This year will mark the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the 1984 Neoliberal economic “reforms” into New Zealand, so I thought I would make the documentary I made for the 30th anniversary in 2014, free to view.
While some things have changed since I made this programme, I have to sadly report we have not yet learned the lesson that the economics of selfishness is socially corrosive and has increased the gap between the haves and the have nots even further in our country over the last decade.
One of the many reasons the current National/Act/NZFirst Coalition can release the kind of budget it did last week, which gave tax breaks to the rich and effectively cut benefits and services to our most vulnerable, is that anyone under the age of 40 or who has settled in our country in that period ,has not experienced the WE society we once had. The society that forced the wealthy to pay their fair share, that built thousands of state houses so that every family had a warm dry place to call home, where the Government, not the commercial banks, controlled the mortgage market, and kids like me were given a virtually free education up to and including university.
I remember the executive producer for the broadcaster, TV3, saying to me just before I started filming this documentary “I hope you are not going to use the word ‘neoliberalism’ Bryan, because no one will understand what it means.”
Well, I did my best to explain it, and a lot of us today know about it because we experience its wired-in unfairness that panders to the rich at the expense of the poor, every day of our lives.
(Mind The Gap won a Gold Award at the New York Festival in 2014)
Please share with friends and whanau.
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