It’s part of the human condition to mark out days, weeks, months or years since a major event. It is also true that time appears to go faster as we all age — because each day or year is a smaller proportion of the sum of our experiences. Time is a funny thing.
Travel back 40 years. New Zealand was sitting slap-bang in the middle of that much-maligned decade, the 1980s.
For many, mention of the ’80s immediately conjures up the thought of yuppies, shoulder pads and electronic drums and synth-pop. Yet it was a seminal decade in our country’s history.
The Springbok tour in 1981 gave the whole nation a fright by showing that the depth of opposition to a politically manipulated sports event could lead to violence, even here. Four years later, the bombing by French spies of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour made us realise we weren’t immune to international terrorism.
In 1986, the Homosexual Law Reform Act came into being after much protest and debate. The degree of hostility from some parts of the country revealed how intolerant and red-necked some Kiwis were.
A year later, nuclear-free legislation was passed, although nuclear-powered or armed ships had been banned from New Zealand ports for several years.
But if one year in the 1980s stands above the rest for providing more than its share of watershed moments it is the sinister-sounding 1984. At the moment, there is a great deal of debate and coverage of what happened that year.
New Zealand had been cruising towards major change since the dawn of the ’80s. Politics had for years been dominated by Robert Muldoon’s National Party and, to a large extent, by older white men in grey suits.
Under Bill Rowling, the Labour Party had come close to defeating the National government in 1978, winning 40.4% of the popular vote compared with the government’s 39.8%.
In 1981, the margin was even closer. Mr Rowling’s Labour had 43 seats and National dropped to 47. Again Labour had more of the popular vote, with 39.0% compared with 38.8%.
A refreshed Labour, under David Lange after he won the leadership in February 1983, barrelled on towards the next election. When a drunk Mr Muldoon called what has become known as the "schnapps election" in June 1984, it seemed even more inevitable that Labour would win, which it did the following month in a landslide, gaining 56 seats to National’s 37.
While Labour remained in power until it was thrashed by a rejuvenated National Party under Jim Bolger in the 1990 election, it is the Lange years, up to his resignation as prime minister in August 1989, which are being remembered now for being agents of huge change.
During those five years, the social and economic face of the country altered utterly. New Zealand split from the Anzus alliance, fell out with the United States, many government assets were privatised, farm tariffs were scrapped, and Kiwi investors suffered the hardest from the October 1987 stock exchange crash.
While Mr Lange was most concerned with issues of social justice, he was increasingly sidetracked having to deal with the right-wing neoliberal economic policies known as Rogernomics, promulgated by Roger Douglas.
The widening rift between the two, and a sense of betrayal by caucus, eventually led to Mr Lange’s resignation.
Forty years ago this very day, four days after being elected, the Lange government finally forced a beleaguered Mr Muldoon, who was refusing to give up the reins of power, to devalue the dollar by 20% to stop New Zealand going bankrupt. That was the catalyst for much of what inevitably followed.
Mr Lange was eloquent, quick-thinking and, like all of us, flawed. While there remains much debate about the legacy of his governments, his cutting wit lives on.
Who else could have called some of his opponents so boring that if their life flashed before them they wouldn’t be in it?
