Neoliberal whizz-kid: Aotearoa New Zealand PM John Key in 1987
"A 1987 video has been unearthed featuring a 25-year-old squash-playing, accountancy graduate John Key. The bright-eyed Mr Key features in an early Close-Up story called Big Dealers. The 'portrait of 80s job du jour: foreign exchange dealer', shows the now Prime Minister in 'the pit' (trading room) as a senior forex dealer. 'Forex dealing is a work hard, play hard world with an image of rich brats who wreck restaurants but always somewhere else,' says the reporter. 'I am not denying that, that has happened and I guess that will happen again in the future but I personally perform in that way,' Mr Key responded."
(Deanna Harris, 02 Sep 2010, MediaWorks TV)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
David Lange: Nuclear Weapons are Morally Indefensible
"Most New Zealanders watched David Lange contest and win the 1985 Oxford Union debate, arguing the proposition that 'nuclear weapons are morally indefensible' with a mixture of pride and astonishment. After decades of knowing our place, and several years of government by homunculus, suddenly we had a Prime Minister who could stride the international stage with insouciance. And briefly, we seemed to matter.
Although New Zealand's nuclear-free policy did not become law until 1987, it was integral to early years of the fourth Labour government. The 1984 snap election that made Lange Prime Minister was called by Robert Muldoon when National MP Marilyn Waring withdrew her support for her party over the issue of nuclear ship visits. Labour won the election with a nuclear ban as a flagship policy.
The policy was popular among New Zealanders, but not without cost. Our relationship with the US deteriorated in the early weeks of 1985. On the same journey that took him to Oxford, Lange, four days before the debate, met with a US State Department official who outlined the retaliatory measures that the US would be taking against New Zealand. The ANZUS alliance of which New Zealand had been part since 1951 was effectively cancelled at that meeting."
(Public Address, 14 October 2004)
This is the introduction to the transcript of the Rt. Hon. David Lange's 1985 Oxford Debate. The transcript is copyright to Public Address. It was prepared by Russell Brown and Fiona Rae, with the consent of David Lange. Thanks are due to Radio New Zealand’s Sound Archives/Nga Taonga Korero (File: Media Numbers T4705 to T4708), Infofind, the Parliamentary Library and Barry Hartley.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Kevin Rudd: The Global Financial Crisis
"Not for the first time in history, the international challenge for social democrats is to save capitalism from itself: to recognise the great strengths of open, competitive markets while rejecting the extreme capitalism and unrestrained greed that have perverted so much of the global financial system in recent times. It fell to Franklin Delano Roosevelt to rebuild American capitalism after the Depression. It fell also to the American Democrats, strongly influenced by John Maynard Keynes, to rebuild postwar domestic demand, to engineer the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and to set in place the Bretton Woods system to govern international economic engagement. And so it now falls to President Obama's administration - and to those who will provide international support for his leadership - to support a global financial system that properly balances private incentive with public responsibility in response to the grave challenges presented by the current crisis. The common thread uniting all three of these episodes is a reliance on the agency of the state to reconstitute properly regulated markets and to rebuild domestic and global demand.
The second challenge for social democrats is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. As the global financial crisis unfolds and the hard impact on jobs is felt by families across the world, the pressure will be great to retreat to some model of an all-providing state and to abandon altogether the cause of open, competitive markets both at home and abroad. Protectionism has already begun to make itself felt, albeit in softer and more subtle forms than the crudity of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. Soft or hard, protectionism is a sure-fire way of turning recession into depression, as it exacerbates the collapse in global demand. The intellectual challenge for social democrats is not just to repudiate the neo-liberal extremism that has landed us in this mess, but to advance the case that the social-democratic state offers the best guarantee of preserving the productive capacity of properly regulated competitive markets, while ensuring that government is the regulator, that government is the funder or provider of public goods and that government offsets the inevitable inequalities of the market with a commitment to fairness for all. Social democracy's continuing philosophical claim to political legitimacy is its capacity to balance the private and the public, profit and wages, the market and the state. That philosophy once again speaks with clarity and cogency to the challenges of our time."
(Kevin Rudd, February 2009, No. 42, The Monthly)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Kevin Rudd says sorry (to the stolen generations)
"Australia has formally apologised to the stolen generations with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd reading a speech in Federal Parliament this morning.
...
Both Mr Rudd and Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin received a standing ovation as they entered the Great Hall before the Prime Minister delivered the speech.
...
Former prime ministers Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser and Sir William Deane were all seated on the floor of the Parliament as well as 17 people representing the stolen generation.
...
Redfern [inner city suburb]
Mr Rudd''s speech received a standing ovation at the Redfern Community Centre, where hundreds gathered.
Residents, workers, families, students and Sydney''s Lord Mayor Clover Moore braved the rain to watch the speech via a large outdoor screen.
David Page, composer with the indigenous dance group Bangarra Dance Theatre, said he liked the fact that Mr Rudd made a personal apology.
''It was very moving to see a prime minister with a bit of heart. I loved it when he said he was sorry. There was just something personal about it. It''s very hard for a prime minister to be personal,'' he said.
Enid Williams, 72, who was brought up on a mission in north Queensland after her father was forcibly removed from his family, said she was happy with Mr Rudd''s speech, but said it was now important to look to the future.
''I''m 72. The main thing is the young people, to give them a better future.''
Martin Place
At Martin Place in [central] Sydney, hundreds of Sydneysiders from all walks of life gathered to watch the Sorry Day celebrations holding Australian, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags.
Men and women in business suits, schoolchildren and other passers-by of all different backgrounds cried, smiled and stood in respect as they listened to Mr Rudd apologise."
(Dylan Welch, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2008)
[This has been a long time coming - and is something that was clearly beyond the capacity of the previous Australian Liberal Party administration!]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Yes Prime Minister: parodying Australian Prime Minister
[Yes Prime Minister is an interactive parody of Australia's ex-Prime Minister John Winston Howard. The interactive toy works as a kind of digital 'fridge magnet poetry' through allowing users to re-mix Little Johnny's speeches for humorous effect. The toy was created by the Australian communications agency 'Thought By Them'.]
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
