KEY POINTS:
In a series of edited book extracts this week we present visions of how our history might have developed if key events had taken a different course. Today Bob Gregory looks at how the flight of a rugby ball in 1981 could have changed the fate of a nation.
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The protests over the 1981 Springbok tour were set against the background to gain revenge for the defeat in 1976. In the closing minutes of the third and deciding test, Allan Hewson kicked a penalty which gave the All Blacks a series victory against the old foe. Two months later National narrowly won the general election.
Hewson's kick swings just outside the upright and referee Norling blows the final whistle. The match is a 22-all draw and the test series is also drawn.
New Zealand rugby supporters are deflated. Many of them assuage their frustration in the belief that the difficult conditions created by the protest movement have been a principal reason for this failure. Although most of them, and especially those living in provincial New Zealand, have enthusiastically hailed Prime Minister Rob Muldoon's decision not to intervene to stop the tour, they have not received the prize they had most fervently hoped for: a series revenge over the old foe.
Had the All Blacks won the series they would have enthusiastically endorsed National candidates at the forthcoming general election. Now, frustrated, a significant number are insufficiently motivated to vote at all.
In the minds of many of them there now lurk doubts about whether the tour had actually been worth it in light of all the mayhem and violence on the streets and the social division.
The 1981 general election sees the end of Rob Muldoon's two-term Government. The Labour Party wins 46 seats, National 44 seats, and Social Credit two.
Labour narrowly wins the seats of Taupo, Eden, and Gisborne. With one of its members - Jonathan Hunt - elected by the House as its Speaker, the Government relies on the two Social Credit MPs, Bruce Beetham and Gary Knapp, to support it on confidence and supply.
Bill Rowling is now Prime Minister, with Bob Tizard the Minister of Finance. They keep on with Think Big (the Muldoon Government's industrial development projects) because of the funds already sunk into them.
But there is no price and wage freeze (as instigated by Muldoon in 1982). Rowling and Tizard pursue largely orthodox economic management.
However, inflation continues to rise, as do interest rates and unemployment. After two years in office the Labour Government's poll ratings are dropping badly.
Midway through the third year there erupts a Lange/Douglas v Rowling/Tizard split in the Labour Party.
With an eye to his own political future, party president Jim Anderton backs Rowling/Tizard. However, the Lange/Douglas challenge succeeds and Lange replaces Rowling as Prime Minister with Douglas as his deputy.
The unseemly leadership struggle proves to be the final nail in the Government's coffin. The 1984 election is held, as scheduled, in November, and Labour is ousted. Neither Rowling nor Tizard stood for re-election. Early in 1985 Jim Anderton becomes the new leader of the Labour Party in opposition, having entered Parliament at the 1984 election.
Lange resigns from Parliament mid-term, with Labour retaining his Mangere seat in the subsequent byelection.
Douglas does not stand at the 1987 election. Instead, he becomes an unsuccessful pig farmer, subsequently writing his second book, this time titled There's Got to be a Better Whey.
Meanwhile, early in 1982, following National's defeat at the polls, Muldoon has been replaced as Opposition leader by Jim McLay. McLay thus becomes Prime Minister in 1984, with Bill Birch as Minister of Finance. (There is no economic or constitutional crisis.) The Anzus treaty remains intact.
Birch is wary of the radical economic advice being offered by Treasury and the Reserve Bank. He prefers more orthodox economic policies, along with a pragmatic "modernising" of the public service and cuts in government spending.
Industrial troubles develop, led by "Red Ken" Douglas, president of the Federation of Labour.
McLay is consistently portrayed by Labour as weak and indecisive, while Muldoon undermines his leadership from within the National Party caucus.
Although its impact on New Zealand investors is only moderate, the international stockmarket crash in October 1987 - just one month before the election - plays into the Opposition's hands. Labour wins with a three-seat majority. Jim Anderton is now Prime Minister, with Helen Clark as Minister of Finance and Richard Prebble as Minister of Labour. Winston Peters succeeds McLay as Opposition leader.
Anderton and Clark are able to introduce decidedly neo-liberal economic policies, including deregulation of the economy and the phasing out of farming subsidies.
Graham Scott is now Secretary to the Treasury. However, his advocacy of privatisation of state-owned utilities is not accepted by the Government.
A policy and personal schism develops between Clark and Scott, who resigns to stand at the 1990 election as a member of the New Zealand Party, a right-wing grouping formed and led by businessman Robert Jones.
In 1990 the Anderton Labour Government narrowly wins a second term, and Peters is replaced as leader of the National Party by Jim Bolger.
On the back benches, Peters attacks both Opposition and Government colleagues alike, earning for himself the sobriquet "The Whine Box".
He later resigns from Parliament, so as to force a byelection and embarrass the Government. Late at nights, often in a restaurant known as the Green Parrot, he muses over the prospect, unlikely though it seems, of one day returning to the political scene and becoming the country's Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Following the 1990 election, Clark becomes Deputy Prime Minister. The election sees the New Zealand Party win 20 per cent of the vote, but no seats in the House.
There are growing calls for the introduction of proportional representation, which are vigorously resisted by the Anderton-led Labour Government.
National wins the 1993 election, and this time the New Zealand Party wins 25 per cent of the vote, but only one parliamentary seat (Robert Jones).
The move for proportional representation now becomes unstoppable. At the first MMP election, in 1996, a minority coalition of National/New Zealand comes to office, led by Bolger, with Robert Jones as Deputy Prime Minister.
At this juncture the elastic band of credulity is stretched to snapping point.
* This is an edited extract from New Zealand as it Might Have Been,15 scenarios of alternate history edited by Stephen Levine and published by Victoria University Press.
* Bob Gregory is an associate professor in the school of government at Victoria University.
