#ruthenasia — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ruthenasia, aggregated by home.social.
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"Four core pieces of legislation set the neoliberal norms and disciplines to guide the project: the State Sector Act 1988, the Reserve Bank Act 1989, the Public Finance Act 1989, and the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994. These were complemented by binding and enforceable international trade and investment agreements that expanded to diverse areas of policy."
#JaneKelsey, 2025
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"Four core pieces of legislation set the neoliberal norms and disciplines to guide the project: the State Sector Act 1988, the Reserve Bank Act 1989, the Public Finance Act 1989, and the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994. These were complemented by binding and enforceable international trade and investment agreements that expanded to diverse areas of policy."
#JaneKelsey, 2025
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"Four core pieces of legislation set the neoliberal norms and disciplines to guide the project: the State Sector Act 1988, the Reserve Bank Act 1989, the Public Finance Act 1989, and the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994. These were complemented by binding and enforceable international trade and investment agreements that expanded to diverse areas of policy."
#JaneKelsey, 2025
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No discussion of the legacy of the 1980s/90s neoliberal coup in NZ would be complete without a #HatTip to Alister Barry's trilogy of documentaries about it;
Someone Else's Country (1996);
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/someone-elses-country-1996
In a Land of Plenty (2002)
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/in-a-land-of-plenty-2002
A Civilised Society (2006);
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/a-civilised-society-2006
As well as Jane Kelsey's book The NZ Experiment (1995), which I believe was an important source for the first of these docos.
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"We wanted to make Revolution because we believed that unless we re-run and re-examine our recent history we are in constant danger of forgetting, and forgetting can render us passive about the present and slaves of the future."
#MarciaRussell, 2009, Producer of Revolution, the 4-part 1996 TVNZ series about neoliberal coup of the 1980s/90s.
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/revolution-1996/series/background/marcia-russell
Full series can be see here;
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Grain of salt warning:
TheSpinOff aligned writers often seem to swallow the big lie of neoliberal coups; we're in a crisis, There Is No Alternative (sound familiar?). But their Juggernaut podcast about the 1984 election can be found here;
https://open.spotify.com/show/14elyKUvT9NNvkyGl6mTze
FYI It seems to focus on the Rogernomics labour government (1984-90), not the Ruthenasia National government (1990-99), which was just as crucial to the degraded state the country is in today.
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"But I do think that since the introduction of the Neoliberal “economic reforms” of the 1980s and 90s, New Zealand has forgotten that the purpose of an economy is not to make a few people very wealthy at the expense of the many, but to create the greatest good, for the greatest number of its citizens over the longest period of time."
#BryanBruce, 2024
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This year marks the 40 year anniversary of the #Rogernomics Labour government that made market fundamentalism and austerity policy the dominant paradigm of the NZ Parliament. This neoliberal coup was continued by the #Ruthenasia National government of the early 1990s.
It amazes me how few people in Aotearoa today seem to understand what the country was like in 1984, and what's changed since then. Anyone keen to help put together a factual and non-partisan website about this?