1980s: Days of greed and glamour

By EUGENE BINGHAM

Ahh, the 1980s - debauchery, bull markets, shoulderpads, Rogernomics.

Some look back with fondness, others with horror. Now a new book tries to unpick the decade when New Zealand went wild and understand the reckless attitude that saw the sharemarket soar and champagne flow.

The Dirty Decade concludes that the 1980s was New Zealand's adolescence, full of cringe-making behaviour, styles and attitudes, but a necessary part of our development as a nation.

Author Stephen Stratford - who wrote for Metro magazine, itself a child of the 80s - blames much of the excess on the late former Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon.

"Muldoon suppressed us for so long that when freedom came we, or at least lots of us, exploded in craziness and bad behaviour," he writes.

"Perhaps without him we would have had a more dignified transition into the modern world - and Michael Fay and David Richwhite, among others, wouldn't have made such colossal fortunes.

"The Knobz wouldn't have had a hit with Culture. Perhaps it all would have been different. We'll never know."

Stratford says his title encapsulates the moral climate of the time, "that goldrush fever - anything went, and bad behaviour was justified."

But he believes a lot of good came out of the decade: homosexual law reform, Pakeha beginning to recognise Maori grievances, job opportunities and business that sprouted then.

New Zealand has matured since the 80s, he says, although it has certainly not become staid. The nation is now more in its 20s than middle-aged.

But have things changed that much? And were all the changes for the better?

Emerald Gilmour, a founding proprietor of Club Mirage, nightclub to the rich and famous back then, admits there was plenty of bad behaviour.

"That was the beginning of people flashing their wealth. Prior to that, people had been careful not to do that.

"Then we started drinking French champagne, driving flash cars and parking them on the footpath.

"I remember someone parking their Rolls-Royce outside Club Mirage and someone who is well known coming out at 1 o'clock in the morning quite inebriated and jumping on the roof."

But she does not believe there is any less bad behaviour now.

"Things are no less outrageous these days."

In business, the sharemarket boomed, with brokers and ordinary families alike lured by ever-increasing stock prices - until the 1987 crash.

Sir Robert Jones says companies tried everything to attract investment.

"I could go on at length about elements ... we utilised. Ensuring celebrities were known shareholders by giving them shares was [one] tool.

"Actually, the word 'celebrity' sums up the mood of the times. It was a corporate celebrity culture, and the high-flyers fed off it to the benefit of their shareholders."

Another high-flying businessman of the times says New Zealand today would be a basket case without the reforms of the 1980s.

"The structural changes that [Sir Roger] Douglas put in place are the foundations of our economy today," says the businessman, who declined to be named. "They perhaps were brought in a bit suddenly but the reality was they were necessary.

"We had a closeted, protected economy, and by 1986-87 we had oneof the most open economies."

But Sue Bradford, who fought for beneficiaries' rights in the 1980s as a protest leader and is now a Green MP, does not have a rose-tinted view of the 1980s in Auckland.

While stockbrokers and foreign exchange dealers wined and dined, thousands lost their jobs, she says.

"Unemployment was one of the fundamental drivers of the rich-poor gap. Then Labour came in and it widened."

To her, the 1980s cemented inter-generational unemployment and the attitude of blaming beneficiaries for their plight. The culture of greed was deeply ingrained, she says.

The 1980s had other legacies too - glitzy celebrity weddings starting with the 1986 union of former Miss Universe Lorraine Downes and former All Black Murray Mexted.

And who could forget singing along to Sailing Away, penned to draw New Zealand behind those first attempts on the America's Cup - a love affair that lasts to this day.