Poverty in Perception

QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

POVERTY IN PERCEPTION

A STUDY OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY PRIME MINISTERS OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DISCIPLINE OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE HUMANITIES RESEARCH PROGRAM IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

MARCELLE M.C.E SLAGTER B.A., M.A (HONS) (VUW NZ) BRISBANE 2009 2

CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY 4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5

ABSTRACT 6

PREFACE 7

1. WHY STUDY POVERTY PERCEPTION? 1.0 Prologue 8 1.1 Introduction 8 1.2 The Purpose of This Research Study 10 1.3 A Synopsis of the Prime Ministers’ Biographical Data 13 1.4 The Organisation of the Thesis 23

2. EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY 2.0 Prologue 26 2.1 Introduction 27 2.2 Western Philosophy, Causal Theory and Phenomenology 27 2.3 The Phenomenology of Husserl 31 2.4 The Existential Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty 33 2.5 Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception 37 2.6 Phenomenological Research and Methodology 42 2.7 Phenomenology and Language 45 2.8 Existential Phenomenology as an Applied Methodology 47 2.9 Conclusion 50

3. A BRITISH POLITICAL INHERITANCE OF MIND AND BEING 3.0 Prologue 52 3.1 Introduction 54 3.2 A Liberal English Inheritance: From the Old to the New 56 3.3 British Slavery, Self-Interest and Perceptions of Rights 60 3.4 The Poor Laws and Racial Poverty 69 3.5 Colonisation and Custom: A Pentimento of Old Thought 74 3.6 Unisocialism and Government 80 3.7 Liberalism, Protection and Free Trade 83 3.8 Conclusion 86

4. THE HUMANITARIAN PRIME MINISTERS 4.0 Prologue 89 4.1 Introduction 91 4.2 The Stout Story 91 4.3 Seddon’s Perspectives: Structuring Poverty Perception 95 4.4 The Mutable Genealogy of Poverty Perception 101 4.5 Land and Work 111 4.6 Housing, Defence, Alliances and Security – Lest We Forget 124 4.7 Conclusion 151

5. THE RATIONALIST PRIME MINISTERS 5.0 Prologue 152 5.1 Introduction 154 5.2 Perception Driving Political, Social and Economic Direction 154 5.3 Rationality, Unity and Perspective in Party Politics 177 5.4. Middle-class Perception 192 5.5 Conclusion 226

6. POLITICAL IMPRESSIONISM: THE COLOUR OF POVERTY 6.0 Prologue 227 6.1 Introduction 227 6.2 Communicating Perception to Dominate Political Thought 228 6.3 Two Countries in Perceptual Reflection 238 6.4 Terrorism and Poverty 239 6.5 Findings 248 6.6 Poverty in Perception – Summary 257 6.7 Conclusion 260

7. THE MUTABILITY OF POVERTY PERCEPTION: CONCLUSION 7.0 Prologue 262 7.1 This Study in Overview 262 7.2 Final Conclusion 267

APPENDIX Table 1 – The Twentieth-century Australian and New Zealand 269 Prime Ministers (Chronologically) Table 2 – The Prime Ministers’ Place of Birth 275

Table 3 – The Twentieth-century Prime Ministers of Australia and 277 New Zealand (In Order of Service) Table 4 – The Twentieth-century Prime Ministers of Australia 279 and New Zealand (In Order of Birth)

BIBLIOGRAPHY 281

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby declare: 1. that this thesis is my own work and that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, it contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text; 2. that this thesis contains no material that has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma of a university or other institute of higher learning.

Signed: ______

Marcelle M.C.E. Slagter

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to:

My family – my children Nicole and Ranier, and my parents Jan (deceased) and Marita Slagter. With your love, support, and encouragement, this thesis was finally completed; and The cancer survivors and ostomates of Australia and New Zealand. “Life begins on the far side of despair” (Jean-Paul Sartre in Knowles 2001, 264).

Sincerest Thanks

My sincere thanks are extended to the following people and organisations: x Professor Clive Bean and Professor Gavin Kendall for their generous guidance, advice and academic support; x The staff of the QUT Library who cheerfully and professionally provided me with most of the material I needed for this thesis; x The staff of the National Library of New Zealand and Parliamentary Library of New Zealand for their willing and helpful service; x The staff of the former Department of Social Welfare (now the Ministry of Social Development & Work & Income New Zealand) in Napier, Hastings, and Wellington (Head Office) (NZ), particularly – Royce Cooper (deceased), John (Chum) Aldridge (deceased), Jackie Baird, Hilda Blasoni, Josephine Price, John Gilmore, Peter Irvine and Ann Reeves. Indirectly and unknowingly, you all contributed to the questions and thoughts that in time led to the research for this thesis. Your dedication to your work, to the welfare of other people, and to your faith in humanity, has positively served New Zealand at a level rarely, if ever, acknowledged; x My friends and draft editors Dr Karen Barnett and Kathleen Frost for providing feedback on the completed first draft of this thesis. Your time, patience and friendship have been invaluable; and finally x My copy editor Lorelei Waite for coming to my rescue and editing the final version of the thesis.

In Gratitude

I am very grateful to ‘The Research Degrees Committee’ at the Queensland University of Technology for providing funding for this research in the form of a: QUT Grant-in-Aid (GIA) Award and QUT Postgraduate Research Award (QUTPRA).

ABSTRACT

Australia and New Zealand, as English-speaking nations with dominant white populations, present an ethnic anomaly not only in South East Asia, but also in the Southern Hemisphere. Colonised by predominantly working- class British immigrants from the late eighteenth century, an ethnic and cultural connection grew between these two countries even though their indigenous populations and ecological environments were otherwise very different.

Building a new life in Australia and New Zealand, the colonists shared similar historic perceptions of poverty – perceptions from their homelands that they did not want to see replicated in their new adopted countries. Dreams of a better life shaped their aspirations, self-identity and nationalistic outlook.

By the twentieth century, national independence and self-government had replaced British colonial rule. The inveterate occurrence of poverty in Australia and New Zealand had created new local perspectives and different perceptions of, and about, poverty.

This study analyses what relationship existed between the political directions adopted by the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand and their perceptions of poverty. Using the existential phenomenological theory and methodology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the study adds to the body of knowledge about poverty in Australia and New Zealand by revealing the structure and origin of the poverty perceptions of the twentieth-century prime ministers.

Keywords: Australia, history, liberalism, media, Merleau-Ponty, New Zealand, perception, phenomenology, philosophy of perception, policy, political thought, politics, poverty, poverty perception, prime minister, prime minister of Australia, prime minister of New Zealand, sociology, unisocialism, values of social occupation.

Preface

In the late twentieth century, the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand declared that poverty, or more accurately absolute poverty, no longer existed in their countries. The gradual development of national legislation designed to prevent the occurrence of absolute poverty underlined the contribution successive governments had made to control poverty in the community during the twentieth century.

As member countries of the United Nations, Australia and New Zealand’s political and economic efforts received favourable support in the United Nations’ campaign for worldwide poverty eradication. However, problems began to occur for both countries from the mid-1980s when nation-wide ‘soup kitchens’ suddenly emerged to address an economic recession.

In analysing the social, political and economic position of Australia and New Zealand in the late twentieth century, questions arise as to why some of the characteristics of absolute poverty reappeared. Were the 1980s’ neoliberal economic policies of each country to blame? Did government safety-net laws and policies fail to meet community demands?

This sociological study looks more closely at the essential theme of poverty and the history and phenomena that contributed to the prime ministers’ perceptions of poverty in the late twentieth century.

Chapter 1

Why Study Poverty Perception?

“We should expect our system of social security to free us from dangers and from situations that tend to debase or to subjugate us.” (Foucault 2001, xix)

1.0 Prologue The idea for this thesis developed more than 20 years ago when I worked for the New Zealand Department of Social Welfare (now Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ), the New Zealand equivalent to Australia’s Centrelink). In July 1984, David Lange became prime minister of New Zealand, ending the more than eight-year term of Sir Robert Muldoon. The return of a Labour government in New Zealand carried the promise of a new direction in political thought and policy. The outcome of this phenomenon however, was far from predictable.

From the early 1970s until the start of the new millennium, economics dominated party political thinking, subverting all other social considerations and possibilities for community development, balance and focus. Yet, reliance on economic thought provided no solutions to the rapidly growing ‘real’ poverty emerging in New Zealand. In fact, the economic rationalism of the last two decades of the twentieth century produced a visible change in the condition, characteristics and constitution of poverty in New Zealand.

1.1 Introduction In this thesis, the essential theme of poverty is referred to, on occasion, in terms of its condition, characteristics and constitution. By definition, the word condition means: status, expansion or diminution of poverty; characteristics: social stresses as expressed in, for example, housing shortages, crime, welfare dependence, unemployment, health and wellbeing, population net migration losses and the general public affordability of the cost of living; and constitution: the linguistic interpretation and meaning of poverty in the community. In describing poverty as an essential theme in

© Marcelle Slagter 9 this research study, it is acknowledged that the theoretical and stylistic precedents for this work developed from reading the work of the French philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Foucault, and the Australian sociologist Mitchell Dean.

Philosophically, Merleau-Ponty and Foucault present opposing perspectives in their consideration of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity. However, their opposing perspectives, especially in regard to the analysis of the subject in particular social and cultural spatiotemporal contexts, provide a contrast in thought that is appropriate for investigating discourses and governmental rationalities through which subjects’ perceptions are mediated.

While this thesis has been guided in the philosophy of perception by Merleau-Ponty, Dean’s book The Constitution of Poverty – Toward a Genealogy of Liberal Governance (1991) used a Foucaultian genealogical technique to develop an understanding of the constitution of poverty in eighteenth century England that highly influenced the development of the thesis. Dean’s contribution to sociological thought and perspective in the late twentieth century can be described as a nascent tribute to Foucault and his methodological technique (Dean 1988; 1991).

It can also be said that for this study of the poverty perceptions of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand to be possible, the eminent antecedents of philosophy and sociology mentioned reflect a substance, maturity, and integrity that has withstood the test of time. By opening this chapter with a narrative that identifies the phenomenon as of interest to the author, and by then providing a description of the essential theme of poverty that characterises the phenomenon, I have used a classic technique in phenomenological research. Yet, the application of a Merleau-Pontian existential phenomenological approach in the style of sociological research presented in this thesis is not so common.

Before launching into the heart and body of the thesis, this chapter provides details about the purpose of this research study, and a synopsis of the biographical data of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. It then concludes with a description of the content and organisation of the thesis.

1.2 The Purpose of This Research Study In 2001, the United Nations advocated that disparities in the distribution of power, wealth and opportunity result in poverty (UNDP 2001,1, 4). In the beginning of his book The Mystery of Capital, Hernando de Soto states: “Only the West has the conversion process required to transform the invisible to the visible. It is this disparity that explains why Western nations can create capital and the Third World and former communist nations cannot … [The tool for conversion lies in] an implicit legal infrastructure hidden deep within their property systems – of which ownership is but the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the iceberg is an intricate man-made process that can transform assets and labour into capital. This process was not created from a blueprint and is not described in a glossy brochure. Its origins are obscure and its significance buried in the economic subconscious of Western capitalist nations.”

So far, Western countries have taken their system for producing capital entirely for granted and have therefore left the history of this system undocumented. This history, de Soto states, must be recovered (2000, 7-8).

Why study poverty perception? Australia and New Zealand are Western- style countries that possess an inherited history of, and observance toward, capitalism (and therefore the creation of capital) in their social, political and environmental infrastructure. From a sociological perspective, the history of poverty in Australia and New Zealand is both unique and exclusive to each country and, when amalgamated, unique and exclusive in the world of social and national development. It is not that the contemporary image and experience of poverty is significantly different between the two countries, but more that the documented historical evidence of poverty in each country supports particular public and political perspectives, and subsequently perceptions about poverty, in which salient ideas and events have played a

With a central focus on the form and consequence of perception, the research question in this thesis is succinct. The study asks – what relationship existed between the political directions adopted by the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand and their perceptions of poverty?

In explaining the reasoning behind why this study is a comparative analysis of Australia and New Zealand, the answer is simply ‘it was too tempting’. Australia and New Zealand possess remarkable political and historical similarities. Similarities that are reflected in: i) the early historical governance and British settlement of both countries; ii) the prevailing domination of English culture and language (including the lineal inheritance of social beliefs, values, and cultural attributes derived from particular temporal events in history), and in the European/British migrant populations that live in both countries; iii) the presence of minority indigenous populations in both countries; iv) the historic economic platform of agrarian dependency in both countries; and most of all, v) the unusual propinquity of the two countries as ‘Western- style’ nations in the Antipodes; outside the geographical ambit of Britain, Europe and the United States of America, and within the ambit of South-East Asia.

In short, the viability of a comparative research study of Australia and New Zealand, as Peter Saunders stated, is not difficult to conceive, particularly from an international perspective.

“The similarities in history and culture, combined with their geographical isolation from other industrial nations, makes any other approach virtually unthinkable” (1999, 494).

Yet, even though this is a comparative study, it is not intended to be a critique of the variations in style and form of governments, nor the development of the phenomena of the ‘welfare state’ and ‘welfare society’ in Australia and New Zealand. From its outset, this thesis identifies Australia and New Zealand as politically independent nations which share a mutual interest in the economic and social wellbeing of their people.

From the outset of this research study, it was recognised that there are at least four major historical perspectives that comprise the history of poverty in Australia and New Zealand. These histories are generally presented nationally, within the rationalised government discourse of poverty, as a unified perspective. The four historical perspectives, however, are exclusive and not universal histories even though the boundaries of nationalism bring about an inter-relationship between them. Each historical perspective carries a unique reflection of the cultural distribution of power and knowledge, and political, social and environmental change, relative to the particular denizen populations of Australia and New Zealand. Broadly identified, the four histories of poverty are the cultural histories of: a) the immigrant British/European people (particularly dominant English colonists) in New Zealand; b) the immigrant British/European people (particularly dominant English colonists) in Australia; c) the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand; and d) the indigenous Aboriginal people of Australia.

By using historical texts and biographical material about the twentieth- century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, the focus of this study emulates the work of Mitchell Dean in so far that it concentrates on the essential theme of poverty through history. Unlike Dean’s work however, the analysis of poverty provided in this thesis is reflective not so

Moreover, by choosing to study only the perceptions of the prime ministers of each country, the field of this research study is narrowed to a specific political influence – leaders who represent the epitome of political party policies, beliefs and values. In using biographical and other archival material about the former prime ministers, it is recognised that subjective poverty perceptions may not be accurately, or specifically, reflected. For this reason, this analysis of the prime ministers’ perceptions of poverty includes a wider sociological consideration of the personal events and circumstances that delineated the prime ministers’ experiences, their reflected values, their historical understandings of the poor, the conditions and characteristics of poverty during their lifetime, and any other relevant political statements made during their time in office. Because of this approach, it should therefore be highlighted that this study in no way represents either an approved or authorised biographical account or representation of the twentieth-century prime ministers’ poverty perceptions, nor a historical work, nor a detailed description of the twentieth century conditions, characteristics or constitution of poverty in Australia and New Zealand, nor an exhaustive analysis of historical and biographical documents. In description, this work is a sociological study of the poverty perceptions conveyed, but not necessarily overtly presented, by the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand.

Despite its deference to the work on poverty of Mitchell Dean, the theoretical position, style, and adaptation of technique adopted in this study in relation to the phenomenon of interest, set it apart as an original work. In other words, this study has no domestic or international sociological precedent in its research focus or style of theoretical application.

1.3 A Synopsis of the Prime Ministers’ Biographical Data Politically, the head of government (i.e., the leader of the executive branch of government) in Australia and New Zealand is the prime minister. The prime minister has an important role in maintaining and coordinating the government by overseeing the government’s general policy direction. The person who holds the office of prime minister is, arguably, the most powerful politician in the country. Yet, despite the importance of the office of the prime minister, the constitutions of Australia and New Zealand do not mention the office by name. The appointment of the prime minister in both countries is through custom and constitutional convention (Department_of_the_House_of_Representatives 2008; Department_of_the_Prime_Minister_and_Cabinet 2009; Office_of_the_Clerk_of_the_House_of_Representatives 2006).

In analysing the power of the prime minister it may be perceived, from a public perspective, that the prime minister is either all powerful or has no actual power. This perspective stems from the fundamental belief in democratic government, that a prime minister’s services are retained at the will of both the people and parliament - albeit not always in that order. As an acknowledgment of their contribution to the office of prime minister, it is a tradition in both Australia and New Zealand that a prime minister has at least a published memoir or biography.

Summarising the position of political parties and political leaders in the United States of America, Meyer and Hinchman state: “Even in the heyday of party democracy parties were always just one element in a parallelogram of forces; they were never “conveyor belts” carrying the interests of society directly and undistorted into the highest reaches of state decision-making. Nevertheless, they were the strongest force in the political field, and the actions of their elite actors were firmly bound to the programs and images to which the parties were publicly committed and which their members battled to uphold. If the party leaders had not stuck by their proclaimed objectives, they would never have enjoyed legitimacy in the public sphere or even among the rank-and-file. Even parties without a written program could count on a widespread consensus among the party membership in support of the policies of their leaders” (Meyer and Hinchman 2002, 20-21).

Such has also been the life of political parties and leaders in Australia and New Zealand.

Since the biographies of the prime ministers rarely contain direct indications of their personal poverty perceptions, some reliance has been placed on interpretations provided in other historical documents. Nonetheless, much of what has been written about the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand can be described as an affirmation of each prime minister’s character (including personal qualities and psychological traits), and the events and circumstances that directed their life and term in office. What has been omitted, for the most part, are the thoughts (e.g. perceptual values, understandings, experiences and perspectives) of each prime minister. In short, this style of biographical writing imitates that of news reporting – a style described by Herbert Gans in his 1970s study of the news reporting of political leaders (Gans 2004, 63).

It should come as no surprise to readers, therefore, to discover that many of the authors of prime ministerial biographies in Australia and New Zealand are journalists or former journalists. The biographers’ journalistic style of writing, at best, historically documents the desired political impressions, rhetoric, and actions of each prime minister. At worst, it presents a blatant and empty recapping of imagery and effect that provides a ‘halo’ over what it is perceived ‘the public’ may want to hear and see.

In structure, political biographies are very predictable. Generally, they provide a record of the events and circumstances of a person’s life. They précis: • when a person was born • community membership • their familial connections details • their education • their marital and • their status in terms of procreative status their communal values of social occupation

• a list of the events for • a list of awards, and which the person is (or • a record of the person’s may be) remembered demise. • a list of events that prescribe the character of the person • a personal descriptive of the person’s appearance

On the other hand, what is not always in political biographies is what is beyond the superficial – an insight into ‘the other’; the subject rather than object of interest; in short – the person within the image (the ‘I’ inside the Cartesian ‘I am I exist’). Since most prime ministerial biographies are written by professional authors unable to express the thoughts of their subject, a lot of the background of how a prime minister came to think in a certain way is eventually lost to public knowledge. In terms of perception, this knowledge incorporates a combination of what the prime minister read, what values, beliefs, experiences, and moral concerns directed them, what historical events and circumstances made them the person they were in society (for good or bad), and how their activities set them apart from other people. It must be asked, therefore, what we can really learn, and how much ‘other’ data should be stored, about our political leaders.

One observed characteristic to emerge from the prime ministers’ biographies is that most of the professionally authored biographies have a systematic historical and methodical writing style. Over the years, and through the continuous replication of this writing style, a constant data set of information has accumulated in the biographies. This makes it possible for the data to be objectively and comparatively analysed, as well as statistically formulated.

An example of the comparative statistics to emanate from the biographies of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand is

© Marcelle Slagter 17 presented in Tables 1 – 4 at the back of this thesis. These statistics provide not only an indication of the age and party allegiance of the prime ministers, but also an indication that age itself did not determine party allegiance even though particular perceptual values, understandings and experiences and party policies may have contributed to the prime minister being elected to or remaining in office.

In addition to these tables, the following paragraphs provide other statistical information about the prime ministers. In total, 48 prime ministers governed Australia and New Zealand during the twentieth century. Of these 48 prime ministers, two (from New Zealand) were women – one through ascendancy and appointment to party leadership while her party governed (Dame Jennifer Shipley), the other by election (Helen Clark). In order of birth, the oldest twentieth-century prime minister was Sir George Reid AU (b.

25 February 1845), and the youngest was Dame Jennifer Shipley NZ (b. 4 February 1952). The oldest prime minister to take office was Sir Walter

Nash NZ who was 75 years old when he, as leader of the Labour Party, won the 1957 New Zealand parliamentary election.

In order of service, the youngest prime minister was John Watson AU (b. 9 April 1867) who was only 37 years old when he became the first Labor prime minister of Australia in 1904. Coincidently, New Zealand’s youngest prime minister, David Lange NZ (b. 4 August 1942), was also the leader of a Labour government in 1984.

Overall, the average age of appointment to the position of prime minister of Australia in the twentieth century was 52. The mean age was 53. The average age of appointment to the position of prime minister of New Zealand was 54, and the mean age was 54.

Of the pre-World War II prime ministers, the average age of first appointment to the position of prime minister of Australia was 50 and the mean 52, while the average age of first appointment to the position of prime minister of New Zealand was 57 and the mean 56. In the post-World War II

© Marcelle Slagter 18 period (until 1999), the average age of first appointment to the position of prime minister of Australia was 55 and the mean 56. The average age of first appointment to the position of prime minister of New Zealand was 52 and the mean 51.

Since 1972, the average age of first appointment among New Zealand Labour Party prime ministers was 45.5 and the mean 46, while the average age of Australian Labor Party prime ministers was 52 and the mean 53. However, the last Australian Labor Party prime minister, Paul Keating, was 47 years old when appointed as Prime Minister in 1991.

Although there were only two Liberal Party of Australia (LPA) prime ministers since 1972, their average age at first appointment was 50. The first LPA prime minister after 1972, Malcolm Fraser, was 45 years old when appointed. The second, John Howard, was 56 years old at first appointment. Of the three National Party of New Zealand prime ministers to hold office since 1972, the average age of first appointment was 51 and the mean 54. The last National Party prime minister, however, (Dame Jennifer Shipley) was 45 years old at appointment.

Since 1975, the only Australian and New Zealand prime minister to have had either war service or national defence force experience was Sir Robert

Muldoon NZ . During the twentieth century, all the prime ministers received what may be regarded as an upper-middle class income following appointment.

So what do these statistics really mean? Objectively, the statistics indicate that since 1972 the age of first appointment to the position of prime minister of Australia and New Zealand has progressively been by younger politicians. It can also be suggested that since 1972, the younger age of the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, like their pre-World War II forebears, may have stimulated a change in political direction. Moreover, it can be suggested that since 1984, no prime minister has experienced war or military service, or the physical and psychological hardships of an economic

© Marcelle Slagter 19 depression, ‘first hand’. It can be suggested from this information therefore, that their values, understandings and experiences of war, social and economic insecurity, and the melancholy that can befall a nation through these experiences, may not have been fully perceptually tested. Statistics do not, and cannot, reveal the perceptual understanding, knowledge or depth of rationalism and perspective that forge, through time, the conscious and political direction of a prime minister.

How true can the preceding suggestions be? Publicly, it can be asked how many politicians would concede that they have, or are, engaging in, or promoting, radical political change? How many would acknowledge that they lacked the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of war needed to prevent or anticipate its approach? Our system of government seeks and extols truth, but it does not always publicly acknowledge or overtly present this truth. The simplest way to find out what a prime minister’s perception of poverty is would be to ask them. However, the question then arises whether the answer received is a subjective or objective response, applies only to the moment of enquiry, the period of political activity of the prime minister, or the prime minister’s term in office.

Most of the prime ministers of the twentieth century are no longer living. The question then is, how can we compare or relate how a prime minister perceives poverty, or whether they ever actually consciously or unconsciously had a perception of poverty? By focusing on the research question in this study, the essential theme is the perception of poverty of the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. Fundamentally, this study therefore asks if perception makes a difference, i.e. if the prime ministers had a perception of poverty or if their actions revealed a poverty in perception during their life time.

Throughout the twentieth century, what has distinguished one prime minister from another has not been a question so much of class, personality or political party allegiance, but a question of style, culture and perceptual belief. Michel Foucault stated that liberalism is a practice and tool used to

© Marcelle Slagter 20 criticise reality, and rationalise and regulate the exercise of government (Foucault 1997, 74-75). In political perception, Merleau-Ponty argues that what is rationalised, critiqued, and meant as liberalism, is also a matter of temporal interpretation (Merleau-Ponty 1974, 80). So, in relation to this study, what does this mean?

In analysing the lives of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, each prime minister contributed an understanding and interpretation of liberalism that uniquely provided an insight of their own perceptual values, understandings and experiences. When, for example,

Richard Seddon NZ was prime minister of New Zealand at the turn of the twentieth century, he was described as leader of the ‘Liberal Party’. The temporal meaning for ‘liberal’ at this time, however, was constituted by very different perceptual values, understandings and experiences than those that prevailed for Helen Clark NZ and John Howard AU at the end of the century.

From a contemporary perspective, historic understandings of liberalism can be viewed neither as truths nor as falsehoods but more, in Merleau-Pontian terms, as developments and reflections of each subject’s perceptual understanding and interpretation of their life-world. Since a subjective perception is so personal and relative to the life-world experiences of the subject, this analysis of the prime ministers’ perceptions of poverty is not intended to be a polemic reflection or critique of the character, thoughts, or the development of perceptions of any of the prime ministers. The same however, cannot be stated of the political direction or perceptions cast by the prime ministers.

Of the 48 prime ministers who governed Australia and New Zealand in the twentieth century, some held office for only a very short time. The contribution of these short-term prime ministers is not measured by their contribution as prime ministers, but from their wider participation in the development of political ideas for the governance of poverty in their country (i.e. being-in-the-world). The term of office of Helen Clark, however, since

© Marcelle Slagter 21 she was appointed prime minister on 5 December 1999 and is more a twenty-first-century prime minister, is not measured at all. In other words, Helen Clark was excluded from this analysis because, at the time of writing this thesis, she was still able to change her perceptions of poverty, and influence a change in the governance of poverty in New Zealand. Moreover, from her biographies, it was not yet clear what, as prime minister of New Zealand for the last twenty-six days of the twentieth-century, her political direction was going to be, and if her perception of poverty before becoming prime minister would change during her time in office or in later life.

Despite the diatribe that some people may harbour toward certain prime ministers past or present, it is believed that the prime ministers of both Australia and New Zealand are owed, at the very least, the respect of their people for their national effort and contribution. It has been sobering to reflect in reading the biographies of the prime ministers that public attitudes toward some of them have often been quick to condemn and slow to praise. The position of a prime minister in both Australia and New Zealand was, throughout the twentieth century, both an onerous and lonely position. In no other vocation, other than perhaps as a sovereign, is one person so open to public scrutiny, public demand and public abuse.

During the twentieth-century, all the prime ministers and political parties sought, within their epistemic knowledge, to govern Australia and New Zealand in the political direction they considered most appropriate. Some even sought to improve the work and living conditions of their citizens. However, while controversial power struggles and raw ambition were highlights for the media, the personal cost of being a prime minister has rarely been publicly acknowledged. Untimely death, public divorce, and public rebuke, have been some of the costs borne by the prime ministers for their political leadership. It has never been suggested however, that a relationship may exist between the political directions adopted by a prime minister, and their perceptions of poverty.

When Foucault stated that the most important things said by people are those things that become endlessly systematised from their outset, he provided a clue to how political thought progresses and develops into scientific knowledge and perspectives of, for example, rationalised liberalism and conservatism (1963, xix). Merleau-Ponty also provides a starting point for describing how variations in both political perception and discourse can affect the presence of poverty when, as will be demonstrated in this study, no direct thought may have been given to either the existence, continuity or potential escalation of national poverty.

From the documented biographical histories available, little justice can be done in this study to reconstruct the exact thoughts of each prime minister. Much of the material describes their character, conflicts and political positioning for power. For critics, a defence of this study rests in the hope that future biographies about prime ministers may contain more information about the people who become prime ministers. Such information can include their thoughts (perceptions and perspectives), political achievements and disappointments in national governance, and life experiences, rather than just a limited and often politically biased portrayal of the day-to-day public and private power struggles the prime minister was required to overcome, be it within their own party or through the derision of opponents.

Even though studies such as this can create a corridor to condemn the political perspectives and ideas of our political representatives and prime ministers, it is not the aim of this study to do this. Paul Keating once said: “It is not easy in the course of politics to put a detailed view of history, or a view that is accurate in every respect. Full-time scholars will concede that the latter is impossible, even for them … just as there are different interpretations of history, there are different interpretations of patriotism” (Gordon 1993, 197).

In acknowledging the concept of patriotism, as well as the contribution to the nation made by the political leaders of Australia and New Zealand, this study takes a clear perspective. In a democratic nation, an indictment of an elected government reflects not only the individual fallibility of its

© Marcelle Slagter 23 leadership, but also the fallibility of the nation (whether supported by ignorance, apathy or reasoned consent). For the people of Australia and New Zealand it is fair to accept, in the words of Alexander Pope (1688- 1744), that “to err is human; to forgive, divine” (Knowles 2001, 248:6).

1.4 The Organisation of the Thesis In the structure of this research study, Chapter 2 covers two main areas. It examines and describes the basic principles in the Western philosophy of perception, and the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and it briefly explains the theory and methodological technique applied in the thesis.

Chapter 3 analyses the pre-twentieth-century perceptions of poverty in Australia and New Zealand. It provides a background and a series of essential genealogical themes for understanding how and where the poverty perceptions of the twentieth-century prime ministers began to take form.

In this chapter, the concept of values of social occupation is introduced. This concept, by definition, refers to the activity or contribution of usefulness and worth individuals and groups bring to a community and society. Value relevance (Weber), it is argued, temporally coexists in a community and society in accordance with the circumstances governing social (including political and moral) perception. In the context of capitalism, the values of social occupation are narrowed and weighted to give specific emphasis to the exchange of labour in a timely, often physically controlled, economically productive environment. Inhibitors to this politically economic system, and means of production, are scientifically identified, measured, and relatively understood in government rationality. In developing an understanding of the values of social occupation, the word ‘class’ is used in this thesis, but only in so far as the application and existence of this word in language provides a useful, descriptive, and temporally rationalised meaning for the differences in value attributed to particular people and groups.

Also introduced in this chapter is the term unisocial. The words ‘unisocial’, ‘unisocialist’ and ‘unisocialism’ by definition refer to a political ideal (Weberian ideal type), or archetypical form of liberal thought (Foucaultian def.), that is used in the thesis as a heuristic device. A unisocialist form of government is one where the governance of the people relies on a unity of political thought in which the state and community mutually promote and advance the wellbeing of all (i.e. the nation, the economy, the sovereignty, and the dominant interests of the community itself). The aim of unisocialism is to preserve the freedom and independence of all social, political, and economic interests in a community, as opposed to the exploitative interests of one group (e.g., a minority or elite) with state control. The word ‘unisocial’, as applied in this thesis, comes from the Latin words unus socius meaning one (universal) sharing. Unisocialism is used here as a word to replace what William Pember Reeves referred to as ‘a sort of socialism’ (1969).

In developing and using the term unisocialism in this thesis, it is recognised that the word socialism, like liberal, is ambiguous. The word socialism is commonly used to describe conditions of community or state ‘ownership’ and ‘control’ that have arisen from a working class origin. Little regard is given in this context, however, to other influential factors in state application, for example, social and democratic intent, social structure, and social infrastructural organisation. Although in economics a blend of socialism and capitalism is referred to as a ‘mixed economy’, this term does not satisfactorily address either national political or social positions (Jary and Jary 2000; Pember Reeves 1969, 67-69).

In Chapters 4 and 5, the thesis provides a précis of the perceptions of the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. Advancing the theory, thoughts and historical perceptions introduced in Chapters 2 and 3 along the genealogical lines of twentieth-century New Zealand and Australian politics, Chapter 4 examines and briefly describes the life-world perceptions of the early twentieth-century prime ministers.

Continuing the style of examination and description presented in Chapter 4, Chapter 5 then identifies the ideological variation that permeated the genealogy of thought between political parties in Australia and New Zealand during the twentieth century. Finally, in analysing how the prime ministers’ perceptions of poverty were conveyed to the people of Australia and New Zealand in the twentieth century, Chapter 6 examines the modes of communication chosen by the prime ministers, including the prime ministers’ own receptiveness to the mode of delivery of new perspectives and ideas through different media. The chapter then briefly analyses the similarities in the rise and fall of Labor/Labour and conservative governments in Australia and New Zealand, before comparing the plight of the indigenous people in both countries in relation to their national constitution of poverty and access to communication in their own countries. The chapter finally moves on to provide a summary of the findings addressing the research question.

The thesis concludes by providing a succinct restatement of the essential themes discussed in the study and a representation of the conclusions drawn from the research.

Existential Phenomenology

“Perception opens us to a world already constituted and can only reconstitute it” (Merleau-Ponty 'The Prose of the World' 2004, 242).

2.0 Prologue Many of us have read books or articles about poverty, seen poor people on television, heard about poverty through religious affiliations, or experienced poverty first hand. Yet, what is poverty really? How do we perceive it? How can it truly be described?

To most people, perception is hardly problematic. We have experience of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting, and accept certain basic facts about these experiences as indisputable. Philosophers, for the most part however, have found these attributes of individual and common sense are not as true as we may believe. They have come to query what our perception of things, as we experience them, involves, and what guarantees the reliability of our senses (Swartz 1976, xi).

In this thesis, the philosophic theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty are given prominence. This is not because Merleau-Ponty supported contemporary scientific reasoning, but because Merleau-Ponty’s work provides an opportunity for us to look upon our perception of things differently. Merleau-Ponty has shown us that there are at least two distinct levels of perception. There are the objects of perception, and the acts of perceiving which are directly available to reflection (Fisher 1969, 10; Merleau-Ponty 2004).

This chapter provides an insight into the western philosophy of perception and the ambiguity that underlies our common understanding of poverty and perception.

2.1 Introduction To understand the research method and outcomes of this thesis, some appreciation is required of the genealogy of thought that through tradition has given rise to the Western philosophy of perception and, more particularly, the existential phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Merleau-Ponty 1964; Merleau-Ponty 2004). This chapter briefly describes some of the main currents of thought in the western philosophy of perception before describing in more detail the theories of Merleau-Ponty.

The chapter then moves on to describe the methodological technique applied in this thesis, and provides an example of how poverty can be interpreted from an existential phenomenological perspective.

2.2 Western Philosophy, Causal Theory and Phenomenalism Since the seventeenth century, and the ‘scientific revolution’, Western philosophy increasingly began to take scientific knowledge as its paradigm of knowledge. Embracing a systematic style of inquiry, scientific knowledge uses empirical experiments and mathematical models to obtain predictive knowledge of its subject matter. In science, it is paramount that the subjective point of view of an inquirer is suspended so that any findings have a neutrality or objectivity that makes them available to any unbiased learner. It is also characteristic of scientific prose that it is written in the grammatical third person and that any subject matter is treated as entirely physical.

By examining the history of Western philosophy, Priest states it is evident that contemporary Western philosophy has retained an optimistic faith in the procedures of the natural sciences to solve problems that are philosophical, but this optimism is nearly always misplaced. The greatest contribution of existential phenomenology to Western philosophy has been to call this paradigm of scientific knowledge into question (Priest 1998, x, 224).

In the natural sciences, Swartz argues, it is incontestable that sense perception plays a crucial role. Sense perception serves as the sole means

© Marcelle Slagter 28 through which information can be gathered about the world around us. However, mere faith in the senses is not enough. Scientifically, it must be evident that observation accommodating circumstance and condition can lead to reasonable and true judgments. Rationalisation and proving that observation produces truth is a problem not just for scientists. It is a problem that has dogged the formation of many of our everyday commonsense beliefs. Nevertheless, as scientific knowledge developed from the seventeenth century so too did the impetus for rethinking matters connected with perception and knowledge. The result was the creation of a strong current of philosophical thought based on rationalism and empirical knowledge, a fundamental approach to perception that has permeated Western philosophy.

Whether empirical beliefs can validly be inferred from our knowledge of the contents of our sense-experiences, Swartz states, is a question Western philosophy has considered by examining the relationship between sense- experience and the objects of perceptual judgments (the things and events in the external world we claim give us knowledge about sense-experience). Traditional philosophers, Swartz says, have taken two main positions concerning the relationship between sense-experience and material objects: phenomenalism and causal theory.

The philosophic position referred to as causal theory is the theory most closely allied to the scientific conception of material objects. Causal theory looks upon material objects as things that exist apart from sense-experiences but which causally determine the content of those experiences. A classic source of this theory is found in the work of John Locke and René Descartes (Swartz 1976, xii-xviii).

Very briefly, the theories of both Locke and Descartes can be summarised as follows. In the seventeenth century work of John Locke (1690), sight was accorded the status of the most comprehensive of our senses. Locke argued however, that the fewer senses an individual person uses the fewer and duller their impressions are from those senses, the duller the mind is,

© Marcelle Slagter 29 and the more remote the individual is from acquiring knowledge. Locke believed that perception was “the first operation of all our intellectual faculties, and the inlet of all knowledge into our minds” (Locke 1988, 68- 69).

In formulating his theory about perception Locke was well aware that for a thousand years, European scholars had consulted historical texts to resolve moral and religious quandaries. Elaborate strategies of interpretation, distinction, etc., were developed to extract from these disparate sources a unified, highly complex body of truth. Locke, therefore, warned his readers against basing their beliefs on hearsay or unexamined tradition (Wolterstorff 1996, 438).

In Meditations (1640), Descartes wrote (in direct translation from French to English), “I am I exist”. Translated to English from the Latin “Cogito ergo sum” this statement became “I think therefore I am”. Significantly, through language and translation, Descartes changed the perspective of his sentence from that of the conscious holistic ego acknowledging existence (in French), to an emphasis where the mind of the conscious ego rationalises existence (in Latin). This subtle but succinct change altered the status of the ego from that of a whole subject to one of specific (cogito) objective parts (mind and body).

With the aim of drawing attention not only to human consciousness but also, like Locke, to the inadequacies in the development of human knowledge, Descartes asserted that a belief should only be retained if it is true and not a product of hearsay. The slightest doubt about the truth of a belief, Descartes argued, should be enough to reject it. In time, this theory came to be referred to as Cartesian doubt.

From Cartesian doubt, Descartes argued that as his senses on occasion deceive him, he could only be sure that he, that is, his mind, did not deceive him. Observing that the mind and body are divided, but interact, Descartes subsequently insisted that, with the fallibility of the body, the truthful

In contrast to causal theory, and the philosophic position of the causal theorists, the philosophy of phenomenalism is usually associated with George Berkeley, John Stuart Mill, and the nineteenth-century positivist Ernst Mach. The fundamental perspective in phenomenalism is that material things (external objects) are nothing but bundles of actual and possible sense-impressions or sensations. Knowledge of the contents of sense-experiences therefore, does not provide a good inductive ground for believing propositions about external objects (Jary and Jary 2000, 149; Swartz 1976, xviii; Warburton 2004, 50-55).

Describing the development and difference between what he describes as objectivism or causal theory and phenomenalism from his perspective, Edmund Husserl argued: “What characterises objectivism is that it moves upon the ground of the world which is pregiven, taken for granted through experience, seeks the ‘objective truth’ of this world, seeks what, in this world, is unconditionally valid for every rational being, what it is in itself. It is the task of epistēmē, ratio, or philosophy to carry this out universally. Through these one arrives at what ultimately is; beyond this, no further questions would have a rational sense. Transcendentalism, on the other hand, says: the ontic meaning [Seinssinn] of the pregiven life-world is a subjective structure [Gebilde], it is the achievement of experiencing, prescientific life. In this life the meaning and the ontic validity [Seinsgeltung] of the world are built up – of that particular world, that is, which is actually valid for the individual experiencer. As for the ‘objectively true’ world, the world of science, it is a structure at a higher level, built on prescientific experiencing and thinking, or rather on its accomplishments of validity [Geltungsleitungen]. Only a radical inquiry back into subjectivity – and specifically the subjectivity which ultimately brings about all world-validity, with its content and in all its prescientific and scientific modes, and into the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the rational accomplishments – can make objective truth comprehensible and arrive at the ultimate ontic meaning of the world. Thus it is not the being of the world as unquestioned, taken for granted, which is primary in itself; and one has not merely to ask what belongs to it objectively; rather, what is primary is subjectivity, understood as that which naively pregives the being of the world and then rationalises or (what is the same thing) objectifies it” (Husserl 1970, 68-69).

In other words, what Husserl said is that we come into a world already constituted for us. Through our thinking and knowledge from experience, we rationalise what is. However, by looking for objective truth in our experience of the world, we step beyond ‘what is’ (what exists). Transcendentalism, Husserl stated, says that the real meaning of what exists (what constitutes the pregiven life-world), is determined by individual experience of the world – not by science. In life, meaning and the validated reality of the world is built-up from things actually believed by the individual experiencer. Rationalised objective (causal) truth, on the other hand, develops at a higher level and is built on taken-for-granted prescientific individual experience and thinking, or accomplishments of validity (evidence of truth). What is primary (what comes first), in itself is subjectivity (humankind). The history of philosophy is a history divided between objectivistic and transcendental philosophy. It is a history of constant attempts to maintain objectivity and develop it in a new form.

2.3 The Phenomenology of Husserl Described by one of France’s most distinguished twentieth-century philosophers, Paul Ricoeur, as the “the greatest of the French phenomenologists”, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and his long-time friend, Jean- Paul Sartre, were accorded acclaim for introducing into France the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (Madison 1995). “Merleau-Ponty made Husserl’s phenomenology, especially that of the last years, much more integrally a part of, his own philosophical method. In many ways Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is a genuine synthesis of the best in existentialism and phenomenology; the term existential phenomenology probably applies better to Merleau- Ponty’s thought than to the thought of any other philosopher” (Fisher 1969, 7) .

Although Husserl was by far Merleau-Ponty’s greatest inspiration, Merleau- Ponty’s work also reflects consideration of the ideas and theories of René Descartes, Emmanuel Kant, George Hegel, Karl Marx, Gabriel Marcel, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. From Husserl, nevertheless, Merleau-Ponty developed his ideas about the structure of consciousness, the

© Marcelle Slagter 32 relationship between subjectivity and scientific method, and the transcendentalism of phenomenology (Swingewood 1984, 270). All the sciences, Husserl argued, developed in the pre-scientific world (Lebenswelt) of a common humanity. “One can truly say that the idea of nature as a really self-enclosed world of bodies first emerges with Galileo. A consequence of this, along with mathematisation, which was too quickly taken for granted, is [the idea of] a self-enclosed natural causality in which every occurrence is determined unequivocally and in advance. Clearly the way is thus prepared for dualism, which appears immediately afterward in Descartes” (Husserl 1970, 60).

Reality, Husserl advanced, is ‘intentional’ in the sense that the human subject directs their consciousness to objects, or put another way; it is through the activity of consciousness that an object acquires structure and meaning. “Intentionality is the title which stands for the only actual and genuine way of explaining making intelligible. To go back to the intentional origins and unities of the formation of meaning is to proceed toward a comprehension which, once achieved (which is of course an ideal case), would leave no meaningful question unanswered. …The world is a spatiotemporal world; spatiotemporality (as ‘living’, not logicomathematical) belongs to its own ontic meaning as life-world. Our focus on the world of perception (and it is no accident that we begin here) gives us, as far as the world is concerned, only the temporal mode of the present; this mode itself points to its horizons, the temporal modes of past and future …” “The epochē, in giving us the attitude above the subject-object correlation which belongs to the world and thus the attitude of focus upon the transcendental subject-object correlation, leads us to recognise, in self-reflection, that the world that exists for us, that is, our world in its being and being-such, takes its ontic meaning entirely from our intentional life through a priori types of accomplishments that can be exhibited rather than argumentatively constructed or conceived through mythical thinking” (Husserl 1970, 168, 181)1.

1 What Husserl is saying here is that we only ever perceive, and comprehend the existence of an object by intentionally focusing on it. If we go back to how something is given meaning, we also find the structure of our comprehension of that object. Our world is always a world that exists in a specific space and time. In fact, we can only perceive the present time, although we can consciously understand that our time has a history and a future. The concept of the ‘epochē’, refers to an intended technique for revealing the underlying grounds of our knowledge by thinking away conventional, including scientific, assumptions (Jary and Jary 2000, 187).

From this argument, it follows that the meaning of an object is not inherent in the object itself, but located in the inner life of the subject. Husserl stated: “All objects in the world are in essence ‘embodied,’ and for that very reason all ‘take part’ in the space-time of bodies – ‘indirectly,’ then, in respect to what is not bodily about them. This applies to spiritual objects of every sort, primarily to souls, but also to spiritual objects of every other sort (such as art works, technical constructions, etc.). According to what gives them spiritual signification, they are ‘embodied’ through the way in which they ‘have’ bodily character” (Husserl 1970, 216)2.

However, because in the subjective life-world, an individual’s consciousness consists of numerous accumulated experiences and presuppositions that hinder the process of understanding, Husserl therefore advocated the method of ‘phenomenological reduction’. Using this method, Husserl argued, an individual can in their consciousness abandon all ideas about the external world and its objects (Swingewood 1984, 270-271).

2.4 The Existential Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty For Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Fisher notes, philosophy was a completely unrestricted reflection not only on the whole of human experience including science and language, but also on the individual itself and all the activities of the individual, including art, politics, society and religion. Recognising that reality never presents itself without some degree of ambiguity, Fisher states, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy has been called a philosophy of ambiguity3.

In directing his ‘philosophy of ambiguity’ at causal theory, Merleau-Ponty sought to enlarge reason, to make it clearly understood that reason includes the non-rational and the irrational. Yet, Merleau-Ponty also emphasised that

2 In short, Husserl argues, because in transcendentalism the real meaning of what exists is determined by individual experience of the world, our subjective belief in spiritual objects is also primarily given meaning through our individual life-world experiences. 3 Fundamentally, what is meant here is that since subjective reality depends on our life- world experiences and no one experience or perception is the same (perception is paradoxical) reality itself is ambiguous. Merleau-Ponty nevertheless sought to support the rational structure of our subjective understanding of reality by emphasising and revealing how the non-rational and irrational enter our subjective life experiences and consciousness (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 16).

