FYI having trouble downloading the third episode of Juggernaut 2, which dropped yesterday. Maybe the hosting provider The Spinoff is using for their podcast episodes is behind CloudScare?
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The history of the 1990s, and Ruth Richardson's hijacking of the Bolger government is just as important to understanding the corporatist (or "neoliberal") reforms. In which government of both legacy parties architected the impoverished, decaying country we live in today.
Especially because some opponents of "neoliberalism" are rewriting history to blame Labour alone. Even as the NatACT First coalition speedrun the ideology-driven economic incompetence of the 1990s.
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FYI having trouble downloading the third episode of Juggernaut 2, which dropped yesterday. Maybe the hosting provider The Spinoff is using for their podcast episodes is behind CloudScare?
"And then out came the tale of woe, about how the Bank of NZ was about to collapse, and we were going to have to introduce this draconian - only word to describe it - set of welfare measures that were going to screw everyone who was down in NZ."
#MichaelLaws, Juggernaut 2, ep 1, 2025
https://www.thespinoff.co.nz/podcasts/juggernaut
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Let's be clear on what happened in 1990. A publicly-owned bank needed bailing out. But instead of raising taxes on the wealthy, National took the money from kiwis who had the least; those on social welfare benefits. Sound familiar?
But keep in mind that many of the unemployed were those whose public service jobs had been "restructured" out of existence by the 1980s Labour government. Unemployment was high and rising as a direct consequence of Rogernomics, not lack of effort by workers.
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"Back at home, Ruth Richardson pushes on. Asset sales continued; the BNZ is flicked off, so is NZ Rail."
#TobyManhire, 2025
https://www.thespinoff.co.nz/podcasts/juggernaut
So having severely impoverished a million kiwis during an economic crisis, supposedly to afford the cost of bailing out the BNZ, within a couple of years Richardson has sold it.
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The current PM is talking up sales of public infrastructure ("asset sales"), as a way of balancing the books in the short term. The same excuse the Rogernomes and Ruthenasians gave in the 1980/90s.
So it's worth noting that within a decade of those sales of BNZ and NZ Rail, a new government was setting up a new public bank from scratch (KiwiBank), and buying back the asset-stripped and ailing railways (now KiwiRail). They also bailed out the corporatised Air NZ, sold by the Rogernomes.
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