Interview by Trevor Burnard - Part 2
Michael Bassett discusses his new book
The State in New Zealand 1840-1984
Reprinted from History Now
In part 2 of the interview Michael Bassett discusses the effect of his
involvement in the 1984-1990 Labour government on his view of the state in
New Zealand, the interactions of Maori with the state, the impact on New
Zealand history of important impulses in American history, and his choice
of topics for his books on New Zealand history.
You were a leading reformer in a very reformist government, the
1984-1990 Labour government. To what extent is your negative view of
the state in New Zealand, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, the
result of the political ideology of that government?
The Fourth Labour Government 1984-1990 will almost certainly be seen
as THE most reformist government in New Zealand's history. Never
before had any government set out on so many fronts in such a short
space of time to alter the ways in which the Government went about
its business.
My critics may well argue that my negative views of
the 1970s and 1980s were coloured by what I learned as a minister,
and to an extent they would be right. But that would only be part of
the story. For instance, as a practising politician from the mid
1960s I saw that some health care benefits such as the
Pharmaceutical, and Pathological benefits had been captured by the
middle classes. Before one could access them, one had first to pass
the income barrier of getting into a general practitioner's surgery -
something which the poor were finding it increasingly hard to do. My
experiences with the increases to the General Medical Services
benefits in the 1970s convinced me that it was the height of
stupidity to continue existing policies; every time the State
increased the patient's subsidy, the doctors lifted their charges and
the gap which the patient had to pay was as wide as ever. What began
its life in 1941 as a patient's subsidy had by the 1970s turned into
a doctor's subsidy.
As my political career moved towards ministerial
office I was watching and learning all the way. All that happened
after 1984 was that my access to knowledge about government widened
exponentially, and the need for radical change on many fronts became
urgent if New Zealand was not to become a permanent member of the
Third World.
Some may see my change of views over the years as a shift from one
bias to another. One woman on a talkback show recently called me a
"traitor." I would prefer to argue that I was a creature of my
upbringing and education - a widow's child, who was lucky enough to
get a good education, but who has always needed to know the value of
money, and has disliked seeing it wasted. In public policy areas I
have always been inclined to flexibility and never weighed down by
ideology. Franklin Roosevelt observed once that if a policy didn't
succeed it was commonsense to try another. He was right, which is
one reason why he was one of the great Twentieth Century leaders.
Politicians who are imprisoned by any ideology are a menace to
themselves and to the society they claim to serve.
One of the major themes in recent New Zealand political history has
been the intense involvement of Maori, through the Waitangi Tribunal
and other state institutions, in new forms of relationship with the
State. The character of Maori interactions with the State is not a
major theme of your book. Are their interactions with the state
fundamentally similar to those of New Zealanders as a whole?
I have been a Waitangi Tribunal member since 1994 so have been
exposed to what passes for history at that august body. I did not
deal much with Maori in the book, partly because to do the subject
justice requires a separate study in itself, but also because, in
broad terms, Maori expectations that the State would be
interventionist were no less developed than settlers'. At first they
did quite well out of the State; I have just been reading an overview
of relationships between Ngati Whatua and the Crown (I sit on the
Kaipara and Tauranga claims) and FitzRoy and Grey tried hard to
involve Maori in their activism, but problems grew when the economy
subsided in the 1850s and war eventuated.
By 1900, Maori were
largely beyond the State's vision. But they came back into it with a
rush in the 1930s, first when all political parties gave Ngata a free
rein after 1929 and then with Labour after 1935. Sadly, Maori
probably suffered more as a result of mis-guided, if
well-intentioned, social engineering from then onwards. The culture
of dependency that lies so firmly rooted beneath so many of modern
New Zealand's social problems stems not from want of State assistance
but because of excessive busybodying by the State. I am not sure
that the most influential voices in Maoridom yet realise the real
cause of today's Maori problems. But, as I say, there is another
book to be written here.
You started your career in history as an American historian, doing
your doctorate at Duke. How would you compare New Zealand's
experience with the state to American experience? Do you believe that
important impulses in American history - Progressivism, for example,
or monetarism - have their echoes in New Zealand history?
I really began my writing with my MA thesis on the 1951 waterfront
dispute which, after further research in the 1960s, was published in
1972.
When I got a James B. Duke fellowship to Duke in 1961 I was
delighted to discover that I would be able to specialise in modern
American history. My thesis was a history of the Socialist Party of
America from 1900-1920 - it was a small third party that looked as
though it might do to the Democrats what Labour did to the Liberals
in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Why it didn't, became the
main theme of my study.
Now to your question: expectations of high
activity by public authorities in the US were slower to develop than
in NZ, although by the turn of the century there were many "gas and
water socialists" as their critics called municipal advocates on
intervention. For the US, the two wars and especially the Great
Depression were the fillips to intervention in the market place. But
American advocates of interventionism cooled earlier than in New
Zealand. Apart from those who feel that only the federal government
can bring order to the awfully complicated American health system,
where states, federal government, private interests and personal
responsibility seem to be so inextricably confused, there are few
voices preaching interventionism today on a scale to compare with the
Alliance and Labour parties.