© Marcelle Slagter 34 recognising the non-rational and irrational in reason is not the same as capitulating to it. “The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing, truth into being” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, xxii).

From this position, Merleau-Ponty therefore sought to draw Western Philosophy’s attention to the contingent, the vague, and the dark underside of things in reason. In brief, he sought to ensure that philosophy remained true to the task of unrestricted reflection and was not captured by the tenets of reason itself (Fisher 1969, 8). Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy in this regard, Crossley argues, “allows us to understand human agents as sentient, practical, communicative, affective, thinking, free and (most importantly) intersubjective beings, who are situated in relation to a historical, material- symbolic world” (Crossley 1994, 8).

The major difference between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, Edie points out, is that, Husserl spent most of his life elaborating a phenomenology of reason and categorical thought, and only turned to perceptual consciousness as the foundational mode of experience. Merleau-Ponty, on the other hand, began with perception and, in his published works, did no more than pose the problem of a phenomenology of rationality (Edie 1964, xvii-xviii).

In describing phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty argued that it is a philosophy that puts essences (elements), back into existence without expecting to arrive at an understanding of people and the world from any starting point other than that of their ‘facticity’ – the fact of their being (what is) (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 85; Merleau-Ponty 2004, vii; van Manen 1984, 6). Phenomenology, he said, could also be described as “a study of the advent of being to consciousness, instead of presuming its possibility as given in advance” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 71).

Although it may be concluded from this description of phenomenology that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy supports a naturalistic perspective, it must be

© Marcelle Slagter 35 emphasised that for Merleau-Ponty, the universe of naturalism is not self- enclosed, and perception is not an event of nature4 (Merleau-Ponty 2006, 145). As Baldwin argues, Merleau-Ponty was incipiently idealistic, however, a crucial point for Merleau-Ponty was that the idealist position needs to be worked out in a way that does not detach the subject of perception from the world; thereby treating the world and the subject’s own body as merely objects of consciousness. The latter position Merleau-Ponty argued, is the ‘intellectualist’ (rationalist) position (in that it treats the world as the product of a constituting consciousness “which eternally possesses the intelligible structure of all its objects” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 32)) which he contended is as unsatisfactory as the position of the realist (empiricist – treating the world as ‘in itself’). Both approaches, Merleau-Ponty asserted, are in fact situated on the same terrain (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 24-25), a determinate unambiguous objective world in which empiricism develops through a process of causal relations, while rationalism forms from consciously constituted relations (Baldwin 2004, 4-5; Cole 1992, 104-105).

The limitation of these causal perspectives, Merleau-Ponty argued, is that they fail to account for: a) the structure of perpetual experience, for the fact that we see things from a point of view that is located in space and moves around within it; and b) the fact that things manifest themselves to us only in time, through a series of partial appearances that can be continued indefinitely. Merleau-Ponty felt, however, that it was only natural for people to misinterpret these facts as an outcome of their causal dependence in experiencing the world (Baldwin 2004, 5-6). “As philosophy, realism is an error because it transposes into dogmatic thesis an experience which it deforms or renders

4 This Merleau-Pontian perspective goes back to Husserl’s argument that Galileo first suggested - that nature is a self-enclosed world of bodies. Or, in other words, materially nature exists apart from, and independently from, our subjective existence of it (rather than being a social construction). Subsequently, Merleau-Ponty emphasised that perception is not an event of nature; it is not something that happens separately from subject experience, it is an inner subjective experience.

impossible by that very fact. But it is a motivated error; it rests on an authentic phenomenon which philosophy has the function of making explicit” (Merleau-Ponty 2006, 216).

In short, Merleau-Ponty argued, the authentic phenomenon indicates that the subject is not an abstract, absolute, consciousness, but that it exists in the world of space and time in such a way that its embodiment realises its spatial and temporal position (Baldwin 2004, 6; Merleau-Ponty 2006, 208- 209).

Having reflected on the position of the perceiving subject, Merleau-Ponty then pointed out how the concept of the subjective body as simply an object within the world fails to do justice to the body’s contribution to our experience of the world. In writing substantially about the interrelationship of the subjective body in the life-world, Merleau-Ponty suggests that we should learn to recognise our own body as a ‘phenomenal body’, something that in playing an active role in our experience of the world is apt to fill the role of transcendental subject. “Bodily experience” Merleau-Ponty states, “forces us to acknowledge an imposition of meaning which is not the work of a universal constituting consciousness, a meaning which clings to certain contents. My body is that meaningful core which behaves like a general function, and which nevertheless exists, and is susceptible to disease” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 170).

At the most basic level, Cole states, in summarising Merleau-Ponty’s work: “The world we experience is a world essentially open to diverse ‘structurings’ – diverse determinations – through which it is simultaneously revealed and concealed. The world always retains an inexhaustible reserve of otherness (in the simplest sense, background), which exceeds, harbours, permeates, and constitutes the perceptions that emerge from our contact with it. This quality of the perceived world as structured-yet-open is what both motivates and makes possible our living experience of the world. Our new perceptions always emerge from and are motivated by our past experiences (rather than being determined by them or arising from nowhere, as with classical epistemology), and are possible precisely because the past did not offer us the world in completion. … The phenomenological world is always revealed as ‘perceived by’ an incarnate self, a being embodied within it from whence it is witnessed. The appearance of the world is always bound up with my spatial and temporal position in it, as well as my incarnate history in a social, cultural, economic, and political world. The intersection of

each social incarnate self and the world gives rise to perceptions that are always rooted in a particular existence. The self and the world refer endlessly to one another in a process of co-creation” (1992, 106-107).

Whereas in The Structure of Behaviour (1942) Merleau-Ponty called for a philosophy that inverts the natural movement of consciousness in order to uncover the ways in which the real world is constituted in perception, in Phenomenology of Perception (1945) he argued that phenomenology is precisely the philosophy that will achieve this result. This philosophy, he argued, would provide a genealogy of being that would, like a work of art, bring to expression the truth about being (Baldwin 2004, 10-12).

2.5 Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception In explaining ‘what is the phenomenological world?’ Merleau-Ponty stated: “The phenomenological world is not pure being, but the sense which is revealed where the paths of my various experiences intersect, and also where my own and other people’s intersect and engage each other like gears. It is thus inseparable from subjectivity and intersubjectivity, which find their unity when I either take up my past experiences in those of the present, or other people’s in my own” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, xxii)5.

Merleau-Ponty explained that the word perception “indicates a direction rather than a primitive function” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 13). Science and philosophy, he stated, “have for centuries been sustained by [an] unquestioning faith in perception. Perception opens a window on to things. This means that it is directed, quasi-teleologically, towards a truth in itself in which the reason underlying all appearances is to be found. … Science has first been merely the sequel or amplification of the process which constitutes perceived things” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 62-63).

5 In explanation, what Merleau-Ponty is saying is that the phenomenological world is the temporal world where our subjective experiences cross one another, and cross with the experiences of other people. The phenomenological world is therefore a united world of experiences; be they subjective experiences or intersubjective experiences.

“We believe truth is eternal because truth expresses the perceived world and perception implies a world which was functioning before it and according to principles which it discovers and does not posit. In one and the same movement, knowledge roots itself in perception and distinguishes itself from perception. Knowledge is an effort to recapture, to internalise, truly to possess a meaning that escapes perception at the very moment that it takes shape there, because it is interested only in the echo that being draws from itself, not in this resonator, its own other which makes the echo possible” (Merleau- Ponty 'The Prose in the World' Baldwin 2004, 242). In describing the theory of perception as presented in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the following list is not exhaustive; the limits of this chapter and thesis prevent such a detailed account. What is described here, however, is intended to provide some understanding of perception as a phenomenon.

For Merleau-Ponty: a) classical science is a form of perception which loses sight of its origins and believes itself complete (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 66); b) the act of perceiving is co-constitutive of the human world – the only primary world – in all its rich contours. “For this reason, the act of perceiving itself and the objects of perception come to be the central object of study. In addition to a sustained criticism of all scientistic and reductionistic views, for Merleau-Ponty it becomes necessary to carry out a direct examination of perception and perceived reality” (Fisher 1969, 9); c) the perceiving mind is an incarnated (embodied) mind, and knowledge and communication sublimate (convert or convey) rather than suppress the mind’s incarnation (A Prospectus of His Work Merleau-Ponty 1964, 3, 7); d) the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most secret affective movements, those most deeply tied to the humoral infrastructure, help to shape our perception of things (A Prospectus of His Work Merleau-Ponty 1964, 5); e) a perceiving subject is not an absolute thinker; rather, each subject functions according to a natal pact between its body and

the world, and between itself and its body (A Prospectus of His Work Merleau-Ponty 1964, 6); f) it is impossible to decompose a perception, to make it into a collection of sensations, because in it the whole is prior to the parts – and this whole is not an ideal whole (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 15); g) a perceived thing is not an ideal unity in the possession of the intellect, it is rather a totality open to a horizon of an indefinite number of perspectival views which blend with one another according to a given style, which defines the object in question. Perception is therefore paradoxical. The perceived thing itself is paradoxical; it exists only in so far as someone can perceive it (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 16); h) perception is not an intellectual act, but a reality in which the infinite sum of an indefinite series of perspectival views in each of which the object is given but in none of which it is given exhaustively (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 15); i) perception and thought have this much in common – that both of them have a future horizon and a past horizon and that they appear to themselves as temporal, even though they do not move at the same speed nor in the same time (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 21); j) the experience of perception is our presence at the moment when things, truths, values are constituted for us; k) perception is a nascent logos; it teaches us, outside all dogmatism, the true conditions of objectivity itself; that it summons us to the tasks of knowledge and action (Merleau- Ponty 1964, 25); l) perception is not built up with states of consciousness as a house is built with bricks, and with a mental chemistry that fuses these materials into a compact whole. Like all empiricist theories, the idea that perception is built as a house is built with bricks describes only blind processes which can never be the equivalent of knowledge because there is in this mass of sensations and

memories nobody who sees or appreciates the falling into line of datum and recollection, and no solid object protected by a meaning against the multitude of memories (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 21); m) perception is not reducible to an atomistic field of sensation, but all sensory experience is a structure of consciousness (Merleau- Ponty 2004, 211); and n) to perceive is not to remember (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 26).

To paraphrase, for Merleau-Ponty senses form part of our bodily experience – they are not reducible to mere qualities. This creates a paradox because in perception these sensual experiences form part of a whole that is endlessly reified by the different perspectival stimuli emitting from objectivity. In other words, it is not possible to perceive an object without intent and outside consciousness (and knowledge), because to do so would presuppose the existence of that object, or thing, in itself (Merleau-Ponty 1997, 118- 119). In sum, as Merleau-Ponty argued, “our certainty about perceiving a given thing does not guarantee that our experience will not be contradicted, or dispense us from a fuller experience of that thing” (Merleau-Ponty 1997, 121). The possibility of a rupture or substantial change in an existing perception always exists.

What Merleau-Ponty teaches us is that people do not live only in the ‘real’ world of perception. They also live in the realms of, as Eadie states, “the imaginary, of ideality, of language, culture, and history. In short, there are various levels of experience, and phenomenology is open to all of them and recognises in each its own irreducible specificity, its own meaning and value structures, its own qualitatively distinctive characteristics. … What is distinctive of Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of phenomenology is the belief that in all these other levels or realms of experience we will rediscover the fundamental structures of perceptual consciousness, but transformed and enriched and therefore qualitatively irreducible to perception as such. … We are always immersed in the world and perceptually present to it” (Edie 1964, xvi). However Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy is understood, it is widely accepted that his study of perception in Phenomenology of Perception (1945) is his

© Marcelle Slagter 41 most important contribution to contemporary philosophy (Gordon and Tamari 2004, 2-3). Yet, as Eadie states, in Merleau-Ponty’s first works, The Structure of Behaviour and Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty was presenting a thesis, a program for phenomenological research, that was intended to be developed, criticised, and tested over a considerable period of time and that should not have been taken as prematurely established. Merleau-Ponty was not able to do more than lay the foundations for his phenomenological research program (Edie 1964, xiv-xv). By using the ideas and methodology from Phenomenology of Perception in this thesis, the aim, through reflection, is to do justice to the work begun by Merleau- Ponty.

In Phenomenology of Perception, and the posthumously published and sadly incomplete The Visible and the Invisible (1968), perception is described as an embodied experience that cannot be understood from an objective causal theoretical perspective. That Merleau-Ponty views individual perception as an embodied experience, provides a way out of the dualistic Cartesian ‘mind-body’ impasse that many sociologists and social theorists have identified with their discipline (Crossley cites (Hirst and Woolley 1982; Turner 1984)). It allows us, Crossley argues, to think beyond the organic composition of the body to its actual engagement in social life and the intelligent, communicative and practical role that it takes therein (Crossley 1994, 37-38). From this perspective, Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception is not simply the passive registering of the data provided by the external world, but an act shown to be co-constitutive of the human world (Fisher 1969) – a primary, and much more holistic world, than that constituted in causal theory.

2.6 Phenomenological Research and Methodology Merleau-Ponty stated that: “It is essential never to cut sociological inquiry off from our experience of social subjects (which of course includes not only what we have experienced ourselves but also the behaviour we perceive through the gestures, tales, or writings of [other people]). For the sociologist’s equations begin to represent something social

only at the moment when the correlations they express are connected to one another and enveloped in a certain unique view of the social and of nature which is characteristic of the society under consideration and has come to be institutionalised in it as the hidden principle of all its overt functioning – even though this view may be rather different than the official conceptions which are current in that society” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty 'The Philosopher and Sociology' in Fisher 1969, 67-68).

In adopting both a phenomenological theoretical and methodological position in this thesis, the first point to consider is where to start. Merleau- Ponty stated that if perception is “the common act of all our motor and affective functions, no less than the sensory, we must rediscover the structure of the perceived world through a process similar to that of an archaeologist. For the structure of the perceived world is buried under the sedimentations of later knowledge” (Merleau-Ponty 1969, 369-370).

Van Manen argues that it is fundamental of phenomenological research for a researcher to give an indication of ‘orienting to the phenomenon’. By this it is meant that a researcher must attempt to “somehow capture a certain phenomenon in life in a linguistic description that is both holistic and analytical, evocative and precise, unique and universal, powerful and eloquent” (van Manen 1984, 6). If applied phenomenology means putting the essence of a phenomenon back into existence, then a good outcome is produced when the structure of a lived experience is revealed to us in a manner not previously seen but still able to be understood. By taking this approach, van Manen states, a topic for phenomenological inquiry is determined by the questioning of the essential nature of a lived experience: a certain way of being in the world (1984, 6).

Methodologically all phenomenological research is structured around four activities: a) identifying a phenomenon that seriously interests us and commits us to the world; b) investigating lived experience rather than conceptualised experience; c) reflecting on the essential (elemental) themes which characterise the phenomenon; and

d) describing the phenomenon through the art of writing and rewriting.

Phenomenological research, van Manen states, is a deep questioning of something that restores an original sense of what it means to be a thinker, researcher and theorist. As a form of research, it always seeks to make sense of a certain aspect of human existence, and has a two-fold characteristic, a preoccupation with both the concreteness (the ontic) as well as the essential nature (ontology) of lived experience. A phenomenological description is always one interpretation. No single interpretation of human experience ever exhausts the possibility of another complementary, potentially richer, description.

In looking at a phenomenological research question, the question must not only be clear and understood, but also lived. The problem with phenomenological inquiry however, is not always that we know too little about the phenomenon we wish to investigate, but that we know too much. For example, ‘commonsense’ assumptions and the existing body of scientific knowledge predispose us to interpret the nature of a phenomenon before we even understand the significance of the question.

The aim of phenomenological research, therefore, is to establish a renewed contact with original experience. Merleau-Ponty explained that by turning to things themselves, by returning to the phenomena of lived experience, a researcher relearns to look at the world by reawakening their basic experience of the world. It means that the researcher actively explores the category of lived experience in all its modalities and aspects.

Understanding some phenomenon, some lived experience, nonetheless is not fulfilled through the facts of this or that particular experience. On the contrary, thought about lived experience is reflective and understanding of what it is that renders this or that particular experience significant. Phenomenological research, unlike any other kind of research, distinguishes between appearance and essence, between the things of our experience and

© Marcelle Slagter 44 that which grounds the things of our experience. In short, phenomenological research brings near what can be obscure, what tends to evade awareness in our everyday life. To do phenomenological research is always to bring something into written language. It is the application of logos (language and thoughtfulness) to what is revealed through a phenomenon (lived experience).

The following table, developed by van Manen, outlines the kind of procedure that is dialectically involved in phenomenological research and writing, and has methodologically been applied in this thesis. No sequential order is necessarily implied in the outline; a researcher may, as van Manen states, work at all aspects at the same time (van Manen 1984). A. Identifying the phenomenon of lived experience: 1. Orienting to the phenomenon. 2. Formulating the phenomenological question. 3. Explicating assumptions and preunderstandings. B. Existential investigation: 4. Exploring the phenomenon: generating ‘data’ – 4.1 Using personal experience as a starting point. 4.2 Tracing etymological sources. 4.3 Obtaining experiential descriptions from subjects. 4.4 Locating experiential descriptions in literature, art, etc. 5. Consulting phenomenological literature. C. Phenomenological reflection: 6. Conducting thematic analysis – 6.1.1 Uncovering thematic aspects in life-world descriptions. 6.1.2 Isolating thematic statements (from, for example, biographies). 6.1.3 Composing linguistic transformations. 6.2 Gleaning thematic descriptions from artistic sources (transcending the experiential world in an act of reflective existence). 7. Determining essential themes. D. Phenomenological writing: 8. Attending to the speaking of language. 9. Varying the examples (aims to reveal the previously unseen structure of a lived experience). 10. Writing (e.g. thematically, analytically, existentially, and exegetically). 11. Rewriting (as an aspect of phenomenological methodology the experience of recalling describes a gathering of the kinds of understandings that belong to being). Methodological Outline for Doing Phenomenology (van Manen 1984)

2.7 Phenomenology and Language Having briefly discussed the theoretical foundation of Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology, and the methodological framework for this study, the next step, before orienting to the phenomenon of poverty in perception in this research study, is to emphasise the importance of language in phenomenology. “Language”, Merleau-Ponty stated, “is much more like a sort of being than a means and that is why it can present something to us so well. … To speak is not to put a word under each thought; if it were, nothing would ever be said. … Language bears the meaning of thought as a footprint signifies the movement and effort of a body” (Merleau-Ponty 1974, 40-41).

Language, Merleau-Ponty further asserted, is not meaning’s servant nor does it govern meaning. There is no subordination between language and meaning; no one commands and no one obeys. “What we mean is not before us, outside all speech, as sheer signification. It is only the excess of what we live over what has already been said. With our apparatus of expression we set ourselves up in a situation the apparatus is sensitive to, we confront it with the situation, and our statements are only the final balance of these exchanges. Political thought itself is of this order. It is always the elucidation of an historical perception in which all our understandings, all our experiences and all our values simultaneously come into play – and of which our theses are only the schematic formulation. All action and knowledge which do not go through this elaboration, and which seek to set up values which have not been embodied in our individual or collective history (or – what comes down to the same thing – which seek to choose means by a calculus and a wholly technical process), fall short of the problems they are trying to solve.” (Merleau-Ponty 1974, 80).

From this Merleau-Pontian perspective on language, there are several things to consider in this thesis. For example, in describing and defining poverty it is not enough to accept an objective scientific (causal) understanding of poverty, nor to narrow the meaning of poverty to certain quantifiable (statistical) conditions. It is just as, if not more, important, in the context of this thesis, to describe poverty from its historical understanding in subjective and intersubjective perception – its incarnate history in the world.

By revealing the genealogy of historic perceptions, we may then be able to reveal the spatio-temporal structure of poverty’s meaning.

It is also important to recognise that as people live in the realms of the imaginary, of ideality, of language, culture, and history (Edie 1964, xvi), so our past impresses upon our present. In what we read therefore, our thoughts continue to be moulded by dominant causal perspectives. For example, in my copy of the 1984 Oxford English dictionary, it is stated that to be ‘poor’, an individual is experiencing an event of ‘deficiency’ (of unknown origin) and is lacking the ability to “procure [the] comforts or the necessaries of life” (Sykes 1984). Invariably, the trap with this dictionary definition of poverty, as with many other attempts to define poverty, is that the common temporal conditions of poverty are explained from a narrow causal philosophic perspective. What is missing from this objective rationalistic perspective is the history of subjective perception – the spatiotemporal lived experience of the individual that through cultural intersubjectivity has historically reconstituted, perpetuated, and embodied poverty in our language.

The fact that in Western countries, deprivation and deficiency are social characteristics of poverty systemically created through the perceptions of humankind, and the fact that the linguistic constitution of poverty is defined by our societies, is a matter frequently overlooked. Through objective rationalism, it is simple to point a finger at individual inferiority and inadequacy as a cause of poverty. To reflect upon the subjectivity and historical essence of poverty’s origins is a much more difficult and rare approach.

So it is, that even though the word ‘deficiency’ can imply a lack of any quality (e.g. social, political, economic, psychological or physical), the common understanding given to deficiency with regard to poverty in contemporary western society is dominated by perceptions in rationalistic economic and political thought. Poverty, by definition and understanding, in the western capitalist, economic, self-image, therefore, is not only

Through the application of the theories and methodology of Merleau-Ponty we are given a valuable antidote and opportunity to consider the issue of poverty from another perspective (Priest 1998, x). Following in the footsteps of Merleau-Ponty, it can be argued that as human knowledge is shaped by communicated perceptions that are systematically open to transformation, any discourse about wealth or poverty must contain the conflicting dualism of the signifier and the signified. The difficulty with wealth and poverty, however, is that in language they are transcendent signifiers of our causal dependence, interpretation and experiencing of the world. Wealth and poverty not only falsely communicate an objective metaphysical existence beyond essential experience, but also intimate an intersubjective unity of consciousness in order to produce a culturally valued outcome.

Taking a causal philosophic perspective therefore, a person may die in poverty, but they will never die from poverty. Only through language are wealth and poverty given perspective and meaning.

2.8 Existential Phenomenology as an Applied Methodology Although history gives poverty continuity, it is in the linearity of the genealogy that the cultural constitution of poverty and its infinite disposition to change in perceptive meaning may be revealed. Just as history gives poverty continuity, in its descriptive communication it also gives poverty presence. The context of poverty’s presence is however paradoxical. This is because the replacement of one perception by another is always only the elucidation of a particular historical perspective.

Poverty, as a signifier, is empowered in political thought. Moreover, it is in political thought that the conditions of poverty are objectified, made communally visible, and exposed to the infinite nuances of power and control. Intrinsic to its genealogy, the meaning of poverty is not only

© Marcelle Slagter 48 consciously reconstituted but also, consequential to its perceptual origin and to spatio-temporal difference, a fundamental reflection of the historical fallibility of humankind itself.

In analysing poverty, humanity is faced with two basic perspectives. Not only must an awareness be emphasised of the values, understandings, and experiences that through linguistic expression constitute poverty, but a reconsideration of thought must be given to the continual rationalisation and objectification of the conditions that, through history, have produced both the linguistic unity and signified character of poverty. As Merleau-Ponty intimated, the inexorable paradox of poverty perception is always that its objectified characteristics are only unified as a totality in linguistic composition; its constitution exists only so far as we can consciously perceive it (Merleau-Ponty 1997, 117-118).

In political thought, and in the formulation of institutional policies and practices for the alleviation or eradication of poverty, the ‘model’ constitution of poverty is not only historic, but also reliant upon causal theory. Because of poverty’s perpetuated history and analysis through only one philosophic approach (causal theory), solutions to poverty remain eternally out of reach. The causal limitation is something Merleau-Ponty was exhaustively critical of, especially in the social sciences. As Fisher explains, Merleau-Ponty was disparagingly aware of the assumption implicit in most sciences that their frequently reductionist theories constitute a truer account of reality than a theory based on direct experience. Or put another way, the frequent pretension of science to being the only valid mode of knowing (Fisher 1969, 9).

While contemporary political and economic thought is dominated by the causal scientific approach, and common characteristics of poverty are measured, rationalised, standardised and accorded global relativity by national and international organisations (including the United Nations), phenomenological research is in abeyance in our scientific databanks. Far from the world witnessing the international eradication of poverty, gaps in

© Marcelle Slagter 49 both local and national understandings of poverty champion its infinite being. As Merleau-Ponty stated: “Human society is not a community of reasonable minds, and only in fortunate countries where a biological and economic balance has locally and temporally been struck has such a conception of it been possible” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 65).

In the structure of twentieth-century political poverty perception lies the potential to reanalyse history and relearn why and how poverty has been, and is, given meaning in our society, and what determines that meaning. The character of this relearning process is not a decontextualising, or textual destruction or deconstruction, of history (Derrida 1990, 278-293) but more a reflection, refinement and representation derived from the continuity of our cultural and perceptual differences.

Hick affirms that the work of Merleau-Ponty, when used to analyse causal approaches in the philosophy of science, has shown that science does not give the description of reality itself, but instead provides a (one possible) description that is contingent upon a chosen methodology (Hick 1999, 134- 136). Phenomenology provides an alternative perspective to Western scientific assumptions of absolute knowledge.

Merleau-Ponty argued that a sociologist begins to do philosophy when they take it upon themselves not simply to note down facts, but rather to understand them. When a sociologist begins to interpret, he said, they have already become a philosopher (Merleau-Ponty 1978, 146).

By using Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenological approach in this study, an opportunity exists to look back in history and rediscover the essence of our perceptual understanding of poverty in Australia and New Zealand. From history, it may be possible to: 1. more clearly understand the values and experiences that have contributed to our perceptions of poverty; or 2. develop an understanding and acceptance of different local subjective experiences of poverty; or

3. develop a better understanding of the cultural expectations, values, contemporary life experiences, and characteristics of poverty for different ethnic groups in our community.

In seeking to understand what relationship existed between the political directions adopted by the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand and their perceptions of poverty, this study does not set out to simply note down facts. It relies on a much wider understanding of the subject in relation to space, time and circumstance. From this perspective, the study therefore transcends the temporal history presented in most of the biographies of the prime ministers.

“True philosophy” Merleau-Ponty said, “consists in relearning to look at the world, and in this sense a historical account can give meaning to the world quite as ‘deeply’ as a philosophical treatise” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, xx). Recognising from Merleau-Ponty’s work the significance of values, understanding and experiences in the formation of perception, this thesis uses these three perspectives as a basis for analysing and describing poverty in the perception of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand.

2.9 Conclusion In beginning this chapter, it was stressed that philosophers have questioned what the perception of things as we experience them involve. It was stated that for Merleau-Ponty there are at least two distinct levels of perception – the objects of perception and the acts of perceiving.

The chapter then moved on to describe the two main theoretical positions in the philosophy of perception i.e. phenomenalism and causal theory. From here, the antecedents of phenomenology and the theories of Maurice Merleau-Ponty were introduced.

Describing the fundamentals of phenomenological research and methodology, the chapter then went on to assert the importance of language

© Marcelle Slagter 51 in both the development of perception and in phenomenological writing. Finally, the chapter presented a brief example of how poverty can be interpreted from an existential phenomenological perspective.

Moving on from the description of Merleau-Ponty’s theory and methodology, I now come to the systematic application of his technique in this thesis. Beginning with an analysis of the historical origins of poverty perception in Australia and New Zealand, the next chapter seeks to reveal the salient values, understandings and experiences that through time have harboured the structure of poverty’s mutable constitution.

In describing the history of poverty perception in Australia and New Zealand, this thesis should not be read as the poverty perception of the prime ministers, but rather as a description of the poverty perceptions of the prime ministers. The intent of this research is to provide readers with an opportunity to reflect upon present-day events and their conditions. If we can understand that our perceptions have emanated from historical values, understandings and experiences, then we can also recognise that any event or circumstance in our life-world could rupture or substantially change our established perceptions, particularly those pertaining to poverty.

Chapter 3

A British Political Inheritance of Mind and Being:

“History is other people; it is the interrelationships we establish with them, outside of which the realm of the ideal appears as an alibi.” (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 25)

3.0 Prologue In his book The Quest for Security in New Zealand (1942), William Ball Sutch named his first chapter ‘Old Societies in New Places’. An experienced New Zealand national archive researcher, Sutch sought to describe through his title two points. The first point was that in the nineteenth century there was a socially historic if not political ‘quest for security’ in New Zealand. The second point was that British colonisation of New Zealand from 1830 to 1870 marked not just a physical migration of hundreds of thousands of people from the shores of Britain, but the invisible transfer of an old and well established culture and discourse in social and, conversely, political thought (Sutch 1942, 9).

Despite selling over 100,000 copies, Sutch’s The Quest for Security in New Zealand and an earlier publication Poverty and Progress in New Zealand (1941), were rejected as social histories by the National Centennial Historical Committee for whom the works had been commissioned. The concern over Sutch’s books revolved not on a matter of fact, accuracy or truthful representation, but upon his perception and perspective in explaining the historical position, prominence, authority and legitimacy of the pervading theories in political thought.

Framing his research in a thought style that revealed his own empathy toward the theories of Karl Marx, Sutch was informed “by J. W. Heenan, under-secretary for Internal Affairs, that the two manuscripts should be locked away and left for a long time” (Easton 2000).

In relation to this study, William Sutch’s work is an example of both the tactical strength and power of political thought, and the interpretative differences of perception that existed during his life. In other words, it is an example of how certain values were rationalised, structured and systematised in New Zealand society in order to preserve a specific perception of New Zealand in the interests of political, economic and social security. Moreover, Sutch’s work illustrates that major political thought structures emanate from community perceptions and are practically realised in the direction taken by particular government organisations through decision-making, and through the control of information by repetitive statements that are socially accepted and credible in the temporal environment of community reality.

Whereas Sutch’s work factually reflected what he found in the archives the perspective that he adopted through his own perceptual values, understandings and experiences stepped outside the temporal boundaries of accepted historiography. Sutch’s work, in short, presented a difference in meaning that not only transcended accepted mainstream political thought, but also the temporal image of New Zealand that had culturally, politically and socially been cultivated and presented to the world by dominant leaders in the community.

With time, the historical perceptions that directed mid-twentieth-century Australian and New Zealand social and political thought changed. In the latter years of the twentieth century, changes in the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of the community produced a greater emphasis in, for example, recording the equitable and concurrent representation of indigenous events and circumstances in each country’s official national history. Throughout the 1980s, new guidelines began to emerge that transformed the established ethnocentric representation of official social histories. These new guidelines enabled the merger of different ethnic and cultural histories, and the creation of perspectives that were more historically holistic portrayals and representations of events and circumstances. Yet, even though some bicultural and multicultural histories

© Marcelle Slagter 54 have merged in official contemporary historiographical accounts, these histories remain controversial because the descriptions of the different perceptual experiences portrayed are objectively rationalised explanations of what happened.

Because contemporary historiography supports a greater emphasis on the transparency and permissiveness of difference in fact, many contemporary historians now provide better descriptions of the national histories of their multicultural populations. Perception, nonetheless, perpetually creates and shapes historical perspective.

In sum, the authority and style of once ethnocentric and monoculturally dominated historical documents and representations has been superseded. A new order has evolved whose purpose it is to uncover and present different knowledges using the tools present-day liberality and perception permit. In this context then, history lives on – it is endlessly accessible to new representations, new form, and new perceptions.

3.1 Introduction Just as the economic historian Karl Polanyi once said about his work, this is not a historical work (1945, 14). What is presented in this chapter is not intended to be a strict history of events, but a condensed analysis and description of the phenomenon of poverty as represented through specific perceptual viewpoints, and indeed theories. Put another way, what is presented in this chapter is, as Merleau-Ponty suggested, a description of the historical structure of poverty perception before and during the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand (1969, 369-370).

Beginning with an analysis of the twentieth-century description of Australia and New Zealand as liberal democratic societies and nation states, the chapter moves back in time to ask: Where did the liberal democratic description came from? What does it mean? And, how does this political description relate to poverty perception in pre-twentieth and twentieth- century Australian and New Zealand political thought? To address these

© Marcelle Slagter 55 questions, specific use is made of existing literature, or more particularly, the perspective given by other authors of the archival history contained in that literature. Merleau-Ponty supported this approach when he argued that as perception is the common act of all our motor and affective functions, no less than the sensory, then we must rediscover the buried structure of the perceived world from the sedimentations of later knowledge (Merleau-Ponty 1969, 369-370).

In reanalysing old-world British society before the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand, this chapter focuses on three specific historical themes – class and ethnic polarities (including slavery), land ownership (as part of the accumulation of capital), and work (labour). These themes are highlighted because of their historic importance and repetitive relevance in the formation of poverty perception and its description in language during the course of time. The relationship between, for example, the landed gentry and peasants in feudal Britain produced a set of explicit perceptions about individual subjects and their social position. In this chapter, the correlation is emphasised between this feudal relationship, the social and economic feasibility of the British slave trade, and the development of a national political economy. Through this emphasis, the chapter traces the structural origins of the early intersubjective relationships, discourse, and ideas, of the landed gentry and peasants, and the relationship of the master and servant, with relevance to contemporary industrial relations and the objectifying of national populations in terms of socio-economic position.

Progressing on, the chapter then looks at the development of the ‘Poor Laws’ and the early unstable social, political, and economic conditions of British (Western) capitalism. At this point, consideration is given to the advancement and development of the British juridical system of sovereignty, and the objective subjugation and struggle of people in the

From this historical position, the chapter reveals how an intricate genealogy of perceptual thought developed during the colonial formation of community, society and government in Australia and New Zealand, in which the values of liberalism, protection, and free trade came to support an ideal (Weber) belief in a form of governmentality referred to as unisocialism. The chapter finally concludes by drawing attention to the interrelationships between the government of poverty, poverty perception in political thought, and the development of a distinctly Australian and New Zealand constitution of poverty.

3.2 A Liberal English Inheritance: From the Old to the New In twentieth-century political thought, Australia and New Zealand were frequently referred to as liberal democracies. The strengths and weaknesses of this label and political approach were given some grounding in the formation and rhetoric of political party ideology, but in large part, the identification of the state in Australia and New Zealand as ‘liberal democratic’ has been reverently imitated from relational British antecedents.

Beginning this section by discussing the style of government adopted in Australia and New Zealand is important because it provides an indication of how the people of Australia and New Zealand have historically perceived their government, and what has historically been acknowledged as acceptable leadership and government in these countries. In simple terms, the common and dominant definition of the word democracy is ‘rule by the people’ or ‘government by the people’, whereas the political unity of the words liberal and democracy, when applied to the state, classically suggests a unity between ideas favouring individual freedom and the need to limit the

6 Because the perceiving subject is situated in a particular social and cultural spatiotemporal context (life-world), it is not considered inappropriate in this thesis to investigate the kinds of discourses and governmental rationalities through which subjects’ perceptions are mediated. Even if in doing this the source of ideas and style of investigation may appear antithetical – as is in reference to the work of Merleau-Ponty’s nemesis Michel Foucault.

© Marcelle Slagter 57 power and authority of government. Arising from these ideas however, comes the viewpoint that democracy refers to the ‘location’ of a state’s power (in the hands of the people) and liberal refers to the ‘limitation of that power’; be it a limitation in the government ‘of’ or ‘by’ the people (e.g. in public authority) (Holden 1988, 5,12).

In his analysis of eighteenth–nineteenth century British poverty, Mitchell Dean nevertheless writes that use of the word liberal is plagued by definitional ambiguity. Historically, the word liberal came into the English language in the fourteenth century and referred to a class of free men as distinct from others who were not free. In a social context, quite different from that of the class of free men, the word liberal came to mean ‘open- minded’, and ‘unorthodox’ as in liberal opinion in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. The political use of the word liberalism however, developed in the early nineteenth century. As a doctrine liberalism was, and is, based on individualist theories of man and society and is therefore in fundamental conflict with socialist and most strictly social theories (Williams 1988). In its presentation as a political doctrine, the word liberalism, Dean argues, has been besmirched by concern “with the optimisation of the sphere of individual freedom and rights, and the preservation of this sphere against any arbitrary encroachment by the state” (Dean 1991, 11-13). Dean’s theoretical authority, including the separation in meaning he comes to refer to between state and government, are directly derived from the work of Michel Foucault.

Liberal thought, Foucault said, begins not in the existence of the state (i.e. political structure) or through its government (i.e. in structuring the actions of others), but from society, an idea promulgated earlier by Ricardo and Hegel (Polanyi 1945). In explanation, Foucault wrote, the word government must be allowed the very broad meaning it had in the sixteenth century. At this time, “‘government’ did not refer only to political structures or to the management of states; rather it designated the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed: the government of children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the sick. It did not only cover the

© Marcelle Slagter 58 legitimately constituted forms of political or economic subjection, but also modes of action, more or less considered and calculated, which were destined to act upon the possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others” (Foucault 1982, 221). The idea and acceptance of society was for Foucault both a precondition and an end with respect to state governance (Foucault 1997, 75).

Liberalism on the other hand, as Foucault considered, is a practice rather than theory or ideology that rationalises and regulates the exercise of government (Foucault 1997, 74-75). In examining how states rationalise, Foucault believed that rationalism itself is central to the orientation of liberalism even though liberalism is simultaneously oriented toward objectives and logically regulates itself by means of sustained reflection. Foucault concluded therefore that liberalism is both a principle and a method for rationalising the exercise of government.

Fundamentally, however, the core of liberalism constitutes a tool for criticising reality. This criticism may be toward the reality of: a) shedding a previous governmentality (i.e. government rationality); b) rationally stripping down and reforming a current governmentality; or c) opposing and limiting the abuses of governmentality. Characteristically, liberalism is polymorphic. It can exist simultaneously in many different forms (Foucault 1997, 74-75).

Using Foucault’s ideas, Dean emphasises that by optimising individual freedom liberalism, in practice, preserves private autonomy rather than public intervention. Dean argues, however, that overall private autonomy can only be preserved if it: a) is already sullied by the effect of numerous state and non-state interventions loosely aimed at promoting a specific way of life; and b) enforces the principles of freedom, right, and economic responsibility, by the male breadwinner, in regard to matters of poverty (Dean 1988, 31).

Stepping back to the contrasts in causal and phenomenological philosophical perspectives presented in the previous chapter, three points are important from Foucault’s ideas. The first point to consider is that spatially and temporally liberalism is a causal political approach that rationally regulates itself by means of sustained reflection. Secondly, liberalism is endlessly polymorphic because it is a product of perception and, therefore, subject to the spatio-temporal limitations and structures that human consciousness, rationality, and knowledge permit. Thirdly, liberalism, in practice, produces a circularity of intent. This is because, intrinsically, in the Foucaultian interpretation of liberalism, liberalism begins with society, is rationalised and regulated by the state, and then practically exercised in society. Liberalism is, therefore, a practice that methodically regulates itself in objective reflection, but more importantly, in principle, liberalism is open to perceptual variation because, through reflection, its form can be interpreted differently.

Since, in Foucaultian thought, liberal thought begins fundamentally in society and not with the state, it is most significant to recognise that in the objective analysis and government of poverty, the state can only ever reify and impart the dominant historic perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty that is temporally circulating in society. Political thought and practical policy activity in relation to poverty do not, therefore, generate perceptions about poverty even though they may bring about the actual development of, for example, measures to reduce poverty. Political thought and practical policy activity, however, may unconsciously produce changes and increases in poverty yet to be perceived in society.

In summary, the point of this section is to emphasise that even though Australia and New Zealand were described in the twentieth century as liberal democracies, this term could not have been used, nor was used, by either country in their political self-description until the end of the nineteenth century. The development of Australia and New Zealand as nation states and liberal democracies, nevertheless, did fundamentally begin from their nineteenth century colonial societies.

3.3 British Slavery, Self-Interest and Perceptions of Rights To bring to light the perceptual structure of Australia and New Zealand in the nineteenth century, as well as the genealogical roots of poverty perception in twentieth-century Australian and New Zealand political thought, the starting point of this thesis is not, and cannot be, within these countries themselves. Both Australia and New Zealand’s contemporary model of federal government and sovereignty have a vibrant and ancient history. This history was shaped from a timbre of British culture and thought evoked long before the imperial colonisation of Australia and New Zealand.

From the beginning, ideas circulated of Australia and New Zealand replicating Britain. Macintyre describes how the imagery of replication was conveyed in Britain in an 1823 William Wordsworth poem: “May this, thy last-born infant, –then arise, To glad thy heart, and greet thy parent eyes; And Australasia float, with flag unfurled, A new Britannia in another world” (Macintyre 2004, 82). History demonstrates, nevertheless, that even in their early beginnings, the colonies of Australia and New Zealand never really did emulate all the thoughts and cultural beliefs of old-world Britain.

Following Foucault and Dean’s lead, it is argued here that the core of Australian and New Zealand political thought about poverty perception lies manifestly in the British juridical system of sovereignty. It is in this system that Foucault considered the struggle of race (including discrimination based on class, ethnicity, biology and gender) lies (2003, 60-62); but it is also in this system that a genealogical root exists to explain how and why poverty is perceived the way it is, for example, in Australia and New Zealand. In other words, it is in the language and discourse of race, and its system of differential segregation, that the masonry of contemporary poverty and poverty perception in Australian and New Zealand political thought exists.

Although it is beyond the scope of this thesis to provide an in-depth sociological study of the history of the British slave trade and its structural

© Marcelle Slagter 61 interrelationship with the spatio-temporal events and circumstances of British society, Gordon Lewis provides a worthy opening to this discussion. Referring to Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), Lewis emphasises Goldsmith’s classic example of the social perceptions of the English living in the late eighteenth century. “For the ordinary clerical mind [of this time] the slave was in the same category as the English village labourer who, both of them, must submit to a servitude ordained by the necessary inequality of social life and structure” (Lewis 1978, 33).

That perspectives of class and racial segregation were sanctioned by a privileged governing class that successfully managed to oppress some 90% of the British population in a life of dependent subsistence throughout the feudal years, and for much of the nineteenth century, has been established in many British historical texts (Cole 1948; de Schweinitz 1943, 17; Lux 1990; Toynbee 1890). That this divide was supported in the name of God, and at the absolute liberty of the sovereign (be it monarch or state) is a reflection of: a) the temporal and systematic control of social conduct during this period; b) the methods of judicial enforcement governing conduct of individual subjects; and c) the general absence of a democratic and shared (circular) relationship of power and freedom between the governing aristocracy and the wealthy, with the labouring population (as subjects of the sovereign); as reflected in the struggle and resistance between the governing and working classes, and in, for example, the position of those exploited because of their ethnicity and gender.

Even if some of the privileged governing classes were not consciously aware of the events and ideas presented in the Age of Enlightenment (– seventeenth–nineteenth century, including the periods referred to historically as The Industrial Revolution and the Age of Reason), the changes that were occurring environmentally, socially and politically could not have long been overlooked or voiced. With many governing elites

© Marcelle Slagter 62 actively pursuing the privatisation of common lands for personal profit, while simultaneously withdrawing manorial accountability and responsibility for the livelihood, wellbeing and housing of evicted peasants, the social, political, economic and spatial environment in Britain became increasingly unstable. Describing the tremendous social upheaval of this period, Arnold Toynbee stated that: “It is a great law of social development that the movement from slavery to freedom is also a movement from security to insecurity of maintenance. There is a close connection between the growth of freedom and the growth of pauperism” (1890, 95-96).

In short, even though the governing classes did frequently interpose to shield workmen from injustice when their interests were in peril, or when governing class prejudices were involved (Toynbee 1890, 187), the general perceptions of the governing classes were that the labouring classes were inferior classes. The perceptual values, understandings and experiences, and conduct of landowners and employers toward the management of workers be it peasants, slaves, or later, the labourers and factory workers of the working classes, was consequently structured on the historic maintenance of class deference, exploitation and segregation. To the governing classes, the labouring ‘working’ population were nothing more than a physically plentiful, renewable, and disposable economic resource vastly removed by difference (and prejudice) from their own social lives. This contrast, described by Hobbes, was when men were like beasts, while Townsend said they were actually beasts. From this point of view, Polanyi argues, society could be regarded as consisting of two races: property owners and labourers (Polanyi 1945, 118).

Lux, however, elucidates the position of the labouring and capital classes further by stating that: “At the high point of the Middle Ages – say between the years 1000 and 1300 – the peasant came with the land and was as much a part of the manor as the land itself. In this sense, the people and the land formed an entity. The feudal conception, backed up by the Church, was that the peasants could not be ejected from the land and therefore had a right to it” (Lux 1990, 16).

In the social thinking of the governing classes (particularly aristocrats facing the patrimonial system of inheritance), the notion therefore developed that not only slaves, but also peasants and labourers were their property. This was a perception that first found form through their ownership of the land, and all on it, and later through the establishment and extension of legislation determining the conditions and conduct of behaviour (and employment) between the master and servant – conditions that precipitated and endorsed the possibility for both land and labour to be sold as a commodity in the market. In explanation, it should be noted that the law of Master and Servant made a breach of contract on the part of an employer a civil offence, while such a breach on the part of the labourer was a crime (Toynbee 1890, 186).

In contrast, however, it was perceived by the labouring classes (peasants and labourers) that, by reason of their native heritage, location, and protected status on the manor, they had a right: (a) of either access to land in order to acquire a subsistence living, or access to an equivalent means of acquiring a subsistence living provided from the land; and (b) to support from the master (landowner /employer) and community (guild, family and church) for their maintenance as the need required. Nonetheless, in this feudal equation slaves from other ethnic origins and locations were excluded. Foreign slaves were considered to have no commutable rights and, therefore, no entity with either the ‘host’ land or community in which they lived (Cole 1948, 23; Toynbee 1890, 95; Williams 1990, 18).

