How we got here, Who was Roger Douglas?

[McDuck]

I’ve been doing a bit of research into how we ended up with our banking structure.

It all seems to point back to one year in the 80’s when a politician called Roger Douglas passed some laws that resulted in foreign buyouts of the main banks within 12 months.

I haven’t triple checked the sources, so the exactness might be questionable.

Some of you might have been around at the time, and I’d love to hear a personal take on the man and situation.
(History books tend to miss the real subtleties of things).

[jimO]

jeez how old are you?

[Keys]

3? (mammc)

[McDuck]

Lol. I was distracted at the time.

I guess my main question is.
How did Rodger Douglas, the best National Party politician ever, wind up being best friends with a man who notices radium on your breath.

[Wayne]

what he did was remove a lot of the regulations restricting things - necminit the banks were brought by bigger money.

He also reduced a few other regulations that most are in favour of.

[muppet]

the best National Party politician ever

He was a pretty good Labour Party member as well.

[Eugene]

Wikipedia is good on this, accurate, google 1984 labour government. It was interesting. Friends made thousands when the exchange rate was floated in 1984, lost it again in the sharemarket crash of 1987, drank a lot of champagne - sometimes laced with Berocca, one treasury friend liked to look out for rural Post Offices to close while on holiday, Richard Prebble wrote about functioning railway workshops in the middle of nowhere that had been forgotten about, the Railways employed 20,000 as Muldoon used to phone them to take on more staff in order to keep the population employed - the 1984 election was exciting as NZ was believed by many to be on the verge of insolvency. 1984 - 1990 saw pure Thatcherism put into practice, necessary but rather too quickly for some, including Prime Minister David Lange.
I feel even older than when my musical nephew told me he envied me because I was actually THERE in the 70's.Anyone got any questions about the 90's?

[Keys]

First of the whaka jumpers?

[muppet]

Yeah.
They were made from moa wool.

[lawt]

I do remember a couple of things he did.
As an apprentice I spent a lot of time strenghtening bulging wool stores as the National govt had instituted Suplimentery Minimum Pricing and was paying farmers to grow wool - which it couldn't sell. It was great for farmers (and commercial construction companies) but not sure how it helped us. Roger Douglas removed the SMPs and in doing so restored order to the (market) force - and upset many farmers.

The other thing that I recall was a report he commissioned on the Auto assembly industry. National had declared it a strategic industry and in need of our protection. According to the report it was costing you and me $60,000.00 per job per annum to maintain this strategic industry, much of it in the form of import duties. He reasoned it was cheaper for us to keep them on the dole instead of employed so dropped the import duties on new and used cars and let the industry deal with it.

I must admit - both of these things I saw as very positive.

The other one that I do recall is the setting up of the State Owned Enterprises, which was I feel a very positive thing (given my experience of golf and the Kumeu tavern whilst employed in the Post Office for a limited time). Of course what he did with many of the SOEs is a matter of much debate.