In other respects, American political movements had their equivalents
in New Zealand. Sir Joseph Ward, as I say somewhere in Ward, would
have been perfectly at home in Progressive America. American
obsessions with efficiency and gadgets resonated with New Zealand's
"financial wizard." Most American intellectual movements had only
the tamest of replicas here - monetarism, for instance. It is a
substantial school of thought in the US; I don't know of anyone who
admits to being a monetarist here.
Since leaving politics, you have completed an impressive array of
works on New Zealand history. You have written major biographies of
Sir Joseph Ward and Gordon Coates, a history of the Department of
Internal Affairs, and a history of the Third Labour Government. Is
there a common theme or themes linking these works that distinguishes
you from other New Zealand historians? Why, for example, did you
concentrate on Ward and Coates - people not often (or at least not
until your biographies) considered major New Zealand personalities?
Does your choice of topics suggest a particular view of New Zealand
history?
Yes, I have kept writing since retiring at the end of 1990, although
the Third Labour Government (about which I am rather embarrassed) was
published in 1976. Anyone wanting to trace my own thinking as to the
role of the state, and its efficacious activity, will find that book
a mine of information. None of us realised then that the State was
over-reaching itself, and actually making matters worse rather than
better.
I began work on the book about Sir Joseph Ward in 1982 after finishing a
small book
called Three Party Politics 1911-31. I was fascinated to find that
Ward was a constant during those years just as he had been for the
whole period of the Liberals. Studying his thinking on the limits
which he saw to the role of the State made me think more carefully.
I had much of that biography completed (as far as 1908) by the time
the whole thing went on to the shelf in July 1984 when I became
Minister of Health and took up residence in the house in the gardens
of Ward's ministerial house at 260 Tinakori Road. My own ministerial
experience gave me insights that no backbencher can ever gain.
Ward is a miles better book than the early drafts, due to my much
greater appreciation by 1990 of the way in which the system works.
Coates had a similarly large view of the State, with similar
boundaries to Ward. After all, Coates had entered parliament in 1911
as an independent Liberal pledged to support Ward, but ended up
losing the Prime Ministership to the very same patron sixteen years later.
Why were they worth writing about? Because they both contributed
hugely to New Zealand's political history with their 38 and 32 years
apiece in parliament. And they are link figures between the activism
of the Seddon years and the Savage years. But each was less of a
social engineer than any of the Labourites who followed. As The
State in New Zealand really argues, there is a seamlessness to state
activity that earlier New Zealand historians (myself included) did not
acknowledge. And there will be continue to be more
seamlessness to the reduction of the role of the State, despite the
probability of a Labour/Alliance government sometime in 1999, than
many supporters for that coalition expect.
What areas of New Zealand history do you believe are neglected or need
fresh attention and in which areas do you see yourself doing future
research and writing?
As you have guessed, I am passionate about New Zealand's largely
unwritten political history. I was reading Anthony Trollope's
autobiography recently and he makes the comment, apropos his decision
to stand for the Commons in 1868 as a Liberal, that he felt that to
sit in Parliament "should be the highest object of ambition to every
educated Englishman." Without having read his comments, something
akin to that feeling always propelled me on. Having had fifteen years in
politics, nine in government (six as a minister), and enjoying
writing, I felt that I ought to devote myself to that writing to
which I could bring the benefit of experience.
The more I have
written about our politics, the more gaps there appear to be. There
are no biographies of Massey, Forbes, Holland, Holyoake or Kirk.
Fraser, whom I am currently working on, has been largely ignored.
Think of it: fifty years of twentieth century political life without
a book on the prime minister of the day! We need a substantial study
of Seddon, too, although it will require someone with a real flair
for politics, because Seddon was - with the possible exception of
Fraser - our most artful practitioner.
There are second string PMs -
Hall-Jones, Mackenzie, Dillon Bell, Rowling - about whom virtually
nothing has been written. Kirk is a big gap: the last fervent
believer (with the quirky exception of Muldoon) in the omnipotence of
the State. I knew Kirk well, of course, and sat in his caucus,
taking copious notes. I have done only a partially satisfactory (in
my view) entry on him for the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
(DBNZ). He is a complex figure worthy of
a big study. If only I was fifty instead of sixty, I would be
tempted to tackle him.
There are other jobs that badly need doing. Our academics have won
prizes for their work on Maori but it is my guess that much of their
work won't wear well over time. Their students, many of them working
in the Waitangi Industry, are producing some highly debatable stuff,
mainly because none of them (nor many of their teachers, I fear) seem
to have the foggiest idea about the political process, specifically
about what was possible in the middle and later parts of the
nineteenth century. I predict that there will be a huge revision of
the work that is currently being churned out by the Waitangi
Industry. Indeed, it could be on such a scale as to call into
question the basis of some of the settlements now taking place. At
the same time as many of today's claimants will be wanting to
re-visit these settlements in a few years time, hoping to squeeze
more out of the taxpayer, there will be a new breed of historian
coming on to the scene questioning whether they should have been
treated the way they were, first (or is it third?) time round. But
while I will continue to sit on the Tribunal, discomfiting some, I
don't see my dotage being spent in research in that area.
I have always said that I intended to write about the Fourth Labour
Government which will eventually be seen as the most radical break
with our statist tradition. A moment of nationhood where we began to
stand on our feet, for a change, instead of acting as though the
world owed us a living. That job I will do.