When the population of Britain increased substantially from six to nine million in the second half of the eighteenth century, and from nine to

© Marcelle Slagter 64 fourteen million in 18347 (Digby 1992, 5), the reasons for this increase were said to include: a) traditional church pastoral interests; persuading the flock (for potential political and economic benefits) that it was God’s will that they should ‘be fruitful and multiply’ (Mount 1982, 18-25); b) a fall in death rates; a factor attributed to by improved sanitary conditions and increasing medical knowledge (Cole 1948, 21); c) changes in traditional customs; with the ‘enclosures movement’ and their release from the manorial estates, men married sooner as they were no longer bound to a customary standard of restraint (Cole 1948, 23); and d) the juxtaposition of widespread poverty itself, i.e. that families without adequate employment, education, or health care have little security for the future except for reliance on their children8 (Lester R. Brown cited in Lux 1990, 44).

Added to the issue of increasing population, however, was also the parallel problem of slave labour and production. The English had become active in the slave trade in 1562 (Durham-University 2005), however, the social and economic conditions that emerged from the enclosures movement highlighted the fact that a market for the exchange of labour could not coexist with slavery. As Williams stated in 1789, just before the French Revolution, the French were so dependent on British slave traders that a unilateral abolition of slavery would have seriously dislocated the economy of the French colonies.

More importantly, however, was the fact that between 1715 and 1789, export produce from the French colonies had increased tenfold. Saint

7 The first Census was taken in 1801, therefore, no accurate figures exist of population numbers for earlier times (Cole 1948, 21). Similarly, a register of births was not established until 1837 (Department for Culture 2005). 8 Twentieth-century studies “show that countries that have sharply reduced their birth rates – but were socially and economically diverse such as China, Barbados, Sri Lanka, Uruguay, Taiwan, Cuba, and South Korea – have done so because their populations have acquired access to basic social and economic services. Birth rates dropped in these countries even before the introduction of family planning programs” (Lux 1990, 44).

Domingue, a fertile French colony that depended on the labour of some 40,000 slave imports per year, had given France control of the European sugar market. The low cost of production created from slave labour, Williams has suggested, gave France not just an edge but placed France in an untenable position. The fact that slavery had reduced the cost of sugar production implied that it could also reduce costs in other industries. The chance of this occurring was a serious matter for political thought.

While the French Revolution subsequently destroyed France’s control of the sugar market, it became apparent to Britain’s political and economic thinkers that continued British involvement in the trade and exploitation of slave labour must end. Slavery, it was perceived, would inevitably destabilise and diminish not just Britain’s commercial status in Europe, but also the wage-earning potential, and rights to life, of the white working classes of Britain; a recipe for anarchy, if not revolution. As Eltis points out: “Herman Merivale, the elder James Stephen, and the body of later classical economists in general came to recognise, free markets and free labour could not coexist in many parts of the world” (Eltis 1987, 22, 24-25; Williams 1990, 145-148).

In an environment where the value of a life and the cost of living rested on the lowest possible rung of worth, human – let alone British working class – rights were more a hope than a reality. William Fox expressed the interrelationship between slavery and trade more definitely when, in 1792, he informed the British people that with every pound of sugar they also consumed two ounces of human flesh (Williams 1990, 183). Yet, even in the wake of the American War of Independence (1775–1783) and the French Revolution (1789–1799), the British governing classes blamed white working class idleness and poverty for the potential threat of anarchy and revolution. This perception made the governing classes less, rather than more, inclined to remedy poverty, and resulted in a callous disregard for the suffering of the poor. Patriotism, in this era, became a cloak for an unprecedented and harsh exploitation of the labouring classes, while anti- Jacobinism gave reason for a multitude of sins (Cole 1948, 18).

By the time Adam Smith (1723–1790) published his books The Wealth of Nations (1776) suggesting that people in society are always driven by self- interest, the question of affordability, exploitation and profit from labour was foremost in political thought. How could the local parishes and councils of Britain attend to the subsistence needs of a growing population of dislocated and discarded labourers? How and where could so many mouths be fed, clothed and housed? Smith’s books supported the ideas that he had learned in meeting with a group of French physiocrats years earlier. Mercantilism and free trade, he relayed, were to be favoured in opposition to the costs and inefficiencies of slave labour (Killingray 1974,17).

When the question of abolition of slavery finally entered British political thought and debate, the pro-abolition camps were centred on three main concerns. Protagonists in the first camp argued that slavery created dependence and was economically inefficient because it relied on an owner’s obligation to address the physical and material needs of a slave. Slavery, in this context, was seen as incompatible with the demands of a market economy (supply and demand) because of labour dependence upon (for life needs) the supplier and resistance (due to the absence of freedom and rights) to the demands of the supplier. Stalwarts of the second camp argued that slavery was morally unjust and inhumane, and the proponents of the third camp argued that slavery maligned the position of white labourers, effectively producing both poverty and starvation in the labouring classes (Eltis 1987).

Of the debates, the most politically compelling were the arguments of the first and third camps. Morals, fairness, justice and humanitarian concerns were a lesser consideration than the promotion of a national economy and a renewable source of wealth. Of most significance, however, was the consideration that apathy, idleness and the overt struggles and resistance displayed by slaves, reduced productivity and increased the need for, and cost of, individual supervision. Poverty, in contrast, provided a ‘free’ inducement and motivation for independent labourers to compete and produce more. In other words, the incentive of poverty, hope and liberty,

Just as words can be taken out of context and temporal meaning, Adam Smith’s work has suffered from the polemics of interpretation (Dean 1988; Lux 1990). For the governing classes pursuing land enclosures (i.e. securing and enclosing ‘common’ meadowlands within fences thereby preventing peasant access) to their finality in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Smith’s ideas of self-interest, liberty and free trade seemed to perversely support and justify their harsh exploitative actions. Motivated by the potential for personal as well as national wealth and gain, the rationalism in Smith’s ideas was represented (Derrida 1994, 22) and given credence through systematic changes in the structure of British governance; changes that not only produced visibility for the labouring classes, and presence and independent unity in the British population, but enabled the development of biopolitics (Foucault 1997,73).

The governing classes’ perceptual values, understandings and experiences of liberalism, in this agrarian environment, meant nothing more than the eviction (setting free) of increasing numbers of peasant labourers from the land in order to optimise and preserve the individual freedoms and rights of their own class. This event put strain on the mediaeval towns of Britain, an environment not yet structured to the market economy (Toynbee 1890, 189- 191).

By their actions the governing classes, however, inadvertently sanctioned a challenge to the existing balance of power between the master and servant, and the individual and community – a change that in consequence would alter not only the relationship between labouring people and the land, but also the relationship and environment of work, the household, and the means for subsistence living. In short, the governing classes brought about the development of urban living and a concept of division between town and country.

As urbanisation was supported by the discourse of liberty and free trade, a growing interest in population developed. Different perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of population were articulated and presented by the governing classes. Among the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century writers to articulate their views were the Rev Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) and David Ricardo (1772–1823). The perceptions (values, understandings and experiences) of population and poverty conveyed by both these writers were to produce a new direction in social and political thought – a course forged in class interest and moral rectitude.

In genealogical terms, the events and circumstances described in this section contain numerous lines or branches from which perceptions about poverty began to be formed and rationalised. Whereas, in practice, the events of nineteenth century liberalism and free trade increased the wealth of the governing classes (and by association the wealth of the nation), in consequence, these events also promoted a shift in the social position and status of the working classes. A shift that manifested itself not only in a discernible movement from agrarian working class dependence on the landowning governing classes to urbanised dependence on the market economy, but laid the foundations for a further decline in both the absolutism, and obligation of the sovereign and governing classes to recognise natural and customary rights (Lux 1990,14-17; Toynbee 1890, 95- 96). These perceived natural and customary rights, inspired in Thomas Paine (1791) the production of his works Rights of Man (1791), Age of Reason (1794), and Agrarian Justice (1797).

The perceptions of the governing classes finally led to the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, even though slavery itself was not abolished in the British Colonies until 1833, the year before the British Poor Law was revised. Of special significance for this thesis, however, is the fact that one year after the emancipation of black slaves, criminal transportation to Britain’s colonies became the penalty for trade union activity (Williams 1990, 12).

3.4 The Poor Laws and Racial Poverty When Britain entered the African slave trade in 1562 during the reign, and with the sponsorship, of Elizabeth I (Elizabeth Tudor), the status of the slave was not the same as Goldsmith’s English labourer. For Elizabeth I, the pecuniary profit to be made (in gold) by trading in slaves from Africa was a greater consideration than any humanitarian concern for their interests, welfare or well-being. However, while exploitation and piracy added to the national coffers, as Polanyi states, England was only able to withstand the calamity of the enclosures because the Tudors and early Stuarts used the power of the Crown to slow down the process of economic improvement until it was socially acceptable (Polanyi 1945, 46).

The history of the poor laws in England really began with the abolition of the monasteries by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1539. After that, and until 1598, responsibility for the poor was left to the local community, with mounting controversy and dire consequences. To prevent the rising death toll and excessive punishment of the poor, the state took over responsibility for their management in 1598. From this time on, a new, ‘less harsh’ regime based on reason and liberal thought began to develop. Under the terms of the 1601 law of the 43rd year of Elizabeth, the poor started to be differentially categorised as either impotent or able-bodied9. Relief maintenance began to be given to the impotent poor through a compulsory rate collected by overseers, while the able-bodied were set to work on materials provided from the rates (Toynbee 1890, 95-99). Workhouses were born, but in continued deference to the beliefs of the church, the Poor Laws of Elizabeth were designed to protect the poor from the community.

9 Categorising the poor as either impotent or able-bodied enabled the State and community to systematically develop a discourse about whether the poor deserved, or did not deserve, assistance. This discourse has traversed through time and space, and continues to impact on contemporary perceptions of poverty – particularly in debates about the degree of benevolence the State and community should show to ‘the poor’ (the deserving). In referring to the work of authors like Karl de Schweinitz, Mitchell Dean, Anne Digby, M.B Katz, Gordon Lewis, Karl Polanyi, Peter Gordon Saunders, Joseph Townsend, and Arnold Toynbee, this thesis has described some of the history from which poverty perceptions and party political thinking developed over time. The list of authors provided is however not exhaustive, many more authors have written on this subject.

It was not until 1718 with the beginning of convict transportation to North America that strong parallels began to be drawn between the harshness of criminal sentencing for the poor in Britain (and their resulting status as convicts), the severity of labour relations between master and servant, and the forced extraction of labour from slaves (British_Empire_Museum 2005). By 1783 and the end of the American War of Independence, the working classes were reeling beneath the oppressive laws of the British juridical system – laws that increasingly criminalised their personal endeavours to secure a minimum subsistence living. With no exception, laws that had been designed previously to prevent parish vagrancy were now preventing spatial movement for workers from locations (largely in the south of England) without work to locations where work was plentiful, while wage- fixing laws were being undermined by rapid price and cost of living increases.

Consequently, in the Midlands and south of England farm labourers threw themselves on the Poor Law demanding that the parish supplement insufficient wages by an allowance. Toynbee describes this event further when he states: “The farmers supported this system; they wished every man to have an allowance according to his family, and declared that high wages and free labour would overwhelm them” (1890, 103).

The allowance, known as the Speenhamland system, Dean emphasises, changed the constitution of poverty in Britain (1991). The poor were no longer divided into the two Elizabethan categories of the able-bodied (without work) and impotent, they now included below-subsistence wage- earning labourers. The word pauper – long associated with craftsmen who could not secure admission to a guild, or free landless labourers (liberals) in search of work – now came to be applied to ‘the labouring poor’ (Dean 1991, 143; Toynbee 1890, 95).

Speenhamland, Polanyi states, “ensured the ‘right to live’ – grants in aid-of- wages were made general; family allowances were paid; and all this was given in outdoor relief, i.e. without committing the recipient to the

© Marcelle Slagter 71 workhouse.” Where, however, the industrial revolution demanded a national supply of labourers willing to work for wages, Speenhamland asserted that no man need fear starvation and the parish would support him and his family no matter how little he earned (Polanyi 1945, 93). In essence, it emphasised the divide between two principles – the economic principle of the market economy, and the social principle of the right to adequate subsistence and maintenance for all.

In the perception of the governing classes, however, the Speenhamland system was not about rising rural poverty through the development of world commerce, the low cost of production created from slave labour and the economising of wages to independent workers, or an increasing and ageing national population – it was about the local maladministration of the Poor Laws. No challenge to this thought could be made. All that the British public were aware of up to 1785 was an erratic increase in trade and the growth of pauperism (Polanyi 1945, 94).

As the French Revolution progressed, two perceptions about poverty began to develop. With the first perception, Toynbee contends landowners’ attitudes toward the people changed. From a position of unthinking and ignorant benevolence, a sentiment emerged among some landowners that the poor should have an unconditional right to an indefinite share of the national wealth. However, this right, it was considered, should be granted in such a way as to keep the people in dependence and diminish self-respect. Though Toynbee argues this attitude was akin, in perspective, to bribery, he states that such a mode of thinking was not new. To induce passiveness amongst the people such action had been taken before with Gilbert’s Act in 1782. Then, the workhouse test had been abolished and work had been provided for those who were willing to work, near their homes (Toynbee 1890, 103-104).

With the second perception, as Dean and Cole argue, there was greater hostility toward the poor. In this perception (the position most often taken by the governing classes in political thought), it was considered that high

© Marcelle Slagter 72 wages and low living costs invariably caused idleness, whereas low wages and high living costs created the motivation for harder work or industry. It followed, in this train of thought, therefore, that the working classes must be kept poor in order to ensure they remained industrious. With this thought, an old idea came to be given a new twist – first through William Pitt’s reading of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and later in the work of Joseph Townsend (1739–1816) – that poverty was natural.

The poor, Townsend considered, were significantly different from the governing classes10. As Dean highlights, in Townsend’s perception, the poor were not only naturally idle, morally corrupt, and deserving of stronger government, but they also possessed none of the motivations of the wealthy such as pride, honour and ambition (Dean 1991, 48, 50, 70; Townsend 1786).

In the absence of a balanced class/race relationship of power, and a corresponding interconnection in real political representation, the British juridical system denied the working classes (labourers and non-labourers alike) a right to full citizenship. Refusing the working classes both democratic leadership and law, while ensuring the institution and government of law was concentrated in the hands of the landowners,

10The interrelationship between poverty and industry is frequently referred to in texts including the Bible. For example, St Paul’s ‘He who will not work shall not eat’, II Thessalonians 3 (Warning Against Idleness), and Weber’s ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’ with referral to the Thomas Aquinas interpretation of St Paul as only necessary naturali ratione for the maintenance of individual and community (Weber 1985, 159). William Pitt first expressed the inference of a natural interrelationship between poverty and labour in 1782. Pitt claimed, in opposition to Samuel Whitebread’s poverty bill, that, from his interpretation of Adam Smith’s writing, the price of labour (i.e. wages) varies with demand and supply, and in this sense is a commodity which like all commodities has a natural price (Lux 1990, 31). Taking this idea a step further in his dissertation on the poor laws, Joseph Townsend (1739–1816) argued that a natural order exists between master and servant and that “it seems to be a law of nature, that the poor should be to some degree improvident” (Townsend 1786). In 1852, Herbert Spencer (influenced by the work of Thomas Malthus) expanded this idea yet again. Spencer argued that “those prematurely carried off must, in the average of cases, be those in whom the power of self-preservation is the least, it unavoidably follows, that those left behind to continue the race are those in whom the power of self-preservation is the greatest ... are the select of their generation” (Herbert Spencer in Dagg 2003, 499ff). Finally, Charles Darwin in his famous book On the Origin of Species (1869 ed) ch.3 stated “The expression often used by Mr Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate [than ‘Struggle for Existence’], and is sometimes equally convenient” (Knowles 2001, 106).

© Marcelle Slagter 73 wealthy merchants, and a small knot of capitalist-manufacturers, perpetuated the interests and well-being of the governing classes, rather than the interests and well-being of the people (Toynbee 1890, 186).

By the late eighteenth century, and as they exhausted their ability to further privatise land at home, the governing classes began to look for investments further afield. Even though English naval lieutenant James Cook had claimed possession of New South Wales in the name of King George III in 1770, it was not until 1788 that the British took up the government of this part of Australia. By this stage, Britains’ loss of its American colonies (through the American War of Independence) had put an end to convict transportation from Britain to America and created the need for a replacement. Convicts provided a steady source of ‘free’ white labour and, as Williams suggests, convicts by their circumstance were institutionally restrained from independently developing manufactures in rivalry to the mother country. The availability of free white labour in the class and status of convicts was synonymous with black slavery but with a prospect of freedom, their potential was more economically competitive. “Better black slaves on plantations than white servants in industry, which would encourage aspirations to independence” (Williams 1990, 18).

For Britain, the colonies were simply regarded as the markets and farms of the mother country. They owed everything, it was argued by the governing classes of the British Empire, to England. Therefore, it was no tyranny to exploit the colonies in her interests (Toynbee 1890, 81).

With these beliefs at the fore, Malthus came to reflect that the predicament of the poor in Britain was a problem of population. Britain had too many poor. Population when unchecked, Malthus stated, increased geometrically while the produce of the land increased arithmetically. The ratio between food and population, therefore, needed to be addressed. The poor, he argued, were fundamentally redundant and surplus yet they were reproducing and being maintained by the community. The reason for this, he claimed, was the fault of the Poor Laws, rather than, for example, the

© Marcelle Slagter 74 circumstantial event of joblessness created by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, or the introduction of power-driven machinery to reduce the cost of production in workshops, or the increased productivity of labour in relation to the size of the market. Morality and self-interest, Malthus considered, would help the poor. The only way to eradicate pauperism, he argued, was to abolish the humanitarian reforms that enabled the out-of-work poor to maintain themselves and breed. God, nature, and the political stance of laissez-faire, Malthus believed, would level the playing field.

Ironically, while Malthus’s crusade against the Poor Laws gained success through his sermonising from the pulpit he did not equate the logic of laissez-faire, and the circumstances of the poor, with the historical debate over the English Corn Laws. In his position as a member of the landholding governing class of British society, Malthus not only supported the Corn Laws but directly benefited from the high price the tariff on imported wheat created. It was Ricardo who recognised that the governing classes were always opposed to the interests of every other class but their own (Cole 1948, 20; Lux 1990, 34-43).

In 1834, therefore, the Poor Laws were reformed. New workhouses were constructed according to the deterrent panoptic designs of Jeremy Bentham, and Britain entered a new phase in the governance of the poor. From this point in political thought onward, the aim of the state was no longer to protect the poor from the community, but instead to protect the community from the poor. From this new nineteenth-century perception of poverty there developed a more complex field in political thought – that of the conducted government of domestic ‘social security’.

3.5 Colonisation and Custom: A Pentimento of Old Thought Even though, by the twentieth century, English was the dominant language of the denizen populations of Australia and New Zealand, less than two hundred years earlier this was not the case. As the historical texts of Australia and New Zealand indicate, the life and existence of the indigenous people of these two countries was metaphorically ‘blown apart’ physically,

© Marcelle Slagter 75 culturally and socially through the intrusion of British colonisation. Moreover, as Macintyre states, there was little effort on the part of the British government to maintain the existing order, to enter into commercial relations with the indigenous people or recruit them as labour. “Instead, these lands were cleared and settled as fresh fields of European endeavour” (Macintyre 2004, 19).

Two things, however, distinguished Australia from New Zealand in their early years of colonisation. The first was that when settlement began in Australia in 1788 it was during the period when Britain was still heavily engaged in the slave trade. The second was that when Lieutenant James Cook declared possession of New South Wales in 1770 it was under the perception that this land was terra nullius (uninhabited land).

When their lands were later claimed under British sovereignty, and colonisation of Australia began in 1788, there was, therefore, no treaty or concession proffered to the indigenous Aboriginal people (Macintyre 2004, 33). Consequently, the Aboriginal people were foisted into a role under British governance that, by British standards, changed the racial constitution of poverty from a system where the conditions of poverty reflected the white/European class values of social occupation, to a system divided further by categories of ethnic difference. The conditions of poverty in Australia, upon colonisation, subsequently split into two genealogical branches. The first perspective of poverty (recognised officially in government) reflected the class orientated values of social occupation as historically perceived in the government of Australia’s white immigrant population. The second reflected a juxtaposition between colonial separatism, ethnic discrimination, and cultural alienation, as perceptually encountered by Australia’s Aboriginal, Torres Strait Island, and later Pacific Island ‘Kanaka’ populations.

While this constitutional difference was not immediately visible, or not always consciously rationalised, in the perception of the governing classes of Australia, this dual constitution of poverty is the historical nucleus of

© Marcelle Slagter 76 both perceptual understanding and misunderstanding between the different denizen populations in this country. Through monocultural historiography, and white English perceptions established long before colonisation (and well into the twentieth century), the Aboriginal people (and other minorities) were not just black, but invisible. Denied not only a right to their lands, rights of residency (Aboriginals were not granted full Australian citizenship until 1963), and equality before British law, Aboriginal people faced an alien encounter of such magnitude that it not only intersected with their history but displaced their history. Both objectively and subjectively, the Aboriginal people were spun into a new reality. Their present and their past became the object of another people’s historical and cultural perceptions. But in their subjective logos they possessed no conscious values, understandings or experiences to bridge or provide a connection with the intersubjective perceptions of the invading colonists.

Without any knowledge of the peasant history of working class Britons, or the intricacies of British social structure and government, the Aboriginal people were literally alienated from their Cartesian ‘being’. From a causal philosophic perspective, this meant that the Aboriginal people could see the presence of differences in the British settlers as objectively apart from themselves, but from a Merleau-Pontian perspective, the Aboriginal people were unable to, perceptually, make sense of their experiences with British settlers. The settlers were completely alien to the values, understandings and experiences that structurally comprised Aboriginal consciousness and knowledge.

In comparison, British settlers also saw the Aboriginal people and their land as alien not only in history and in culture, but also in social familiarity. For the Aboriginal people, convicts, and the working class migrants that settled in Australia, however, one shared commonality was to develop – their labour would be utilised as effectively and efficiently as temporal British social and political thought and the creation of a market economy in Australia allowed.

When New Zealand, in contrast to Australia, became part of the British Empire through cession of Maori sovereignty in 184011, not only had slavery been abolished in all British Colonies, but the tide had also changed in relation to the international treatment of non-white indigenous people and convicts. The resulting Treaty of Waitangi ensured protection for the Maori people of their ‘just rights and property’. Its preparation occurred at a time, stated in the English Version of the Treaty (as signed on 6 February 1840), when it was desirous to establish for the British sovereign “a settled form of Civil Government with a view to avert the evil consequences which must result from the absence of the necessary Laws and Institutions alike to the native population and to Her subjects” (Hobson 1840). In return for the cessation of their sovereignty and the signing of the Treaty, Queen Victoria imparted upon the Maori people the rights and privileges of British subjects12.

Historically, the Treaty of Waitangi has been presented from two perspectives. The first perspective supports the context of the Treaty in British history, and the second, its context in New Zealand history. In relation to the former, the Treaty may be regarded temporally as a politically liberal document. In relation to New Zealand history however, the Treaty has, since its signing, often been viewed outside the circumstances and events of its temporal creation. Retrospection (or reflection), in short, has

11 By coincidence or not, this was the year that the 21 year-old Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (m.10/02/1840). Prince Albert, from all historical accounts, was described as highly influential in teaching Queen Victoria to be a ‘constitutional monarch’. He was also said to be liberal in his political advice and an adversary to Lord Melbourne. Melbourne had “attempted to protect Victoria from the harsh realities of British life and even advised her not to read Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens because it dealt with "paupers, criminals and other unpleasant subjects"”. Upon their marriage, Albert replaced Melbourne as the Queen’s political advisor and began educating her on Britain’s social issues (Arnstein 2005). In this same year, the British government, under pressure to abandon penal transportation, suspended transportation of convicts to New South Wales (AU) (Garton 1990, 24; Macintyre 2004, 75). 12 It is a matter of debate whether the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi apply outside their temporal intent. In according Maori protection of their ‘just’ rights and property, and privileges as British subjects, in 1840, the longer-term implications of the Treaty were not stipulated. The presence of a sunset clause or inferences of absolute cession to the British sovereign were omitted. The Treaty has subsequently also become an issue in New Zealand law principally because of New Zealand’s political and constitutional independence from Britain (Gerbic and Lawrence 1991, 13). In intent, however, the Treaty of Waitangi did enable Maori the opportunity for equal consideration under British government.

© Marcelle Slagter 78 tended to introduce a presence of knowledge and rationalism that did not exist in the social and political perceptions of its creators. As a tool for circumstantial manipulation, historical hindsight produced not only an early reneging of the promises instilled in the Treaty13, but an ongoing controversy in perception – socially, politically and legally. Much of this controversy, when viewed from the sociological perspective presented in this thesis, has emanated not only from an out of context temporal interpretation of language, intent, and meaning from the Treaty but, in Merleau-Pontian terms, also from a biased representation of opinion about the historical perceptions (values, understandings and experiences) of the signatories of the Treaty.

Although the status of the Treaty of Waitangi remains controversial, and a broader analysis of this matter is beyond the confines of this thesis, its mere existence in history is radically at odds with the actions and conduct displayed toward other ethnic populations under British governance during this time. The greatest contrast, in proximity, is of course presented in the example of the Aboriginal people of Australia. Where the Aboriginal people were denied their rights and property upon colonisation, the Maori people were in turn granted not only the just protection of their rights, but correspondingly, the potential to pursue, for example, their economic, social and political self-interest and independence, as far as their position as British subjects permitted.

Perhaps in reflection, it was this perspective that was conveyed inaccurately to the understanding of the Maori signatories. It remains an issue for contemporary Maori, that even if New Zealand was ceded to the British sovereign, the terms of the Treaty were such that it enabled the Maori people to retain their ‘tino rangatiratanga’, i.e. their rights to self governance

13 In 1840, half the Maori population were attending mission schools and services. Under the terms of the Treaty, the Maori chiefs were selling land only to the Crown but as Sutch indicates, while the government “secured from the Ngatiahu tribe 30,000,000 acres for £5,000 in cash, the delimitation of reserves and a promise of ‘paternal care’ in the form of schools and hospitals. Little was done to keep the promises, but the land was sold by the government for £5,000,000 – a thousand times the purchase price” (Sutch 1942, 33).

(albeit ‘as British subjects’) while relinquishing their ‘kawanatanga’ (sovereignty).

When with colonisation and new government more than a million predominantly British working class migrants (mostly from the southern English towns and countryside, one-fifth being Irish and a few Scots) entered these countries between 1788 and 1888, poverty, or the fear of poverty, was indelibly etched in their minds (Macintyre 2004, 41, 112; Sutch 1942, 9). Having witnessed the terrible impact of the Poor Law reforms, and the glaring abuses of the British governing classes (Cole 1948, 15-18), the settler colonists ensured that the new colonies, as Macintyre writes, “took on a life of their own to a degree quite unparalleled by any other type of imperial holding” (Macintyre 2004, 51).

For Australia and New Zealand’s newest residents, bearing the knowledge that Malthus and Ricardo’s principles of economy, modified by utilitarianism, had become the guiding principles of nineteenth century British government, a more liberal form of government was sought. Ideas for political change were also rapidly developing among the working classes in Britain; a movement in labour and trade union thought was emerging, one that particularly extolled the theories of Owenite, Socialist, and Chartist thinkers. With some middle class support, communal control began to be sought to steady “the new forces unloosed by the Industrial Revolution” (Cole 1948, 52; Roberts 1997).

Even though the tenets of socialism did not appeal greatly to the immigrant Australian and New Zealand working classes, the hope of improving their lives and social position, the attainment of manhood suffrage, and democracy and fairer working conditions, did. In the dreams and thoughts of the migrants, desires for real political liberty, equality and power, stood out. Reflecting and typifying the up swell of thought advanced through the labour and trade union movements, the colonists looked to organisation, order and discipline, as a means to attaining their goals (Cole 1948, 58).

3.6 Unisocialism and Government When the nineteenth century British governing classes turned to Poor Law reform and the indoor (workhouse) control and containment of the impotent and jobless poor, Britain’s colonial governors took up the call and ensured that, in accordance with the law, workhouses also were developed in Australia. Yet, as Australia at this time was not one nation but a cluster of independent colonies, the conditions for the application of the workhouse laws, when compared to Britain, remained in their infancy. By the time the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in New Zealand, fifty-two years had passed (from 1788–1840) since the settlement of Australia had begun. This temporal difference, together with the early settlement aims for New Zealand to be a pastoral England, ensured that workhouses were never introduced in New Zealand14.

New Zealand's governing landowning classes, in considering the application of the Poor Laws, argued that, simply and practically, poverty could not be contained institutionally in their country. Administratively, it was contended, New Zealand could not replicate the institutional funding required under the British Poor Laws. Workhouses and hospitals in Britain were largely financed from taxes on the developed land of wealthy British landowners. New Zealand did not yet have large areas of developed land or large numbers of wealthy landowners. Moreover, there was not only an absence of local government machinery to establish and enforce the Poor Laws, but the thought of providing workhouses, hospitals and services for the poor had not yet even entered the minds of the governing authorities.

For the New Zealand landowning governing classes, and the Government formed under the Constitution Act of 1852, the greatest thought about poverty was the thought that workhouses would deter British labourers from migrating to New Zealand, thereby preventing land and business development. New Zealand’s official nineteenth- century handbooks,

14 Although no official provision was made for the relief of the unemployed in New Zealand, an Ordinance was provided in 1846 for the safe custody of the insane. In the absence of workhouses, the unemployed were housed in local jails (Sutch 1942, 46).

© Marcelle Slagter 81 therefore, gave the impression that poverty did not exist there. For example, in 1875, The Official Handbook of New Zealand stated that: “Those who incline to make New Zealand their home should not form extravagant anticipations of it. It is not paved with gold, nor is wealth to be gained without industry. Our countrymen of the United Kingdom may form an idea of it if they suppose it to be a very thinly-peopled country, with numerous points in common with the Island of Great Britain, but possessing, on the whole, a much better climate, free from pauperism, more free from prejudices of class, and, therefore, opening to the industry and ability of those who have not the adventitious aid of family connections to help them, a better road to advancement” (Vogel 1875, 14). In the face of need, the prevailing political thought in New Zealand was that private charity would adequately provide relief for the poor (Sutch 1942, 44- 46).

William Pember Reeves stated, in 1902, that from its early beginnings, life in the colonies was supposed to resemble a European society ‘topped and tailed’. In neither Australia nor New Zealand, however, were there aristocracy, old-established landed gentry, or set over tenant farmers. Without a royal “court, titles, an aristocracy, a state church, a leisured and learned class, or a standing army officered by the sons of the rich and the cadets of patrician families” the organisation and structure of government conduct in these countries was, for lack of a better word, flattened (Pember Reeves 1969, 48, 60). Nor could a comparison be made between the colonisation of the United States of America in the seventeenth century, with its marked inference of individualism and self-interest permeating the development of capitalism there, and the powerful impact of state land ownership and infrastructural amelioration that accompanied the national development of Australia and New Zealand (Pember Reeves 1969, 61-62).

As Arnold Toynbee describes it, there had always been ‘practical socialism’ (Tory Socialism) in England advocated through a principle of protection of the poor by the rich (Toynbee 1890, 103-104). With judicial and state policy changes in addressing poverty, a political revitalising in trade unionism and a surge in the labour movement, a more independent self-

Even though trade unions had appeared in the community long before the Industrial Revolution, their early form had been mostly as local unions for skilled craftsmen in older towns, e.g. tailors, boot makers, wool-combers and printers. Created with the aim of providing mutual help in protecting craft standards and conditions of employment, there was no feeling of common solidarity conveyed among either the different trades or unions. There was also little interest in distinctive political activity. The majority of trade unions were small and acted more as Friendly Societies because of their strong convivial social characteristics, than as political organisations (Cole 1948, 35).

But by 1870, the labour and trade union movements in Britain had gathered not just momentum amongst the working and middle classes, but uncapped political strength. The theories of unionism, well embedded in the minds and consciousness of the dominant working-class immigrants to Australia and New Zealand of this time, provided the foundation for establishing a more socially democratic form of governance. This new form and style of governance enabled the responsible governments in these colonies to transcend the historic class and oppressive ethnic discrimination inherent in Britain.

In reflection, this did not mean that the populations of Australia and New Zealand were, at any time in their history, ‘classless’ (in terms of their values of social occupation) but that, through the introduction of more liberal political opportunities, the working classes in these countries gained greater social empowerment and ability to focus on the conduct of their governments. In other words, with self-government changes began to occur in the governmentality and conceptual balance of power within which liberalism was exercised in these countries.

As neither Australia nor New Zealand completely replicated the forms of government and political economy presented in the social structures of Britain or the United States of America, they could not be regarded as either politically or economically socialist or capitalist. The dual demand for labour and capital in the colonies, and the consequent check that this demand created (particularly for labour) upon the oppressive self-indulgent behaviours of the wealthy governing classes, and exploitative self-interest of capitalists, ensured that the governments of Australia and New Zealand displayed a more unisocial front.

The foundation of this unisocialism was not centred upon any one dominant class interest, but upon the actual infrastructural needs of the fledgling colonies. Fairness and justice, and the political objectives espoused in the trade union movement, were at the heart of immigrant demands and needs in the new British Australasian colonies. What was missing in this social environment, nonetheless, were systemic safeguards to put an end to both class and race struggles; such as, for example, preventatives against the development of juridical and social inequalities between white and coloured ethnic groups, and the renewed or widening development of class discrimination and power. These antidiscrimination safeguards were not yet a conscious consideration for the colonists.

From its inception, therefore, the state in both Australia and New Zealand was culturally ethnocentric and inherently class conscious. Discrimination against the poor, and ethnic minorities, was historically not just systemically perpetuated, but reinvented.

3.7 Liberalism, Protection and Free Trade While the doctrine of liberalism did not enter political thought until the early nineteenth century, its secular practice, emphasising both a historical and materialistic determinism (Williams 1988), showed early signs of producing two specific temporally bound consequences. On the one hand, the British juridical system of sovereignty ensured ‘liberalism’ continuity because the practice and development of law favoured the political thought

© Marcelle Slagter 84 of the governing classes. This ensured that even with the passage of time, the economically self-sufficient would remain socially and politically empowered and therefore able to preserve their status, wealth and freedoms as a right from the impositions of state regulation. On the other hand, however, liberalism required that the wage-reliant (those people without major capital reserves subject to the restrictive oscillations of the labour market) be forever in a position of ‘slave like’ economic dependence – A position that would require infinite deference to the inequalities and elite interests of the labour market (as an example of a market of exchange).

By operating from a platform whereby freedom and right exists only for those empowered with choice, or more specifically, the means and ability to exercise choice for personal gain, the doctrine of liberalism supported community struggles and inequalities, and simultaneously, a cycle of demand for social protection, surveillance, and class/race advantage. From a position of self-interest, the governing classes therefore focused on the recurring characteristics and conditions of poverty in order to systematically observe and control the poor. At the centre of this causal focus emerged the idea that poverty could be prevented through the moral and religious education of the working classes (Dean 1991, 219; Katz 1989, 14-15).

As Kothari, Pearson and Zuberi state, while by necessity the fledgling nineteenth century colonies of Australia and New Zealand required, and received, British economic and social protection from the predacities of other developed capitalist nations and states, both countries also relied heavily on strong assimilationist beliefs to support their cultural identity and political perspectives. This approach produced a need for protection in which security was sought from rather than in difference. Cultural difference, it was implied, would be inherently dangerous (Kothari et al. 2004,148).

With the tenets of liberalism endorsing bias against both the indigenous and working-class settler populations of nineteenth-century Australia and New Zealand, a conflict of thought developed between the inherited British

© Marcelle Slagter 85 beliefs and values of the governing classes, and the desired social outcomes and reality of conditions in the wider colonial community. Allegiance to the rhetoric and language of the doctrine of liberalism became easily confused with that of liberal thought. As a consequence, in the late nineteenth century, when political parties began to emerge in Australia and New Zealand, both sides of the House of Representatives had members who were either liberal thinkers or believed in the doctrine of liberalism (a determinant of ‘left-’ and ‘right-’ wing thought within the same political party) (Drummond 1906, 61). From this factional inheritance, politics in Australia and New Zealand moved forward, its British antecedent providing direction for the future development of contemporary political and economic ideology.

Since early British government of Australia and New Zealand was dependent upon the security and stability of each country’s colonies, and the colonies within each country experienced life from their own perspectives, differences in perception between the colonies developed. When, in 1901, the Australian States united to form the Commonwealth of Australia, New Zealand chose to remain independent. At the centre of this political decision by the New Zealand government, were concerns over Australia’s early colonial history, New Zealand’s more distant geographic location, the fact that New Zealand had for some years had a centralist style of government, and the nationalistic aspirations, pride, honour, rivalry and ambition of New Zealand’s nineteenth-century leaders.

Alfred Deakin, for example, described William Pember-Reeves (then Agent-General for New Zealand), as ‘hostile to Australian Federation because of its injury to New Zealand trade’ (1995, 145). In 1895, a reciprocal trade agreement had been negotiated between Sir Joseph Ward, colonial treasurer in the Seddon Government (NZ), and Charles Cameron Kingston, Premier of South Australia. This agreement allowed for certain products to pass between the two colonies duty free (at the expense of the other colonies). It was an issue that for the protagonists of federation (like

Deakin) was seen as a setback to unity, because the federationists were advocating tariff-free trade between all colonies (1997, 133).

From the liberal thought of the nineteenth-century leaders, male and then female suffrage passed into law in both Australia and New Zealand, bringing with it not only a new generation of politicians, but a new type of politician. The presence of these new politicians changed the social class composition of the Australian and New Zealand governments for most of the twentieth century.

Describing the reason for the political change in New Zealand, Hamer states that whereas representation by the old, highly-educated elite emphasised the maintenance of high standards of administrative competence, the event of depression in the 1880s discredited their political stance. The new self- made and self-proclaimed ‘democratic’ politicians that emerged through universal suffrage prided themselves on being not merely the representatives of a few, but the servants of all (Hamer 1988, 196). United in not wishing to identify themselves politically or economically with the convict colonies of Australia, while remaining loyal to the British Empire, the late nineteenth-century politicians of New Zealand governed New Zealand more as an independent self-governing nation than a dependent colony or state. No pretence can be found that these governments in any way favoured suzerain control from Britain. It was perhaps for these reasons, that Richard Seddon came to refer to himself as the prime minister, rather than premier, of New Zealand following his election in 1893 (Drummond 1906, 303).

3.8 Conclusion In this chapter, the Foucaultian idea of liberal thought was introduced to emphasise that, from a causal theoretical perspective, when liberal thought is systematised to form a practice (liberalism), it still takes on a variable perceptual meaning. Using the Foucaultian interpretation of liberal thought, it was argued that for Britain’s – seventeenth to nineteenth century governing classes which faced a rapidly increasing and ageing population, liberal thought was perceived to mean:

i) self preservation – the progress of the enclosure movement and liberation of dependent serfs and slaves ensuring the protection of both land and capital holdings; ii) freedom – the ability to more intensely develop land for increased annual yields and potential profit, and to channel and utilise capital into other profitable ventures; and iii) independence – a release from further responsibility and accountability for the maintenance and security of dependent labourers. Liberal thought nonetheless, did not absolve the governing classes from their religious values or their feudal duty to provide philanthropic contributions to the community. This value was endorsed in, for example, the compulsory rate imposed in the law of the 43rd year of Elizabeth.

For the liberated serfs and slaves who became free labourers and eventually Britain’s working classes, liberal thought on the other hand, meant alienation from a shared heritage imbued by class and ethnic deference, and a considerable loss in sovereign right, protection, and direction. It also meant however, increased class empowerment, and the possibility (if not the ability) to pursue social equality, rights, and independence before the law.

As presented in this chapter, the meaning of liberalism and its political practice has historically been determined from the perceptions of those who govern. In 1834, a growing discourse linking poverty and population manifested itself into a discernible fear of the poor, and insecurity over the preservation of personal ownership of property and the well-being of ‘the self’ amongst the British governing classes. This fear was driven, not by the thought of armed revolution, but by a conscious awareness that class emancipation was increasingly making ‘traditional’ rulers and their rules vulnerable to the exigencies and extremes of competitive self-interest in the shape of capital accumulation and poverty. In short, the governing classes of this period supported and propagated the direction and prevalence of good and bad conditions in their community through both their social and political thought.

By the late 1880s–1890s, the practice of liberalism in Britain, Australia and New Zealand had lent itself in reflection to critique and change. A new rationalism and conduct of government (governmentality) began to emerge, driven by changes in the values of social occupation, the Labour Movement, colonial settlement, and capital investment in Britain’s colonies. In New Zealand and Australia, the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty brought by the settler populations from their countries of orientation provided the motivation and organisation for a more unisocial form of government.

In the next two chapters, the existential phenomenological methodology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to analyse the historical and biographical data of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. The purpose in using this methodology is to emphasise the existence, in any one time, of more than one perceptual field and to reveal the structure of the twentieth-century prime ministers’ poverty perceptions.

Chapter 4 The Humanitarian Prime Ministers

“There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all.” (Foucault 1992, 8)

4.0 Prologue It is profound that despite the metaphysical presence of the values and principles of unisocialism in Australian and New Zealand political thought throughout the twentieth century, unisocialism was never given recognition or referred to other than as ‘some sort of socialism’. This is perhaps because antipathy toward socialism and communism depended greatly on how people perceived and rationalised specific events in Australian and New Zealand history.

From the beginning of colonisation in Australia and New Zealand until each country achieved national independence, a major issue facing governments was a lack of capital for infrastructural development and investment. The perceived threat of state ownership of the means of production (particularly that of primary industry) in each country, whether real or not, posed a serious risk not only to external investment and profitability, but also to economic and environmental development. To renege on repayments, or lose the British investment, was an affront to ingrained cultural and social values. It was inconceivable. A responsible colonial government could not contemplate breaking its capital ties with its investors; such a move would be akin to alienating ‘a mother from its child’. Recognising and categorising the white settler populations of Australia and New Zealand as British citizens ensured not only ongoing allegiance to the British homelands, but an offshore reserve army of patriots.

While Australian and New Zealand politicians of both the late nineteenth and twentieth century acknowledged strict interpretations of the political ideologies of socialism and communism, overt supporters faced an array of

© Marcelle Slagter 90 reactions. These reactions ranged from an oscillation of whimsical tolerance to savage class opposition, ostracism, and overt hostility. Yet, even to political conservatives, not all the ideas stemming from socialism were objectionable.

In a social environment desiring justice and fair play but hostile toward ideas of state interference, a palatable and pragmatic humanitarian solution to the large-scale absence of capital and the persistence of poverty amongst its settler citizens had to be found. Stemming from socialism as an encouragement to capitalism, unisocialism may have remained hidden from language and perspective in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but it was not hidden in the collective conscious.

It was because of the great needs for infrastructural development in Australia and New Zealand that, as William Pember Reeves and many other politicians of his time (and after) described it, ‘a sort of socialism’ developed in political thought in these countries. Unisocialism as an ideal, an objective, and a form of liberal thought, traversed the temporal directions of ‘event and circumstance’ without ever being subordinated to language, static meaning, or the rigors of the critical polemic eye. Nevertheless, even without a name, unisocialism could still be sensed and felt; its social and political value seeping through the superstructure of Australian and New Zealand economic rationalism in order to buffer the miserliness and inequality of opportunity wrought by capitalism.

Unisocialism, as it has come to be called in this research study, is now open to systemisation. Its acknowledged presence, conveyance to memory, and ability for reflection can be progressed in description, portrayal, and the veracity of perspective.

It is significant that in seeking to promote and advance the wellbeing of their nations, and to preserve freedom and independence, all the twentieth- century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand were liberal thinkers. It is equally significant however, that not all were unisocialists. Without

© Marcelle Slagter 91 any allegiance to party politics, the ideology of unisocialism (like that of liberalism) criss-crossed all the boundaries of political thought. It found protagonists in both the government and the political opposition. As a result, no unisocialist twentieth-century prime minister of Australia or New Zealand can be identified purely by their party affiliation.

4.1 Introduction Advancing the theoretical perspective and historical perceptions introduced in Chapters 2 and 3 along the genealogical lines of twentieth-century New Zealand and Australian politics, Chapter 4 has been organised to identify the twentieth-century prime ministers who demonstrated a humanitarian political direction, while Chapter 5 describes the prime ministers who adopted a rationalist political direction. Using these two terms (humanitarian and rationalist15) as a heuristic device, the thesis builds on the concept of unisocialism introduced in Chapter 3. Opening with an examination of the thoughts and ideas of a late nineteenth-century New Zealand Premier, Sir Robert Stout, the chapter then moves on to examine and briefly describe the life-world perceptions of the early twentieth-century prime ministers.

4.2 The Stout Story It is an important corollary in Australian and New Zealand history that Britain legalised trade unions in 1871. From this point on, working class ideas were not only recognised and empowered in political thought, but also sanctioned in liberal reforms designed to dispel any residual feudal impediments to the development and progress of capitalism and the market economy. Arnold Toynbee described this period eloquently when he stated: “In 1875 the law of conspiracy was abolished, and the old law of master and servant was replaced by a law putting master and servant on exactly the same footing. The workman had at last reached the summit of the long ascent from the position of a serf, and stood by the side of his master as the full citizen of a free state” (1890, 196).

15 By definition the term humanitarian refers loosely to the phenomenological subjective (people) based focus certain prime ministers used in their political direction, the term rationalist, on the other hand, refers to prime ministers whose political directions reflected a greater causal or objective interest, for example, in the nation’s political economy.

However, as William Walters points out, the decriminalising of trade union activity also produced a new collective identity for out-of-work, able-bodied people. Coinciding with the Great Depression (1873–1896), this new characteristically organised collective was referred to as the unemployed (Walters 2000, 20-22).

