Former Green MP Sue Bradford on Rogernomics: ‘The betrayal was absolute’
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.