| Comment | IN A LAND OF PLENTY - New Zealand Victimized By Extreme Right Deregulation And Privatization In The 1980s
"In a Land of Plenty" is an historical documentary describing how New Zealand moved from being a country of genuine full employment to one where unemployment is used as a tool of economic management. With rising unemployment workers are less likely to seek wage increases. Wages make up the largest part of the cost of goods and services and so by constraining wages the general level of prices is held steady. Inflation is contained.
Economic theory aside, unemployment is an emotional subject and this documentary gives voice to the low paid, the beneficiaries and their dependents whose quality of life is now shaped by Reserve Bank policy makers. Reserve Bank officials like Don Brash are seen explaining their actions. One of the most shocking scenes involves young Treasury officials deciding on a "poverty line". To increase the motivation of the unemployed to search for work, they decide that benefits should be cut to a level at which the recipient would have only just enough to eat.
Extraordinary footage from WINZ training videos shows Christine Rankin personifying the steady shift in attitude from compassion to compulsion in our welfare state. Pearl Biggs gives a moving account of having to choose whether to buy food for her children or to pay the power bill.
File Size: 195.4 MB
Technical Details:
Length: 1:43:33
Resolution: 352x240
Frame Rate: 29 fps
Video Codec: xvid
Audio Codec: mp3
SOMEONE ELSE'S COUNTRY - New Zealand Victimized By Extreme Right Deregulation And Privatization In The 1980s
In 1935 the first Labour government swept to power and began to build a social democratic welfare state that became the envy of the western world. For fifty years successive generations worked to increase the wealth and security of ordinary citizens in health, education, housing and above all to counter the scourge of unemployment. The spirit of this endeavour was summed up as the "quest for security".
During the early 1980's, a group of rightwing economists quietly came to dominate policy development at the New Zealand Treasury. With the election of the fourth Labour Government in 1984 and the appointment of Roger Douglas as minister of finance, their theories began to be put into effect with the introduction of some of the most drastic economic reforms seen in western democracies at the time.
This feature documentary tells the story of how the new right elite took power and exercised it relentlessly to turn our country into their vision of the model free-market state.
File Size: 195.5 MB
Technical Details:
Length: 1:47:25
Resolution: 352x240
Frame Rate: 29 fps
Video Codec: xvid
Audio Codec: mp3 |