Not unlike what British politicians had done seven years earlier, in 1878 Sir Robert Stout (1844–1930), premier of New Zealand from 16 August 1884– 28 August 1884 and 3 September 1884–8 October 1887), introduced the first Trade Union Bill before parliament. A British migrant and paragon of middle-class Victorian values (and reflective perception), Stout saw in New Zealand an opportunity to manage poverty differently.

Aware that the bulk of immigrants to New Zealand were mainly poor labouring people (domestic servants) from urban centres, and having witnessed the mounting burden of rates for poor relief amongst the British urban middle and landowning classes, Stout keenly advocated that the British poor laws and poor rates never be introduced into New Zealand. He feared that if the poor congregated in New Zealand’s towns, they would rapidly become a permanent drain on the established industrious, frugal and persevering middle class inhabitants. Access to land, he believed, was paramount to avoiding the pauperism, slums, heavy taxes, and other negative characteristics evident amongst the working classes of England (Hamer 1963, 81).

Relying on the works of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), particularly Spencer’s book Social Statics (1851), and his pamphlets on State Education (1870) and The Social Future of Labourers (1871), as well as the writings of John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), Stout began his political career in the belief that poverty was an outcome of the inherent workings of nature. From this perspective, Stout condoned poverty among the working classes because it was part of life’s ‘struggle for existence’ – the weeding out of the ‘unfit’ and the purifying of the ‘race’’. Moreover, Stout considered, poverty was a social and personal weakness, not an economic one. A cure for poverty, in

© Marcelle Slagter 93 his thinking, should therefore not come from interference by the state with the economic system, but through the moral, cultural and physical improvement of the individual (Hamer 1963, 81-83, 88-89).

With substantially laissez-faire ideas, Stout was not prepared to concede that the state should provide relief for the unemployed, even though he considered that it should encourage the start of new industries and the subdivision of land to bring new opportunities for employment. His desire to avoid the social emulation in New Zealand of Britain’s hardened class divisions lay at the bottom of these ideas. State relief to the poor, he considered, would create an unwanted pauper class and interfere in the natural economic balance between labour and capital. In short, “socialism in practical politics was beyond his comprehension” (Drummond 1906, 85- 86).

To ensure the preservation of a labour/capital balance, Stout considered (between 1878 and 1889) that with the right encouragement and empathy of the state, trade unions would provide a safeguard for workers’ interests. He acknowledged that in the relationship between labour and capital, labour was weaker, but believed that by legalising the activities of trade unions: a) the unions would have the power and ability to redress any labour and capital imbalances; and b) that the unions, through voluntary working-class co-operation and association, would foster individual, rather than class, consciousness.

In supporting the introduction of the Eight Hours Bill in 1886, Stout therefore took the perspective that the state must protect those that require protection. He believed that if a conflict arose between labour and capital, capital would always be the stronger, so the state should assist labour wherever it could (Hamer 1963, 85-87).

Seen by his peers as a radical middle class conservative (Drummond 1906, 85), by the general election of 1887, and in the midst of a crippling

© Marcelle Slagter 94 economic depression, Stout’s laissez-faire approach to poverty cost him his parliamentary seat and premiership (New_Zealand_Prime_Minister's_Office 2003). Reflecting on what had gone wrong, Stout was shocked to discover that by pragmatically applying the theories of Spencer and Mill, his basic intention of providing New Zealand settler migrants with hope and the chance of a better life to that in Britain had backfired – he had in fact imitated British society.

Turning to more modern British theories in political economy, Stout read the lectures and essays of Arnold Toynbee. From his reading, Stout recognised that because of the style and emphasis of historical representations, and the perspectives presented about social relations, conditions of power, and the pursuit of free trade, reactionaries and conservatives (like himself) had been led to adopt the doctrine of laissez- faire. Language and perspective, Stout found, had sanctioned and reinforced a historic and dominant perception held by reactionaries and conservatives in such a way that they were drawn to laissez-faire as a solution to poverty and social distress. In reflection, Stout concluded the unregulated pursuit of self-interest in a community produced nothing but a form of social tyranny.

Merging his reading with local experience, by 1893 Stout’s perceptions about poverty had completely changed. He now believed that the state should not permit individual self-interest to emerge as the strongest and most dominant entity of control in the community. For the rest of his political career, therefore, Stout worked hard to persuade trade unions in New Zealand to accept the empathy and co-operation of middle class ‘public opinion’. He believed that no combination of capitalists on earth would, or should, ever oppose the demands of labour if it was supported by the middle classes (Hamer 1963, 93-96).

Stout's political and prime ministerial story is a classic – a brief example of how, historically, the poverty perceptions of a political leader determined his political thought, direction, and career. Stout’s political career also

© Marcelle Slagter 95 reveals the close interrelationship that can exist between a prime minister’s perception of poverty, the political direction adopted by the prime minister, and the development of government social and economic policies. The Stout story emphasises that with different values, understandings and experiences, poverty perceptions, political directions, as well as the conditions, characteristics and constitution of poverty, can, and do, change. Moreover, the Stout story emphasises that perception is never reducible to an atomistic field of sensation (in this case the visual reading and development of belief from certain perspectives of theory), but is determined from an infinite sum of perspectives achieved from consciousness and from a more sensory holistic source of life-world experience.

4.3 Seddon’s Perspectives: Structuring Poverty Perception New Zealand’s first twentieth-century prime minister entered national politics in 1879 when political party formation was still in its infancy. A new kind of politician, Richard John Seddon was a self-made man with little education, from a humble background, who, through hard work, enjoyed success in politics. As Hamer stated: “The old highly educated elite, with its emphasis on the maintenance of high standards of administrative competence, had been discredited by the depression of the 1880s and the new breed of politician was very self-consciously and deliberately democratic, priding himself on being merely the servant of the people” (1988, 196).

Employed as a miners’ advocate, Seddon was inspired into national politics after listening to Sir George Grey (1812–1898). Sir George Grey was Governor of South Australia from May 1841–October 1845, and served two terms as Governor of New Zealand. His first term as governor of New Zealand was from November 1845–January 1854, his second term from October 1861–February 1868. Choosing to remain in New Zealand, Grey then served as premier from October 1877–October 1879. Richard Seddon was ‘a greyhound’ – a follower and ardent admirer of Sir George Grey. He shared with Grey a ready interest in the future of New Zealand and in the liberal thought Grey propounded. When the aged Grey called for leaders to

“turn New Zealand from a colony with a pauper population into one of the happiest countries in the world” Seddon answered the call (Drummond 1906, 24, 28-29; Serle 1949b).

Despite being an autocrat, Grey contributed much to liberal and unisocialist thought in New Zealand. “He thought the state should guarantee employment, adequate wages and fair working conditions, and championed trade unions and voluntary industrial arbitration. He nursed a morbid hatred of landlordism and aristocracy, and wanted both the upper house and the governorship to be elective. For years he fought against plural voting and finally had it abolished in 1889” (Rutherford 1966).

Interested in the cultures and government of indigenous people, Grey learnt the Maori language and culture, and believed in both the power of education and the assimilation of Aborigine and Maori alike under British law. Arguably Grey was, Sinclair declared: “…one of the most remarkable nineteenth-century British colonial governors, and one of the most remarkable people who have lived in New Zealand” (1990). “A strong, brave, sincere man, his influence extended far beyond his own time” (Serle 1949b).

Sharing Grey’s liberal views, Seddon’s perceptions had developed from a combination of experiences amassed in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, socially, politically, and through his work as a miners advocate and publican. Old miners, he gleaned, would rather die in poverty than degrade themselves by accepting charitable aid donations. Seddon’s early perception of poverty, as he expressed it in the late nineteenth-century, was therefore that “there could be no question whatever but that the only way of dealing with the unemployed, or the greater majority of them, effectually was by putting them on the land, either as lessees, or, where they had reached that time of life that they were unable to farm for themselves, put them on the State farms” (Drummond 1906, 332; Hamer 1988, 67).

A pragmatist rather than book reader or theorist, Seddon’s political views and activities lent themselves to the provision of state assistance not only for

© Marcelle Slagter 97 infrastructural development but also for the support and welfare of all – be they white or indigenous New Zealanders (even if this support was debatably inequitable ethnically and culturally). He wrote in his last election manifesto: “I believe that the cardinal aim of government is to provide the conditions which will reduce want, and permit the very largest possible number of its people to be healthy, happy human beings. The life, the health, the intelligence, and the morals of a nation count for more than riches, and I would rather have this country free from want and squalor and unemployment than the home of multi- millionaires” (Seddon in Drummond 1906, viii).

Seddon did not believe it fair or just for people to be judged only by their economic contribution to New Zealand as they aged. He believed that if older people were, through circumstance, unable to set aside money for their retirement, their life long contribution to their family, friends, community, and other indirect activity of value to their country, had earned them a right to an income. A self-declared ‘humanist’, Seddon’s policies ‘to bring about a better state of affairs’ for the people were publicly referred to as ‘Our Humanities’ and were divided into four categories: a) Humanity for the mother and child; b) Humanity for the young; c) Humanity for the worker; and d) Humanity for the old and feeble (Drummond 1906, 340; Hamer 1988; Hamer 2005).

Although not a supporter of women’s suffrage, Seddon’s term in office as prime minister (01/05/1893–10/06/1906) saw women gain the vote in 1893, and an array of legislation pass through government in support of his humanist ideas. This included: • The Civil Service Insurance Act 1893 (enabling retirement incomes for civil servants); • Government Advances to Settlers Act 1894 (introduced by Sir Joseph Ward NZ);

• the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1894 (introduced and designed by William Pember-Reeves in consultation with Charles Cameron Kingston (premier of South Australia)); • the Wages Protection Act 1898; • the Old Age Pensions Act 1898; • the Public Health Act 1901; • Midwives Act 1904; and • Workers’ Dwelling Act 1905 (Drummond 1906; Glass 1997; Hamer 1988).

The legislation introduced by the Seddon Governments encompassed some of the major ideas of the labour and union movements during Seddon’s lifetime. It endorsed the principles of a fair and just society, supported access to capital by ordinary people through advances for land settlement, enabled improvements in housing standards, and set in motion activity to reduce infant mortality.

Seddon was renowned for using other people’s ideas at ‘the right time’, but equally important, he was also legendary for his capacity to keep both independent and loyal members of parliament in line, and in government. Full credit for the design of the Old Age Pension Act was given to Seddon, but after the death of Sir William Hall-Jones, Hall-Jones’ family claimed that Hall-Jones had not only drafted the Old Age Pension Act but was its initiator. This claim went so far that upon release of Hall-Jones’ personal papers a statement was published in The New Zealand Herald, on Saturday June 20, 1936 to posthumously acknowledge Hall-Jones’ contribution. His son, F.G. Hall-Jones, stated that there had been some talk about pensions, mostly on the basis of ‘pay now and draw out later’ (national insurance ideas), and ‘pay now from new taxation’. His father’s idea, F.G. Hall-Jones argued, was for pensions based on the philosophy of ‘pay now without new taxation’ (from the government’s budgetary surplus held in the Consolidated Revenue Account) (Bassett 1993; Hall-Jones 1969).

Wherever the actual idea for the Old Age Pension Act came from, ideas for the provision of a national insurance-style scheme had been raised for some years. Sir Harry Atkinson (premier of New Zealand from September 1876– October 1877, 1883 and 1887), following his reading of an article by Cannon William Lewery Blackley (Blackley 1878), stated in parliament in 1882: “What are the approximate chief causes of poverty? Lowness of wages, inability to find work through a surplus of labourers, inability to work through sickness arising from whatever cause, inability to work from old age, and widowhood, and orphanage.”

He suggested then, that a national insurance scheme be introduced in New Zealand to pay benefits to the poor funded from compulsory insurance funds and money received from the lease of Crown land, but his suggestion was quashed as unaffordable and a hidden form of taxation by Seddon’s mentor Sir George Grey (Atkinson 1882).

Describing his interests in lowering infant mortality and promoting child- life preservation, Seddon stated: “In the younger colonies of the Empire population is essential, and if increased from British stock the self governing colonies will still further strengthen and buttress our great Empire… In British interests, it is clearly undesirable that the colonies should become populated by the inferior surplus of peoples of older and alien countries. To prevent such a disaster is worthy of our best thoughts and most strenuous efforts … Why should the state not similarly interfere in the preservation of our own species” (Seddon 1904).

Although a Liberal Party protagonist, Seddon did not support party politics. Early in his political career he stated: “The man who has the courage to fight for what he thinks is right is the man who is respected. I believe I have that courage, and I believe the Premier [Ballance] has it, and that is why we are both respected in New Zealand”. Party politics he considered, had no right to exist (Drummond 1906, 70).

Referred to colloquially as ‘King Dick’, Seddon’s biographies indicate that he supported reasoned and independent political thought above the

© Marcelle Slagter 100 restraints, inflexibility, and coercion that have the potential to emanate from party political policy, and the demands of, for example, the union and Labour movements. His political independence and support for imperialism however, also encouraged adversaries to compare him to a sovereign, hence the soubriquet. Yet, even though Seddon always identified himself as a British subject, like his Irish predecessor and New Zealand’s first Liberal premier, John Ballance, Seddon believed that as a member of a democratic party, and independent government, he should not ‘touch titles’ bestowed by the British sovereign (Hall-Jones 1969).

Seddon’s political approach was in all respects unisocialist. He had learned to integrate the ideas of the labour and union movements in his politics but, as both a miners’ advocate and a prime minister, he masterfully transcended the discourse of these movements to incorporate a wider perspective, one that, although autocratic and paternalistic in its management style and practice, found public approval in the circumstances of his time. His policies and perspectives subsequently provided direction not only for the Liberal government of New Zealand, and all later New Zealand administrations, but also for the future development of the ‘welfare state’ in Australia (Gustafson 1986a; Hamer 1988, 9; Hamer 2005).

Even though Seddon’s perceptions of poverty were determined from his life-world values, understandings and experiences, his solutions to poverty (in political practice) were reflective of the prevailing and historic discourse in British liberal thought. Seddon’s liberalism for instance, gave continuity to the old historic British perspective that solutions to poverty were to be found in affinity with, and labour on, the land; a remnant of thought from Britain’s feudal past.

More than this, however, Seddon also embraced a concept of liberalism that, as Dean has argued, was designed not only to promote and preserve private autonomy but also the principles of freedom, right, and economic responsibility (Dean 1988, 31). When, during the strike of 1890, labour was plentiful and capital was in short supply Seddon became convinced that

© Marcelle Slagter 101 state interference was not only justifiable but also absolutely necessary for New Zealand’s future. He spoke long and earnestly in favour of state interference in employment matters, “… basing his reasons on the fact that industrial disputes militated against the colony’s progress and against the well-being of the people generally” (Drummond 1906, 130).

To this end, his aim and objective was to use state resources for the rational benefit of the whole country. Seddon’s focus, as already indicated from his statements, was not shaped by dominant economic discourse, class interest, or ideas of ethnic superiority, but more by ideas of cultural homogeneity.

In comparing New Zealand with Britain while attending Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Seddon, Drummond stated, “was observing and thinking, and his observations and thoughts made more steadfast his determination that, as far as his power went, New Zealanders would never be like the physically inferior human beings he saw in the manufacturing districts of the United Kingdom” (1906, 308). Remarking on the conditions he encountered during his visit Seddon stated: “If this is the result of factory life in the Old Country, and if this is to be the end of it, it will be much better for us in New Zealand never to have a factory in the country”.

Returning to New Zealand, Seddon told the New Zealand people that he had seen more real poverty in ten minutes in Glasgow than in three months in his own country (Drummond 1906, 309).

4.4 The Mutable Genealogy of Poverty Perception Sir Edmund Barton became Australia’s first prime minister following Australian Federation in 1901. Described from first appearance as a conventional late nineteenth-century politician, Barton perfectly resembled the conservative politicians of the governing classes in English society. The youngest of eleven children, his father a stockbroker and his mother a teacher, the Australian-born Barton grew up well-schooled in English values and conformism.

Attending first Sydney Grammar School, followed by the University of Sydney, Barton excelled at his academic studies, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) degree in classics in 1868, and a Master of Arts degree in 1870. He was a Lithgow scholar in 1866, Cooper scholar in 1867, and medallist for classics in 1868 (Serle 1949c). Barton then entered into four years legal training before being called to the New South Wales Bar in 1872 as a barrister (Bolton 2000, ix-x, 14; Bolton 2003a, 24-25).

A successful but by no means wealthy barrister, Barton began his political career on 31 October 1879. He was elected the Member of Parliament for the University of Sydney, in the New South Wales State Legislative Assembly. “There is one great thing which above all others actuates me in my political life, and will actuate me until it is accomplished”, Barton said, “and that is the question of the union of the Australian colonies” (Serle 1949c).

Leading the Protectionist Party in March 1901, Barton supported the idea that Australia needed protective tariffs for economic sustainability, to enable industry growth, and to create employment, but like Richard Seddon NZ , he recognised that Australia had its own identity and place in the world (Bolton 2000). To form a viable, centralised federal government, Barton needed to create political alliances with politicians from outside his party. While the Protectionist Party was the dominant government party, the balance of power and support was held by representatives of the Labor Party (Macintyre 2003, 45-46).

The Barton government's first piece of legislation – the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 – brought in (with Labor support), the White Australia Policy. The White Australia Policy entered Australian political thought when Henry Parkes (1815–1896), a former premier of New South Wales, raised it at an Intercolonial Conference held in 1888. Many leading Australian and New Zealand politicians supported this policy in their day (Murdoch 1923, 228; National_Library_of_Australia 2006). In fact, it was in discussing the issue of immigration while attending the Colonial

Conference in London on 14 May 1907 with Alfred Deakin, that Sir Joseph Ward NZ also pronounced New Zealand ‘a white man’s country’. Ward told the conference, ‘we intend to keep our country for white men by every effort in our power’ (Bassett 1993, 154; La Nauze 1965, 64-65).

In its purpose, the White Australia Policy, together with beliefs in protection and protective tariffs, characterised not only an overt support for the growth of a political economy and Australian identity, but incorporated a much older and more complex branch of political thought. Sitting in the structure of the White Australia Policy was the historical heartbeat of the British labour movement and the debates about slavery raised by the abolitionists. In its presumptions, lay the ideas of natural interrelationship and ‘survival of the fittest’ raised by Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin.

Gate-keeping non-white immigration and products from non-white countries was not simply racism but in British minds, a preventative for domestic poverty. The perception that non-white people were, as history had demonstrated in Britain’s involvement with slavery, a veritable threat to the white labouring classes (dominant working class population), had entered Australia. Whether from Africa, Asia, Melanesia, Polynesia or Australia itself, non-white people (whether as slaves or as free men and women in unequal competition) posed a threat to the white settler population. Many leading politicians in Australia and New Zealand therefore, believed (in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century) that non-white immigration and competition would inevitably create lower basic wage rates (subsistence levels), reduce living standards, and increase demands by capitalists for white workers to work harder. These conditions, although of advantage to capitalists, were seen as disastrous for the survival of a white society. This sentiment in thought, Macintyre confirmed, was grounded in imperial as well as national feeling. For the champions of the Empire, Macintyre stated, it was vital that the white race be united against the yellow and the black (2004, 141).

With no real aptitude for commerce or economics, but bearing a strong reverence for his white British ancestry and culture, Barton supported the Immigration Restriction Act with the comment, “I do not think that the doctrine of the equality of man was really ever intended to include racial equality” (Bolton 2000, 13). So saying, he put into words not only his thoughts regarding the external immigration policies of his government, but also the notion that his government would not pursue domestic equality either socially, economically or politically for the well-being of Australia’s Aborigines or other non-white residents. The Barton government thereby created an enduring and unique constitution of poverty in Australia. This constitution supported a markedly different perception of poverty for white and non-white ethnic groups, particularly indigenous Australians.

It is doubtful that a non-biased government was conceivable within the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of Australian politicians at the turn of the century. The Immigration Restriction Act was the embodiment of a well-established train in global white political thought. It supported both the concepts of nationalism and the nation-state. Temporally, Sir Edmund Barton was no less and no more a man of his time – many (if not most) of his social and political peers shared his perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty and white social protection. History has recognised and acknowledged that Barton was a man of exceptional talent. Even if Sir Samuel Griffith did write most of the Australian Constitution, Barton provided the political leadership and strength of purpose to carry it into existence.

If Barton was a conservative protectionist, Alfred Deakin in contrast was an idealist. Deakin favoured the principles of free trade but, in the interests of the British Empire and fledgling population of the Australian colonies, supported protection. In promoting Australian federation and, with Barton, the development of a ‘white Australia’ Deakin’s strongest motive was nationalism. Australia, Deakin considered, should be comprised of ‘one people, and remain one people, without the admixture of other races’ (Deakin 1995; Macintyre 2004, 141; Serle 1949a).

For Deakin, Australia’s protection policies also meant economic security for the people rather than just employers and manufacturers – a safeguard against the underpaid labour of other countries, and the racial, religious, social and political protection of the Anglo-Saxon British population of Australia from non-white ethnic infiltration. “It is not the bad qualities of … alien races that make them so dangerous to us,” he wrote, “it is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors” (Hughes 2005, 31). To achieve his protectionist ideals, Deakin believed in the unity and ongoing strength of the British Empire (Murdoch 1923, 228-230).

In terms of poverty perception, in his own experience, the exploitative laws of capitalism to which free traders appealed had, as La Nauze states, been successfully exposed to Deakin as a youth in Victoria (La Nauze 1965, 38). The outcome of this experience had helped to shape in Deakin a perceptually trimerous approach to politics, an approach based on the perception: a) that the State should not “divert the course of the organic evolution of society” by accepting non-white immigration (La Nauze 1965, 36); b) that State protection was needed for the development of a strong and independent nation; and c) that the political economy of Australia depended upon the political goals and temporal circumstances within Australia.

Even though Deakin was prime minister of Australia for three relatively short periods, his governments produced a lot of policy and legislation for the Commonwealth in its first decade of existence. Most of this legislation and policy related to Australia’s infrastructure, but some of it was more socially and commercially orientated. Among the social initiatives introduced by the Deakin governments was the: 1906 – establishment of the Bureau of Census and Statistics, and the

Australian Industries Protection Act (linking tariffs with wages in order to ensure that companies paid fair wages); 1907 – Harvester judgment by Justice H.B. Higgins (President of the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration) which introduced the concept of the male basic wage; 1908 – Old Age Pension Bill (enacted in 1909), and the national tariff protection policy, providing tariff advantage to manufacturers in Australia (with a fair wages codicil) and giving a 5% margin of preference to UK manufacturers (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006). Outside the office of prime minister, Deakin was also instrumental in the development of factories legislation in Victoria (1885), and bringing about Commonwealth conciliation and arbitration legislation (La Nauze 1965).

Of the same generation as Barton and Deakin, Sir William Hall-Jones NZ was persuaded to enter national politics as an independent ‘Liberal’ Member of the House of Representatives (MHR) for Timaru in 1889, the first man elected under the new ‘one-man-one-vote’ law. Hall-Jones, however, was not readily accepted by the Liberal Party. Pitting himself against other contenders, his personality and people skills nonetheless brought him victory.

Hall-Jones made his presence felt early with Richard Seddon when he opposed Seddon as a protagonist for the women’s franchise, quietly and very politically outmanoeuvring Seddon to get the bill passed. Not to be outdone, Seddon recognised that it was better to keep Hall-Jones in his sight than leave him an independent ‘Liberal’. In 1896, Seddon therefore invited Hall-Jones to become a member of his Cabinet (Hall-Jones 1969, 27-39).

Even though Hall-Jones was ‘unusually frank in criticism of Seddon’s style of governing’, in liberal thought and in the conveyance of his poverty perceptions, he, Seddon and Sir Joseph Ward, led the Liberal Party with similar political thoughts in mind (Hamer 1988, 240). Together, they shared a belief that state interference in the community was justified if it

© Marcelle Slagter 107 enhanced individual opportunities without conferring special privileges on any particular group (Bassett 1993, 38-39). Hall-Jones became New Zealand’s second twentieth century leader, and first official prime minister (rather than premier), temporarily following the sudden death of Richard Seddon (Hall-Jones 1993).

New Zealand’s third twentieth-century prime minister, Sir Joseph Ward (Seddon’s heir apparent), was no Seddon in either temperament or ability to manage people, particularly Maori and other non-white people. Ward thought of his government as a backstop of security for all classes; he also believed that it was the duty of the State to make suitable provisions for older people. From his perceptions, Ward considered Seddon’s Old Age Pension Act ‘bold in principle and cautious in practice’. In 1901, Ward said that the Seddon Liberal government’s policy was to assist people who helped themselves to settle the country in the interior: “There is no class in the country that the Government has not helped by legislation to give them the opportunity by their own efforts of improving the opportunities that are available to them” he said (Bassett 1993, 97, 113, 130).

Yet, through Ward’s perceptions of Maori and non-white immigration (akin to that of Barton and Deakin), his government supported a constitution of poverty with vastly different objective characteristics to that of the Seddon government.

If early twentieth-century party politicians were meant to reflect the dominant thoughts of the populace in both New Zealand and Australia, then the political direction of the populace of these countries was very homogeneous. When Deakin’s government faltered and Chris Watson became Australia’s first Labor Party prime minister, new threads were added to the genealogy of poverty perception in Australia.

The son of a Chilean-German father and a New Zealand-Irish mother, Watson’s parents had met in New Zealand and travelled to Chile in 1867 where he was born. Officially, registered at birth as Johan Christian Tanck,

© Marcelle Slagter 108 of Valparaiso, Chile, the events of Watson’s early childhood have been lost to history. As Grassby and Ordonez state: “Little primary source material survives of Watson. Watson’s private papers were all carefully stored in a tin trunk and kept in a garden shed. One day a gardener thought he would carry out the ultimate clean-up … apart from a few personal letters in his desk, the invaluable papers of the nation’s first Labor Prime Minister were destroyed” (Grassby and Ordonez 1999, 3, 5).

Despite this loss, it is known that Watson’s mother Martha Tanck (nee Minchin) returned to New Zealand in 1868, and married George Watson, an Irish-born miner who had emigrated from Scotland, in February 1869 (McMullin 2004, 1-2). Whether it was his parents’ choice, or his, Watson adopted his stepfather’s surname and anglicised his first names during his childhood. By all appearances then, Chris Watson became indistinguishable from the many British children and adults of working class descent who had migrated to Australia and New Zealand – a pretence he never disavowed for fear of social and political ostracism, and questions being raised about his status as a British subject (Grassby and Ordonez 1999, 79; McMullin 2004, 2).

In spite of Watson’s Labor Party background, and even though all the major political party leaders were avid readers, there was virtually no dissension among Australia’s political party leaders about the introduction of the White Australia Policy; even from the anti-socialist free-trade opposition leader - Sir George Reid. While party political propaganda suggested that the Australian Labor Party promoted the White Australia Policy, it is significant to note that Watson’s first policy speech to Parliament included an undertaking to remove a statutory provision prohibiting employment of Aboriginal Australians in the postal and telegraphic services (Post and Telegraph Act 1901) (Grassby and Ordonez 1999, 85, 88-89; Reid 1917, 220).

Watson was prime minister of Australia for only four months. By all accounts, he was a very astute and highly capable organiser and political

© Marcelle Slagter 109 leader, his influence in parliament was however more powerful in the position of an opposition leader during the governments of Barton and Deakin than as prime minister. In his position as a political leader, Watson was recognised as a master politician who put practical results before ideological purity, and was dedicated to improving the lives of the poor as well as promoting a fair nation. Unlike his avid socialist contemporaries, Watson showed little interest in pursuing land nationalisation, but believed that political priority must be given to prevent unemployment, sweated labour, and the existence of slum landlords. To achieve all his objectives, Watson made it clear that it did not matter what government or political party brought in the needed legislation, he was more concerned that it should be done (Grassby and Ordonez 1999, 99).

Even if the debates and progression of legislation for compulsory arbitration and conciliation proved fatal to the continued office of the first Deakin government and Watson’s own government, its eventual passage into the annals of statute in 1904 (under the Reid government) proved the shrewdness of both Deakin and Watson as political statesmen. That the two major class-based genealogical strains of liberal thought interpreted from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations should interweave so closely in the protectionist/free trade debates of the Australian political party leaders of this time is evident in Watson’s retort to Sir George Reid’s increasing anti- socialist attacks on the Labor Party. Watson pointed out: “The very people who objected to socialism [in Australia] were immersed in it. They rode in socialistic railways, sent their children to socialistic schools, received their letters through a socialistic post- office, read them by a socialistic light, rang up their friends on a socialistic telephone, washed in socialistic baths, read in socialistic libraries, and if through studying the advantages of individualism they became insane, they retired to a socialistic lunatic asylum” (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

Succeeding Chris Watson, the Free Trade party leader Sir George Houston Reid held the office of prime minister of Australia for just six months longer (i.e. 10½ months). Outwardly antagonistic toward socialism, his political

Having established himself early in his political career as a protagonist of free trade, Reid’s empathy with free trade politics lent itself more to the liberality of Adam Smith’s thoughts on self-interest, and universal freedom and independence, than the exploitation of the working classes by the governing classes as denoted in both feudal and eighteenth century British political history. Before becoming prime minister therefore, Reid supported government action to reduce land monopolies in New South Wales to enable fairer settler access. He also campaigned for greater infrastructural development, economic growth, and easier access to education for all Australians. Reid believed, in contrast to more conservative political thought, that equal opportunities to education had not yet been reached in Australia’s democratic community. Such an achievement he thought could only be claimed when: “… the poorest child can enjoy the best education its mental promise warrants” (Reid 1917, 37-43, 48).

Without a doubt, Reid fought an uphill and unending battle against the imposition of class-based protectionist ideas. He recognised early that the imposition of protectionist legislation in Australia could produce legislation like the nineteenth century English Corn Laws (of Malthus’s time) that lined the purses of landowners and Britain’s wealthy governing elite. Alternatively, he also recognised that it could produce a working class socialism that could stifle the potential, creativity and productivity of the people in his own time.

Sir George Reid was not however a unisocialist. His views on ethnic unity supported the White Australia policies of the Barton and Deakin governments. Analysing the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand, Reid stated: “The [Australian] aboriginals were as incapable of bargaining successfully as they were of fighting successfully. The Maoris of

New Zealand were quite the opposite. They were just as keen in making a bargain as they were valiant in warfare” (1917, 17-18).

Even though Reid’s views on poverty have not been recorded in his biographies, his life history and political activities indicate that, like some of his peers, he believed that the solution to poverty lay in fair access to land and competitive free trade. The trouble with protective policies, he stated, is: “… that the industries from which the protective policy produces the largest results are those that make the articles which the masses of the people use [i.e. monopoly industries]” (Reid 1917, 213). For Reid, the protectionist policies and perspectives held by leading members of both the Deakin government and the Labor Party would have seemed an anachronism, no matter how noble their intent.

For the many supporters of free trade nevertheless, the polarising juggernaut of the labour and trade union movements, coupled with the undercurrent of unisocialist liberal thought, proved to be both stronger and better organised than the free trade movement in Australian political thought. The Reid government’s own sponsorship of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904, after earlier attempts by Labor and the Protectionists, bears testament to the compromises political leaders (as prime minister) were willing to enter into to stay in office. Politically, the balance of power in Reid’s time did not rest with the prime minister or his political party, but in the level of negotiation and co-operation that each political party leader was prepared to engage in with his peers and opponents in order to achieve progression of personal and party beliefs and objectives.

4.5 Land and Work In 1885, the New Zealand Hospitals and Charitable Institutions Act sought to provide outdoor relief (food and fuel) and indoor relief (institutional shelter) to the deserving poor. In 1887, Sir Robert Stout argued that it was not a duty for governments to provide people with work. The ensuing impact of an economic depression and migrational ‘exodus’ from New Zealand in the late 1880s and early 1890s, however, soon provided evidence

© Marcelle Slagter 112 that historic social perceptions concerning the relationship between government and work would have to change. In fact, the whole role of government and politics came to be viewed in a new light. At all costs, it was considered, New Zealand and Australia needed protection – be it, for example, in work, in farming and export production, in legislation or in defence (Brooking 2004, 89; Drummond 1906, 86, 93-94).

Just as language and perspective had relayed perceptions in the genealogical development and direction of different branches of political thought to emphasise, for example, free trade, protection, and liberty, the vestiges of culture, religion and heritage, have impressed an enduring belief and rationalism in resolving social and political issues. For example, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many Australian and New Zealand Liberals, like Sir Robert Stout and Richard Seddon, perceived that land reform was essential for preventing and eradicating poverty. The question of land ownership, however, was a controversial one.

The New Zealand Liberal politician John (Jock) McKenzie, MHR for Moeraki, expressed a working-class perception when he stated: “We are told that the freehold is a secure tenure. But who holds the security? In nineteen cases out of twenty it is the mortgagee. The poor farmer has to work hard for the plutocrat, who does nothing but draw his interest and threaten his victim now and then with foreclosure. … Where you have freeholders heavily mortgaged on the one hand, and landlords or mortgagees – they are virtually the same – on the other, you have a position of things that amounts to human slavery, because you have the land serf and the slaver-owner. Under the guise of a freehold more cruelties have been committed in the Old Country we have left behind than anything else we know of. That system of freehold gives the right to the owner himself to turn people out of their homes, to burn the roofs of their dwellings, so that they might not return to them, and to leave them starving on the roadside. That is what the system of freehold has done” (Hamer 1988, 74-75).

McKenzie’s perception of land ownership developed from an experience he had when he was 5 years old. “McKenzie saw something he would never forget: the once proud people of Glencalvie [Scotland] huddled in a graveyard after being

evicted from their land by an unscrupulous landlord. This memory would shape his whole life's philosophy and work” (Hamer 1988, 199)

Like the early twentieth-century Australian Protectionists, the New Zealand Liberal Party was not a landowners party but believed in closer settlement of the land. Some Protectionist/Liberals, like Stout and McKenzie (in the Seddon Ministry), blamed land monopoly for unemployment, homelessness and poverty. For these politicians, labour reforms were merely a secondary and palliative solution to urban unemployment and poverty. If land was properly distributed, it was considered, every man and woman in Australia and New Zealand would be well employed. Many self-identified Liberals therefore believed, that by instituting land reforms the problems of poverty and unemployment that affected urban society would also be addressed (Hamer 1988, 65-67). Subsequently, between 1900 and 1925, life in Australia and New Zealand became, as Gardner states, the “age of small farmer predominance” (1969, 3).

New Zealand’s fourth prime minister, Sir Thomas Nobel Mackenzie, was a free-trader who opposed protectionism because he considered that it was not in the best interest of farmers. He was also an ardent supporter of freehold landownership, but supported John McKenzie's lease-in-perpetuity, because he viewed it as a virtual freehold. In sum, Thomas Mackenzie favoured the closer land settlement policies of the Liberal government while simultaneously also being an ally to the big landowners who dominated the parliamentary opposition (Brooking 1996).

Like his predecessors, when faced with rising unemployment and cost of living increases in the first decade of the twentieth century, Mackenzie believed that unemployment and poverty were “caused by there being too many people in the towns and cities” (Hamer 1988, 328). Mackenzie, was never able, however, to ameliorate his perception of poverty in policy because he served for less than four months as prime minister. His greatest contribution to New Zealand was his work as a wartime High Commissioner

© Marcelle Slagter 114 in London, and his contribution to the conservation of New Zealand’s scenic beauty, flora and fauna (Brooking 1996; Hall 1966). For this work, Mackenzie accepted a K.C.M.G. in 1916 and in 1920 was the first New Zealander to receive a G.C.M.G.

William Ferguson Massey replaced Mackenzie as New Zealand’s fifth prime minister. He remained prime minister for almost thirteen years. Once in office, Massey pressed ahead with his reform programme of putting into law the option of freehold land purchase, the establishment of a Public Service Commission, and the opening up of Maori lands for settlement. The idea of closer land settlement and the fostering of farming prosperity as a remedy to poverty, be it with freehold or leasehold land, however, was now running up against strong urban protest, a position aggravated by the First World War. With farm produce an essential need in wartime Britain, large numbers of New Zealand farmers were exempted from compulsory military service during World War I. The war, however, brought great prosperity for these farmers and with it an enmity from urban dwellers demanding to know why farmers should line their pockets with money while other members of the community fought in their place. Encouraged by militant Labour leaders the unrest between town and country escalated (Gardner 1969, 18, 21).

Unable to firmly deal with all the problems facing him (including a bitter sectarian struggle that arose when the question of exempting clergy from compulsory military service developed into an ardent denouncement of the government by both Catholic and Protestant groups (Gardner 1969, 24-25)), Massey approached Sir Joseph Ward to form a unified wartime ‘coalition’ government. This alliance lasted until the end of the war in 1919 (Gustafson 1986a, 2). Massey then had to address the problem of New Zealand’s returning soldiers potentially being left jobless and in poverty in the New Zealand’s cities. Adopting the temporal political thinking of his life-world, Massey supported the solution that the returning soldiers should become ‘soldier farmers’ and share in the independence that landownership had to offer (Serle 1949c). He therefore proceeded to provide (with state

Harbouring an aversion to ‘state socialism’ early in his career, Massey quickly learnt nevertheless, that the state could often help farmers better than they could help themselves (Gardner 1969, 26). Massey’s Reform government, unlike the Liberal governments before his, subsequently ceased taking a unisocialist political approach by adopting one specific subtle change in direction. Unlike the liberal-labour focus of the other early twentieth century governments, Massey’s administration shifted away from any dalliance with the labour movement and unionism, favouring instead, the greater self-interest and desires of landowning farmers. This change inevitably produced not just stasis in the development of government welfare provisions to both the urban and rural poor, but a fixed political understanding of poverty in New Zealand overall.

When Massey died in office in May 1925, his immediate successor Sir Francis Henry Dillon Bell stepped in as caretaker prime minister for just over two weeks. Bell’s perception of poverty, like that of Massey, was reflected throughout his political career. Land was the solution. It was no surprise therefore, as Downie Stewart illustrates, that: “… when the Rent Restriction Bill was before the Council in 1932, Bell said: ‘There is no one with a greater respect for the rights of property than myself, but I have more sense of the duty of property than some honourable members. We are not only protectors of property, but we are also protectors of distress, or we ought to be.’ ‘If the tenant can pay nothing,’ asked one member, ‘is the landlord to get nothing?’ Bell: ‘Yes’” (Downie Stewart 1937, 302). In community values, according to Bell, the achievement of profit and personal gain from property was second only to the duty of protecting the community from poverty.

When, on 30 May 1925, Joseph Gordon Coates replaced Bell as New Zealand’s seventh twentieth-century prime minister, New Zealanders were expecting a man of action with a fresh and new approach to politics and economic management. Gordon Coates however, like his Australian

© Marcelle Slagter 116 counterpart Viscount Stanley Melbourne Bruce, would soon become a very controversial political figure. Both were war heroes, both were described as tall and handsome, and both were publicly idolised then reviled, each bearing the brunt of blame for the severity and hardships of the 1930s Great Depression in their countries. Yet, as Michael Bassett arguably states, it may well have been from the economic conservatism of Coates that his Labour successors were later able to develop State housing, social security and universal education (1995, 5).

A Seddon supporter in his youth, Coates approved of Seddon’s defence and developmental policies, as well as the Advances to Settlers Act introduced by Ward. Politically however, Coates stood between the inspired political worlds of private endeavour advanced by Seddon, Ward and Massey, and the controlled, directed and subsidised worlds ‘in the public good’ of, for example, Savage, Fraser, Nash, Kirk and Muldoon.

With a limited education and minimal interest in reading, the New Zealand born Coates did not lend himself to strong development of ideological convictions. Instinctively distrustful of people who thought governments and bureaucracies could produce better economic and social outcomes for the community than the community itself, Coates’ subsequent support for publicly owned transport for a time raised scandalised discussion of his ‘surrender to the principles of socialism’. His loyalty to Britain and the Empire also far outweighed any forceful rhetoric for an economically independent New Zealand.

When in 1926 Coates attended the Imperial Conference in Britain, he declared that he intended to continue unaltered New Zealand’s traditional attitude toward Great Britain. “We must keep New Zealand British, he said, adding that better trade relations would ensure that, and that New Zealand owed a preference to British workmen against those “not of our race” (Bassett 1995, 177-181). But, against the judgement of Coates, Bell and Bruce, the Imperial Conference produced the Balfour Declaration stating that the Dominions

© Marcelle Slagter 117 were autonomous communities within the British Empire. Britain, in supporting free trade, had no desire to give preference to its Dominions since the Dominions specialised in producing only some of Britain’s needs16. As with trade, so too did Britain display ambivalence over the next few years in its position toward Imperial defence.

Outmanoeuvred by self-interested sectional party members at the election of 1928, Coates lost his position as prime minister to the ageing Sir Joseph Ward only to re-emerge two years later as deputy prime minister in a coalition government with Sir George William Forbes. It was in this role that Coates truly displayed his perception of poverty.

Just as the characteristics of the Great Depression began to hurt the people of New Zealand, Coates and Forbes became more adamant that there should be no State payments to the unemployed. Relief rates of pay, Coates believed conservatively, should always be less than the income paid to people in regular employment. Full employment was his long-term goal; in Coates’ belief, the State should not encourage people to substitute personal effort for reliance on welfare assistance.

With primary production the cornerstone of New Zealand’s economic structure, Coates sought to get single men out of urban areas and into farm work. Every effort should be made, he reasoned, to get the unemployed on to the land. There was nonetheless no compensatory program provided to help the unemployed ‘over the fence’ into subsistence farming. A Small Farms Scheme piloting ten-acre farmlets was promoted by Coates and successfully introduced at a local level by his brother but no national program came into being. Little by little therefore, the Forbes-Coates

16 Six years later (in early 1932), Britain abandoned its free trade position and adopted more protectionist values. Discussions with the rest of the Empire, at the Ottawa Imperial Economic Conference in 1932, subsequently focused on the issue of British Imperial preference to its colonial bastions.

© Marcelle Slagter 118 government lost control of events. At the height of the Depression, New Zealand succumbed to its economic mismanagement. In a country where food was in abundance, people began to starve (Bassett 1995, 177-181).

In applying the Merleau-Pontian technique of analysis, Coates’ perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty was learned and based on values and reason more than lived experience. His values came from his familial upbringing, while his insights into poverty problem-solving came from a lesser understanding of the human motivations and support systems experienced through farming. Presenting good relations with local Maori, and also able to speak some Maori, Coates believed, throughout his life, in public help for those in need, and was always moved by the sight of genuine hardship. With a bias toward the interests of the farming community however, neither Coates nor Forbes can be described as unisocialists (Bassett 1995, 5, 25, 28, 31, 109).

Significantly, after Coates and Forbes lost the 1935 general election, the United and Reform Parties merged to become the New Zealand National Party. Of most profound importance from this merger was the fact that amongst the eight general objectives of the new party were two specific objectives: 1. “to formulate and carry out policies designed to benefit the community as a whole, irrespective of sectional interests: particularly to bring about cooperation between country and city interests, and between employers and employees; and 2. to pursue a policy of progressive and humanitarian legislation”.

At the 1936 National Political Federation Conference when the New Zealand National Party was formed and its objectives adopted, a proposal was made for the objectives of the party constitution to state specifically that the party would, ‘combat Communism and Socialism’ and ‘oppose interference by the State in business’. This proposal however, was defeated (Gustafson 1986a, 7-9). In classification, the new objectives and values of the New Zealand National Party were now fundamentally unisocialist.

Providing a perspective on how Viscount Stanley Bruce really perceived poverty in Australia has revealed some contradiction in his biographies. Judged largely on the manner in which he publicly displayed an aloof and at times condescending upper class demeanour, Bruce was at odds with an Australian political environment that promulgated and cherished working class egalitarian values. As Judith Brett states: “Bruce’s perception of strikes as the work of an alien few was the result of his inability to admit to the existence of genuine differences of interest within Australian society, as well as his own remoteness from ordinary Australians’ experience. He showed no understanding of the necessity of rank and file support for successful strike action, nor of the bonds of solidarity and common experience that linked men engaged in poorly paid, demeaning and dangerous work. Nor did he show any sympathy with the hardships of many Australians’ lives. He was also largely indifferent to social welfare issues, in the main seeing pensions as a burdensome cost to government and a likely disincentive to hard work and effort. The limitations of Bruce’s social experience were here starkly apparent” (2003, 135).

Cecil Edwards, on the other hand, argues that Bruce: “… was not unsympathetic towards the problems of working men. His attitude, however, was rather that of the enlightened squire who finds it hard to understand why some tenants do not like squires”. Edwards says that when, in 1928, “unemployment began to rise again … Bruce publicly attributed it mainly to adverse seasonal conditions. To those who urged that overseas borrowings be stopped or cut, Bruce said that halts in Government expenditure were among the principal causes of unemployment. In Australia, governments carried out works that would be done by private enterprise in many countries. It would be wrong to reduce borrowings for developmental works … Bruce had many eminent companions in giving public misreading of the economic barometer. He certainly knew that the glass was falling” (1965, 142).

Alternatively, Heather Radi argues that Bruce was an anti-socialist prime minister who never developed a consistent policy on industrial relations, and stalled on social reform, promises for a national insurance, child endowment, and finance for housing, because he calculated the costs before implementation. As Radi quotes, Bruce conceded that: “The world is now so far advanced that we have to recognise we must face great expenditure upon social amelioration, and the only way to solve our problems is to adopt the same course as every

modern business has been forced to … of expanding our turnover rather than imagining we can solve our difficulties by reducing our expenses” (Radi 1979).

From his biographies, Bruce, as a prime minister, was more a businessperson than political ideologist. By appearances, however, his economic thinking, like that of John Maynard Keynes (a contemporary peer), may also have been described by Friedrich von Hayek as still in the mould of a ‘classical English liberal’. Pursuing continued government borrowing and expansion at the expense of greater national indebtedness, Bruce may have been considered to have predated the mainstays of Keynesian economic theory17 by some eight years. Whether this was due to instincts in economic rationality or, more particularly, protection of conservative interests, is a matter for speculation. In Caucus Crisis (1937), Denning stated, that Bruce had found political success too quickly to fully appreciate and understand the ‘mind and soul’ of the people he was governing, so his perception of poverty could hardly have come from his experiences with the Australian people (Denning 1937; Edwards 1965, 189).

