1984: The Fall of Fortress New Zealand

July 18, 2023

By AHNZ

Today in history, 18 July, 1984, Fortress New Zealand ended. Against out-going National 3.0 Prime Minister Rob Muldoon the new government “devalued” the national currency.

Of course, governments cannot really bestow or revoke value at all but they can hold others at gunpoint and make them pretend to. That is what we did after our post-war ‘Golden Weather High’ ended; We faked it. New Zealand society hadn’t wanted to face up to its economic problems during those years and Muldoon facilitated that for willing voters with his financial morphine. Instead of using our abilities to meet new challenges we put all we had into avoiding them. We preserved ourselves like a ship in a bottle; A Fortress.

Muldoon’s people wanted to go on believing New Zealand could still train and keep leading doctors and develop our own pharmaceuticals. Defend ourselves. Build our own televisions and cars. Manufacture things. Make toys. Have chocolate factories and not have to import Pineapple Lumps from Tasmanians. Run our own call centres. Own our own banks and newspapers and publish our own books and songs. Continue to have heavy industry, to mine, and to pull off athletic and inventive miracles.

We had a Fortress built to protect us from the truth that these things were slipping away. As a result we didn’t act to hold on to them. Didn’t innovate, didn’t stay competitive or productive. So when we finally did let Muldoon’s Fortress go and re-engage with reality the shock and grief were terrible.

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Image ref. Richard Harman interviews Muldoon in his slippers on the last night before the Fortress was breached; Revolution (1996)

Ref. “The banks and the Dairy Board, Meat Board and the Wool Board and so on, made killings. We all knew it was coming and so what you did was delay the repatriation of your overseas receipts.” – Kiwi still flying 25 years after devaluation, NZ Herald (2009)

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