralised [[David Lange|Lange]]’s incoming Labour government had no choice but to implement the sweeping reforms the economy needed, announcing an immediate twenty per cent devaluation in the pegged New Zealand Dollar. | |||
But Muldoon — still caretaker prime minister, pending the swearing in of the new government, was not done with his wrecking. He promptly precipitated a constitutional crisis — and a dramatic run on the [[New Zealand dollar]] — by publicly refusing the new administration’s instruction to devalue the [[Kiwi]]. There was so little money left that Lange instructed New Zealand’s international diplomatic staff around the world to ''max out their credit cards'' so there would be money to pay the bills. | |||
{{sa}} | |||
*[[Robert Muldoon]] | |||
*[[David Lange]] | |||
{{ref}} | |||
====In the end==== | |||
Ultimately the Lange administration will be seen in the wider geopolitical context of the 1980s perhaps as something that was going to happen at some point anyway, but when one looks at the vibrant, dynamic and diverse culture, economy and polity that New Zealand enjoys today, and compare it with the staid and stultifying one which Lange took on in 1984, one can only tip one’s hat to the man who actually did start that process rolling and acknowledge this very personal record of the events. | Ultimately the Lange administration will be seen in the wider geopolitical context of the 1980s perhaps as something that was going to happen at some point anyway, but when one looks at the vibrant, dynamic and diverse culture, economy and polity that New Zealand enjoys today, and compare it with the staid and stultifying one which Lange took on in 1984, one can only tip one’s hat to the man who actually did start that process rolling and acknowledge this very personal record of the events. | ||