For all his mainly free-trade economic thinking, however, Bruce still recognised and stood by the values and understanding of liberal thought established in Australia with colonisation. A point Edwards indirectly emphasises in drawing attention to Bruce’s awareness that Australian governments ‘carried out works that would be done by private enterprise in many countries’, and Radi notes in highlighting Bruce’s objective to establish a national transport system (Edwards 1965, 142; Radi 1979). His perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty, like that of John Howard years later, nevertheless, did not encompass the fostering of a solution to financial crises based on the idea that population dependency could be supported through an accumulation of state assets and income.

17 For example, in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), Keynes argued that in times of economic recession government spending must compensate for insufficient business investment.

Bruce’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences were indicative of his education, class, life experience, and British cultural upbringing. In describing Bruce, Sir Earle Page boldly stated that Bruce’s long years of residence in Britain had: “… enabled him to view Australia as in a distant perspective and thereby to appreciate its problems more clearly than did those who had lived exclusively in Australia” (Page 1963, 104). In other words, Page considered that Bruce’s contemporary political Australian peers could not, to quote the more familiar saying, ‘see the wood for the trees’, however able or well-intentioned their ideas.

Significantly, Stanley Bruce’s biographies do not succinctly convey his perceptual values, understandings and experiences with regard to the constitution of poverty in Australia while he was prime minister. Bruce acknowledged the condition and some of the characteristics of poverty, but not what that meant to, or how that affected, people at the grassroots of Australia. When Bruce became Australia’s High Commissioner to Britain, he argued that world peace could only be achieved if nations were given equality of opportunity, ‘economic and social policies which would obviate recurring boom and depression, and programmes to improve the world food situation’. Similarly, when he stated that more investment should be directed to raising the living standards of underdeveloped countries to ensure the prosperity of industrial nations and prevent restiveness, Bruce’s approach displayed a business focus, or parochial class-orientated perception of poverty. ‘Well fed men, he said, are not apt to become revolutionaries’ (Radi 1979).

In short, Bruce’s perception of poverty came from distinctly governing upper-class perceptual values, understandings and experiences. Rather than learning about the constitution of poverty in Australia, Bruce was instilled with a causal objective understanding and rationalism toward this country through his British educational upbringing. What was needed, however, was that he should see the genuine differences of interest within Australian society rather than meditate on old class perceptions. His lack of vision and

In analysis, the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty of Bruce and his coalition partner, Sir Earle Page, were fundamentally conservative. Neither prime minister, during their time in office, was unisocialist. Both, in their own way, represented the interests of only a subsection of the community (farmers or the business community) with state control.

Outside a strict adherence to the chronology of Australian prime ministers, the name of Sir Earle Page is closely synonymous with the government of Viscount Stanley Bruce. Page, the leader of the coalition Australian Country Party, a medical doctor and farmer, asserted in 1922 that his party’s main aims were for: “National economy, social efficiency, equality of opportunity by balanced development of cities and country, and real government economy by establishing one taxation collecting authority for all [State]Governments” (Page 1963). Sustaining his interest in social infrastructure development, Page used his party’s political position to bring about similar tariff protection for primary producers as for secondary industry, including subsidies on the export of dairy products, sugar and dried fruits, and the formation of boards to market products collectively.

In early 1925, Page established a scheme with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to provide loans to farmers based on the security of their produce. He stated that the success and constructive achievement of the Bruce-Page government came about largely due to the advent of a composite Government with a socialist Opposition, but remained oblivious to Opposition claims that the measures he was introducing were in themselves ‘doses of socialism’ (Bridge 1988, 3; Page 1963, 104).

Although he claimed to provide fairness and equality to all Australians, Page’s leanings toward greater support of the farming sector reduced his

© Marcelle Slagter 123 potential classification as a unisocialist. His perception of poverty developed in his youth when he saw natural disasters and poor infrastructural support leaving many Australians open to financial ruin. Like many of his predecessors, Page recognised, in farming, a means to address poverty. When small farmers lost their crops, land and financial independence, the welfare of the people and the nation, in Page’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences, was at stake.

The fact that, a) the Depression of the late nineteenth century forced his family, friends and neighbours to turn to a bartering system for their existence, b) he had never before “seen people so happy, so co-operative, or so willing to help their friends and neighbours”, and c) Page was a small farmer himself, induced him to act as a political advocate for farmers and pursue economic equality for this group with urban manufacturers. Poverty in Page’s understanding, was a consequence of governance open only to remedy through a process of constructive thinking and legislative enactment (Page 1963, 9, 102).

As Bridge stated, some of Page’s early projects clearly supported some of his own farming interests. It was no coincidence, when Page became Deputy Prime Minister in the Bruce-Page government, “that early projects approved for Commonwealth financial assistance included the linking of Grafton [Page’s home town] to South Brisbane [Page’s farm location] by a standard gauge railway line and the sealing of the road from Grafton to the coast, or that the dairy industry fared well” (Bridge 1988, 3).

In terms of poverty he “saw most issues through the prism of his rural base and his own constituents, forever winning them concessions”. By claiming that he had erected ‘a bulwark against the socialisation of medicine’, as minister for health during the Menzies coalition government of 1949 (until his retirement from cabinet in 1956), Page used the state to rhetorically

© Marcelle Slagter 124 advance the wellbeing of all, but preserved individual freedom by subsidising private health fund membership because this membership reduced the cost of medical services to the state. In legislating to provide free essential drugs to the community, maintain free medical services for the poor, subsidise the bulk of the population in their voluntary contributions to private health insurance funds, and increase Commonwealth grants to hospitals, Page advanced a form of government over health that did not give the state ownership of drug companies, or control over medical practitioners, but did slide between the opposite extremes of liberalism and socialism (Bridge 1988, 3, 5-6).

4.6 Housing, Defence, Alliances and Security – Lest we Forget Spatiotemporal events and circumstances have always controlled our focus and our perception of our life world. Over time therefore, a tide of ideas about poverty developed from perceptual understandings of the world that, Merleau-Ponty argued, functioned before truth and according to principles of discovery rather than speculation and hypothesis (Merleau-Ponty 'Prose in the World' in Baldwin 2004, 242). Beyond conceptions that poverty could be minimised through farming land, in the late nineteenth century another idea to imprint upon political thought and poverty perceptions in Australia and New Zealand was that of national identity and self- government. The catalyst for this branch of political thought was the Boer War of 1899–1902.

The Boer War brought to the fore questions about the integrity of imperialism, and the importance of national identity and self-government in both Australia and New Zealand. Fundamentally, the concerns of sovereignty and self-government that incited the Boer War were largely played out in South Africa; however, these concerns very much plagued the consciousness of many other colonised countries on the world stage, Australia and New Zealand among them.

For the Dutch and German people who had settled in South Africa since 1652 (when this part of Africa was a Dutch colony) Britain, and the British

Empire, represented a competitive, if not hostile, foreign power. Britain’s takeover of the colony in 1814, coupled with land (farm) seizures, the annexation of the Transvaal Republic in 1877, and increased British settlement of South Africa due to the discovery of large gold and diamond deposits in 1886, firmly alienated the ‘Boer’ settlers. Without British recognition of Boer settler loyalty to another sovereign and culture, or observance of Boer self-governance in South Africa, the presence of the British in South Africa was perceived by the Boers as hostile. The Boers, in turn, considered that they were under siege, were being deprived of their identity, and were not the object of ameliorating British sovereign rule but of harshly imposed suzerain rule (Crawford 2000; Grattan Grey 1900).

Many Australian and New Zealand liberals disagreed with Britain’s annexation of the Transvaal and the jingoism that politically endorsed Britain’s presence in South Africa. Loyalty toward Britain and its imperial endeavours nonetheless prevailed, nationalism within the colonial populations ensuring both social and political support for Britain’s presence in South Africa. After all, Britain’s presence in South Africa could not be wrong, because this would seriously undermine the values of colonisation, the British Empire, and the position of the largely British populations in New Zealand and Australia (Crawford 2000; Weber 1980).

For much of the twentieth century, nonetheless, a tug-o-war about identity and nationalism raged within Australia and New Zealand. For new settlers and descendants alike, the question arose of whether they, as citizens of Australia or New Zealand, should identify themselves with their ancestral country of origin (British genealogical roots) or their new country of destination. Or more importantly, were these people to identify themselves as, or be identified as, British subjects living in Australia or New Zealand (i.e. British18 men and women merely in residence in these countries)? Or, were they to be Australians and New Zealanders? Until 1949, the eyes of

18 Although reference is made here to British men and women, it should be noted that this term should be interpreted in its wider meaning (i.e., including English, Irish, Welsh and Scots men and women).

© Marcelle Slagter 126 those governing Australia and New Zealand remained firmly set on Britain. Self-identity and the model upon which poverty was perceived in Australia and New Zealand, therefore, continued to be derived largely from comparisons with Britain. Time, events, circumstances, and politics, however, were to slowly forge and determine not only a national identity but also a constitution of poverty more attuned to national circumstance and locality.

From the mixed British-New Zealand spatiotemporal perceptions and history that determined the conservative, liberal and labour strains of political thought in New Zealand at the turn of the twentieth century, there was nothing ambiguous in the position the Liberal Party leader and prime minister, Richard Seddon, took with regard to defence, security and welfare. When Britain entered the Boer War, Seddon considered the British position a ‘moderate and righteous’ one. He stressed that the ‘crimson tie’ not only bound New Zealand to the ‘mother country’, but to the British Empire – the strength of the British Empire, he believed, was also the security of its colonies (Crawford 2000). Sir Edmund Barton accepted a similar position to Seddon. Upon Australian Federation, Barton led the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia into the Boer War. Australia therefore became not only a united federation of colonies, but a united nation at war (Bolton 2000).

Like Barton, Deakin continued to support the clear economic, social and political separation of British identity within Australia’s population that in its cultural and racial characteristic forged different constitutions of poverty between white and non-white residents. When in 1908 Britain rebuffed the idea of Australia developing an independent navy, Deakin retaliated by inviting the American ‘Great White Fleet’ to visit Australian ports. So doing, Deakin laid the first seeds of change in Australia and Britain’s economic, social and political relationship (Macintyre 2003, 49; Murdoch 1923, 273). For all the ministrations of devotion to the ‘crimson tie’ between Britain, Australia and New Zealand, distance and geographic locality forced change. Difference, no matter how subtle, contributed to

The introduction of Richard Seddon’s NZ Old Age Pensions Act in 1898 established a precedent and alternative solution to poverty than the age old solution of land ownership and land productivity. It also solidified a shift in thought, first founded in early nineteenth-century Britain, that poverty was caused more by financial deprivation than a lack of personal endeavour. Subsequently, when the second Deakin government emulated New Zealand’s example of providing financial support to older people, and passed the Invalid and Old-age Pensions Act 1908, two solutions to poverty became more freely available – land and money.

Replacing Alfred Deakin as prime minister of Australia in 1908 and again in 1910, the Labor Party leader, Andrew Fisher, opposed sending Australian troops to the Boer War. Like Barton, Deakin and Seddon, however, Fisher was a fervent imperialist, declaring during the First World War that “our last man and our last shilling will be offered and supplied to the mother country”. This promise, however, did not extend to conscription because, as Murphy states, “the humanitarianism that lay behind [Fisher’s] political philosophy prevented his taking this step”(Murphy 1981).

Becoming the leader of the Australian Labor Party in 1907 when Chris Watson stood down, Fisher initially supported the social, economic and defence policies of his mentor and close friend, Alfred Deakin. This friendship, however, did not last. Nevertheless, like Deakin, Fisher was a political bulldog, willing to hold on against the tumultuous sectarian and factional events and circumstances of the time, to also become prime minister of Australia three times.

Even though the first Fisher government lacked sufficient numbers to pass major legislation, the ALP demonstrated that it was able to produce a competent and responsible federal government. Fisher’s second government, however, proved much more successful. In April 1910, the

ALP became the first Australian federal party to win government in its own right (without coalition support). Holding majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Fisher consequently embarked on an awe- inspiring programme of public policy reform unparalleled in Australia until the 1940s. In total, he added twenty-three new pieces of legislation to the formerly skimpy Commonwealth statute book (Lloyd 2003a, 77-81).

Among the Fisher government’s major innovations were: “The establishment of the Commonwealth Bank, the introduction of maternity allowances, workers' compensation for Commonwealth employees, implementation of recommendations of the royal commission on the sugar industry (laying foundations for the industry's future development), liberalisation of invalid and old age pensions, expansion of the High Court (from five to seven judges), transfer to the Commonwealth of the Northern Territory, and the decision to establish a federal capital at Canberra” (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

Fisher’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty were clear. His perception was not based on reading or just the vision of other people’s misery. Fisher's perception reflected the very intense personal feelings of deprivation that he had accumulated in his youth and while working in mines in both Scotland and Australia. From his life-world of experiences, Fisher developed a political fervour that, in terms of justice and fairness, zealously embedded unisocialism.

Two politically ambivalent prime ministers, Sir Joseph Cook and William Morris Hughes succeeded Fisher consecutively as prime minister after his second and third terms of office. The Australian Labor Party did not then return to government until after the Nationalist Party government of Viscount Stanley Bruce.

When James Henry Scullin became Deputy Leader of the Australian Labor Party in March 1927, any thoughts he may have had of becoming prime minister and replacing Stanley Bruce, most assuredly would not have

Upon becoming Australia’s ninth prime minister in October 1929, Scullin was appalled to discover the desperate state of the Australian economy. Adding to his woes, his party’s slim hold on government made the creation of new legislation nigh on impossible. The ALP may have achieved a resounding victory in the lower house, but the Senate was firmly controlled by the Opposition. Scullin was therefore prevented from amending or introducing any legislation without the approval of members of both the National and Country parties. Not withstanding this impediment, by the end of 1929 Scullin had managed some small achievements – raising tariffs on imports, abandoning the gold standard, increasing social security payments, and reducing assisted immigration (Molony 2003; Robertson 1988).

Lacking the power to effectively legislate for the economic changes he desired, and facing hostile rivalry from a renegade faction of Labor members led by John (Jack) Thomas Lang, premier of New South Wales, (who amongst other things sought to renege on overseas loan interest payments) Scullin introduced The Premiers’ Plan for economic recovery. The plan cut expenditure and brought a few months of relative calm before Lang chose to launch a campaign to eject Scullin’s government.

Entering the federal election of 19 December 1931, Scullin made use of radio to fight a vigorous campaign for Labor, but three unwise decisions as prime minister, and his attempt to remain true to the ideals and policies of the Labor party, led to his losing the election. Hindsight is a gift of time. With disunity and dissent within the ALP at the time, Scullin would have been wise to gather party faithful to his side. The first unwise decision he made however, was to persuade caucus to instate the discredited Edward (Ted) Granville Theodore as treasurer in January 1931. With this decision Scullin offended Joe Lyons (acting treasurer) and James Edward Fenton (MHR for Maribyrnong, and Minister for Trade and Customs). Both Lyons

The second unwise decision Scullin made was to reappoint Sir Robert Gibson as chairperson of the Commonwealth Bank. As the circumstances of the Great Depression revealed serious faults within Australia’s banking system, Scullin’s subsequent experiences with Gibson (and the Commonwealth Bank) made Scullin forever after an advocate of firmer government control of the banking system, and fuelled the imagination and later ideas of future prime minister, Ben Chifley. Gibson opposed Scullin’s authority as prime minister, and in March 1931 refused to grant Scullin credit expansion.

The third unwise decision made by Scullin, was to absent himself from Australia for approximately five months (from 25 August 1930 to 6 January 1931) to attend the Imperial Conference in London. Scullin’s absence distanced him from the fray of internal bickering within the Labor Party, but also allowed a factional challenge to be launched upsetting the balance of power within the party (Molony 2003; Robertson 1988).

Politically inspired by the social doctrines on the rights of labour written by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum novarum (1891), Scullin believed firmly that social justice and order required state intervention. “Justice and humanity” he said, “demand interference whenever the weak are being crushed by the strong” (Molony 2003, 143; Robertson 1988). Beginning his political career with an educated and socialised perception of poverty derived from the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of his Irish parents and his religion, Scullin’s intelligence and life-world circumstances allowed him to marshal and transcend his actual experience of poverty in Australia. Finding a level of similarities between his experiences and the contemporary theories and perspectives about poverty of his day, Scullin consequently reflected on Australia’s poverty conditions in terms of the divisions he saw in class, ethnicity, and religion. Yet, as much as Scullin’s perceptions of poverty were rationalised through meditation and social interaction, he

Scullin’s working-class upbringing and ethnic heritage assuredly supported the formation of his personal biases. Consequently, Scullin was a strong advocate of the White Australia Policy and of high protection for manufacturing industries. Unlike his political forebears however, Scullin supported initiatives for the indigenous people of Australia to have a right to their own native land. In 1931, Scullin’s government created the first Aboriginal reserve in the Northern Territory, comprising 49,920 square kilometres of Arnhem Land. This support from Scullin, Molony argues, developed from the idea that Australia’s indigenous people needed a place where they could live their traditional lifestyle and preserve their culture without interference from Australia’s white population. While Scullin may not have consciously understood the variability in the conditions, characteristics and constitution of poverty within Australia’s denizen populations, he did nonetheless see enough to want to induce change.

Scullin’s unisocial approach to government, despite his being prime minister for only one term, provided a cornerstone for the creation of new branches and directions in Australia’s political genealogy and political thought. Moreover, in spite of the difficulties he experienced as prime minister, it was acclaimed by the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes, that Scullin ‘saved the economic structure of Australia’ in the early 1930s through his Premiers’ Plan (Molony 2003; Robertson 1988).

Losing the 1931 election, Scullin was replaced as prime minister of Australia by his former ALP colleague and acting Treasurer, Joseph (Joe) Aloysius Lyons. Like Scullin, Lyons was also a unisocialist of Irish catholic descent. Also like Scullin, Lyons was educated and socialised with stories of the hardships and politics of life in Ireland. Unlike Scullin however, from the age of nine Lyons was weighed down with the burden of

Described by his wife as a rebel against tyranny but the very gentlest of men, Lyons became involved in local politics early in his teaching career. A witness to social injustices and circumstances of inequality in Tasmania, Lyons initially advocated for better working conditions for teachers. He was soon however battling accusations from local politicians that his public outspokenness was an abuse of his role as a public servant. As Dame Enid Lyons stated: “It was one thing for public servants to be allowed to join political parties, but it was another for them to take the public platform, … on matters affecting their own departments!” (Lyons 1965, 58). Lyons subsequently resigned from the Tasmanian Education Department, and on 12 March 1909 accepted endorsement as the state Labor Party candidate for Wilmot (Lyons 1965, 53, 56, 58).

As a Member of the Tasmanian House of Representatives, Lyons promoted a number of progressive reforms, including free medical treatment and education for children, a state medical scheme, reform of the Legislative Council, aid to farmers, factory legislation, and the breaking up of large estates. Serving as state Treasurer, Minister of Education and Minister for Railways in John Earle’s ALP government from April 1914 to April 1916, Lyons reformed the Tasmanian Education Department, abolished school fees, improved teachers’ employment conditions and pay, and had Tasmania’s first high schools built in Hobart and Launceston (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

Opposing conscription for the conscription referenda of 1916 and 1917, Lyons demonstrated personal beliefs that were structured as much from the radicalism instilled in him from his Irish-Catholic background, as from his own pacifist character. Both in personality and character, Henderson states: “Unlike John Howard, who would appear as the plain man but who was middle-class from the cradle, Joe Lyons knew what poverty

meant. His empathy with the plight of so many in the years he was prime minister was keenly felt” (2003a).

“Like most Australians of his era”, Hart and Lloyd assert, “Lyons equated government debt with personal debt and insisted that all commitments had to be fully honoured. He opposed inflation and stressed the importance of balanced budgets and strict loan repayments. He was aware of Keynes’s doctrines … but felt that, even if they were correct, experimentation was inappropriate for the small Australian economy” (Hart and Lloyd 1986). Lyons, therefore, fiercely opposed public debt as a way of easing the jobs crisis of the Depression (Henderson 2003a, 155).

Resigning from the Labor Party [1931] at the time of the fiduciary note debate, Lyons made a passionate speech in which he empathised with the unemployed and expressed guilt at the irresponsibility of comfortable politicians: “All over this country … good, honest fellows are tramping the country looking for work that they cannot obtain, yet we sit here, talking nonsense” (Henderson 2003a, 158). “He could never forget the miseries of the unemployed and he was painfully conscious that every decision he made affected the lives of men, women, and children throughout Australia” (Lyons 1965, 170).

Although much of his political career was spent as a Labor politician both in the Tasmanian state government and as a federal representative at the suggestion of the federal ALP leader, Jim Scullin, the furore that saw him resign from the Labor Party in 1931 and accepting leadership of the United Australia Party (UAP) on 7 May 1931, reflected the actions and beliefs of a man with strong values. It was perhaps because of the common appreciation of his beliefs and principles that Lyons was able to hold his Wilmot seat for a total of thirty years (Henderson 2003a, 159-160; National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

Described by Charles Hawker, who opposed Lyons’ leadership, as a conservative reminiscent “of the man with small savings, [and] a home of [his] own” (Hart and Lloyd 1986), Lyons’ state ALP government

© Marcelle Slagter 134 nonetheless survived because of his judicious management of the state economy. Likewise, when as a UAP prime minister in 1934, signs of a national economic recovery began to emerge from his economic policies, his government was able to take advantage of this turnaround to assist the states with a £2 million grant (Henderson 2003a, 155-156; National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

A consensual politician, Lyons’ early dreams of socialism became tempered, as his wife Enid was later to write, “by awareness of the danger to individual freedom that lay within it” (Lyons 1965, 145). A man for the time, and of the time, Lyons wanted for Australia the things all Australians most desired for their children. He pictured Australia: “… always as leading the world in humanitarian legislation, a model for democratic governments: a land whose citizens were truly free; where a man could keep a straight back, and look every other man in the eye” (Henderson 2003a, 157).

When introducing welfare policies Lyons was, as Hart and Lloyd state, frustrated by the lack of federal government funds and by the opposition on constitutional grounds of Robert Menzies, deputy leader of the UAP since the 1934 elections. Lyons did, however, sponsor a national insurance scheme which parliament approved in 1938, but the Act was never proclaimed (1986).

While Lyons’ perceptions of poverty developed when he was still a child, it was his life-world experiences that made him economically conservative and honestly expressive in his empathy for the Australian people during the 1930s depression. Like Fisher, Lyons did not see poverty through the eyes of an unscathed observer, or for that matter from the bias of a working-class man, but from the perspective of his own lived experience.

Poverty, for Lyons, reflected only divisions of extremism. Pride and honour on the other hand, were to Lyons the sentinels of political and economic integrity. Aware, through his Irish ancestry, of the existence of both sectarian religious bigotry and class conflict, Lyons was mindful of the

© Marcelle Slagter 135 benefits of consensual government. Peace, he believed, could not be found, nor poverty alleviated, without the consensus of the people. Unfortunately, such consensus is often hard won. While trying to cope with the factionalism developing within his own party, Lyons’ suddenly died (National_Archives_of_Australia 2006). In a letter to his wife (Dame Enid Lyons) after his death, Dame Mary Gilmore wrote: “I would still feel I voted Labor if I voted for him … his heart was with the people, and it neither changed with position nor wavered with circumstance” (Henderson 2003a, 167).

If the governments of Alfred Deakin, Andrew Fisher, Jim Scullin and Joe Lyons precipitated icebreaking development of social and humanitarian policies within Australia (the last two bringing their Irish-Catholic community values and beliefs to the surface within the Australian labour movement), their Australian-born, New Zealand counterpart, Michael Joseph Savage, was a trailblazer. Born the youngest of eight children to Irish-Catholic parents, death and poverty walked hand in hand through Michael Savage’s childhood and adolescence. After his mother died when he was only five years old, his father sought desperately to support his family from the pitiful harvests of his small farm near Benalla in Victoria.

A hard-working, knowledgeable, and kindly man, Michael Savage’s hard life forged within him a spirited and militant rationalism rather than submissive conformism. Attending night classes after leaving school while still very young to aid his family’s income, Savage became a passionate reader. His reading included the influential political theories of Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Karl Marx, Thomas (Tom) Mann, and the monetary reform views of Yale University professor of political economy, Irving Fisher.

Joining the Political Labor Council in Australia, Savage did not migrate to New Zealand until 1907 when he was thirty-five years old and his employment as a goldminer, stationary engine driver, and foundation manager of a co-operative bakery, had ended through the closure of the

Rutherglen mines. Originally intending to work in the Denniston coalmine on the West Coast of New Zealand, Savage moved instead to Auckland where he became a Brewery cellarman, president of the Auckland Trades and Labour Council, secretary of the Auckland branch of the New Zealand Socialist Party, and the Auckland organiser for a new Social Democratic Party. In July 1916, Savage contributed to the formation of a united New Zealand Labour Party (NZLP), and in 1918, he became its vice-president. A year later, Savage became the New Zealand Labour Party’s first permanent national secretary and a Labour Party member of parliament, after winning the seat of Auckland West.

Michael Savage’s perception of poverty was shaped, like his Irish- Australian prime ministerial contemporaries, through socialisation, experience and self-education. It was not determined from the comforts and distance of upper-class vision, but from much broader life experiences. Savage believed that: “Gross under-consumption, economic deprivation and social misery existed in the midst of plenty because the means of distribution and exchange were unsatisfactory. The state alone [he argued] should have the right to issue money and regulate its value and to control credit through a government-directed banking system” (Gustafson 1986b; Gustafson 1998b).

An anti-conscriptionist during the First World War, Savage argued that conscription of wealth should precede conscription of men. In 1926, he was largely responsible for the Family Allowances Act “which the Reform government [of Gordon Coates] freely admitted it had modelled on three earlier bills moved by Savage”. In 1927, he persuaded the NZLP to recognise the right of freehold in its land policy (to gain rural support), and in 1929, he became a major advocate for increased pensions and the establishment of a completely free national health service. He declared that all people, as a right of citizenship, were entitled to: “… a reasonable standard of living in the days when they are unable to look after themselves, whether it be because of old age or physical infirmity” (Gustafson 1986b; Gustafson 1998b).

In liberal thought therefore, Savage was clearly a unisocialist; promoting a unity between the state and community to advance the wellbeing of all.

Distressed by the deprivation and suffering he witnessed from the onset of the Depression, Savage’s commonsense humanitarian politics convinced many voters in the 1935 election that the NZLP “not only understood their problems but could be trusted to solve them” (Gustafson 1986b). With this approach, Savage sought to unite as many people as possible to a common goal of a better and fairer society. William Sutch wrote that it was at the funeral of former NZLP leader, Harry Holland in October 1933, that the New Zealand public first came to realise the numbers of the unemployed. “… for with their spokesman carrying a pathetic white wreath they came in their shabby thousands, marching in fours as they had been taught in the European War and under compulsory military training. They came to see their leader buried – ironically in the shadow of Seddon’s monument. … With a heavy majority at the general election which had been postponed a year, the Labour Party took office on December 6th 1935; they represented more than wage workers, their followers included small farmers, the underprivileged generally, and the monetary reformers” (Sutch 1942, 123).

After becoming the New Zealand Labour Party’s first prime minister in December 1935, Savage and his government rapidly produced a mass of legislation much of which was designed to stimulate the New Zealand economy. A programme of state house construction was introduced, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand was made a state-controlled central bank, and some discrimination against the Maori people was ended through increased attention to Maori employment, education, health and land settlement.

Distrustful and unimpressed with Britain’s foreign policies, economic strategies, and stance toward its semi-dependant colonial nation-outposts, in 1937 Savage challenged Britain’s commitment to the defence of Australia and New Zealand and the viability of Britain’s Singapore naval base and Pacific Fleet in the event of a Japanese attack in the Pacific. He suggested that New Zealand might need to foster secondary industry or find a market

© Marcelle Slagter 138 other than Britain for its primary products. In 1938, when Britain accepted Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia, Savage’s condemnation of Britain’s action was decried in leading New Zealand newspapers as an ‘embarrassing and deplorable display of Empire disunity’. The same year however, Gustafson stated, Savage’s election speeches “were among the most moving and inspiring ever made in a New Zealand election campaign. Labour’s share of the votes rose from 46 to 56 percent.” (Gustafson 1998b).

Whether it was by chance, fate, or a manifestation of the seeds of repression Britain had sowed in its relations with Ireland over the centuries, it seems ironic that both the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand during the Great Depression were from Irish-Catholic ancestry. It is an even greater coincidence that both prime ministers possessed such highly ingrained humanitarian values and perspectives of poverty, sought security for their people above all else, and died in office.

For some people, it may be considered insulting and a scourge on the values they upheld, that contemporary claims about the humanitarian initiatives that Lyons and Savage adopted were in some way, as Carney argues, a requirement “of national economic policy” fuelled to effectively ignite the flames of social reform (Carney 2006). From their biographies it appears that Lyons and Savage recognised that no economy could exist without people, or the values that the community gives to social occupation. To imply that these prime ministers were motivated more by the needs of their countries’ political economies than of their people, is perhaps an affront not only to their values and beliefs, but also to the democratic choice and political demands of the people of Australia and New Zealand in this time. Economics, for both men, was a ‘means to an end’, a method to achieve social balance, social security, and a life without the pain and extremes of poverty.

Confronted by communities no longer able to procure the basics for human sustainability (food, shelter and clothing), even when the source for sustainability was readily available, Lyons and Savage despaired at the

© Marcelle Slagter 139 anguish and angst of their people in the Depression (Gustafson 1998b; Hart and Lloyd 1986; Lyons 1965, 266). It seems paradoxical, therefore, that Australians and New Zealanders (as with all other world nations in the Depression) having been led to economic disaster through defunct economic theories, monetary policies, and greed, should then give their trust to leaders who, it is claimed by Carney, would so blatantly deceive their populations by introducing social remedies merely from the perspective of the economic interests of the market, business world, and the wealthy (Carney 2006). From their biographies, both Lyons and Savage understood the importance of the political economy, and of social and economic balance for their people, but above all, they believed in the need for hope in the community (Gustafson 1986b; Gustafson 1998b; Hart and Lloyd 1986).

When, in April 1938, Michael Savage introduced his government’s legislative proposal for social reform, it was not by coincidence that the title he gave it was Social Security. As Riches stated, “the New Zealand Labour Government will be able to say, first in the world, ‘We have conquered Poverty and abolished Insecurity’” (Riches 1938). Nor was it coincidence that in describing his proposals, he used the term ‘applied Christianity’ (A term suggested by the Reverend W.H.A Vickery, mayor of Kaiapoi). Confronted by the threat of a war in Europe, the erosion of economic stability, the overtures of weakness in Australia’s and New Zealand’s border defences, and the vulnerability of each country’s population to the ravages of physical and psychological harm, the hope and potential for sustainable future stability and individual security was paramount (Gustafson 1986b).

The social security scheme was, as Gustafson states, ‘a team effort’. Other members of Parliament and public servants dealt with the detailed negotiations and drafting of the legislation, but it was Savage's basic scheme design they used. Not designed as a drain on the consolidated account, or on the taxpayer, the Social Security Act 1938 was planned as a form of sustainable social insurance. Every person of 16 years and older, resident in New Zealand, was required to register under the new Act for the insurance. The fee for registration was £1 a year for men and 5s for women and

© Marcelle Slagter 140 persons under 20. In addition, a contribution was charged of 1s for every £1 of income. A man earning £3 a week would therefore pay £1 a year plus 3s a week while a woman earning £3 a week would pay 5s per year plus 3s a week. For this contribution, the State provided Old Age, Widows and Orphans’ Pensions, Medical, Sickness, Invalid, and Unemployment Benefits, and Family Allowances. Payment was also authorized for various minor supplementary benefits, as well as emergency benefits to people unable to qualify for any other benefit and not able to provide an adequate livelihood for themselves and their dependants by reason of age, or physical or mental disability, domestic circumstances, or any other good reason. The National Health part of the Act provided for a complete universal general practitioner service similar to that of the prevailing British scheme as well as provision for maternity care and maintenance in a maternity hospital for 14 days (Gustafson 1986b).

The New Zealand Social Security Act, came into existence providing services and allowances on top of ‘the very high statutory minimum wages’ of New Zealand – the minimum wage set by the Arbitration Courts of the time being £3.16s per week (Riches 1938). With the looming general election, Savage also insisted that for fairness a provision be inserted that the Act would not come into force until 1 April 1939, thereby giving the National Party the opportunity to revoke it if they won the election. Labour, however, won an outstanding electoral victory. Savage consequently was able to see the introduction of his social reforms, but died in office on 27 March 1940 from the bowel cancer he should have had removed more than a year earlier (Gustafson 1998b). His successor was his former campaign manager, deputy, and colleague, Peter Fraser.

Peter Fraser, like Michael Savage, was an immigrant to New Zealand. Born in Scotland, Fraser’s education had also been interrupted at an early age by poverty and the need for him to supplement his family’s income. Also like Savage, Fraser was a self acclaimed socialist, although no one was firmer in drawing the ideological lines in the New Zealand Labour Party’s 1925

A tireless worker, Fraser’s reputation won him widespread respect during the great influenza epidemic in 1918, while his experiences with the unemployed led him to introduce an Unemployment Bill (on behalf of the NZLP) before the House of Representatives in 1926. Modelled on a Queensland (AU) Act, the principle of the Bill was that every worker (willing to work) should have a right to a job or to basic maintenance from the community. The Bill, however, was one of many initiatives considered but not acted on by incumbent New Zealand governments including the sickness and unemployment insurance Sir Joseph Ward had promised in his election budget in 1911 (Sutch 1942, 110-111). Later, Fraser worked tirelessly with Michael Savage on the Social Security Act 1938, and as prime minister made a significant impact in further reducing discrimination against Maori and developing government policies for the Maori people.

In his poverty perception, Fraser was a man whose perceptual values, understandings and experiences placed national interests before those of his party, and the needs of the people above the needs of government. A unisocialist and ardent champion of the League of Nations, Fraser had the presence of mind to denounce the terms of the Versailles Treaty in 1919 as a settlement for war not peace. No doubt with Australia and New Zealand’s defence also in mind, Fraser revealed on the world stage, at the 1945 San Francisco prime ministers’ conference, a strength rarely seen by the New Zealand public. Determined to strengthen the peacekeeping functions of the United Nations, he sought to bind all members to come to the aid of any country that was a victim of aggression.

In personality, however, Fraser’s greatest weaknesses were his authoritarian leadership style, his dour appearance and his lack of public appeal. Despite being an anti-conscriptionist in the First World War, his campaign in 1949 for peacetime compulsory military training created a gap between the leadership and ‘rank and file’ of the Labour Party and contributed to his

© Marcelle Slagter 142 electoral defeat in that year. Exhausted by more than nine and a half years as prime minister, Fraser’s retirement was short-lived. Suffering a slight stroke ten months after the 1949 general election, his recovery was thwarted by his lack of resistance to a number of health problems. He consequently died a year after losing office (Beaglehole 1998; Brown 1966). Peter Fraser was succeeded as leader of the NZLP by Sir Walter Nash, New Zealand’s oldest twentieth-century prime minister, and the last twentieth-century New Zealand prime minister to be born outside New Zealand.

In October 1941, Australia welcomed to office yet another prime minister of Irish-Catholic descent, John Joseph Ambrose Curtin. Curtin was a keen Brunswick football player who was introduced to politics in 1902 (at the age of seventeen) by Frank Anstey, a newly elected socialist state MP and president of the Brunswick Football Club. For the rest of his life, Anstey was to remain Curtin’s political guide and mentor in the theories and ideology of socialism, inspiring not only Curtin’s political beliefs but greater communal interests, including his interest in the trade union movement (Day 2003, 219; Ross 1977, 8; Serle 1993).

Socialism for Curtin, his socialist colleagues, and his Labor Party (known then as the Political Labor League) colleagues carried a specific meaning. It was perceived as a means for creating a reasonable system of local government, settling the unemployed on the land, providing public works for the unemployed, and public ownership – excluding ownership derived from personal effort. Expressing his beliefs in 1906, Curtin stated that: “It makes not one iota of difference what the form of Government or the nature of fiscalism in operation, the dominant characteristic is everywhere the same – an accumulation of wealth, contemporaneous with an increasing degree of extensive and intensive impoverishment and suffering” (Ross 1977, 18, 21).

In 1907, Curtin, then an active member of the Victorian Socialist Party19, helped conduct a survey of Melbourne’s poor. He recalled later how he had visited homes lacking furniture, where in many cases rags and bags served as bedding, where there was no food, and, invariably, no heating. The experience he felt was sorrowful and maddening (Day 2003, 221). Unlike his political predecessors, Serle argues, “Curtin was a natural Australian, impervious to Imperial ideology” who cared nothing for his Irish heritage. Labor and Australia were Curtin’s twin causes; protecting Australia and working-class people his passion. An alcoholic who suffered from neurasthenia veering between optimism and melancholy, Curtin was not a pacifist but a strong believer in traditional socialist anti-militarism and the Marxist analysis that war was essential to the capitalist system. Socialism, Curtin felt, was the only way. “It will end war”, he stated, “as it will conquer poverty”(Day 2003, 224; Serle 1993).

After being sworn in as prime minister and Minister of Defence Coordination on 7 October 1941, Curtin, like Scullin, Lyons and Menzies, was initially beleaguered by indefatigable party treachery and disunity from his backbenchers. Time and effort in seeking to unite Labor coupled with his competency as prime minister helped resolve many issues.

On 8 December 1941, the day after Curtin became prime minister, Japanese armed forces attacked Pearl Harbour. Fearing a potential Japanese invasion of Australia, Curtin had argued earlier (on 5 November 1936), that Australia’s dependence on the competence, let alone the readiness, of British political leaders to send forces to Australia’s aid was a danger in Australia’s defence policy. In his broadcast to the nation, following the Pearl Harbour attack, Curtin stated:

19 The Victorian Socialist Party was established by the British trade union activist Thomas (Tom) Mann who later became a leading figure in the British Communist Party (Day 2003, 220-222).

“We Australians have imperishable traditions. We shall maintain them … We shall hold this country and keep it as a citadel for the British-speaking race and a place where civilisation will persist” (Serle 1993).

Let down by Britain’s views on the defence of Australia, and suspecting that British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill regarded Australia as expendable, Curtin enraged Churchill when he stated, “Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom”. As Serle states: “Menzies [excluding Sir Arthur Fadden’s short term of office as Curtin’s predecessor] and the Opposition parties had supported Churchill. Never had the division between those backing supposed Imperial and Australian interests been so exposed; Curtin’s decision was a landmark in Australian history” (Serle 1993).

Adding another dimension to Australia’s defence concerns, Curtin, like Lyons and Savage, had opposed conscription during World War I. Faced with the dilemma of Australia’s defence in World War II, Curtin introduced limited overseas service for conscripts, but agonised over the unknown fate of Australia’s soldiers overseas. To set his mind at rest he looked forward to leading Australia’s post-war reconstruction (Ross 1977).

In December 1942, Ben Chifley, the Curtin government treasurer, took charge of the new ministry of post-war reconstruction by taking steps to establish a ‘new social order’. Between 1942 and 1944, the Curtin Government wasted no time in reforming Australia’s welfare system. Widows’ pensions that had been Labor party policy since 1915 and introduced in New South Wales in 1926, were established nationally in 1942. Sickness and unemployment benefits were introduced in a single statute that closely modelled the 1938 New Zealand Social Security Act, and maternity allowances and funeral benefits were set up. Even though

© Marcelle Slagter 145 the pensions were targeted toward the ‘deserving poor’20, the new measures, Carney has argued, laid down a strong commitment to the integrity and value of the family unit (Carney 2006, 30-31; National_Archives_of_Australia 2006; Serle 1993).

Curtin, Bob Hawke stated much later, set up the apparatus to make sure that Australia in the post-war period was going to be a better and different Australia than those darkest hours before and after the war. He made it possible for a Keynesian style full-employment economy to take shape in Australia. Even in 1931, “six years before the [Keynes] general theory, Curtin was light years ahead of his contemporaries in understanding the nature of the economic challenge” (Gordon 1993, 16-17).

In summary, John Curtin was a unisocialist whose perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty developed through both socialisation and experience. A player in the political thought of his time, Curtin’s imagination and conscience did not enable him to perceive a life- world beyond his experience, particularly in his continued support and recognition of the White Australia Policy. In this matter, Curtin, like many of his predecessors, was both blind and ignorant; a man with a belief in pursuing freedom and independence for the dominant many with bias stopping fulfilment of the ideal for all.

Curtin’s experience and background as a union organiser and political journalist reflected the aspirations of organised labour during the war, prompting a generation of Australians not only to idealise him, but to view the Labor Governments of 1941–1949 as the Labor Party’s golden age (Griffiths 2005, 11). It remains a tribute to Curtin’s ambition and strength of values that as a prime minister of Australia, his name was not forgotten in the annals of time.

20 Reference to ‘the deserving poor’, in government rationality (or as Foucault referred to it ‘governmentality), means the order and system of categorisation used by the government to determine eligibility for income support assistance.

Curtin died in office on 5 July 1945 just weeks before World War II ended. He was, many of his contemporaries stated, “a war casualty if ever there was one”. Significantly, the most memorable and publicised eulogy to emerge at Curtin’s death came not from a Labor or socialist colleague, but from his immediate predecessor and political opponent Artie Fadden. Fadden, as Opposition Leader, stated that Curtin was: “the best and fairest I ever opposed in politics … one of the greatest Australians ever … he gave … his mateship” (Serle 1993).

Succeeded immediately by Australia’s second caretaker prime minister, Frank Forde, leadership of the ALP then went to Joseph Benedict (Ben) Chifley. Chifley, following the now well-established ALP precedent, was also an Australian-born prime minister of Irish-Catholic descent.

At the age of five, after the birth of his youngest brother, Chifley went for a holiday to his paternal grandfather’s farm at Limekilns but did not return to his parents’ home for the next nine years. During this period, he rarely saw his mother or brothers but lived the life of a nineteenth-century farm boy, sleeping on a chaff-bag bed in a four-roomed earthen floored shack, bringing the cows in for milking before school, and collecting and bagging potatoes dug by his grandfather on his way home from school (Crisp 1977, 3; Waterson 1993).

Attending a bush school only two or three days each alternate week until his grandfather died, Ben Chifley spent the final two years of his schooling at the Bathurst Patrician Brothers’ School. Hating the conditions of his employment at a local store, and unhappy with his educational achievements, he then began night school.

While not an avowed bookworm, Chifley liked to read and gained familiarity in the work of, amongst others, Mestrius Plutarchus, Edward Bellamy, Jack London, Edward Gibbon and George Bernard Shaw. Through his reading he subsequently learned much about politics, trade unions and the labour movement (Crisp 1977, 5-6, 12; Waterson 1993). A

© Marcelle Slagter 147 convinced Labor supporter and union activist after joining the railways, Chifley gained political experience between 1916 and 1928 as a witness and advocate in industrial tribunals, becoming in 1920, a member of the state general committee and delegate to federal conferences for the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Enginemen (A.F.U.L.E). In 1928, he finally took his political enthusiasm a step further and contested the federal seat of Macquarie and, with the assistance of Jim Scullin, began, albeit in its early stage short-lived, life as an MHR (Waterson 1993).

Supporting Scullin’s ‘Premiers’ Plan’ to combat the Depression (1929– 1931), Chifley soon found himself out of office and at odds with the A.F.U.L.E. His pièce de résistance came, however, when he was appointed to the royal commission on monetary and banking systems. This position not only drew out of him a finesse in monetary matters, but changed him into a master in government finance and paved his way to becoming the federal government Treasurer from October 1941 to December 1949 (National_Archives_of_Australia 2006; Waterson 1993).

In political belief, Chifley was a social democrat in the British Fabian tradition, but with his own intense liberalism and human sympathy rather than an indoctrinated Roman Catholic papal dogma. “His approach to socialism was practical and empirical, not philosophic or ideological, and he clearly showed that he had little time for socialist intellectuals and doctrinaires” recalled Father J.G. Murtagh in the Catholic Advocate (Melbourne), after Chifley’s death.

A consensual leader, political solidarity for Chifley came from the positive upsurge evoked from the people he worked with, not as the outcome of threat, coercion or sanctions. In terms of his poverty perception, Chifley cited his and the ALP position when he stated: “We aim to compel those who can well afford to do so to surrender some of their income to help those who do the hard and tedious work of the country … I make no apologies for enforcing redistribution of the national income so that the less fortunate sections of the

community shall be assured, from the cradle to the grave, of some measure of assistance in adversity”21 (Crisp 1977, 233, 250).

Possessing a cautious and conservative financial streak Chifley engaged the mechanics of Keynesian theory to address several major national problems and countless minor issues. In 1945, for example, he faced the problem of a prolonged drought that took a terrible toll on the pastoral and agricultural industries. In the space of less than two years, the sheep population in Australia fell by close to 25 million, or over twenty percent. The drought coincided with the demobilisation of thousands of Australians from the armed forces and other war work. Proper planning for peace was a high ALP priority, as was the desire to ensure full employment in Australia (Crisp 1977, 225; McMullin 2003, 255).

By June 1949, Chifley was able to respond to the anti-Labour attacks on the subject of socialism from the MHR for Wakefield (P.A.M. McBride) with a statement reminiscent of that of Chris Watkins. Chifley stated: “… that while [McBride] is in Canberra he is living in a socialised community. Every service he uses here is socialised. He would not be able to turn on the light in his room or even to take a bath, if it were not for the socialised services provided by the Government”.

