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NEW ZEALAND: Revolt of the Guinea Pigs

4 minute read
TIME

On election night in New Zealand, the flat voices of radio announcers reported the people’s choice. The broadcasts came from state-owned radio stations; thousands of New Zealanders heard the news in the comfort of state-owned houses, and even the partially deaf listened with hearing aids provided by the state. Many of the welfare state’s supporters and beneficiaries could hardly believe their ears: after 14 years of Socialist government, New Zealand had had enough.

A solid majority had voted against shrewd, able Laborite Prime Minister Peter Fraser, who had governed the country with the red-taped rod of compulsory benevolence. Into office, with a parliamentary margin of 46 to 34, would come the free-enterprising National Party, led by kinetic, fast-talking Sydney George Holland.

Humanitarians & Bureaucrats. For more than half a century, under various parties, insular New Zealand, with its butter and mutton economy, has been an experimental laboratory for welfare statism. Today, social security—paid for by a flat 5% tax on all private and corporate income —includes state-paid old-age pensions, unemployment benefits, medical and hospital care. Industry is heavily regulated, trade unionism and industrial arbitration compulsory. Liberal and conservative governments have shared in the vast social experiments. But ever since the Labor Party took office in 1935, what had begun as a humanitarian drive gradually ossified into bureaucratic socialism.

Under the Socialists the standard of living was high, but small homeowners, businessmen and farmers complained because they could not sell their properties except at state-fixed prices. There was no unemployment or serious want, but wage and salary earners worked at income levels which smothered incentive: a ship’s cook often earned more than a ship’s captain; bus drivers, postmen and newspaper reporters got more or less the same pay. Taxes ate away people’s earnings. Many imports, especially automobiles, were rationed, leaving popular demand unsatisfied. Thousands of young New Zealanders emigrated to find freer opportunities abroad.

Opposition to the Socialists had been growing steadily for ten years. Their parliamentary majority had declined. As 1949’s campaign got under way, Labor candidates faced dissatisfied audiences that insistently harried them with heckling questions. How much more was Socialism going to cost? Why were government ministers riding in U.S. limousines while ordinary folks couldn’t get cars? An Auckland newspaperman called it “the revolt of the guinea pigs.”

Pets & Stallions. Sniffing the political wind, shrewd, 65-year-old Prime Minister Fraser soft-pedaled the Socialist line, tried to convince the guinea pigs that if they elected the free-enterprisers they would face insecurity, wage cuts, a depression. The opposition National Party promised to keep social security and present wage levels. But it hammered hard at high taxes, controls, and the creeping inefficiency of government.

Sydney Holland, 56-year-old businessman, sheep rancher, World War I artilleryman, and politician since 1935, forcefully led the attack. “Make your pounds go further,” he cried. “We’ll give you more for less.”

Labor’s best hope for victory lay in the Maori vote. New Zealand’s 100,000 Polynesian natives have long been Labor’s pets, benefit especially from family payments of ten shillings a week per child, which they called “stallion money.” Though the faithful Maoris gave Labor their votes—and four parliamentary seats—they could not block the decisive National Party victory.

Santa Claus & Security. Most New Zealanders last week cheered the change of government. Many Laborites themselves hoped that Labor’s defeat would revitalize the party. The big question was how far and fast Prime Minister Holland would go in desocializing New Zealand. Last week Holland announced that, as promised, he would retain all of Labor’s social security measures, but he intends to return to private enterprise many parts of the country’s economy which had been nationalized by Labor, e.g., the nationalized airways system. He will have to do it gradually. One national leader parried questions about his party’s intentions with another question: “Have you ever tried to unscramble eggs?”

The New Zealand elections was eagerly watched in Australia (see below) and in Britain. British Conservatives saw in it a forecast of their own hoped-for triumphs. British Laborites consoled themselves that New Zealand was a more prosperous country than postwar Britain, and had, after 14 years of the welfare state, all but forgotten the bad old days. In Britain, ran the Socialists’ argument, it was different: Britain still needed the Labor Party to lead it to better days.

The fact remained that the New Zealand elections held a sharp, simple political lesson: the bread and the boons which the Socialist Santa Claus had handed out—from the taxpayers’ money—did not necessarily buy and bind the people’s votes. New Zealanders, for all their human yearning for security, had decided that Socialism’s drab, regimented version of Christmas was a pain in the neck.

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