Former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange was the real thing, says Joe Bennett. Lange was a Labour man from his hair to his boots. Photo / File
Former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange was the real thing, says Joe Bennett. Lange was a Labour man from his hair to his boots. Photo / File
A DOG'S LIFE
She was a medical student in Auckland in the early 1970s. And in the holidays she drove buses.
"That's very old-style Soviet Union," I said.
"We were the workers' paradise back then," she said.
When she applied for the job two ancient inspectors took her out to Parnell in anequally ancient bus and parked it on a steep bit. "Now back it round that corner," they said.
She backed it round the corner. They looked at each other. "Do it again," they said. She did it again. "Not bad," said one. "Not bad at all," said the other. They took her on as a trainee.
"The two things you had to learn were how abnormally long and wide a bus was. And to swing out on bends because a bus' frame will cut the corner."
I took the chance here to tell the story of the very first time I towed another car. The other driver was a towing virgin too and we were both scared that he might not brake in time, so we agreed to use a long rope. All went swimmingly till we turned left at some traffic lights. Ooooh how the people fled. It was like reaping corn.
"There can't have been many young women on the buses."
"There weren't. But I've always liked blokes and once they knew I could drive they treated me pretty well. I loved it. And it was bloody well paid."
"It isn't now."
"No," she said, "it isn't now. Back then the unions were strong. Every year we'd threaten to work to rule a few days before Christmas. Just flexing the muscle, you know."
"In the workers' paradise."
"I don't know about paradise," she said. "Men ran most things. A woman's place was still in the home. It was illegal to be gay, and so on. But it was more egalitarian. The gap between rich and poor was narrower."
"So where did that go? What happened to a fairer world?"
"The 80s happened. Rogernomics. The economy had been badly handled. The government was broke. To raise cash they sold off the family jewellery - the railways, Telecom. They ditched subsidies to farmers. They encouraged free market competition. That led to efficiencies but it also put power into the hands of capital. And bit by bit the rich climbed higher and the poor sank lower and the workers' paradise faded from view. And that's how we got to today."
"Those changes," I said, "happened all around the world. Reagan in the States, Thatcher in the UK and, when I was living in Canada in the mid-80s, I watched a drab character called Mulroney follow suit. But Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney were all conservatives, right-wingers. Here it happened under a Labour government. How could that be? Was there some global zeitgeist they were powerless to resist? Or had right-wingers infiltrated Labour?"
Sir Roger Douglas, a former Labour Party member and finance minister, was the architect of Rogernomics in the 1980s and went on to form the Act Party. Photo / File
Richard Prebble followed Roger Douglas who formed the Act Party. Joe Bennett wonders if they were ever really left-wingers. Photo / File
"I've wondered the same myself," she said. "Roger Douglas went on to found the Act Party which is about as far from being socialist as it is possible to be. And Richard Prebble followed him. So whether they were ever actually left-wingers, I don't know. But David Lange was the real thing. Lange was a Labour man from his hair to his boots. He was all up-the-workers and right-up-the-bosses in the best revolutionary tradition."
"I landed in this country in January 1987," I said, "and I was impressed. Here was a prime minister who made me laugh. I'd never come across that before. The powerful generally dread laughter, because it threatens their self-importance. So with a modest, clever, honest and funny left-winger in charge, how did this lurch to the right come to pass?"
"They broke him," she said. "Somehow they broke him. For all his eloquence he was afraid of conflict and his ministers just beat him down. They broke his spirit and his health broke with it. I went to see him speak some time in the 90s and he was a shadow of his former self, a man sick in body and soul, sweat-drenched and beaten.
"And with him went any notion of a workers' paradise, not that workers' paradises are sustainable anyway. They all become the opposite of paradises. Then they implode. Look at the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Venezuela. We managed to avoid all that. But it was a good time to be a bus driver."