Such was political policy on the subject of socialism in Australia, Chifley continued, that the policy was: “… by no means championed solely by the ALP. Mr Playford, the Liberal Premier of South Australia, socialised its electricity undertaking. The Bruce-Page Government socialised ‘A’ Class broadcasting stations. A Liberal Government in Victoria socialised the electricity undertaking which operates throughout that State. All of those activities were socialised because the governments concerned believed it to be in the best interest of the people” (J.B Chifley cited in Crisp 1977, 250).

Chifley was not interested, however, in nationalising the whole country but in developing a ‘mixed economy’. Socialism, in his understanding,

21 The cradle to grave welfare analogy was a policy position first imparted by the Labour Party Prime Minister of New Zealand, Michael Joseph Savage (06/12/1935 - 01/04/1940) (Gustafson 1986b).

© Marcelle Slagter 149 therefore, stood for the maintenance of the maximum measure of personal freedom and individual security: “A condition of society in which man shall not be the slave of Government, or of the State, or of private financial interests controlling his economic destiny” (J.B Chifley cited in Crisp 1977, 251).

“I try to think of the labour movement,” Chifley said in mid-1949, “… not as putting an extra sixpence into somebody’s pocket, or making somebody prime minister or premier, but as a movement bringing something better to the people, better standards of living, greater happiness to the mass of the people. We have a great objective – the light on the hill – which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand” (McMullin 2003, 265). In continuing to ration petrol in Australia after World War II, Chifley did what he thought was right to assist the people of Great Britain. “Sir Walter Citrine, Chancellor of the British Exchequer, had told him that it was essential to maintain petrol rationing to preserve US dollars and help the British people following their grim sufferings” (Daly 1985, 79).

In sum, Chifley was every bit a unisocialist. His interests rested on the pursuit of freedom and independence and developing a unity and balance between the state and society. Like Joe Lyons, Chifley’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty developed while he was still in his youth. It was a perception shaped not from what he had read or seen in films, but from his life experience. As he said of himself, the events of the 1890s, 1917 and the Depression ‘forced the iron into his soul’ and created a hatred of injustice. Unlike Deakin, Chifley was sceptical of Australia’s relationship with the United States of America, and America’s motives for trade liberalisation and the demolition of Imperial preference in Australia (Waterson 1993). He remained steadfast in his loyalty to Britain (McMullin 2003).

Chifley’s political downfall came about in two blows: the first blow fell because of an oversight, the second by desire. In accepting industrial conscription in return for full employment and abundant overtime during the

© Marcelle Slagter 150 war, skilled craft unions allowed unskilled workers including women to do the work previously reserved for tradesmen. Concessions were introduced (such as longer tea breaks) to allow for the changes in the workforce, but with reduced skill levels, and a progressive run-down in plant and equipment in the six years of the war, wage levels also deteriorated. Post- war Australia subsequently saw spontaneous grass-roots campaigns for better wages and working conditions. Chifley, however, disregarded workers demands, deciding instead to retain wartime wage restrictions.

By 1946, strike action coupled with an international fear of communist political activity spreading as it had in both Russia and China, brought the Australian Communist Party into the limelight. In an effort induced primarily by conservative (right wing) opposition political strategies to destabilise the labour movement and ALP, a hunt began for ‘reds under the beds’. Despite minimal communist membership amongst union activists, the fear of communism escalated until the Chifley government turned its back on both striking workers and the Communist Party.

As Griffiths states, “if the Communist Party of Australia received unmerited publicity through the strike(s), it was largely Chifley’s doing”. In allowing it to be made a scapegoat, Chifley provided successive conservative governments with the myth of communist influence in both the labour movement and ALP, thus helping them to retain government office throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The damage created by pride and fear tarnished Chifley’s public image as a Prime Minister intent on helping the poor, and corrupted his vision and goal for eradicating poverty. Communists, rather than low wages, became for him the reason for Australia’s temporal industrial unrest (Griffiths 2005, 25-29).

With free enterprise banks reticently working within the framework of the 1945 banking legislation, public memories still fresh from the experiences brought about in the 1930s Depression, political opposition parties encouraging exaggerated claims of communist infiltration and manipulation within the ALP and union movements, and insufficient publicity of the

© Marcelle Slagter 151 government’s general motivations and policy directions, the circumstance of political ‘climate’ ensured that Chifley’s desire to nationalise private banks became the second harbinger of his political demise. The Banking Act of 1947, providing for nationalisation of the business of banking in Australia, was found to be unconstitutional, and an impediment to the freedom of trade, commerce and communication among the states of Australia. Chifley and the ALP lost the 1949 election. It was a loss, Ross McMullin stated, Labor activists knew should never have happened. “Chifley’s biggest defect as prime minister – the low priority he gave to the presentational public relations side … contributed substantially to the outcome” (Griffiths 2005, 30; McMullin 2003, 266).

Chifley’s achievements, nevertheless, while visibly embryonic in 1949 became the foundation of much of Australia’s prosperity and stability in the 1950s and 1960s. “What made Chifley special as a leader, especially a Labor one,” McMullin eulogises, “was that in his everyday dealings with people he genuinely and effortlessly symbolised the ideas of the labour movement more than any other leader in the ALP’s entire history. While Curtin was greatly admired by his party, Chifley was greatly loved” (Griffiths 2005, 36; McMullin 2003, 268).

4.7 Conclusion This concludes the first half of this study into the poverty perceptions of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. This chapter traced and described the essential themes in the structure of poverty perception of the early ‘humanitarian’ twentieth-century prime ministers. The next chapter continues the process of revealing the essential themes in the structure of poverty perception by analysing the variability in perception of both the mavericks amongst the prime ministers, and the next generations of prime ministers.

Chapter 5

The Rationalist Prime Ministers

“Nothing obscures our social vision as effectively as the economistic prejudice” (Polanyi 1945, 161)

5.0 Prologue Progressively during the twentieth century, liberal politics in Australia and New Zealand oscillated between conservative and labour political thought and the ideals of what was believed to be of greatest value to the people of Australia and New Zealand, and what was believed to be best for the economy of Australia and New Zealand (Brooking 2004; Macintyre 2004). The two beliefs have never been mutually exclusive. In the perception of poverty, and in political direction, prime ministers however, have not always appreciated how, as Merleau-Ponty stated, seeing the concept of the subjective body as simply an object within the world fails to do justice to the body’s contribution to our experience of the world (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 170). Or, put another way, it has not always been understood that the intersubjectivity of people contributes to our life-world experience.

In December 1949, the directions of the governments of both Australia and New Zealand changed to reflect a conservative-rationalist rather than socialist-labour perspective. In the preceding years of Labour governments in both countries, solutions to poverty had dramatically altered. Relief from poverty was no longer about settling the poor on the land in subsistence living, or through an emphasis on labour production from the land. As the momentum of liberal politics progressed from its nineteenth-century roots, so too did the belief that poverty could be reduced by supporting well-being and accommodating the needs of the population (Brooking 2004; Macintyre 2004).

Urbanisation and human spatio-environmental conditions in Australia and New Zealand by the mid-twentieth-century had produced a demand for

© Marcelle Slagter 153 social services unparalleled in the history of the constitution of poverty in these countries. In liberal politics, the solutions to poverty that had previously centred on the individual as an object and cause of poverty now took a wider, albeit still causal, community focus.

A positive outcome was sought that would meet the national and cultural demand for an ideal minimum standard of living; a standard that in its normality and orderliness would ‘lift the bar’ on the intersubjective life- world of the people of Australia and New Zealand to a position only ever dreamed. This ideal was rationalised primarily through Christian values and the desires for freedom and hope of people who had endured, most recently, both the Great Depression and war.

Within the aim of this ideal, the conditions and characteristics of poverty also changed. To achieve the desired community ‘norm’, citizens of Australia and New Zealand would be aided with full employment, free education, free health care, provisions for infirmity, and above all, in the wake of the real homelessness, depravity and insecurity experienced during the Depression and the war, an ability for home ownership or access to State rental housing (i.e. affordable housing).

Ideas of settling the poor and unemployed of Australia and New Zealand on small farms to enable subsistence living had proven less and less realistic as the population of these countries grew. New technology, coupled with improved rural farming techniques to support the increasing population and new urban employment opportunities, required new skills amongst the population. Improvements in the national infrastructure, for example, in transportation, and the increased ability of workers to commute to their place of work, revealed that a higher economic gain could be achieved in concentrating population in suburban living, particularly if labour for production was kept nearby.

History had already seen the State support the development of community infrastructure and farming endeavours in both countries through low interest

© Marcelle Slagter 154 loans and the provision of leasehold property. It was only a small step and a change in thought that brought about the introduction of income-related State rental housing, low interest government provided home mortgage finance, and security of tenure through freehold land ownership.

From the ideal of a minimum standard of living the famous Australian/New Zealand ‘quarter acre section’ (complete with home and vegetable patch) was born. Politically however, it remains a contentious point in history whether government promotion of home ownership amongst the populations of Australia and New Zealand came from a genuine understanding of the needs of the people, or from a desire to counteract the revolutionary possibilities of communism. The events and circumstances surrounding increased urbanisation, and the ideal of the ‘quarter acre section’ in the community, were manipulated for political gain (Brooking 2004; Macintyre 2004).

5.1 Introduction Continuing the style of examination and description presented in Chapter 4, this chapter identifies the ideological variation that permeated the genealogy of thought between political parties in Australia and New Zealand during the twentieth century. Without losing sight of the research question, the chapter therefore also continues to analyse and describe what relationship existed between the political directions adopted by the mid to late twentieth century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand and their perceptions of poverty.

5.2 Perception Driving Political, Social and Economic Direction Opposition to the socialistic style of government adopted by the Labour governments grew rapidly in Australia and New Zealand’s conservative parties. In 1937, Sydney Holland NZ was to describe socialism as “equality of income, irrespective of work, performance or capacity … the very antithesis of private enterprise” (Manawatu Evening Standard, 5 March 1937 cited in Gustafson 1986a, 22). In responding to the introduction of Michael Savage’s Social Security Act 1938, Holland stated the Act

During the 1938 election, however, the National Party leadership (which at the time did not include Holland) stated that National was not opposed to social welfare but insisted it was necessary to produce wealth first. The National Party leadership promised to set up a Ministry of Social Welfare and guaranteed the introduction of a full, complete and free health service for people unable to provide such care for themselves.

Elected to office as New Zealand’s twelfth twentieth-century prime minister in December 1949, Sir Sidney George Holland was, as with two later National leaders, Sir Keith Holyoake and Sir Robert Muldoon, influenced by a theologically conservative religious upbringing other than Catholicism: “Holland and Muldoon in the Baptist denomination [although Gustafson states in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, that Holland was Methodist and later Anglican] and Holyoake in the Plymouth Brethren. Both denominations stressed the puritan work ethic, the intrinsic importance and worth of each individual, the individual’s responsibility for his or her own moral actions, that rights and privileges must be balanced by duties, and a distrust of excessive state interference in people’s lives ” (Gustafson 1986a, 39; Gustafson 2000a).

Personally not a theorist, Holland learnt by listening and doing rather than reading. His perspective of what type of society was best for New Zealand and for himself was fixed: “Individual freedom, individual responsibility, individual initiative, individual opportunity, individual enterprise and individual reward were the principles and objectives he held dear. Economic, political and social freedom, however, did not mean a licence for economic speculators to ravish the country and its inhabitants. Nor did it mean an uncaring society in which those not able to help themselves were callously disregarded. Holland’s political and economic conservatism were tempered by his social humanitarianism and economic pragmatism”(Gustafson 1986a, 30, 39, 40-41).

Preparing for the 1943 general election (which he did not win), Holland promised a ‘new order’ for New Zealand. One in which:

“The welfare state would be maintained to provide for the sick and the aged, unemployment would be prevented, taxation would be reduced, the farmers would be left to manage their own affairs, home ownership would be encouraged, and family life would be supported. Above all else he promised ‘the restoration to New Zealanders of their fundamental British right to live their own lives in their own way without bureaucratic dictation’. All people were entitled to a decent home, a decent job, a decent education, and decent social security. But ‘the basis of New Zealand’s material future was a little word with a big meaning – work’” (Gustafson 1986a, 47-49).

Despite Labour’s success in the 1943 and 1946 elections, New Zealanders began to grow restless and resent the ongoing imposition of government- imposed import controls, land sales controls, price controls, building controls, inflation, shortages, and rationing, all of which continued long after World War II ended. Coupled with the Labour government’s apparent unwillingness or inability to oppose industrial militancy, Holland and the National Party were given the opportunity and ‘evidence’ to emphasise their perspective of the dangers of too much state interventionism. Using the Soviet Union’s brutal takeover of Eastern Europe as an example, the National party warned New Zealanders against the growth of communism in their country. Freedom and a property-owning democracy, it was argued was the key to keeping communism out. “We want the greatest possible number of people having a stake in the country and owning something. This is by far the best way of meeting the menace of communism”, Holland stated. The ‘quarter acre section’ was that object (Gustafson 1986a, 52-54).

Whether Holland and the National Party developed their ideas from Australia, or did in fact cultivate their ideas independently, cannot be said. Sidney Holland, however, did not have the same poverty perceptions as the leaders of the NZLP in his time. The son of a farmer and politician, Holland had grown up and served as a sergeant in the First World War before starting, and becoming the managing director of, a successful engineering company with one of his brothers, entering politics, and buying a farm. His experiences did not include severe economic hardship, or manhood unemployment. In sum, while he had seen the conditions and circumstances

Holland’s perceptual values, understanding and experiences of poverty were very conservative, more akin to the experiences and values of the landowning ruling classes of old Britain (Chapter 3) than the temporal working class population of New Zealand. Despite being a man who, outside politics, showed considerable personal warmth and humour, within politics Holland earned himself a reputation as a tough, aggressive, even autocratic leader, determined to put his conservative values and New Zealand National Party interests in the forefront of national politics and community living in New Zealand. With this approach, and with the claim that he was British through and through, Holland was determined to maintain New Zealand’s links with Britain (Gustafson 2000a). In many respects then, he mirrored the perspective taken by Robert Menzies, not those of a unisocialist.

Whether Sir Robert Gordon Menzies’ Scottish Presbyterian upbringing made him a conservative or whether academic and commercial competition and success, fuelled by ambition, drove him there is not known. His biographies draw attention to the fact, however, that from early beginnings Robert Menzies became a man driven to achieve his own personal goals (Martin 2000; National_Museum_of_Australia 2006). He belonged, as Martin states, “to a generation for whom to be Australian was automatically to be British”, and for whom the British aristocracy were the epitome of society (Griffiths 2005; Martin 2000). His perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty were, therefore, more in reverence to, and reflective of, the values of an orthodox British aristocrat than of a working class Australian labourer.

Menzies’ ambition and British admiration guided his leadership. Even though Menzies’ acclaimed duty and dedication to the Australian people was great, his style of politics was more supercilious than democratic. Unlike his political forebears, Menzies’ desire and ambition to be prime minister was unequivocally his Achilles' heel. In describing Menzies’

© Marcelle Slagter 158 character from Menzies’ first government, John Curtin once expressed the thought that Menzies was not good ‘at handling his men’. Supporting this observation, Menzies’ biographers have disclosed that he was often vitriolic toward both colleagues and opponents alike. Ego and ambition slanted Menzies’ political perception – his ambition so shaping his perspective of world events and circumstances that he displayed more political bias than any previous Australian prime minister had ever done.

In describing an example of Menzies’ political style, Wallace Brown states that even though: “… the small print of both the ANZUS and SEATO Pacts made it clear the USA were not committed to come automatically to Australia’s aid in time of conflict, Menzies invariably managed to make out that it was, and it was against this background that Australia went into the Vietnam War”.

Moreover, states Brown (referring to a detailed 1975 paper from Professor R.G. Neale, historian and government archivist), Australian military assistance to South Vietnam was never, at any time, in response to a request for defence aid from South Vietnam (a protocol of SEATO). Requests for aid were largely generated by the USA in its efforts against communism in South-East Asia (Brown 2002, 26-27).

As the dust began to settle in the aftermath of World War II, and the effects of economic uncertainty and war revealed the tenuous psychological health, happiness, and security of the Australian people, Menzies consciously developed and detonated a metaphorical political bomb in language and engineered perspective on the Australian people. So great was his political ploy that the ramifications of Menzies’ actions would affect Australian politics for decades to come.

Lacking the political policy and charisma needed to defeat the national success of the Australian Labor Party, Menzies began to support, encourage and promote the growth of fear and paranoia toward communist activity in Australia’s communities. Although his accusations were predominantly

© Marcelle Slagter 159 unfounded, the communist ‘witch hunt’ precipitated by Menzies and his right-wing liberal supporters preyed upon the political reaction of the uneducated and the desire for economic security amongst the growing middle classes. Vilifying all major opposition to his political position, Menzies shed doubt not only on the fidelity and commitment of protagonists of the labour and trade union movements, but on the loyalty of the ALP to the people of Australia.

Communist paranoia predictably devastated the ranks of the ALP, producing a political swing more shocking than any former internal conflict or ideological disorder could have wrought. Ben Chifley’s desire to prevent any repeat of the catastrophic bank closures witnessed at the start of the 1930s depression by nationalising the banks backfired. Entering the 1949 general election, Labor faced a well-organised, well-funded opposition. The money and propaganda against the Party was limitless. Bank officers in their hundreds organised, disrupted meetings, and distributed anti-Labor propaganda. Parties and individual Liberal-Country Party candidates received financial support from the banks. In later years, “some members of parliament publicly admitted that the banks had financed their campaigns in 1949” (Daly 1985, 79). Menzies, heralded as a champion, a lion amongst men, won Australia’s political high ground and the crown of prime minister, not by fair representation of domestic and international events and circumstances, but by calculated deceit and intellectual guile (Griffiths 2005; Joske Kt 1978; Martin 2000; Page 1988, 72).

For Menzies, poverty was the cost and burden of the working classes, not society. Shrewdly, however, his promotion of Australia as a major donor in the Colombo Plan, (the co-operative economic and social development in Asia and the Pacific international mutual assistance program) to help war- battered and developing Asian and Pacific nations in 1951, would also contribute to a reduction in the potential for political revolution within assisted countries (Brown 2002, 27).

It was fortuitous for Australia, but not reflective of his personal economic philosophies or activities, that Menzies’ period of leadership was marked by extraordinary economic growth – a feature experienced in most advanced economies in this period and initiated more by the ambitious immigration programme set in place by an earlier ALP government. During the 1930s Depression, Menzies considered that to address the worldwide Depression, sacrifices should be made. He subsequently appealed to Australia’s communities for such sacrifices to replace selfishness, a characteristic he considered predominant in Australia at this time. Promises of government assistance, he believed, were not the solution; the economic crisis was, he believed, a result of excessive borrowing and the bolstering of secondary industries that did not produce exportable goods. Greater exports were required.

Attacking the Scullin government of the early 1930s for its failure to cut government costs and reduce tariffs, Menzies argued such cuts and reductions would give Australian businesses the impetus to eliminate waste and reduce the costs of production so as to bring down price levels (Joske Kt 1978). His style of liberalism and promotion of self-interest and less state interference, however, were not pure. To maintain the political high ground and dissuade opposition, by the early 1950s Menzies conceded to continue the practices of state infrastructural support in, for example, rail, telecommunication, mail services and various industries, and economic social security measures, i.e. the Welfare state. If Menzies political contribution to Australia was viewed only from the perspective of his support for state interference he may have been considered a unisocialist, his political ambition, values, and deceit however, assured that he was not. Menzies’ second government’s legacy to the Australian people guided movement toward Commonwealth participation in the health services field, a movement initiated by the modest introduction of free life saving drugs, hospital financing, and subsidised health insurance for medical bills. Menzies’ second government, however, tended to take a quiet technical approach, its reforms generally favouring middle-income and middle-class interests (Carney 2006, 33).

For non-white and working-class Australia, Menzies’ ongoing support for Australia’s White Australia immigration policies, justified on the grounds of national homogeneity and economic standards, systematically ensured the continuation of class and ethnic bias (Daly 1985, 78). The continuation of poverty under a Menzies government was also assured.

Ill health finally ended Sir Sidney Holland’s term of office as prime minister of New Zealand in 1957. His successor, Sir Keith Jacka Holyoake, not only served as a member of parliament in New Zealand for forty years, but also remained prime minister of New Zealand for over eleven years with only a short respite of three years shortly after becoming leader of the National Party in 1957. Unlike his immediate predecessor, Holyoake was not an aggressive conservative leader but a consensus politician. A principled pragmatist, who despite his anti-socialist rhetoric, had few right-wing inclinations, he admired and respected his first party leader, Gordon Coates, and in keeping with his beliefs in social harmony and cooperation was not only liberal, but also a unisocialist (Wood 1997, 47; Wood 2000).

Adopting a Keynesian-style approach in his economic policies, Holyoake was comfortable with the welfare state and government intervention or more specifically, “big government carrying out a large range of activities”. Having lived through the 1930s Depression, and having seen real poverty, he never wanted that to happen in New Zealand again (Bolger 1997, 13; Grant 2003, 125). Denunciating class conflict, in 1950 Holyoake stated: “If we cannot team up as a people, we will not be able to play our real part … in restoring prosperity and peace in New Zealand. So I say the keynote today must be unity, cooperation, teamwork between all sections of our people. … This government [Holland Government] wants to put an end to class warfare, to hates and the enmity and jealousies that go with them, it wants to put an end to industrial waste to industrial strife, to social strife and the social bitterness that goes with it. This government wants to foster cooperation between all sections, to govern fairly and firmly without fear or favour” (Walsh 1997, 88).

Holyoake’s greatest feat as prime minister was the successful and ‘steady as it goes’ management style he used in order to cultivate majority electoral

© Marcelle Slagter 162 support; avoiding abrupt change, or shocks, or processes that, if speedily dealt with, might induce political harm. Refusing to adopt hardline conservative positions, and willing to learn from experience and mistakes, he was loathe to give allegiance to any particular ideology (Brooking 1997, 125; Grant 2003, 125).

In his poverty perception, Holyoake revealed throughout his life empathy for the people of New Zealand. He was not a life-world observer, nor, in the course of his lifetime, was poverty presented by him as fixed in meaning, condition and characteristic. Holyoake has been quoted as stating: “There’s an old saying that you should live as if you were going to die tomorrow and farm as if you were going to live forever.” Doughty states “As a youthful M.P., among men many years his senior, he witnessed the trauma of the great world-wide economic depression. This had a lasting influence on his whole career. John A Lee (New Zealand writer and expelled Labour Party politician (1891-1982)) has said of him, when speaking of the deflationary politicians of the depression era: ‘He was with them in the flesh but not in the spirit’” (Doughty 1977, 2-3; NZHistory.net.nz 2009).

Holyoake’s government may still be viewed in contemporary ideas as conservative, but as the Royal Commission on Social Security observed, New Zealand during the Holyoake years was characterised by economic expansion, rising employment, and rising living standards. Apart from relatively short-lived checks in economic activity, the years since Michael Savage’s Social Security Act 1938 had been marked by continuing increases in incomes and productivity. Full employment had for the most part been maintained, and there was every indication that the quality of life in New Zealand had improved (Wood 1997, 35, 47).

To his credit, when Jack Hunn released his report (The Hunn Report, 1961) on the disadvantaged position of Maori in New Zealand (commissioned by Walter Nash), the Holyoake government not only published it, but endeavoured to act on its recommendations. Asserting his government’s values concerning indigenous discrimination, Holyoake also took a stand

Of great significance during Holyoake’s term as prime minister of New Zealand were the major challenges he faced in negotiating New Zealand’s political and national maturity. After more than a century of New Zealand’s political deference to, and economic dependence on, Britain, overtures began to be made in 1961 about Britain’s entry to the European Economic Community (EEC). New Zealand, at this time, was so heavily bound to the British market that had special provision not been negotiated for continued access to Britain for New Zealand agricultural produce, New Zealand’s economy would have collapsed. Added to this event were the Holyoake government’s relations with the United States of America. Principle, anti- communism, defence commitments and trade repercussions all played their part in supporting the United States in the Vietnam War.

In his poverty perception, therefore, Holyoake was not faced merely with the interests of a few, but with the future of all. New Zealand had to change or perish. It was the Holyoake government that opened the way to diversify New Zealand’s export trade and encourage an economic eye beyond Britain. It was also with the Holyoake government that the people of New Zealand began to identify themselves more as New Zealanders than as British (Grant 2003; Wood 2000).

Apart from Sir Robert Menzies, during the Holyoake years in New Zealand Australia had three other prime ministers. Of note, Harold Edward Holt was the twentieth-century Liberal Party of Australia prime minister whose government began the deconstruction of the historical White Australia Policy, allowed for the counting of Aboriginal people in the Australian Census, and who allowed the Commonwealth to legislate on Aboriginal affairs. Initially a stout defender of the White Australia Policy, Holt’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences of Australia and its immigration policy changed through his experience as Immigration Minister in the Menzies Government (19 December 1949–24 October 1956).

Encouraged further by the decline of British immigration in the 1960s, and opposition from his party’s grassroots to the continued inflexibility of the White Australia Policy toward non-British migrants, Holt found he could no longer justify the policies of his prime ministerial predecessors (Frame 2005, 161; National_Archives_of_Australia 2006).

Holt joined the Young Nationalists, and in 1934 contested the seat of Yarra against former prime minister James Scullin for the United Australia Party. Though unsuccessful, Holt proved himself a worthy adversary. A year later, after contesting the seat of Fawkner in a by-election, the young 27 year-old Holt was admitted to the House of Representatives. His campaign speeches advocated support for housing-unemployment schemes, slum reclamation and a national unemployment insurance scheme. He adopted what Frame describes as: “… a characteristically ‘Deakinite’ position. He thought that poverty existed because ‘the problem of production had been solved but distribution was still a difficulty’” (Frame 2005, 9-11; Hancock 1996).

By the time Harold Holt became prime minister, he was far from an unknown entity. He had been a member of the House of Representatives for 30 years, 5 months and 9 days – it was Frame states, the longest apprenticeship for the post in Australian history. In February 1966, when he made his first major address to the Liberal Party, Holt was quick to distance the new outlook of the Party from the leadership of his predecessor Sir Robert Menzies. No noticeable change however, appeared to exist in Holt's political outlook from that expressed in his early campaign speeches with the UAP or from the perspectives of his predecessor. The Liberal Party policy, inherited from Menzies, accepted the ‘domino theory’ that if one nation fell to communism in South-East Asia, the rest would also fall, leaving Australia isolated from the world. “My support for this particular party” Holt said earlier in his career, “arises from the conviction that it is the one party which does aim at legislating for the community as a whole and not for one particular class” (Frame 2005, 12, 133, 145; Page 1988, 93).

With this liberal thought, and through his subsequent actions, Holt was a unisocialist.

Despite Holt’s lengthy apprenticeship his leadership as prime minister did not last long. In the 22 months that he was prime minister, Holt worked to strengthen Australia’s alliance with the United States of America against the communist threat; preserve a British presence east of Suez; emphasise the importance of Asia to global development and international stability; and sustain the Australian domestic economy with high levels of foreign investment. Explaining during his career that Australians were proud of their British origins and of the British way of life (which was the basis of their own), and saying that it was natural and commendable that Australia should seek to preserve the predominantly British character of its population, Holt nevertheless opened Australia to the world, and the world to Australia (Frame 2005, 302).

Holt's vision of, and for, Australia far exceeded the limited gaze of an observer – he possessed an insight and compassion not seen in his mentor and predecessor Robert Menzies. Holt’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty were however, cocooned in his middle-class values; his life-world understanding based more on learning than experience. Yet, even though his understanding of poverty was not communicated beyond an economic consideration, his empathy and concern for the interests of people from varying ethnic and cultural backgrounds suggested some understanding of the conditions and characteristics of poverty in his time.

Holt’s sudden disappearance while swimming at Portsea on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula resulted in the elevation of Sir John McEwen to the position of Prime Minister. In quoting Peter Golding: “If one seeks to understand [Sir John] McEwen and to find meaning in what he did and what he became one only needs to trace his beginnings. It is all there, written bold. Motherless before he was two, orphaned at seven, raised in poverty, a struggling soldier settler surrounded by others who were hungry and would be driven off their

properties by bank foreclosures, exploited by profiteers, ignored by government, desperately trying to survive in an environment of unemployment and want. This was the palette from which his life was painted” (Golding 1996, 6).

Sir John McEwen was a politician for thirty-seven years and caretaker prime minister of Australia for just twenty-three days. If, however, the periods that McEwen was acting prime minister during the absences of Menzies, Holt and Gorton are counted, McEwen was in fact Prime Minister for a total of 550 days. Nevertheless, politically, Golding argues, McEwen should be recognised historically for striving “throughout his life to help Australia’s and the world’s underdogs in their battle against the odds” (Golding 1996, 1-2, 21).

In McEwen’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences, poverty had no distinct boundary when it came to the unfair exchange of income for labour. For McEwen, the tentacles of poverty stretched well beyond the margins of the unemployed, touching both the employed and employers. Having seen depression and wars, and Australia’s economic dependence on Britain, however, McEwen’s gaze was fixed on only one area of Australian life – production. McEwen believed the nation needed to produce whatever it possibly could. It needed more population (for its defence), jobs and growth. Australia should export wherever it could, for the best prices that it could. McEwen, therefore, had no qualms about selling wool and wheat to Communist China even when this nation was not recognised by Australia diplomatically (Brown 2002, 63; Golding 1996, 86).

McEwen was a force to be reckoned with. Even when Arthur Fadden was Country Party leader and deputy prime minister from 1949 to 1958, McEwen was always the dominant force in the party. In the Menzies coalition government of the early 1960s, McEwen set the Coalition government’s economic policy. For McEwen, there was no such thing as a level global economic playing field. Australia needed all-round protection from imports in both its rural and manufacturing sectors. His policy of ‘all- round protection’ stemmed from the belief that it was wrong for one sector

© Marcelle Slagter 167 of the economy to be advantaged at the expense of another. If protection of manufacturers pushed up costs to farmers, he reasoned compensation should be made through subsidies and bounties (Golding 2003, 293). Losing rural and manufacturing production would, he argued, result in much higher levels of unemployment than that incurred through tariff protection. Menzies accepted this, but so too did Harold Holt. McEwen essentially, therefore, set Australia’s economic policy for the best part of four decades (Brown 2002, 62, 76; Golding 2003, 293).

What was missing in McEwen’s protectionist economic perspective? From McEwen’s own perceptual values, understandings and experiences, his economic perspective failed to change with time and circumstance. When temporal changes in the domestic and global market called for more competitive product quality and efficient production by the Australian rural and manufacturing sectors, production in these sectors was allowed to stagnate beneath a blanket of tariff protection that had long exceeded its ‘use by date’. In the meantime, the Australian jobseeker, consumer and taxpayer, came to bear more and more of the cost of stifled competition and monopoly pricing.

An editorial in the Melbourne Age summarised the economic position of Australia under McEwen’s steerage on 26 January 1971 when it declared: “The Tariff Board in its latest annual report disclosed that Australian manufacturers are cosily sheltering behind a massive tariff wall worth $2700 million a year. The average manufacturing industry, the board declares, is probably getting significantly more protection than it needs to compete profitably against imports. The average effective tariff is 46 percent, bordering on the 50 percent, which the board considers as high-level protection. If ‘economic and efficient’ production is the true qualifying test for such a generous measure of protection then the disinterested observer can only gasp in astonished disbelief” (Golding 1996, 251-252).

McEwen was succeeded as prime minister of Australia by Sir John Gorton and retired from politics on 1 February 1971. Gorton was rather an enigma. According to his entrepreneurial and orchardist father John Rose Gorton, John junior was born out of wedlock in Wellington, New Zealand. On the

© Marcelle Slagter 168 other hand, it has also been recorded that, in fact, Gorton was born and registered in Melbourne, Australia under the name John Alga Gordon. Taking John Gorton’s own belief, at the age of 20, he applied for a pilot’s licence in England, then enrolled at the University of Oxford, and later joined the RAAF in 1940 giving his birthplace on each occasion as Wellington, New Zealand (Hancock 2002, 1-2).

Although his early years were a travesty that ended when his mother died of tuberculosis when Gorton was seven, Gorton, if compared to many of his generation, did not personally experience the hardship of poverty or a financially tough life. Beginning his formal education at Edgecliff Preparatory School, in 1920 Gorton then attended Headfort College before, in 1924, being enrolled as a boarder at the Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore), and at Geelong Grammar School in 1927 (Hancock 2002, 7-13; Henderson 2003b, 304).

Gorton remained at Geelong Grammar School until the end of 1930, the year when the Great Depression and unemployment arrived in Geelong and crossed Australia. In this same year, his school headmaster, James Ralph Darling, disturbed by the effects of the Depression, enlisted senior boys to collect and distribute food to the unemployed, many of whom were ex- servicemen. Each Friday, the boys experienced firsthand the distress caused by unemployment. It was an experience that years later, Gorton would repeatedly refer to as having shaped his political outlook. Australia, he considered, must never again be allowed to leave those who had fought for their country to endure such poverty. Governments had a responsibility to care for those buffeted by forces beyond their control (Hancock 2002, 15- 16).

Asked in April 1946 to reply to the main toast at the Mystic Park ‘Welcome Home’ celebration for local ex-servicemen, Gorton’s speech not only profoundly moved his audience but also outlined objectives he was later to pursue as prime minister. He stated:

“There has been a good deal of confusion of thought as to why we went to war… We did not go to war to make a new and better world … We fought only to preserve, for ourselves and our children, that conception of political freedom and justice which was being attacked by a tyrannous power. We succeeded in that defence … We got what we went after. We retained a system of government in which we, the people, choose our governors, dismiss them when we wish, and have a voice in our own destiny. We retained a conception of justice in which the humblest one amongst us has equal rights before the law with the head of the State … But it is now, in the peace, that we must make our advances … We must remove from the minds of men the fear of poverty as the result of illness, or accident, or old age. We must turn our schools into institutions which will produce young men and women avid for further education and increased knowledge. We must raise the material standard of living so that all children can grow up with sufficient space and light and proper nourishment … We must do our most to alleviate the immediate suffering, and we must take our place in the world, not as a self- sufficient, sealed-off unit, but as a member of a family, the members of which are dependent the one upon the other … We bought your freedom with our lives. So take this freedom. Guard it as [the deceased servicemen and women who fought in the war] have guarded it, use it as [they] can no longer use it, and with it as a foundation, build. Build a world in which meanness and poverty, tyranny and hate, have no existence”(Gorton cited in Brown 2002, 90; Hancock 2002, Appendix 404-406).

John Gorton officially entered federal politics as a senator for Victoria (under the new system of proportional representation in the Australian Senate) on 22 February 1950. Defining socialism to be “state action to prevent a person from earning his living in a particular industry or enterprise” (Gorton cited in Hancock 2002, 71), Gorton declared himself in 1948 as ‘anti-socialist’. Yet, throughout his political career, Gorton held firmly to the belief that the state should assist people who could not help themselves, and enable people to accept responsibility for their own destiny where they could help themselves. By 1968, Gorton’s: “... opponents within the Liberal Party, and admirers on the other side of politics, thought that his commitment to the weak and unprotected meant he was really a Labor man with socialist leanings” (Hancock 2002, 52, 57, 61, 63).

When Gorton became prime minister of Australia on 10 January 1968, he was the first and only twentieth-century politician in Australia to become

© Marcelle Slagter 170 prime minister as a senator. On 24 February, however, he gained a place in the federal House of Representatives after winning the by-election for Harold Holt’s former seat of Higgins in Melbourne (Hancock 2002, 151; Henderson 2003b, 307).

Described as a prime minister who produced very few real achievements while in office (because of a lack of policy sense), Gorton still displayed an empathy toward the unisocialist ideals pursued by Australia’s political federal leadership at the time of the enactment of universal suffrage early in the twentieth century (Henderson 2003b, 311). A centrist in his policy ideas, Hancock states: “Gorton strove to protect the country’s resources from foreign ownership, to promote Australia’s independence and to foster a sense of national self-esteem. He made significant contributions to environmental protection, and to the reform of the health system and the expansion of social welfare” (Brown 2002, 93; Hancock 2002, xii).

Gorton, however, also continued to condone the prevalent inequality created politically by the White Australia Policy. The eradication of poverty amongst Australians from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds was, he considered, a matter of their assimilation with mainstream Australia. Moreover, he believed that Australia should only accept immigrants capable of assimilating in order to preserve the dominance and homogeneity of the Anglo-Celt culture. This is not to say that Gorton did not recognise a need to assist Australia’s indigenous community. In his first budget as prime minister his government provided an extra $10m in expenditure for Aboriginal welfare, but his perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty were focused more on the political economy of white than non-white Australia (Hancock 2002, 85, 192).

Sir William McMahon officially replaced Gorton as leader of the Liberal Party after McMahon and Malcolm Fraser spearheaded a ‘no confidence’ motion in Gorton’s leadership in March 1971. In 1975, Gorton formally quit the Liberal Party when Malcolm Fraser (ironically the man who had

© Marcelle Slagter 171 helped Gorton become prime minister) took the leadership. Standing as an independent in the December 1975 general election, Gorton’s animosity toward Fraser was so great that he urged Australian electors to vote for Labor against Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal-Country Party coalition government (Henderson 2003b, 300).

Representing the last vestiges of the early twentieth-century labour movement, New Zealand’s Sir Walter Nash was 75 years old when he finally became prime minister in 1957, and the last twentieth-century New Zealand prime minister to have been born overseas. A battler, in the Australian context of the word, Nash’s family lived close to the poverty line when he was a child. Attending primary school until he was 11 years old, Nash, despite winning a scholarship to continue his education, then began his working life because his family lacked money (Grant 2003, 129) .

Two influences made a permanent impression on the young Nash’s life: his father, a part-time Conservative Party agent, introduced him early to politics; and his mother, a devout Anglican, fostered in him a steadfast belief in Christianity. Nash’s deeply felt and largely unwavering Christian views included the belief that it is “a Christian’s duty to work to bring about God’s kingdom on earth” (Gustafson 1998a). His religion however, “centred on practical morality and ethics rather than spirituality and ritual”. In following the perspectives on life of John Ruskin, Nash also believed that “the distribution of wealth in the interests of the majority was, or should be, at the core of economic thinking”, and like Michael Savage, Nash was convinced that socialism was quite literally, applied Christianity (Grant 2003, 129-130; Sinclair 1976).

In terms of poverty perception Nash stated: “I am a socialist in the sense that I believe that a major responsibility of Government is to provide collectively for the economic welfare and security of the individual. But I am a conservative in the sense that I look upon the family as the foundation of the nation. I believe that no nation or race can prosper or progress whose people lack the conditions necessary for a ‘home’ and ‘home life’ in the best and fullest meaning of those words. In planning for the future, therefore,

the problem of housing must be closely related to the problem of industry, on the one hand, and to the requirements of home life, on the other. … In other words, the problems of the individual must be closely integrated with those of the community …” (Nash 1943, 265).

In describing the issue of defence and security for New Zealand, Nash stated: “There was a time when her isolation meant security, when the long ocean distances between her shores and those of any potentially aggressive power were in themselves an effective guarantee against attack. But the long-range bomber, the ocean-going submarine, and the aircraft carrier have changed all this. We have had to alter concepts of geography. … New Zealanders are conscious of the fact [nonetheless] that they are part of a Commonwealth of Nations whose first ideal is freedom of the individual and that that Commonwealth is allied with other countries whose ideals are freedom and security for the individual person” (1943, 57-58).

Supporting his ideas, Nash pointed out that long hard years of pioneering had brought home very forcibly to New Zealanders the necessity for self- help. “They learned this lesson well and they have not forgotten it … They learned, too, that the individual can only thrive if all join in helping one another. Thus there emerged side by side with a deep faith in the value of individual freedom an equally firm belief in the value of collective organisation for the individual as well as for the nation” (1943, 60).

In describing the philosophy of the Labour Party in his time, Nash said: • “the first charge on a nation’s wealth should be the care of the old because they have worked in their earlier and fruitful years to make it possible for us to enjoy the standards we enjoy today, of the young because unless we care for them the future will not be provided for, of the ailing because they cannot care for themselves; • that after making this provision those who render useful services are entitled to the full fruits of their labour; • that our resources must be so organised as to ensure the maximum production of useful goods and services and their availability to those who, if able, render useful service so that all may enjoy good standards of life, with security and leisure; and • that it will take collective planning both to make the best of our resources and to ensure that human needs are satisfied to the utmost” (1943, 63). Nash’s philosophy by this time mirrored the ideas of Richard Seddon.

From his perspective, Nash noted that since 1939 the demands of war had superseded other objectives22; both before and after the war however, political efforts were consistently directed toward the promotion of a healthier and happier community. To ensure maintenance of home and family life, and to free mothers of families from some of the difficulties and fears experienced in the past through inadequate income, the social security scheme was developed. The idea behind this scheme, Nash emphasised, was for the community to accept responsibility for a person unable to care for him or herself thereby doing away with the need for and stigma of charity (Nash 1943, 64-65).

Nash’s perception of poverty nevertheless did not extend equally to Maori. More paternalistic than neglectful, Nash sided with the New Zealand Rugby Football Union in excluding all players of Maori descent from a tour of South Africa in 1959. It “would be an act of the greatest folly and cruelty to the Maori race” he argued, for Maori players to go to South Africa (Grant 2003). In so doing, Nash removed from the Maori people the ability to decide for themselves, as well as reducing their recourse to political process.

Nash was not a good leader. His secretary Bruce Brown wrote that, despite his intellectual capacity and energy, Nash lacked organisational skills. “He led the band from the front but he led it as a one-man band. Once every three years, so it seemed, he looked over his shoulder at election time to see if his followers were still there. Not all of them were” (Grant 2003, 133).

Even though his popularity within his own party was waning, Nash won the 1957 election to become New Zealand’s third Labour prime minister, but the outgoing Holland-Holyoake National government had concealed a drastically deteriorating balance of payments situation. In taking urgent

22 In April 1939, Nash was in London seeking further government loans. With the New Zealand Labour Government’s obvious socialistic political thinking however, British bankers and politicians were condescending and hostile offering assistance only subject to very harsh terms. Michael Savage was furious with the British behaviour. Nash returned to New Zealand arriving on 1 September. Two days before his return both Britain and New Zealand declared war on Germany. Within days, the British government changed its stance toward New Zealand and offered to buy New Zealand’s entire export of meat and dairy products (Gustafson 1998a).

© Marcelle Slagter 174 steps to reduce imports and purchasing power, Arnold Nordmeyer, as minister of finance, presented what became known as ‘the Black Budget’. The budget implemented some of Labour’s election promises, but also increased direct taxation and the cost of beer, cigarettes and petrol. With National opposition coaxing a hostile news media, public fury erupted.

Although there had been some dissatisfaction with his leadership of the Labour Party before his 1957 election as prime minister (with notable declines in Labour support and membership), Nash had stood rigidly against moves to replace him. Losing the next election, Nash continued as leader for the 1963 election but at 81 years old, he had effectively lost touch with the New Zealand people. Besides his age, his frequent absences from New Zealand during his term as prime minister had given him the image of a dogmatic and vain prime minister; lecturing at world conferences and individual leaders on the importance of international understanding, disarmament and peace, he could no longer see what his people needed (Gustafson 1998a). While Nash regarded himself as a socialist, his vanity in seeking to stay in power, together with his lack of skill in promoting social unity and organisation, and his beliefs in discrimination against Maori, meant that he was not a unisocialist.

It took twelve years before a Labour government could again gather enough strength and charismatic leadership to come into power in New Zealand. When Norman Kirk became the fourth Labour prime minister of New Zealand, his education and the hardships of his working-class employment history reflected the profile of his predecessors. This profile, however, was rapidly moving out of its time. Consequently, Kirk was the last working- class New Zealand Labour Party prime minister of the twentieth century.

The first Labour prime minister to have been born in New Zealand, Kirk’s early perceptions of poverty developed during the 1930s Depression when his father, able to obtain only intermittent work, was employed on government relief schemes. Struggling to survive, his family suffered the added indignity of bureaucratic bungling in being prevented from receiving

In common with the ‘old guard’ of the Labour Party, Kirk was a conservative on moral and law and order issues who talked about families and full employment. Unlike his predecessors, Kirk seldom used the word socialism in relation to his, and his government’s, political philosophy. Instead, Kirk summed up his, and the Labour Party’s, principles in terms of a system: “a social programme which will promote the housing of our people, protect their health, and ensure full employment and equal opportunity for all” (Bassett 2000; Grant 2003, 142). The government Kirk joined in 1960 was, however, a shadow of the government he had admired when he first went to work in 1935. Under the leadership of Walter Nash, the NZLP’s main task had become one of defending what it had achieved, not presenting itself as innovative or forward thinking enough to govern successfully (Eagles and James 1973, 21).

Throughout his political career, Kirk drew on his own practical life-world experiences unencumbered by theory or doctrine. Whether he identified foremost with New Zealand as his home because his parents had no specific ties to Britain, or because of the outrage felt from Walter Nash and Keith Holyoake’s historic experiences with British political and economic diplomacy, Kirk did not believe in New Zealand dependence on Britain. What he did believe in was full nationhood for New Zealand – free from unnecessary overseas ties (Templeton and Eunson in Grant 2003, 142).

In seeking to promote and advertise the value and desirability of the Labour Party and himself more professionally, Kirk opened up a new era in New Zealand politics. The stump tours and street corner soapbox oratory of his predecessors was beamed to voters nationwide through television – the medium that would plant in voters’ minds new learned perceptions about both politics and poverty.

Even though he had left organised religion behind when he had moved from his parents’ home, in 1972 Kirk showed a passionate belief in a reforming government’s ability to create a society of genuinely equal opportunity in New Zealand. Never was Kirk more succinct in setting out his objectives for the Labour Party however, than in his leader’s address in 1968: “Our movement is not just a fort from which past achievements are defended” he stated, “it is a forward-looking force that accepts the challenge of the future…. It aims to work for the betterment of mankind, both here and abroad; to pursue that great objective of peace and plenty; for the creation of a satisfying society in which each person may seek fulfilment through the application of their talents, abilities and hopes; a society with a sense of purpose”. Then in self-identification, Kirk stated: “The words New Zealand are as important as the word Labour … We [the Labour Party] strive for opportunities for New Zealanders in every field. We demand that New Zealanders should be allowed to run their own affairs … We aim to accelerate New Zealand’s journey towards nationhood” (Norman Kirk in Eagles and James 1973, 53).

Leaving no rock unturned in his desire to dispel the public image of the Labour Party as a haven for militant unionists, extremists and radicals, Kirk’s slogan for the 1972 election was simply ‘It’s time for a change’. The policies of the National Party in 1972 had been developed in the days of the Depression, and following the confusion of World War II these policies still assumed that what the people of New Zealand wanted in the 1970s was security, continuity, welfare assistance, and not much else. Labour’s policies were a little more in tune with the times (Eagles and James 1973, 218; Grant 2003, 143).

In his perception of poverty Kirk was a man whose values, understandings and experiences extended far beyond what he had learnt and seen in his life- world. A unisocialist, his greatest strength was his understanding of other people, his greatest weakness his impatience with economic detail. As Grant points out, Kirk was not an empiricist. He “saw economics in terms of symptoms rather than causes” (Garnier, Kohn and Booth in Grant 2003, 144). Kirk’s term in office as prime minister was cut short when he

© Marcelle Slagter 177 suddenly died of congestive cardiac failure and thromboembolic pulmonary heart disease on 31 August 1974. He was only 51 years old when he died, leaving, as Bassett states, a nation and a Labour Party willing to bring to legend the potential of the man who ‘might have saved the country from Muldoon’ (Bassett 2000).

5.3 Rationality, Unity and Perspective in Party Politics In researching and analysing the poverty perceptions of the twentieth- century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, the prime ministers biographies revealed that certain thoughts about, and solutions to, poverty were historically carried forward (systematised) and rationalised in scientific ‘causal’ theory; for example, in communities rationalising the social promotion of land ownership, and the social characteristics that helped identify the deserving poor. Added to this, there was also significant evidence to suggest that the perceptions of poverty of the prime ministers helped to shape both their political direction and their understanding of the constitution of poverty in their country, in their time. Yet, while historic learning may have contributed to the continuation of certain thoughts about, and solutions to poverty, the passing of time brought with it changes not only in values, understandings, experiences, for the formation of new perceptions, but also in reasoning.

In terms of consciousness, perception was a tool for some prime ministers; its use manipulated for the display of subterfuge (as in the idea of ‘creating a perception’), to hide ignorance, and to hide uncertainty. Whether its use was conscious or unconscious, perception has been the driving force in the presence of both party factionalism and in the self-identification of the prime ministers with party values. This section looks at some of the short- term and more indecisive prime ministers of the twentieth century.

For the early prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, i.e. Edmund Barton AU, Alfred Deakin AU, George Reid AU, William Hughes AU, Richard Seddon NZ, William Hall-Jones NZ, Joseph Ward NZ, and Gordon Coates NZ, party politics was viewed largely as an anathema. Locality, however,

© Marcelle Slagter 178 planted the seeds for change in both the development and support of party organisation and the formation of political perceptions about poverty in Australia and New Zealand. This change included the recognition of locality and poverty as communal problems, and, in reasoned thought, provided the foundation for potential solutions.

Although Andrew Fisher AU came from a staunch working-class upbringing, his political philosophy contained no thoughts of inspiring class warfare. Despite identifying society in 1908 as having a labouring class ‘and a speculating class’, in his radical labour principles, like his poverty perception, Fisher reflected the ingrained perceptual values, understandings and experiences of his life in the Ayrshire mines, and his habit of reading and studying. His solution to class division was therefore to provide parliamentary reforms in banking, industrial safety, workers compensation, land and employment, in order to elevate the living standard of the labourer, and introduce graduated income tax, control of monopolies and state ownership of certain ventures to lessen the power of the governing classes (Murphy 1981).

Unreservedly supportive of the tenets of social democracy through constitutional government, Fisher favoured progressive public policy as a method for reducing social discord and inequality. With the Australian Labor Party entering federal politics, Fisher considered that the shape of politics in Australia had irretrievably changed: “We are all socialists now and indeed the only qualification you hear from anybody is probably that he is ‘not an extreme socialist’” he said (Lloyd 2003a, 76-77, 85; Murphy 1981). Some of his successors, however, were not so sure.

In the wake of the failed national maritime strike of 1890, Sir Joseph Cook

AU entered state politics as the fledgling Labor Party representative for Hartley. A strong supporter of Henry George and his ideas for a single land tax system, Cook promoted the introduction of the eight-hour day, the regulation of coalmines, a land tax, female suffrage, and local option (the prohibition of the sale of alcohol in his district). Cook was nonetheless a

When, in 1893, the Labor Party became divided on the issue of free trade and protection, Cook was chosen as leader of the free trade faction. A year later, Cook quit the Labor Party when it established the Caucus solidarity principle, a principle binding Labor members of parliament to decisions made by a party meeting in Caucus. Still regarding himself as a representative of the labour movement, Cook then aligned himself with the Free Trade Party of Sir George Reid (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006, 93; Rickard 2003).

Following Reid into federal politics, Cook became MHR for Parramatta (which included Lithgow) on 29 March 1901, and in July 1905 was elected deputy leader of the Free Trade Party. Only fourteen years out of the mines, Cook believed that: “No one class in society ought to benefit at the expense of any other and that there should be no unnecessary restrictions on personal freedom”. Moreover, he saw social reform as a slow and laborious achievement, and declared that: “All Labor Party policies were sectional and socialist, while his own were liberal and in the national interest” (Crowley 1981).

When in 1908 the ALP withdrew its support from the Deakin Protectionist government, the formation of a fusion party of anti-Labor free traders and protectionists was speculated. Having much in common with Deakin, apart from his views on protection, Cook, now leader of the Free Trade Party, entered his second political alliance becoming deputy leader and minister for defence in Deakin’s ‘Fusion’ government. Defeated at the next federal election by the Fisher Labor government, the surviving fusionists formed themselves into the Liberal Party.

In opposition, Cook again launched himself into a vociferous attack against Labor, particularly Fisher’s proposals for a federal land tax and a federal

© Marcelle Slagter 180 government bank. In January 1913, Deakin resigned as leader of the Liberal Party and Cook became first, the leader of the Liberal Party, and in May, prime minister of Australia. As prime minister, Cook was now not only protectionist and conservative, but also no longer displayed or made reference to his working-class origins.

His government was short lived. Despite gaining a majority in the House of Representatives, the Labor Party still held a majority in the Senate. With little chance of sponsoring new legislation, Cook therefore successfully went on the attack to bring about a double dissolution of parliament. In September 1914, Labor, still under Andrew Fisher’s leadership, nevertheless gained control of both Houses (Crowley 1981; Rickard 2003, 95).

Cook was never again to become prime minister in his own right, but in May 1917 he struck up his third political alliance, this time with another former Labor party opportunist, William Morris Hughes. The result was the establishment of the Nationalist Party. In the election of May 1917, the Nationalist coalition government won a majority in both Houses with Hughes as prime minister and party leader, and Cook as his loyal deputy.

A man described as “one of the Australian Lincolns” (a prime minister whose early poverty meant they had left school as boys to take jobs (National_Archives_of_Australia 2006)), Cook’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty overwhelmingly influenced his development, both in the creation of his social position as a man and in his perspective on his life-world. Striving to distance himself from the misery of his youth, Cook fought for what he thought was right, demonstrating like

Seddon NZ and Ward NZ that he was of the generation of politicians who, being self-made men, were more loyal to the cause than to the party (National_Archives_of_Australia 2006; Rickard 2003, 90).

Having been entrusted early in his childhood with the responsibility of caring and providing for his family, it should have come as no surprise that as a politician survival came first. Nor should it have been surprising to

© Marcelle Slagter 181 hear that Cook, as Crowley stated, “always thought it the moral duty of government to elevate the working classes, as ‘some sort of parent to the people’” (Crowley 1981). With his Primitive Methodist beliefs, reinforcing in him the morals and values of self-improvement, Cook was every bit a protégé of the historical discourse of poverty i.e. he adopted in his time the historic value-laden and moralistic ideas, theories, and values of social occupation, that had defined poverty in the past. Cook did not, therefore, necessarily understand or acknowledge the circumstantial changes in conditions, characteristics, and in the constitution of poverty, that presence imposed uninterrupted in his own lifetime and life-world. That, at the end of his life, Cook should build a block of flats in Sydney as insurance against poverty, reflected his belief in the historic ‘truth’ that the problems of poverty and unemployment could be addressed by property ownership.

A leading frontbencher, William Morris Hughes was a strong supporter of Chris Watson and a Cabinet Minister in the first Federal Labor Government formed by Watson in April 1904. Rising to the position of deputy prime minister in 1907, when the leadership of the Labor Party passed to Andrew Fisher, Hughes then succeeded Fisher as prime minister in 1915 (Bolton 2003b, 108-110). Hughes, however, was not a true protagonist of party politics, preferring instead to pursue his own political values and beliefs. Within months of becoming prime minister, opposition from within his own party confronted Hughes.

A British imperialist and Australian nationalist at heart, Hughes believed that “the Australian was a purer and better Briton. Australia may well have had her own interests in terms of security, trade and commerce, but in a cultural and emotional sense she was wholly British”. “We are more British than the people of Great Britain,” Hughes said, “and we hold firmly to the great principle of the White Australia, because we know what we know” (Curran 2004, 7).

Proclaiming his support for Britain at the outbreak of World War I, Hughes set a political direction for Australia based fundamentally on two beliefs. In

© Marcelle Slagter 182 the first belief, Hughes recognised that Australia’s economic path lay neither with free trade nor with protectionism. Instead, he believed both the security of the British Empire and Australia lay in the development and control within Australia of its own industries and the orderly marketing of Australia’s major export commodities. Hughes’ second belief rested firmly on his allegiance to Britain and the British Empire, and his undertaking to the British government to boost military recruitment in Australia in support of Britain’s war involvement. Believing that a majority of the people would support him if they knew the facts, Hughes began to advocate for compulsory military service (Bolton 2003b, 110; National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

Hughes’ support and promotion of conscription began a political storm that not only split the Labor Party but also led to his expulsion from that party. Fighting for what he thought was right, Hughes sought a niche for himself in a new political party; one that he considered would retain the social radicalism and emphasis on Australian nationalism of the old Labor party. Before his expulsion from the ALP Hughes therefore briefly remained prime minister by forming a cabinet composed of loyal colleagues and like- minded Opposition members. Losing the national referenda calling for conscription however, Hughes was forced into a general election. In May 1917, the newly formed National ‘Win the War’ Party won majorities in both houses of parliament. Hughes, as party leader, consequently again took up the office of prime minister; switching overnight from being a Labor prime minister to being a conservative prime minister.

Biographically referred to as an enigmatic man (a man ‘who continues to defy definition’ and who possessed ‘a strong streak of deviousness’), Aneurin Hughes has stated that from remaining documents and personal effects, there is little material that provides any clues about William Hughes as a person. Hughes’ careful selection of the personal effects and documents he left to posterity, while being more than that left by some other prime ministers, exposes only the public image of himself he sought to

Succinctly, declared Aneurin Hughes, William Hughes was a man, “… with one foot firmly anchored in the nineteenth century and the other very much in the twentieth; an Empire loyalist and imperialist, but ardent Australian nationalist; a man who, despite his peregrinations through Australia’s political landscape, would always maintain that he stood for the common man, but accepted a Companion of Honour (though refusing a knighthood and a seat in the House of Lords); one who was a firm believer in the vocation of the English-speaking peoples yet spoke French, kept learning Italian, and [knew] some Latin, Greek and Welsh; a man who preached the virtues of family but had six children with a lady he never married” (Hughes 2005, xv).

Determined to uphold his political beliefs, Hughes continued to chop and change his political ties until finally settling with the Liberal Party. By the end of his political career, Hughes had represented four different parties in the Federal House of Representatives, three of whom expelled him – the Labor Party, Nationalist Party and United Australia Party. Nevertheless, upon his death in October 1952, Hughes had been an active member of parliament for 58 continuous years – a record unsurpassed in twentieth- century Australian history (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

In not being a true political party supporter, Richard Seddon’s NZ comment that “the man who has the courage to fight for what he thinks is right is the man who is respected”, without doubt also reflected the beliefs and values of Hughes (Drummond 1906, 70). From his biographies, Hughes’ perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty prompted him publicly to defend the underdog. Both politically and privately, however, Hughes presented as unpredictable; a man limited in his endeavours and capacity to meet the emotional needs of his family, notoriously fickle in politics, but who could also demonstrate generosity of spirit, compassion and self-criticism.

Yet, whereas on the one hand, as Aneurin Hughes has stated: “Hughes spoke in Parliament in favour of ample compensation for those who suffered [the droughts of 1902 and 1914], from whatever source … ‘If a beggar or a starving man asks me for food I do not give him a coin or produce a sandwich with my visiting card bearing the inscription: Here is a sandwich from WM Hughes. Those who are in need are not interested in where the relief comes from’”.

On the other hand, Hughes was well-known as being tight-fisted in all money matters (Hughes 2005, 40, 143-144). In fact, Aneurin Hughes argues that in Wales, Hughes would have, in his time, been regarded as a ‘Cardi’; someone from Cardiganshire in Wales where people were renowned for having ‘excessively deep pockets and very short arms’ – a characteristic often found in people who had become financially secure, even rich, but had come from an impoverished background (Hughes 2005, 40).

Similarly, even though Hughes endorsed the White Australia policies of the Barton and Deakin governments, his endorsement was not consistent with his changeable beliefs. Later in his career, he admitted that the policy had no moral basis. Hughes claimed, after a virulent racist outburst against African Americans: “It was never my good fortune to get into close touch with the rightful owners of this wonderful country [Australia], but I like them and want to do all in my power to help them … I often wish they had one or two representatives in the Federal Parliament. Given a fair show they would hold their own and ventilate their grievances, and perhaps even shame the community into extending the rights and privileges of citizenship, which we enjoy in such ample measure” (Hughes 2005, 114).

In his learning, Hughes was well versed on the history of the British labour and trade union movement. He also understood that slavery, or employment of coloured people from other ethnic backgrounds at lower wage rates, produced a lower standard of living for those people, as well as generally reducing the living standards and values of Australia’s dominant white ‘British’ population. In his perception, preventing people from other ethnic backgrounds from immigrating to Australia (through the White Australia

© Marcelle Slagter 185 policies) enabled the pursuit of equality and fairness in the living standards and wage rates of Australia’s largely white working-class citizens. With his historic values of social occupation, however, he was also part of the governing ‘class’ that disregarded the needs and interests of the indigenous people of Australia. In sum, therefore, his political ideas contributed as much to the problem of ongoing indigenous poverty, as they did to resolving the foibles and deficiencies of white Australia.

William Hughes’ perception of poverty developed from both his reading and his life-world experience. By his own admission, Hughes never made close contact with the indigenous people of Australia; his perspective of race and class differences being clearly determined from his socialised values. For Hughes therefore, the poverty experiences of Australians from different ethnic backgrounds and to some extent working-class Australians (including his own family), were largely invisible, silent and not understood.

Like William Hughes, another prime minister to distance himself in political thought from his humble beginnings was Sir Arthur William Fadden, Australian Country Party leader in 1941. Unlike Hughes and Lyons, Fadden’s early life did not inspire him toward a belief in Labor politics. Instead, he came to lead the charge for an “Australia-wide anti-Labor party” (Cribb 1996).

With his own personal success endorsing his belief in individual freedom and enterprise, Fadden lived, from a conservative perspective, for Adam Smith’s liberal ideals of self-interest, liberty and free trade. Politically, nevertheless, his time as prime minister was only brief (forty days). Having witnessed the social and economic effects of both the great 1930s depression and World War II, he was next in line when political disunity and power struggles provoked the resignation of Bob Menzies as prime minister from the first Menzies government. Fadden’s term as prime minister was, however, never meant to last. Indecision and ongoing political disunity marred his ability to effectively manage and put together a cohesive government, while his political Labor opponents displayed much

When the Labor governments of John Curtin, Frank Forde and Ben Chifley rolled out successive measures to expand the role of government in the economy, Fadden became more and more concerned with what he saw as the imposition of socialism, and the soft line of Australia’s Labor governments toward communism. His perspective reinvigorated and reunited the conservative membership of the Country Party enabling a more cohesive force to stand and form an electoral pact with Bob Menzies’ Liberal Party of Australia (Cribb 1996).

Deputising for Bob Menzies, in Menzies’ second government, Artie Fadden was to spend longer as acting prime minister during Menzies’ absences overseas than he ever spent as prime minister in his own right. In fact, “Fadden reckoned that he had spent a total of 692 days as acting prime minister during Menzies’ absences” (Cribb 1996).

Not a unisocialist, Fadden’s perception of poverty steadfastly reflected his belief that “the interests of primary producers and the inhabitants of country towns could be given proper attention only by a specialist party which understood them and their need” (Cribb 1996). Fadden’s political nepotism reflected the perceptions he developed in his time. The interests of farmers and landowners, not the dilemmas of the urban poor, captured his vision. Nonetheless, Fadden extended the gift of friendship to political peers on both sides of the House, his kindness and encouragement of others being legendary.

Upon the death of John Curtin, Francis (Frank) Michael Forde became prime minister of Australia. A caretaker prime minister for just eight days, Forde’s contribution to the nation was substantial. A valued Labor deputy leader, his role was to maintain and ensure government order and integrity. Politically possessing the classic Labor background, personal characteristics and personality of his era, Forde came from an Irish-Catholic background,

© Marcelle Slagter 187 humble beginnings, showed anti-conscription sympathies in World War I, and a demonstrable early dedication to Labor politics (National_Archives_of_Australia 2006; Page 1988, 84). He was not, however, a charismatic leader.

A personable, hard-working, astute and respected man, Forde was essentially a team player. Subsequently, even though he was readily elected in 1932 as deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party, he never became an elected prime minister in his own right. Instead, he spent fourteen years loyally serving Jim Scullin, John Curtin and Ben Chifley until he lost his seat in the 1946 general election (Brown 2003, 239-245).

With a lack of evidence to the contrary, an assumption can be made that Frank Forde’s perceptions of poverty mirrored the dominant values, understandings and experiences of the Labor party in his time. His work with a Catholic charity organisation in Brisbane after his retirement provided a reflection of the sincerity of his motivation to help people. As Brown stated: “During times of dissension and division within the ALP, Forde’s propensity to put the party first sometimes conflicted with his own beliefs and judgment, and that he often felt misunderstood” (Brown 2003, 245). Because of his service and support to the ALP, and his belief in the state and community mutually promoting and advancing the wellbeing of all, Forde must be described as a unisocialist.

After John Gorton, Sir William (Bill) McMahon became prime minister of Australia for twenty-one months. Joining the Liberal Party during the political leadership of Robert Menzies, McMahon’s maiden speech in the House of Representatives was typical of a Liberal party member in his time, heavily laden with attacks on communism and socialism. Yet a year after McMahon succeeded Sir John Gorton as prime minister, with unemployment at its highest in nearly ten years, and driven perhaps more by the idea of ‘buying’ public support in the opinion polls than placating Liberal Party ideals, McMahon introduced a mini budget with generous income tax cuts and pension increases (Sekuless 2003, 323).

A renowned supporter of free trade, McMahon spent many years fighting against the political hostility of Country Party leader and coalition partner, Sir John McEwen – an arch protectionist. Like Sir George Reid however, McMahon’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences supported the beliefs of a unisocialist – he no more valued the minority protectionist interests of farming elites than that of working-class representation in the ALP (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006; Sekuless 2003,320).

Despite McMahon being Minister for Social Services from July 1954– February 1956, there is little to suggest what perception he truly had of poverty beyond his thoughts and support for free trade. His remedy was obvious: “We have to look after those most in need as our first commitment in this field” he said about his government’s social welfare policies. “We have done this with our pension rises” (Speech notes, 4 September 1971McMahon 1972, 36). Perceptually, his solution for poverty was therefore cash payments. Social welfare improvements could not occur without a buoyant economy he believed, so it could be expected that with a downturn in the economy pensioners would also suffer (McMahon 1972, 36).

In announcing Australia’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War on 18 August 1972, McMahon drew attention to his support of two political positions. The first position was that global circumstances had persuaded him that Australia was no longer under threat of a communist invasion from China or South-East Asia. The second position was that he was supportive of the dominant interests reflected by the Australian community itself, i.e. in the form of the controversy and mounting public protest against Australia’s ongoing military presence in Vietnam and as a response to communism globally.

In summarising and describing the style and character of McMahon’s term of office as prime minister, it is best to quote Graham Freudenberg: “For Liberals, at the parliamentary, organisation and electorate levels, the fact that McMahon commanded nothing more than

nominal loyalty as Menzies’ vestigial heir, eased their passage towards defeat. On the Liberals’ part, it was never a question of genuine goodwill towards Labor. There was none. But there was, in 1972, a widespread absence of active ill will, scarcely any of the hatred and fear which disfigured the 1950s. For this condition, McMahon was largely, if indirectly, responsible; and though it was essentially a negative achievement, it is not the worst thing to be said of a prime minister that he presided over one of the happiest years of his country’s history” (Freudenberg quotation in Sekuless 2003, 323).

When Sir John Ross Marshall succeeded Sir Keith Holyoake as prime minister of New Zealand, his seniority and appointment to the role seemed just, and long overdue. A devout Christian of the Presbyterian faith, Marshall, unlike previous National Party prime ministers, came from an urban, middle class family. Well educated with a Master of Laws degree and Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, Marshall’s idea of political life was influenced by the biographies of the great English lawyers, which he read avidly in his student days (Grant 2003, 135; Marshall 1983, 87-88).

Seeking the National Party candidacy for the seat of Mount Victoria in 1946 without a personal farming background, Marshall admitted that he was a new kind of candidate; a young man with an adequate war record that could be guaranteed to draw post-war public sympathy (Grant 2003; Marshall 1983). Despite having once considered himself a Christian socialist, Marshall’s maiden speech to the House of Representatives was a carefully crafted exposition and representation of his learned perceptual understanding, and belief, in the political philosophy of liberalism. Devoting most of his speech to the subject of economic liberty, Marshall argued that economic liberty and social security were not alternatives, and warned that allowing governments too much economic power to achieve security was dangerous. His goal as a politician, he enunciated, was the promotion of a prosperous, just and property-owning democracy, not an unrealistic socialist utopia (Gustafson 2000b).

A soft-spoken, courteous and considerate parliamentarian, known as ‘Gentleman Jack’, Marshall was, through his legal training, an adept and

© Marcelle Slagter 190 tough negotiator and administrator, and model career politician, as well as an empathetic man who, through his Christian beliefs, actively supported community participation in charitable organisations. Yet, in his beliefs and political motivation, Marshall presented as a politician compelled by duty rather than passion, and ambition rather than inspiration.

Although, as Minister of the State Advances Corporation, Marshall authorised the construction of more state housing, made it easier for lower- income families to buy, build or improve homes, and introduced the Accident Compensation Bill in December 1971, his approach to politics was more in keeping with the behaviour of a benevolent philanthropist than a conservative supporter of liberalism. Ordered and dignified, his personality and personal characteristics were seen as a weakness undermining his leadership qualities; politically, he was no match for prime ministers Norman Kirk, Sir Keith Holyoake or the conceited Sir Robert Muldoon.

In keeping with the strengths of his education and character, and the events and circumstances of years as a predominantly senior National government minister, Marshall led the New Zealand effort to revolutionise trade with Australia in the form of the 1965 New Zealand–Australia Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It was also Marshall who negotiated New Zealand’s part in an agreement for a five-year continuance of dairy and meat exports to Britain, when Britain joined the EEC (Grant 2003, 137-138; Gustafson 2000b). In hindsight, however, while his actions saved New Zealand from a massive economic disaster, the public image of a meek, grasping and desperate government portrayed to the New Zealand people when the EEC sought to cut Britain’s apron strings with New Zealand, indicated a far from mature political nation. In fact, New Zealand’s dependence upon Britain did not demonstrate the pragmatic belief in liberalism espoused by New Zealand’s politicians. Instead, it epitomized complacency and continued support for state domination (rather than community independence and unity) as an approach for resolving New Zealand’s economic problems.

Marshall became National Party leader and prime minister of New Zealand after Sir Keith Holyoake retired in February 1972. He was however, ousted as National Party leader by Sir Robert Muldoon in 1974. During the run-up to the 1974 election, Marshall issued a pamphlet in his electorate entitled What the National Party Stands For. In it, he said: “We reject central direction of economic activity by the state, we stand for private enterprise as opposed to state control, and we restrict to the narrowest compass the intervention of the state in commercial activities”.

After his retirement from politics, and at the age of 73, Marshall’s business activities were only curtailed by the compulsory retirement age for directors. He had to give up the chairmanship of companies such as Philips New Zealand and the National Bank, but remained chairman of DRG and Williams Property Holdings while sitting on the boards of a handful of other companies (Barber 1985).

A few weeks before his death Marshall wrote that “over the years of my life … fortune has smiled on me … I thank God continually for his goodness and mercy” (Gustafson 2000b; Marshall 1989). All his life, Marshall’s perception of poverty was based on a visual, objective, learned and causal understanding of poverty, not lived experience. In focusing more on economics than innovatively opening New Zealand to spatiotemporal solutions for community development, Marshall turned back to the age-old conservative approach of the nineteenth-century British ruling classes. He did not consciously equate New Zealand’s political direction in ‘social security’ with individual freedom and rights, economic liberty, growing urbanisation, geographic stability, or a potential for future economic development. Marshall’s middle-class perception of poverty followed a limited historic branch in conservative political thought and direction that opposed and denigrated New Zealand’s working class unisocialist antecedents.

5.4 Middle-class Perception In his life, Seddon was every bit a British subject resident in New Zealand. Born in Britain, with the values, understandings and experiences of life in Britain, his subsequent years in New Zealand presented an extension to his established values, understandings and experiences rather than a replacement for it. The pride and affinity he had for New Zealand (his country of destination), matched his desire to prevent ‘the evils of the old country’ from spoiling his new country. It also made him desirous of a fair and reasonable standard of living for the New Zealand people. In fact, Seddon strove to make the name ‘New Zealander’ a title of honour reflecting that its bearer was from a ‘strenuous, independent, and humane’ people. Reasoning that a member of a democratic party in another country should not ‘touch titles’ bestowed by the British sovereign, Seddon never accepted a title for himself (Drummond 1906; Hall-Jones 1969; Hamer 1988).

Unlike Seddon, his successor Sir Joseph Ward did not consider his liberal democratic political position an obstacle for accepting personal honours. In short, like Sir William Hall-Jones, who was appointed a KCMG in 1910 while he was New Zealand High Commissioner in London (Hamer 1988, 341), Ward did not separate his position in the State political activities of New Zealand as a nation, from his awareness of, and allegiance to, New Zealand’s sovereign. This inconsistency in thought in one action can be seen as a betrayal of Ward’s political bond with the New Zealand labour movement and the values of his political forebears. While on the other hand, this action provided him with the personal status and valued integrity that, in relations with Britain, would be advantageous during, and beyond, the tenure of his position as prime minister.

Throughout the twentieth century, it was a tradition that because of their beliefs about British sovereignty (accepted as reflective of the domain of class segregation), democracy (the rule of the people rather than the monarchy), and ties with the labour movement, NZLP and ALP prime ministers not accept titles. It is significant that, in the late twentieth century,

© Marcelle Slagter 193 this perspective in the NZLP changed. It is also significant that this change occurred and coincided with a transition in the NZLP from political representation of predominantly working class members to middle class membership and representation in parliament.

Edward Gough Whitlam was the first twentieth-century Australian Labor Party prime minister to come from an educated middle-class background. In fact, his credentials were more in keeping with those of a Liberal Party politician than a Labor Party one (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006; Walter 1980, 23).

The eldest of two children of Harry Frederick Ernest (Fred) and Martha Whitlam (nee Maddocks), Gough Whitlam’s father trained as an accountant before completing a law degree through evening study and joining the Commonwealth Public Service in Melbourne in 1901. Fred Whitlam’s career with the public service then progressed steadily from Melbourne to Sydney, finally climaxing with his appointment as Commonwealth Crown Solicitor in Canberra in 1927 (Lloyd 2003b, 328; National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

Unlike most of his Labor prime ministerial predecessors, Whitlam’s youth was not couched in poverty and hardship. An intellectual from an intellectual family, Whitlam “never had to toil for his wages in the dust and heat” (Page 1988, 108). He attended private prep school, Mowbray House and Knox Grammar School in Sydney, then Telopea Park High School and Canberra Boys’ Grammar School. Whitlam then matriculated to Sydney University where he leisurely studied Latin, Greek, English and some psychology before taking up a study of the law.

When, in late 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, Whitlam set aside his university study and enlisted in the RAAF. Qualifying for aircrew, he was trained as a navigator and promoted to the rank of flight lieutenant. Whitlam began to show an interest in politics during the 1937 civil aviation and marketing referendum. During the 1943 federal election, he distributed

ALP literature in RAAF messes and barracks and, sensing the significance of the Curtin government’s Fourteen Powers referendum in 1944, campaigned for a ‘Yes’ vote to legislation aimed at giving the government increased powers for post-war reconstruction.

When the 1944 referendum was defeated, Whitlam was outraged. As soon as the war ended, and while still in uniform, he formally joined the ALP in Sydney. “I don’t think I thought I’d be in parliament. I just wanted to be a, you know, supporter … not necessarily a backbencher. I wanted to be working for it. For what it stood for. I was so disillusioned or alienated by what the non-Labor interests were doing – you know, I thought, shallow cynical – and so I decided to help to give things a move along” (Lloyd 2003b, 329-330; National_Museum_of_Australia 2006; Gough Whitlam in Walter 1980, 21).

Completing a Bachelor of Laws degree after the war, Whitlam was admitted to the federal and NSW bars in 1947. As an ex-serviceman, he was eligible for war service housing, and used his loan to build a house at Cronulla. The region was ready for massive urban development, and with residents comprising miners, small farmers, and families who had sought cheaper living during the 1930s Depression, the region was known in the Labor Party as the ‘Red Belt’.

In 1950, Whitlam unsuccessfully contested the state seat of Sutherland, but in 1952 won the by-election for the federal seat of Werriwa. Whitlam retained this seat for 23 years, losing it only upon resigning from parliament in July 1978 (Lloyd 2003b, 330; National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

Described in biographies (Brown 2002, 120; Griffiths 2005, 179; Walter 1980, 23) as a man seemingly possessed by conceited arrogance and narcissistic qualities, Gough Whitlam’s rise through the Labor Party, while meteoric, was also fraught with battles against the antagonism and resistance of the old militant socialist Labor Party. His ALP success nonetheless prevailed, not on the back of fallen opponents, but through the

© Marcelle Slagter 195 willingness of the sceptical traditionalists to recognise his merits above his faults, and his daring as a draw card for political appeal. As Lloyd states: “His opponents had no answer to his vitality, consuming presence and perpetual advocacy” (Lloyd 2003b, 331).

Firing Whitlam’s vitality were, Curran has argued, clearly two core values influenced by his father and his classical education – the values of arête and humanitas. Whitlam’s political ideas and perceptions were shaped from these classical values. They brought to him a commitment to humanity, a belief in the right to equal dignity for all people, and a passion for a sharing and united community. Education rather than experience, Curran stated, compelled Whitlam to ponder and reflect upon the great problems in human affairs (Curran 2004, 87).

Yet, while education may have aroused his interest in social issues, a blend of education, values and life-world experience forged Whitlam’s perception of poverty. Reflecting on his time in parliament, and on the virtues and shortcomings of his government, Whitlam stated: “Parliament seldom if ever debated the central questions of poverty, its causes or possible cures. From the ALP itself, little was produced in the way of creative or innovative thinking on a matter which after all goes to the very heart of its mission and meaning. In a very real sense the ALP was a prisoner of its own past. Its perceptions of the real needs of its special constituency, the poor, were limited by its just pride in its own achievements. It was difficult to push ALP thinking beyond the basic concept of the provision of cash payments. The Fisher, Curtin and Chifley Governments accumulated outstanding records in the initiation of new welfare benefits. The problems of destitution and squalor were perceived in terms of financial deprivation. Hence, remedial action was framed almost entirely in terms of financial compensation” (Whitlam 1985, 351).

Whitlam further pointed out that even if his Labor predecessors had made significant headway in revenue redistribution through the provision of welfare in Australia, the poor required services performed as much in-kind as in monetary aid (Whitlam 1985, 352). After reading the work of American author and former Professor of Law at Yale University, Charles Reich, Whitlam developed a new understanding of poverty. When the

McMahon government commissioned a national poverty inquiry headed by Professor Ronald Henderson in August 1972, Whitlam was critical of the limitations of Henderson’s brief. The terms of reference, Whitlam argued, were inadequate because their sole emphasis lay upon low earnings as the cause of poverty (1985, 355-356).

Educated with the thought that poverty could be viewed from both an absolute and relative perspective, Whitlam argued that even though it is tempting to say that, in matters of living standards, everything is relative, so it is wrong to rest everything on absolutes. Poverty, he stated, is more than a product of inadequate earnings, it is the product of community values (Whitlam 1985, 355).

Applying his beliefs, Whitlam argued that the presence or absence of government services, opportunities, and facilities within a community were just as likely to influence the production of wealth and poverty as an inadequate income (1985, 355-356). As he identified it: “During the 1950s and 1960s the children of professional workers had greater access to educational opportunities than the children of unskilled workers. Similarly, residents of established suburbs enjoyed a supply of public transport, roads, reticulated services and recreation facilities incomparably greater than the supply available to residents of rural areas and urban perimeter. The children of unskilled workers and the residents of outer suburban areas encountered poverty in a new form”. Upon taking up office as prime minister, on 6 March 1973, Whitlam subsequently broadened the terms of reference for the Commission of Inquiry into Poverty (Whitlam 1985, 356).

In describing the Australian government’s perception of poverty during his time as a politician, Whitlam provided a causal rather than phenomenological understanding of the conditions and characteristics of poverty. Yet he described poverty as a paradox; an inconsistent entity with characteristics dependent upon ‘community values’. Using objective reasoning Whitlam recognised that Federal government politicians viewed poverty from historical perceptions and knowledge, and not in terms of the

© Marcelle Slagter 197 conditions, characteristics and constitution of poverty of their time. With this knowledge Whitlam subsequently believed a national inquiry into poverty was required to ensure that services for the poor in Australia were both efficient and relevant (Whitlam 1985, 355).

Unlike his ALP and LPA peers, Whitlam’s life-world values, understandings and experiences of poverty enabled him to perceive it differently. This meant that while other politicians could generally see the presence of differences in poverty amongst Australia’s poor from their repeated encounters with their constituents, they were consciously unable to make sense of the poverty they witnessed. The new characteristics in the constitution of poverty Whitlam described in the 1970s were largely politically imperceptible because of the absence of life-world experience in both the politicians and their advisers.

Even though the objective of Whitlam’s Government was the establishment of equality of opportunity and security for all Australians, its term in office was short-lived (Whitlam 1985, 359-360). The Whitlam Government passed into history with the dubious honour of being the only twentieth century Australian government to be dismissed by the Governor-General (on 11 November 1975). Whitlam was nevertheless also one of only two prime ministers whose lifetime spanned the lives of all twenty-five twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia (John Gorton being the other) (National_Archives_of_Australia 2006).

Despite the acrimony that surrounded the political years of the Whitlam Government (particularly in facing a hostile senate not synchronised in its elected membership with House of Representatives elections and therefore dominated by LPA opponents), it was Whitlam who completed the task of deconstructing the ‘White Australia Policy’ begun by Harold Holt. It was also Whitlam who finally removed race, colour and creed as a basis for immigration control: “No change in legislation was needed as, thanks to Holt, the old policy had gone. The policy that had been a necessary precondition

for Australia’s status as a culturally homogenous nation and a founding principle of national life was no longer at the heart of national self-determination” (Frame 2005, 161).

A unisocialist, Gough Whitlam sowed the seeds through his perception for a change in the political discourse, understanding, and constitution of poverty in Australia. He resigned from parliament in July 1978 but remained an influential political speaker throughout his retirement. Whitlam was bestowed with many honours including being made a Companion of the Order of Australia (an award under the Australian rather than British Honours system) (National_Archives_of_Australia 2006).

After Norman Kirk died suddenly in 1974, his deputy Sir Wallace (Bill) Edward Rowling was thrust into the lime light as New Zealand’s fifth Labour prime minister. “Pressed for a definition of ‘socialism’ in 1970, Bill Rowling, the party president and a key member of the policymaking group, talked of ‘humanitarian principles’, rather than turning business enterprises over to the control of the workers” (Eagles and James 1973, 52). He did not see himself as a socialist but, as Grant states: “At the core of his practical and pragmatic approach to politics was a commitment to improve the lot of the underprivileged” (Grant 2003, 147).

A mild-mannered man, with a light voice and short stature, Rowling learnt about politics in New Zealand through his father. Arthur Rowling’s political views developed from his experiences in New Zealand’s West Coast coalmines and Australia’s Queensland cane fields. It was not until he had bought and established his orchard in Motueka, however, that he became an active member of the NZLP. While still a child, Bill Rowling listened avidly to parliamentary broadcasts with his father. Through visits to his parents’ home by New Zealand’s leading Labour politicians, Michael Savage, Peter Fraser and Walter Nash, Rowling became well-acquainted with their thoughts and perspectives.

Absorbing his family’s work ethic from an early age, Rowling worked in his father’s orchard after school and during school holidays. The Depression made a lasting impression on him as in later years he reflected that although he had had a happy childhood; his family had lived frugally and been poor, by modern standards, in those years.

Wanting to become a teacher, Rowling also studied economics at university; eventually completing a Master of Arts degree in economics. He spent several years teaching at various schools before joining the Maori Education Service, choosing to teach in a Maori school in one of New Zealand’s remoter areas. It was during this period, when confronted with the inequalities he witnessed in Maori community living, that Rowling’s political interest in the Labour Party resurfaced and grew. Rowling’s teaching career was to continue a few more years before he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and travelled widely around the United States. On his return to New Zealand, Rowling joined the Army’s Education Corp, becoming assistant director of the Corp with the rank of captain. Based mainly in Christchurch, he completed a second commerce degree while also working as a part-time economics lecturer at Canterbury University.

In 1962, Bill Rowling entered the House of Representatives as the NZLP representative for Buller. By 1970, he was the NZLP’s second-youngest president, and with the swearing in of the Kirk Government in 1972, became Minister of Finance; New Zealand’s first Minister of Finance with training as an economist.

Not a churchgoer, Bill Rowling nevertheless did believe strongly in the Christian ethic of service and in the inherent decency of people. When Norman Kirk died suddenly and Rowling became prime minister of New Zealand, his tendency to ‘turn the other cheek’ to the aggressive and ridiculing innuendo of the National Party leader, Sir Robert Muldoon, only fed the growing public political image of him being a wimp. This image problem, coupled with New Zealand’s entry into an economic recession (as export returns dropped and a global crisis in oil prices unfolded) and

Rowling’s economic philosophy of borrowing rather than retrenching, resulted in Muldoon launching a savage election campaign against him. Muldoon’s campaign included scare-tactic TV commercials that aimed to: a) discredit Rowling in both ability and character; b) blame Labour for the economic recession; and c) negatively portray the Labour Party’s history. Labour’s less assertive, and less visibly powerful, opposing election campaign assured Muldoon victory in the 1975 election (Grant 2003, 146- 151).

In his poverty perception, Bill Rowling was a unisocialist. His humanitarian values, knowledge of economics, middle class experiences, and personal character, however, did not support the cohesive traditional Labour style unity, or comparative perception of poverty that was historically presented by other Labour prime ministers in New Zealand. Aided by television, the National Party election campaign in 1975 was able to create a perception of Rowling’s character that subjugated reality and reinforced a stereotypical image. Muldoon’s visual dominance in the ‘public eye’ won him the election, but also greater political status in other ways.

In the forty years that passed between the Depression and the coming to power of the Kirk Labour Government, global advancements in education, transportation, communication, and technology were supported by increased community demand in New Zealand. Rowling recognised that his family had been poor ‘by modern standards’ during the Depression, but what he failed to identify perceptually were the constitutional, conditional, and characteristic changes in poverty that developed in the intervening years. In the face of socio-environmental change in the community, Rowling’s learned economic knowledge, like the usefulness of old technology, enabled him to see poverty in his past and give linguistic distinction to the poverty of the past in his present. But it did not enable him to see, or more accurately, understand, the conditional and characteristic changes in poverty as they materialised in his present. In other words, Rowling’s economic knowledge failed to give him conscious awareness of change, and failed to

Politically, in his knowledge of poverty, Rowling was not alone. Norman Kirk, despite displaying all the signs, values, strengths and traditions of the Labour Party, would have proved himself to be much more outdated and outmoded in his political and economic approach to New Zealand’s needs in the late twentieth century. A fact Rowling acknowledged in seeing that Kirk “did not accept that valid economic reasons could exist to prevent necessary social actions being taken. His strong humanitarianism did not sit easily with economic reality. He was … unwilling and sometimes unable to compromise between the desirable and the attainable” (John Henderson in Grant 2003, 149).

Yet, like Sir John Marshall, Rowling’s greater, learned, middle-class causal focus on poverty and economics also blinded his vision (and creative imagination) to the changes that had occurred in New Zealand’s social environment. This was a flaw in life-world experience that was common among his political prime ministerial successors (both Labour and National) to the end of the twentieth century.

In a twist of ironic prophecy, it was Bill Rowling who, when David Lange became New Zealand’s sixth Labour prime minister in 1984, warned Lange against selecting Roger Douglas as Minister of Finance. Speaking from experience, Rowling as opposition leader had been obliged to discipline Douglas. Rowling told Lange: “If you give him Finance he will destroy you” (McMillan 1993, 37-38).

Unlike Holyoake, Marshall, Kirk or Rowling, Sir Robert David Muldoon was a master of television, displaying a depth of character and magnetism much greater than the stature of the man himself. Aided by mass television purchase within New Zealand during the 1970s, Muldoon’s atypically featured and undaunted face beamed straight into the nation’s living rooms.

Possessing tremendous physical, intellectual and emotional strength, Muldoon also exhibited a belligerent, dictatorial and bullying personality. His bombastic political style, although matching that of Norman Kirk, dwarfed that of many other senior politicians in both the Labour and National parties. In heredity, Muldoon was, in his own words, “in the National Party but not of it”. His family lacked the usual farming or middle-class business connections associated with membership of the National Party (Gustafson 1986a).

Raised by his mother and maternal grandmother, Muldoon’s father, an unqualified accountant, was badly gassed in France during World War I and was permanently hospitalised in the late 1920s for the rest of his life (twenty years). A small boy, bullied at school, Muldoon lived on the brink of poverty throughout his childhood. Yet, even though Muldoon’s school results were only average, an IQ test completed during his secondary school years rated him a ‘genius’ (Grant 2003, 152). Subsequently winning a three-year scholarship to secondary school, he was able to get a better education than his family could afford. He then began work as a junior clerk with the Auckland Electric Power Board before enlisting in the army in November 1940.

During his tour of duty in the army, Muldoon studied accountancy and, as fate would have it, was supervised in his final cost accountancy examination (in a tent in Trieste) by Sir John Marshall (then an army Major). Qualifying as New Zealand’s first cost accountant, Muldoon was then rewarded with a year-long accountancy scholarship in England. Returning to New Zealand, he simultaneously joined an accountancy firm and the National Party, becoming the Member of Parliament for Tamaki in 1960 and holding this seat for the next 31 years.

Succeeding Sir John Marshall as leader of the National Party in July 1973, Muldoon was comfortable with New Zealand’s Keynesian economic direction, but slow to accept the post-war changes buffeting New Zealand. Like most people who present an intimidating manner, Muldoon’s outward

© Marcelle Slagter 203 belligerence was a front, masking, in his case, a considerable social conscience. His conscience took time to adapt to new ideas, but also rejected many ideas because of their potential adverse human cost. Muldoon’s character undeniably forged many public perceptions about him: “A superb debater, Muldoon had the ability to comprehend, synthesise and simplify complex material and combine a clear analysis with a sense of outrage when required. … In making economic decisions, Muldoon always put himself in the position of individual people and families. He was conscious of what his policies and government actions were doing to them. Having experienced hard times himself … he was determined that people should be hurt as little as possible and this consideration imposed limits on what he was prepared to countenance” (Gustafson 1986a, 122-124) “Muldoon was more at ease with hecklers in a crowded hall than with dinner party repartee; his rudeness was, in part at least, a way of hiding an innate shyness and insecurity; he was ruthless with those, opponents or colleagues, obstructing him yet sought solace growing lilies” (Grant 2003, 155).

In foreign affairs and national identity, Brooking stated, Muldoon’s populist nationalism tended to be as inward-looking as Kirk’s extrovert nationalism was outward looking. New Zealand’s unofficial white policy reappeared as immigration ground to a halt, and Muldoon agreed to a South African rugby tour of New Zealand. Insisting that in a free society the final decision regarding a rugby tour had to come from the sporting body concerned and not the government, Muldoon refused to intervene in stopping the tour, even though South Africa still pursued a policy of apartheid (Brooking 2004, 144; Gustafson 1986a, 144).

Concerned with: a) the social hurt created in unemployment from a world-wide economic recession; b) the political outcomes of too ruthless an application of free market forces on New Zealand’s economy; c) high oil prices; and d) reduced exports to Britain, Muldoon’s solution was greater intervention.

“He continued Labour’s use of tariffs and subsidies to maintain high employment and high standards of living … At the 1981 election Muldoon revealed a dramatic desire to make New Zealand into some kind of Japan at the bottom of the Pacific by encouraging greater self-sufficiency in energy and massive expansion in manufacturing activity” (Brooking 2004, 144 & 146; Gustafson 1986a, 129).

Unfortunately, Muldoon’s poverty perception did not extend to farsighted wisdom as he destroyed the few positive economic initiatives introduced by the Kirk–Rowling Labour governments. Most notable among the initiatives that were destroyed was Labour’s contributory superannuation scheme. Muldoon replaced this self-financing initiative with a universal scheme paid out of general taxation. He then made the new national superannuation scheme available to every citizen over 60, no matter how rich or poor. Much more elaborate than the age pensions and universal superannuation introduced by the Seddon and Savage governments, Muldoon’s national superannuation scheme was totally unsustainable. “By 1984 the cost of superannuation, in fact, outstripped expenditures on health and education combined, forcing dramatic changes in the way [New Zealand] paid out its ever increasing pensions” (Brooking 2004, 144).

Muldoon’s perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty in New Zealand came from his youth. His perception was not built from an observer’s causal gaze but was forged from his life-world experience. To a large degree, his ideas were unisocialist. His political direction however, did not preserve the aim of freedom and independence for all social, political and economic interests in the community. Although not overtly discriminative in his actions toward Maori or other ethnic minorities in New Zealand, he was reluctant to accept different perceptions and ideas for establishing racial equality. Be it in social, political or economic thought therefore, Muldoon’s poverty perception was outdated, his ideas merely an aberration fuelling imbalanced political munificence.

In Australia, Muldoon’s political peer between December 1975 and March 1983 was Malcolm Fraser. In the public image, Fraser was a dominant and

© Marcelle Slagter 205 determined, and some might say feared, leader; a man renowned for being decisive and intolerant of other views. Unable to shake off a history of ruthlessly leaving those who dared to disagree with him defeated and trampled in his path, Fraser like Muldoon was often regarded as ‘a one-man band’, a hero to some and villain to others (Weller 1989, xii, xvii).

Born John Malcolm Fraser at Mowbray in Toorak, Victoria, Fraser came from a wealthy farming family with a proud history of local political participation. His grandfather Simon Fraser, had been a Free Trade Senator from 1901 to 1913 (National_Archives_of_Australia 2006). Educated in his early years at Melbourne Grammar, at the age of 19 Fraser bypassed the local universities and went directly to Oxford (UK), where he obtained a degree in philosophy, politics and economics (Weller 1989, 8-9). . A protégé of Robert Menzies’ political leadership, Malcolm Fraser, like many of his Liberal Party contemporaries, gave his political allegiance to conservative liberalism after studying the values of socialism and liberalism. He believed that socialism was less desirable in the community because socialists would immediately seek government-sponsored solutions to society’s problems. On the other hand, he rationalised that liberals would first ask, “Can individuals solve it for themselves, can the government create the climate in which that can happen?” Only when the answer to this question was ‘no’ would a liberal turn to direct government solutions (Ayres 1987, 53-54, 240-241; Kelly 2003, 357).

Despite his outspoken support for Liberal Party politics, Australia’s twenty- second prime minister, was nevertheless uncannily unisocialist. Fraser wanted a society in which individuals were free to make their own choices, a society where the state and community mutually promoted and advanced the wellbeing of all. Since unisocialism, in liberal thought, does not in itself suggest that social problems should be ‘government-sponsored solutions’, nor infer a requirement for intervention measures, but refers instead to the pursuit of an ideal type of government, Fraser’s endeavour to make Australia a better place through his governance made him a unisocialist.

Separating Fraser from the image of the 1975 villain who bludgeoned his way to power, was the Fraser who developed policies for Zimbabwe, for land rights, for multiculturalism, for family allowances and for administrative law, policies that by Australian standards were radical but which reflected his pursuit of an ideal (Weller 1989, xii, 405-406).

Many of Fraser’s prime ministerial forebears had already trodden the path toward development of the Australian Welfare State, yet the liberal ideas of Harold Holt and Gough Whitlam provided Fraser with a direction and imagination for much wider global consideration. Whereas Whitlam pursued non-discriminatory policies but severely cut immigration to Australia, Fraser restored Australia’s immigration program (allowing greater immigration from Asian countries), championed multiculturalism, further encouraged Aboriginal land rights, and reformed the family support system (Kelly 2003 369-378). His subsequent post-retirement involvement in promoting the end of apartheid in South Africa, and his support of foreign aid and economic development in Africa was true to character and a further reflection of Fraser’s political and spiritual beliefs (National_Museum_of_Australia 2006).

Nevertheless, during his time as prime minister, Fraser outwardly displayed a cold, aloof, uncharismatic authoritarian manner that, coupled with his catchcry phrase ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’, suggested that he was not only very conservative, but a callous man. Upon his retirement however, people showed surprise at how much he appeared to change. The Australian public looked at Fraser, Wallace Brown stated, and thought: “how much more liberal, socialist even, he has become since he has left office. The basic fact is he has not changed. The new Malcolm is the old Fraser” (Brown 2002, 146; Page 1988, 112-113).

Fraser’s perception of poverty developed more from the experiences of other people, and from a visual understanding, than from personal life-world experience. A clever political leader with a well-intentioned conscience, Fraser’s empathy for the plight of both indigenous Australians and

© Marcelle Slagter 207 indigenous Africans, cannot be diminished. Equipped with an authoritarian manner reflective of his upper class upbringing, Fraser did the best he could with the perceptual values and understanding he possessed. It was undoubtedly Fraser's lack of public charisma, and his tough pastoral approach, that lost him the 1983 Australian general election.

With the political logo ‘reconciliation, recovery, reconstruction’, Fraser’s opponent in the 1983 general election, Robert (Bob) James Lee Hawke, communicated to the Australian people the rationality of his perceptions about the country’s political direction. The second son of a Congregational minister and a country schoolteacher, both of whom were from staunch Methodist families, Hawke’s perception of poverty developed to accommodate the values, understandings and experiences that ‘belief in the fatherhood of God necessarily involves believing in the brotherhood of man’. A belief that, at various levels, remained with Hawke throughout his youth and political career, and first saw practical fruition in Hawke’s childhood during the years of the Great Depression.

A child witness to the developed world’s greatest twentieth-century economic disaster, Hawke remembered the endless stream of poor and destitute people arriving at his father’s (manse) door in rural South Australia. “No one" he said, "ever went away without food, shelter or some form of assistance” (Hawke 1994, 4).

A precocious child, his mother indulged him with the belief that he would one day be prime minister of Australia. Filled with high expectations, Hawke’s path to a political career took a few leaps when first he won a place to the prestigious Perth Modern School, then completed a law degree with second class honours and a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in economics at the University of Western Australia, and finally he set forth for England with a Rhodes Scholarship to secure a Bachelor of Letters from Oxford University (d'Alpuget 1982; Hawke 1994).

Returning to Australia, Hawke did not enter politics immediately but began a doctorate of philosophy at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, in order to progress the research he had completed at Oxford on the Australian arbitration and conciliation system. The Australian arbitration system, Carew explained, exercised three functions: “It protected unionists against bread-line wages; it periodically adjusted the income of unionists; [and] it prevented and settled industrial disputes. The protective function was fulfilled by the basic wage – the minimum that an unskilled man could be paid – which had been established in 1907 and since 1921 had been indexed for inflation”.

Periodic adjustment occurred when it was widely believed that a new level of prosperity had been reached nationally, and prevention and settlement of disputes occurred as they arose (Carew 1992, 10). This research by Hawke was never completed. It did however lead Hawke on to a 21-year career in research and worker advocacy with the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU); the last ten years as its president (d'Alpuget 1982, 72).

Ambitious, educationally qualified, and successful as a campaigner and union advocate, Hawke rose to the challenge of being president of the ACTU and the Australian Labor Party – two branches of the labour movement with a chequered history of both magnetism and polarisation in relation to one another. The inevitable step into politics was a small one; he was elected MHR for Wills on 25 November 1980, and prime minister of Australia less than two and a half years later.

Perceptibly, it was a combination of Hawke’s values, understandings and experiences of poverty obtained from his religious beliefs, childhood experiences, and work with the ACTU, which guided his political career and economic perspective as prime minister. From his economic studies and life-world experience, Hawke developed a reference point for his political direction. His beliefs and insightful understanding of the rationalised economic ‘wrong-headedness’ of Australia’s political economy provided him with a different understanding of poverty to that of his peers, and a different vision of the signified characteristics of poverty in Australia.

In other words, in Hawke’s causal perception, time and events markedly changed the condition and characteristics of poverty prevalent in the community. Consequently, he saw that many government departments and community organisations were working with an obsolete model of poverty that was limiting, if not preventing, the effective delivery of community assistance to the poor.

Hawke’s more open perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty (his understanding of poverty’s presence and condition as an object for social and economic intervention), provided him with an opportunity to give new direction to the political economy of Australia. The direction he chose was to set aside the protectionist practices of liberal thought that had historically both shielded and thwarted capitalist development and activity in Australia.

Hawke wanted a social contract to be established between government, business, and labour, based on commonly agreed values and goals. With this approach, Hawke sought to lay the foundations for his party’s success, a success built on Hawke’s style of leadership and his promotion of ‘consensus’ and ‘non-interventionist’ government (Hawke 1994, 170, 250). What Hawke did not foresee was the adverse domino effect that the removal of some community protections would have on the welfare of the Australian people.

The withdrawal of government interventions in, for example, the housing market, and the gradual reduction of government investment in social housing, was the beginning of the destruction of the historic unity between the state and community in addressing poverty through the provision of shelter – government assisted ‘property’ (leased land and rental housing); the precursor to the ‘welfare state’. As ‘freed’ market forces began to push house prices and rents up, a greater political demand developed for the poor to independently support themselves with food, shelter and clothing. Their capacity for independence through support from Australia’s welfare system was however rapidly diminishing as the Hawke Government continued

Australia’s historic reliance on subsistence levels of cash benefits, and ALP and LPA political economic rationalism induced a late twentieth-century re- evaluation of who should be regarded as the new deserving poor.

Idolising, as well as seeing a likeness of himself in former Labor prime minister John Curtin, Hawke stated in 1989 that the quality he most shared with Curtin was the ability each had to discipline themselves in order to make the best contribution possible for their country (Gordon 1993, 18). It was a quality arguably shared amongst many of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia. Unfortunately, in deregulating Australia’s political economy, Hawke set in motion the potential for greater conservative capitalist economic intervention, for increased application of rigid out-of- date economic theories, and for the unfettered exploitation of Australia’s markets, resources, and most vulnerable community members. Extremely aware of hardship in the community, particularly among low-income families with children, on 23 June 1987 Hawke made the famous statement ‘By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty’. It was a statement Hawke himself quickly recognised not only allowed his opponents to pillory him for promising the impossible, but encapsulated the most hurtful paradox of his whole political life (Hawke 1994, 403). On the face of it, Hawke’s intentions were admirable; it was the unintended consequences of his actions (Giddens 1989) that he did not foresee and for which his middle- class upbringing had not prepared him. Consequently, Hawke was not a unisocialist.

When Paul Keating became the federal Treasurer in the Hawke government, the ALP was no longer militant in pursuing the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity in either the labour movement or the community. With the passage of time, new, more secure and conservative, middle-class values, understandings and experiences were being reflected in the manifestos of the ALP and other political parties. Keynesian economic government had fallen by the wayside, while the social stresses of high inflation, high unemployment, and the worst external trade deficit in living memory, had

With Australia’s potential economic recovery weighted down by protectionist legislation bearing no sunset clause, a massive legislative review was required. This legislative review needed to evaluate the benefits of existing legislation against the demands and national conditions affecting ‘present-’day Australia. Lacking the benefits of a tertiary education and equivalent life experience, Keating embraced, as radical, the ‘free-trade’ new-right political ideas and rationality presented to him within the New South Wales ALP. Rising to become the factional right wing leader of the New South Wales ALP, Keating’s political thought style followed more closely that of Sir Joseph Cook and William Hughes, than John Curtin (whom Bob Hawke venerated) (Hawke 1994).

Asserting that his upbringing had given him an interest in the fabric of society and had honed his sense of fairness (Carew 1992, 7), Keating’s perceptions of poverty developed more from the learned intersubjective experiences of other Labor politicians, bureaucrats and working-class people, than from his own life-world experience. Under Bob Hawke’s non- interventionist style of leadership, and economic guidance, Keating subsequently developed an excellent working relationship with the federal Treasury that, since the early to mid-1980s, had also become beset with economic rationalists unsympathetic to Keynesian theory (Gordon 1993, 115).

Fierce in defending the Hawke government as a Labor government bent on improving the conditions of the Australian people, Keating’s views, while strongly voiced Labor views, were, Carew stated, “not straitjacketed by 100- year-old Labor prejudices” (Carew 1992, 214). Subsequently, after first describing the Labor Party of his time as a pragmatic party with traditional interests in economic progress and practical social reforms, Keating, when Treasurer, then explained that Labor had changed with the Hawke government economic reforms. This change, he stated, was at least twenty

© Marcelle Slagter 212 years overdue and had transformed Labor back to what it once was. Labor was now, Paul Keating said, “… a party addressing the broad problems that affected most people. That was what it was like in its best years; it was like that in its state governments particularly. Now we have a Labor party presiding over one of the highest employment growth rates in the western world, yet restructuring the place so that everyone is going to have a better chance of a job and a higher living standard over time” (Carew 1992, 159, 214).

Yet, while his commitment to superannuation, family income supplements, and wage increases for the lower paid stamped him as a champion of Labor ideals, his simultaneous responsibility for the Hawke government’s deregulatory agenda was anathema to traditional Labor (Gordon 1993, 124). In his defence Keating stated: “I always believed that the private economy was the real generator of wealth and that one had to have a much more market-friendly view of the world than we had. While I thought my political life would be a life which assumed at some stage responsibility for treasury or treasury issues, I wanted to do it at my own pace and on my terms. I didn’t want to be picking up someone else’s view in a climate where the Labor Party still had doubts about whether it should be presiding over a very mixed economy. My initial attitude was, ‘Thanks, but no thanks, I’ll wait till later’”(Gordon 1993, 70).

Displaying an admirable capacity to learn from the advice proffered by Bob Hawke and the many Treasury officials and advisors available to him as prime minister, Paul Keating had neither the public appeal nor originality of thought that had led Bob Hawke to electoral victory. After only one term as an elected prime minister, Keating was succeeded by the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, John Howard, an outcome that Griffiths described “saw the end of the ALP as it had more or less existed as a coherent entity throughout the twentieth century” (Griffiths 2005, 223).

Similar to Australia in conservative and labour political thinking, the end of Sir Robert Muldoon’s National Party Government in New Zealand in July 1984 (less than a year after the demise of the Fraser Liberal Government in Australia) also heralded a new era of Labour leadership and governments in

New Zealand. Leading the charge was the exuberantly charismatic, David Russell Lange, New Zealand’s youngest twentieth-century prime minister.

A flamboyant speaker with a wit to match, Lange grew up in a middle-class, liberal Christian household with none of the class and ethnically based prejudices common amongst his generation, or reflected from those before. His father, an Edinburgh qualified surgeon, dedicated his life to general practice in South Auckland, while his mother, a highly trained nurse, assisted her husband in his medical practice and helped run Maori Sunday schools. In values, the Lange family defined people by what they did for others not by who they were (Grant 2003, 159; Lange 2005; Wright 1984).

Highly intelligent, David Lange’s primary and secondary school days were unspectacular as his subjective interests failed to be engaged within the New Zealand education system. Like the fathers of Bill Rowling and John Howard, Lange’s father stimulated his interest in politics. A large boy and man, Lange played sport, but his size and other interests overpowered his ongoing participation in sporting activities.

Deciding upon a legal career, Lange spent seven years studying, mostly part-time, to become a barrister and solicitor. For most of those years he worked as a clerk in a law firm unconventionally committed to acting for the poor and protesters against apartheid, Vietnam, and the nuclear arms race.

In 1967, Lange travelled to England where he arrived with less than £50 in his pocket. He sought whatever work he could find and ate at cheap cafes enjoying his spare time in London by listening to speakers in Hyde Park and the House of Commons. It was while at Hyde Park Corner that he heard the oratory of Donald Soper (later Lord Soper), a Methodist minister and socialist. Soper’s sermons on Christian socialist action further inspired in Lange an interest in politics (Lange 2005, 80).

Returning to New Zealand, Lange took over a run-down law practice in Kaikohe. He then moved to Auckland and tutored in the law faculty at Auckland University while completing a Master of Laws degree with first class honours. After completing his studies, Lange then took over the law practice of a lawyer well-known for representing the poorest and least- likely-to-pay clients. He rapidly became a champion for the underdog, and a dominant legal personality at the Auckland Magistrate’s Court, activity that continued to fuel his ambitions of being a politician. After unsuccessfully standing as the Labour Candidate for Hobson, in 1976, Lange finally won the seat of Mangere (a working-class Auckland electorate with a large Maori population).

His immense physical presence, booming voice and compelling way with words immediately brought Lange into the public eye, a place where few dominant political personalities existed other than Sir Robert Muldoon. Lange’s rise to power as leader of the New Zealand Labour Party in February 1983 was not as meteoric as that of Bob Hawke, but then he had not served the apprenticeship in the stewardship of the Labour Party that Hawke had done. “Two weeks after becoming Leader, he spoke in the Address-in- Reply debate of a severe economic, social and moral malaise existing in New Zealand, and said it was the responsibility of Government to confront that malaise” (Wright 1984, 129).

The background for Lange’s speech was politically depressing. As Wright stated: “People had fled the country in tens of thousands; the media was obsessed with economic matters; people and businesses were increasingly judged only by the money they made; human tragedy and natural disasters were assessed for their cash value/loss; immigration policy had been adjusted to make special allowance for moneyed entrepreneurs; some people were becoming very wealthy while soup kitchens were opening up in South Auckland; industrial disputes festered; and there were alarming indicators in the social consequences of robbery, violence and rape” (Wright 1984, 129- 130).

Lange’s opportunity to lead New Zealand’s Government came more quickly than he ever anticipated when Rob Muldoon unexpectedly called a snap election in June 1984. On 14 July 1984, with Muldoon soundly defeated, Lange was sworn in as prime minister of New Zealand. Despite the Labour Party’s appearance of unity and organisation, neither Lange nor his colleagues were prepared to govern New Zealand. The Party’s manifesto was unwritten, and differences over economic policy were far from settled.

In 1983, Roger Douglas had become the NZLP’s spokesman on finance, and in 1984, Minister of Finance. In essence, Douglas became Minister of Finance because there were no other candidates among the NZLP political representatives who were suitable or qualified enough to replace him. Douglas produced a policy package for the party but, although Lange adopted a consensus approach in the NZLP’s economic direction, he did not regard Douglas’s policy package as either his, or the Labour Party’s policy. “I favoured it over the opposing argument, but it was not my intention simply to see it put into practice” (Lange 2005, 163-164, 166).

Describing his politics as ‘democratic socialism’, Lange wanted to make the law more humane for the New Zealand people. He wanted New Zealand to be a voice for good in the world. “I thought that what Douglas and Treasury recommended in our first two years in office was demanded by the circumstances, when we faced a huge deficit in the current account and what looked like an intractable budget deficit, and we owed billions of dollars to foreign lenders. It was only towards the latter part of 1986 that I formed the opinion, confirmed beyond all doubt the following year, that there was an unbending element in the view of Treasury and its minister which was more like religious belief than professional practice” (Grant 2003, 162; Lange 2005, 179, 192-193).

In Labour’s foreign policy Lange at least achieved what he set out to do. “In Australia as in New Zealand there was strong support in the Labor Party for a nuclear-free policy. The Hawke government took office promising to review Australia’s military ties to the United

States and then abandoned any attempt to limit Australian involvement in the American nuclear deterrent” (Lange 2005, 177).

Throughout his years in politics, Lange maintained his position in relation to New Zealand’s nuclear-free status. Challenging the United States with New Zealand's nuclear-free status seemed to bring little consequence in the perception of the New Zealand people. Lange began to explore new borders and new markets for New Zealand’s exports. “Compared with the fawning sycophantism of the previous decade” Chris Laidlaw wrote, Labour’s foreign policy “was utterly refreshing. Here at last were a few statements of principle and a willingness to extend our psychological comfort zone out beyond the United States and Britain” (Chris Laidlaw in Grant 2003, 165).

In thought, Lange was essentially a unisocialist, but he was also a leader who lacked sufficient knowledge and experience to bring to New Zealand the ideals of the labour movement historically imprinted in him. Unable to balance and control the currents of the traditional Labour Party and the fanatical middle-class free trade conservatism (otherwise referred to as 'new right economic rationalism') that captured the party, the NZLP’s traditional political strengths and identity were subjugated. With the dominant belief that private enterprise was always more efficient and flexible than state ownership, Sir Roger Douglas, as he later became, was the greatest Minister of Finance the National Party never had (to quote in kind the analogy Sir Robert Muldoon once made about the Labour Party in describing National Party leader, Sir John Marshall) (Grant 2003).

“The human consequences of our approach” Lange said, “were only too obvious. The export sector was squeezed and there was a rapid decline in manufacturing. The corporatisation of the public sector led to many more job losses. I cannot remember any serious sustained discussion in cabinet of the human costs of our economic policy. Some in cabinet did not allow themselves to be sensitised to the politics of the issues we dealt with” (2005, 227-228). Already losing skilled workers to overseas emigration, the ‘brain drain’ was perpetuated to the tune of tens of thousands of New Zealanders per year.

Presenting itself as a young, fresh-faced, new ideas government, the Lange Labour government had to make economic and legislative changes. The members of the Lange government, however, lacked the values, understanding and experience of both the very deep pain of war and of poverty felt in New Zealand before they were born. They were not alone.

Beneficiaries of the seeds of social security planted by their political forebears, the poverty perceptions of the Palmer, Moore, Bolger and Shipley governments were also steeped in the trappings of the middle class advantage desired by, and denied to, their parents, grandparents and ancestors. With the exception of Michael (Mike) Kenneth Moore, Lange’s successor Sir Geoffrey Winston Russell Palmer, and National Party Prime Ministers James (Jim) Brendan Bolger and Dame Jennifer (Jenny) Mary Shipley were all middle-class prime ministers. Palmer was a lawyer and writer (most interested in constitutional law), Bolger a farmer, and Shipley a teacher and farmer’s wife, whose early life, like that of Bob Hawke, began in the manse. Nothing exceptional fills their biographies about their poverty perceptions, but since they are all still alive (at the time of writing this thesis) there is the possibility that future biographies may be more detailed.

Born to Irish parents, Mike Moore’s father died when he was six years old, resulting in Moore being shuffled between various family members and attending numerous schools in as many years. He finally attended Dilworth School, a well-funded private Auckland school catering for boys from deprived or troubled families, from where he was eventually expelled. His mother remarried a farmer in Otira and Moore happily took up country living. Taking technical rather than academic subjects at school, there was no expectation that Moore would go to university nor did he.

Without a middle class university education, Moore presented himself at 23 years old, as a ‘traditional working class’ Labour politician, but he possessed none of the stability of purpose and strength of mind that so vividly set apart his Labour prime ministerial predecessors. In politics, he was a man in a hurry, a man who presented a mass of contradictions, whose

© Marcelle Slagter 218 ideas were rarely taken seriously in New Zealand, and a man whose burning ambition was to be prime minister. Succeeding Sir Geoffrey Palmer as prime minister for just over a month, Moore eventually lost the leadership of the Labour Party to Helen Clark. The peak of his political career all but over, he continued his advocacy of international trade from the opposition benches. Moore then set his sights on the position of director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). With the support of National Party leaders, Shipley and Bolger, Moore held this position until his term of office ended in August 2002. A successful self-taught, self-made man, Moore was subsequently appointed adjunct professor at two Australian universities and a visiting professor at a British one (Grant 2003, 171-175).

Even though Lange, Palmer, Moore, Bolger and Shipley grew up in a New Zealand whose living standards had increased significantly through the political directions of their forebears, the comforts, security and power in their lives prevented them from seeing the changes in the constitution, conditions and characteristics of poverty in New Zealand that event and circumstance produced. They failed to see poverty from anything other than a distant subjective gaze. Citizens of a nation for years secure and stable in its political heritage, human nature and the circumstances of their life-world brought forth nothing but complacency and conservatism. Unisocialism died in its true meaning with the fourth Labour government and sixth Labour prime minister of New Zealand, in 1984. It was not of David Lange’s making, nor of his conscience.

Each successive prime minister sought, in their way, to contribute their perspective to the political governance of New Zealand, but in political direction and continuity, each was limited by the economic actions first prescribed by the Lange government, and then by the advice of Treasury. As David Lange stated with regard to the advice he received from the Treasury when he was prime minister: “There was an intellectual coherence about the Treasury point of view which other departments could hardly ever match, all the momentum was with it. Its interest in social institutions was one of

theory and its detachment amounted to indifference to the human consequences of what it recommended” (Lange 2005, 229).

A rationalistic emphasis on causal philosophic theory, economics, and ruling class/wealthy business interests dominated New Zealand conservative and labour politics and perceptions of poverty for the final decade of the twentieth century. The welfare state, in all but name was destroyed. What was left were social services developed from the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty of long dead prime ministers. No changes in the values of social occupation or the constitution, conditions or characteristics of poverty of the late twentieth century were accounted for in either political policy or New Zealand legislation.

When he left Parliament in 1996, Lange’s particular burden, he said, was “people whose lives were wrecked by us [the NZLP]. They had been taught for years, conditioned to believe that they had a right to an endless treadmill of prosperity and assurance and we did them”. “People over 60 hate me and they hate me because I was the symbol of that which caused that assurance of support … to be shattered” (David Lange in Pickmere 2005).

In later commenting on the demise of the Lange government, Helen Clark said, “David saw what Roger was offering as a means to an end. But in fact, of course, the means utterly perverted the end. That was tragic” (Helen Clark in Grant 2003, 165). David Lange died on 13 August 2005 a man with admirable intentions and desires for New Zealand, whose dreams were never realised.

The last twentieth-century prime minister of Australia, John Winston Howard, like his New Zealand peers, was also born and raised in a middle- class environment. A luxury of choice meant that John Howard’s political allegiance could have swung to either the Liberal or Labor platforms. In fact, John Howard’s elder brother Bob Howard was a member of the left faction of the Australian Labor Party. Bob, only four years older than John, left behind any interest in the Liberal Party over Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War (Barnett and Goward 1997, 4).

Determined to enter politics from the age of ten, John Howard actively pursued participation in the Liberal Party and the prospect of a political career. After being educated through the government school system (“Howard liked to say he was the first Liberal prime minister who had not been to a private school” (Carroll 2004, 294)) and completing his university studies to become a lawyer, in September 1974 Howard became the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for the electorate of Bennelong. Serving a shaky 22-year apprenticeship, Howard then led the Liberal Party to form a Liberal–National coalition government and became prime minister on 11 March 1996.

John Howard’s narrow perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty developed from a very conservative causal based life-world. From a close family background strongly imbued with the Protestant work ethnic, the ideas and perspectives of his grandfather and father heavily influenced Howard’s Australian and global perceptions. In fact, his perceptual values, understandings and experiences were shaped by an intersection of socialised knowledge, and events and circumstances from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In a public address made on 1 March 2006 Howard stated: “I have always believed in an Australia built on reward for individual effort, with a special place [of] honour for small business as the engine room of our economy. I have always believed in a safety net for those amongst us who don’t make it. I have always believed in the family as the stabilising and cohering unit of our society. And I believe very passionately in an Australia drawn from the four corners of the world, but united together behind a common set of Australian values and they are the attitudes and they are the values that … instruct and guide my leadership” (Barnett and Goward 1997; Howard 2006).

In his political thinking, Howard believed in independent endeavour and free trade rather than protection, government intervention, and a welfare state. He was twenty-six years old before Sir Robert Menzies retired from politics, and if any Liberal prime minister of the late twentieth century was the heir of Menzies, it was John Howard. With poverty, in Menzies’ understanding, being the cost and burden of the working classes – not

© Marcelle Slagter 221 society – Howard’s legacy, preceded by the economic policies of the Hawke government, was the rolling back of the Welfare State. In the name of individual responsibility, economic rationalism, and the financial bolstering of the family, Howard provided an anecdotal response to community ills. Menzies’ pupil, however, learnt well.

When Howard campaigned against the Keating Labour government in 1995, he did so not by commenting on its policies, but by concentrated personal attacks on the prime minister – much as Menzies had campaigned against Chifley (Carroll 2004, 298). On 11 September 2001, however, Howard was handed his Menzien Mantel. The terrorist attack on the United States of America that culminated in the start of the ‘War on Terror’ by the government of George Walker Bush became John Howard’s crusade, just as the crusade against communism had magnified the political aspirations of Menzies and his USA relations with John F. Kennedy.

Already harbouring a strong perception of Australia’s need for ‘border protection’ and control of unauthorised largely non-white entrants, the events of September 11 provided the impetus for the Howard Government to look for, and provide, a Pacific solution (Macintyre 2004, 270).23 Interventions preventing unauthorised entry to Australia by ‘boat people’ and ‘asylum seekers’ were justified by the statement – “You don’t know whether they do have terrorist links or not” (Howard in Macintyre 2004, 271). Dehumanising and depersonalising the issue of unauthorised immigration by preventing the publication of images of the people involved seemed an arguably fair response to the illegal activity of these people. However, when the Howard government promoted ‘practical reconciliation’ and active intervention in Aboriginal communities – to ensure greater accountability of public expenditure and emphasised health, housing, education and employment programmes with practical outcomes – his

23 “The Pacific solution”, Macintyre states, was a chilling title that John Howard apparently devised without any awareness that Hitler had proclaimed a solution to his own problem of an unwanted people (Macintyre 2004, 270).

© Marcelle Slagter 222 government’s simultaneous attempt to roll back land rights was more contentious (Macintyre 2004, 281). “Howard declared practical improvement of health and education facilities for Aboriginals was more important than land rights” (Brown 2002, 213).

Merleau-Ponty stated, that all of a subject’s knowledge of the life-world is gained from their own particular point of view, or from some experience of the world (Merleau-Ponty 2004, ix). For John Howard, the issue of poverty, like that of recognising the rights of Australia’s Aboriginal people, had a causal explanation that came down to his own point of view – his perceptual values, understandings and experiences. Phenomenology is about describing rather than explaining or analysing. It would be wrong therefore to analyse what persuaded Howard’s point of view. In describing John Howard’s actions as prime minister of Australia, however, what is missing is the reflection of the understanding and life-world experience that created his point of view. “We find in texts only what we put into them”, Merleau- Ponty stated. We can then only presume that what is absent is lacking. From his middle-class life-world, John Howard lacked the experience and understanding to perceive poverty in its temporal light. Like his New Zealand National Party contemporaries, he was not a unisocialist.

Determined to show a humane face in his right wing politics, Howard targeted government financial assistance to deserving groups24, but he did so by favouring business interests and a ruling elite. His social policies were largely out of sync with social conditions, and were not considerate of the interests of the whole community. For example, after years of avoiding expenditure on social housing, the problem of low-income earners being able to access and afford private and state rental housing again reared its head. Ironically, the Howard government’s belief and response was to encourage wealthier community members to invest more in private housing. In other words, property ownership was again valued as a means for

24 “Welfare” Carney and Hanks state, “is the human (or quasi-socialist) face of capitalism (Carney and Hanks 1994, 76). Step by step, Brown stated, Howard took Australia further to the Right (Brown 2002, 212).

© Marcelle Slagter 223 personal gain and a solution to poverty. Central to Howard’s ‘modern conservatism’ was his belief in ‘mutual obligation’25; the notion that ‘just as it is an ongoing responsibility of government to support those in genuine need, so it is also the case that – to the extent that it is within their capacity to do so – those in receipt of such assistance should give something back to society in return, and in the process improve their own prospects for self- reliance’ (Grattan 2003, 456-457; Macintyre 2004, 269-270).

Unfortunately, as the housing market heated up, the affordability of home ownership for low-income earners also declined and the demand for rental housing further increased. Private investors could not meet the demand, with the result that the costs of rental accommodation increased. Despite more than one hundred to two hundred percent increases in the valuation of homes, neither wages nor government welfare payments increased to offset this inflation. Australia’s housing history should have provided warning bells to emphasise the ‘wrong headedness’ of the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments’ approach.

Disbanding the Commonwealth Employment Service and placing greater onus and sanctions on the unemployed, sole parents, and people with disabilities to engage in employment at all costs, the welfare system that had once identified a tripartite responsibility between the individual, community and government in social security, once again focused only on the individual. By 2007, for example, sole parents with primary school aged children over the age of seven had lost all entitlements to income support due to caring responsibilities. Provided with only income-tested Family Assistance and Child Care Subsidy, in an environment lacking suitable and sufficient child care services, sole parents were punitively propelled into an employment market still very discriminating against people with ‘other’

25 Howard’s ideas about ‘mutual obligation’, Grattan states, extended to “the principle that ‘those who have done well in our society, and who benefit from a strong and stable sense of community in our society, should be encouraged to lend a helping hand to our fellow citizens who are in need’”(Grattan 2003, 456)

In describing the actions of the Howard government Macintyre stated: “The Howard government scrapped most of its predecessor’s training programmes for the unemployed, and replaced them with a new scheme of ‘work for the dole’ that required young unemployed to undertake community projects. It subsequently extended the principle of ‘mutual obligation’ to other welfare recipients, though the number in receipt of benefits continued to increase. At the beginning of the 1990s, 1.5 million Australians of working age were receiving income support; by the end of the decade, the number had risen to 2.6 million, or 20 per cent of the workforce. [Added to this] There were more working poor because of changes to the labour market” (Macintyre 2004, 261-262).

Nor was consideration given to the psychological wellbeing of children, the physical demands on children (sometimes having to spend 12 hour days in childcare), or the practical matters of commuting to and from schools and work on top of caring responsibilities and/or disability management for sole parents (including parents with disabilities). With the frequent absence of flexible employment and with poorer living conditions and recreational opportunities, relative and fringe absolute poverty flourished unheeded for children, sole parents, people with disabilities and older people. Promoting himself and his Liberal coalition government as appealing to, and representing, ‘the battlers’, the ‘men and women of mainstream Australia’, Howard sought to reduce the voice and interests of the ‘noisy minority groups’ – feminists, environmentalists, the ethnic lobby, the Aboriginal industry and the intellectuals. “Juxtaposing the practical concerns of his battlers to the indulgences of these, Labor’s pampered ‘elites’, he emphasised the national interest: the coalition would govern ‘For All of Us’” (Macintyre 2004, 261).

Not since before World War II had people with familial and community responsibilities and personal difficulties faced such psychological, economic and social hardship in Australia. Poverty in the late twentieth century and early twenty first century showed characteristics and a potential for

© Marcelle Slagter 225 expansion for which John Howard had no apparent understanding, knowledge, or vision. In describing Howard in the 1980s as a man living in the past, wanting to take Australia back to the stifling conformity of the 1950s, Paul Keating provided an image of John Howard many people affected by Howard's policies and political direction came to support (Macintyre 2004, 261).

Like the new right National governments of James Bolger and Dame Jennifer Shipley, John Howard’s new right Liberal–National coalition government finally met its end in November 2007. Howard, like Robert Stout and Viscount Stanley Bruce, lost his parliamentary seat, the general election, and his prime ministerial position.

In the closing days of 1999, a new Labour Government came into power in New Zealand. Its leader, Helen Clark, was the last New Zealand prime minister of the twentieth century and the first prime minister of the twenty- first century. Following the demise of the Howard Government in November 2007, Australia welcomed its new and first Labour government of the twenty-first century under the leadership of Kevin Rudd. The political directions and poverty perception of these leaders have yet to be recorded both historically and biographically. By all historical indications, the path to the future appears to require a political ideal more accommodating of unisocialist than economic rationalist governmentality – a balance of government intervention in support of community needs, together with a unity of state and community understanding to fulfil political and economic goals.

Reflecting on the political directions of the Australian and New Zealand governments in the last two decades of the twentieth century, the words of Karl Polanyi emphasised at the beginning of this chapter are considered truly apt: “Nothing obscures our social vision as effectively as the economistic prejudice” (1945, 161).

5. 5 Conclusion This concludes the description of how the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand perceived poverty. It does not conclude however, the description of how the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand portrayed their perceptions of poverty to the denizen populations of their countries. In other words, when Merleau-Ponty showed us that there are objects of perception and acts of perceiving, he also showed us that the act of perceiving involved the intersubjective activity of sending and receiving perceptions from other people.

The next chapter briefly focuses on the significance of the technique and technology used by the prime ministers to communicate their and their political party’s, perceptions of poverty. The chapter then moves on to provide the findings of this research study.

Political Impressionism: The Colour of Poverty

“Two things are certain about freedom: that we are never determined and yet that we never change, since, looking back on what we were, we can always find hints of what we have become” (Merleau-Ponty 'Sense and Non-Sense' in Baldwin 2004, 285)

6.0 Prologue In beginning this research study the first question to come to mind was - how was the poverty perception of the twentieth century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand structured? Was it possible for perceptions about poverty to be solely learned and created from books and television viewing (i.e. from various levels of experience)? This chapter looks more closely at how the twentieth century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand communicated their life-world perceptions – including their poverty perceptions.

6.1 Introduction Beginning with a short description of the history of British political life and political news coverage in the time of Adam Smith and David Hume, the chapter then moves on to discuss the inter-relationship between the increase in working-class political journalism, the wider circulation of political ideas, and the communication skills of the prime ministers. The chapter then moves on to examine the similarities in the rise and fall of Labour and conservative governments in Australia and New Zealand, and the plight of the indigenous people in both countries in relation to the national constitution of poverty, their political representation in government, their ability to communicate their perspective of the conditions and characteristics of poverty in their countries, and their ability to induce change. The chapter concludes by describing the findings from this research study.

6.2 Communicating Perception to Dominate Political Thought In the political life-worlds of the twentieth century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, much was different from the life-worlds of the famous Scottish philosophers Adam Smith (1723–1790) and David Hume (1711–1776), particularly with regard to political representation in government and in the communication of political ideas. Despite the fact that the famous Scottish philosophers Adam Smith (1723–1790) and David Hume (1711–1776) were both from middle-class backgrounds, neither philosopher ever had the right to vote during their lifetime. Not owning enough land (or property as lawmakers define it) ensured their disqualification. The right to suffrage was not extended in Britain until 1832. Therefore, in Smith and Hume’s time only three to four percent of the adult male population contributed to the election and formation of government in Britain. Comprising the king, his ministers and lords, and the aristocracy that surrounded them, the government of Britain was both exploitive and paternalistic. Parliament was merely a tool of the wealthy for the social control of the populace. Seats in Parliament were routinely bought and sold, and even advertised for sale in newspapers. It was considered a breach of privilege if a newspaper divulged the contents of parliamentary debates. For such an offence, a newspaper editor could be imprisoned in the Tower of London (Lux 1990, 104; Rosenberg 1979).

With the growth of trade unionism and organised working class political dissent in the early nineteenth century, British political doctrine began to take on new form. While socialist and co-operative societies had produced propaganda in the form of lectures and pamphlets to the more educated sector of workers in the community for some years, encouragements toward increased literacy amongst the working classes produced a substantial growth in working-class journalism. Since the working classes had previously been restricted in their ability to read and communicate in writing, the increase in working-class journalism provided a powerful and much more rapid means for the dissemination of all forms of literature to this class. A change that enabled working-class political ideas to travel

Yet, even with the increase of working-class journalism and the wider circulation of political ideas and information through various community media, deference toward the values of the upper class and upper middle- class sectors of the community persisted. The media did not, as Gans emphasised, often concern itself with either the social order or the values of the middle and working classes or the poor – other than to reflect the acquiescence of these classes to governing class values – or to criticise their popular culture (Gans 2004, 61).

In class divisions it is difficult to discern where one class ends and another begins. The difference in classes is so tenuous that even the smallest of economic events (increased share market stock values, or property prices) can lead to shifts; either lifting or lowering people from one class to another. When, for example, Robert Stout referred to the industrious, frugal and persevering middle classes he communicated his perceptions of a class of people far removed from the realm of the lazy, indolent and dependent poor of the working classes (Hamer 1963, 81). Yet, this perception of a division between classes was irrational, a chimera, the communication of a socially accepted perception from a man whose life-world and reasoning rested on the learned value of bias between people based on the disproportionate distribution and possession of property and wealth in the community.

In Chapter 4 it was emphasised that early twentieth century Australian and New Zealand prime ministers of working class origin, like Richard Seddon

NZ, supported government intervention in the interests of promoting the life, health, intelligence and morals of the whole community as opposed to the accumulation of wealth by a few. It was pointed out that through a lack of governing class capital, Australian and New Zealand governments had turned to government intervention as a practical means for developing their national infrastructure and opening up, or creating, capitalist markets.

Fundamentally, the purpose of government intervention was to protect the people of Australia and New Zealand and their pursuits; be it their liberal political interests, the industry of the governing classes, or the jobs and incomes of the working classes. Either way, what was promoted was considered ‘fair and just’ activity by government, businesses, and white communal markets. What motivated this reason for government intervention was heredity; the class, culture, social values and economic interests of British origin.

Without protection, in some form or another, Australian and New Zealand politicians believed their countries were at the mercy of unchecked capitalism. The effects of unchecked capitalism (witnessed by Australia and New Zealand’s British migrants), Richard Kennedy pointed out, were clearly evident in Britain. “The British state pursued a policy of laissez-faire liberalism for roughly fifty years during the nineteenth century, as a result of which (to speak broadly) the air above the industrial cities could not be breathed, the water below the cities could not be drunk, and large slices of these dwelling places were unfit for human habitation. Such were the consequences of vastly free market forces”(Kennedy 1989, 1-2).

In this life-world, Mitchell Dean explained, the predominance of nineteenth century British poverty provoked the formation of a theoretical discourse of the economy and “a variety of ethical and theological debates, political polemics, obscure tracts, and official reports” (Dean 1991, 9). As a consequence, the constitution of poverty in Britain came to be represented in matters of policy, legislation and administration, as well as in moral and political arguments. From this position, Dean argued, if the constitution of poverty underwent an epistemic shift, the shift would also be implicated in modes of moral regulation and governance (Dean 1991, 9). In other words, any communal shift in the perception of poverty would also produce a shift in the moral regulation and governance of the poor.

From their biographies, all the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand were avid readers; with the exception of Richard Seddon who,

© Marcelle Slagter 231 despite objections to the contrary, nevertheless also read through all the daily newspapers, Blue Books, Budgets, Parliamentary papers and official reports as part of his political duty (Drummond 1906, 75). Not all, however, were good listeners, or able to empathise with the circumstances of their constituents.

In nineteenth century Australia and New Zealand, an ability for speech making was paramount to political success. Speech making formed part of the public entertainment available before radio, cinema or television (Bassett 1993, 110). When Richard Seddon became prime minister of New Zealand in 1893, he was representative of a new breed of politicians “scorned by conservatives and politicians of the old school as vulgar populists” (Hamer 1988, 195). These men came from a variety of occupations before entering politics, with many having had experience of the goldfields, storekeeping or journalism. Storekeeping and journalism, in particular, often led on to a political career, “because of the central political role of the newspaper in promoting the needs of the goldfields communities and of the storekeeper in dispensing advice and information. Seddon was thoroughly representative of this generation” (Hamer 1988, 195).

In fact, Seddon was renowned for his ‘stump tours’. He travelled far and wide to address audiences throughout New Zealand about his party’s policies and his own political convictions. Not only did his political opponents refuse to match him in this endeavour, but they also denounced him for pandering to the populace by his actions. It was not until 1905 that Reform Party and Opposition Leader, William Massey, emulated Seddon on his stump tours by following Seddon up and down New Zealand in a one- man offensive, debating issues leader to leader on the same platforms (Gardner 1969, 10-11).

When Australian voters elected the world’s first national Labor government into power in 1904, Australia’s political correspondent for the London Morning Post wrote that this event was “enough to cause men to rub their eyes and to ask themselves in amazement whether or not the impossible can

© Marcelle Slagter 232 really happen”. The correspondent was unusually well-informed because he was, after all, the outgoing prime minister, Alfred Deakin. Deakin had anonymously been contributing weekly articles on Australian political affairs to the Morning Post for years. As McMullin stated, Australians were stunned by the advent of the Watson government, but they would have been equally amazed to learn the secret identity of the Morning Post’s Australian correspondent (McMullin 2004,33).

Deakin was not the only newspaper columnist amongst the twentieth- century prime ministers. Andrew Fisher helped establish the Gympie Truth in Queensland to provide a Labor perspective in opposition to the news conveyed by existing newspapers owned by political rivals, and some of William Hughes’ most useful work for the ALP was undertaken between 1907 and 1911 when he was invited to contribute a weekly column entitled ‘The Case of Labour’ in the conservative Daily Telegraph (Bolton 2003b, 107; Lloyd 2003a, 77).

In publicising his government, Joe Lyons held frequent press conferences – briefing journalists, editors and newspaper proprietors with the aim of seeking the assistance of private enterprise groups for economic reconstruction (Hart and Lloyd 1986). Discussing the issue of freedom of the press with Benito Mussolini (before World War II) after a vicious criticism of Italy’s fighters in the battle of Caporetto by Britain’s Daily Mail, Lyons stated: “This is only a newspaper; in England the Press is completely free. Even the man who wrote that article may be completely out of sympathy with it. It is the owners only who are responsible for a newspaper’s policy in England, not the Government. The aim of the Government is to maintain peace in Europe and their hope is that Your Excellency will support them in their efforts” (Lyons 1965, 260).

For his part, John Curtin was not just an avid reader, but loved vaudeville, musical comedy and was a film-addict. Able to pitch his speeches to diverse audiences, Curtin’s voice was raspy from decades of open-air speaking, but he ranked as one of the best Australian parliamentary orators

© Marcelle Slagter 233 of the twentieth century. A staunch believer in the freedom of the press, Curtin trusted the press, giving them off-the-record information, and few ever betrayed his confidence. As prime minister, he supported the independence of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (Serle 1993).

By the time Malcolm Fraser became prime minister, however, the relationship between the prime minister and the press had changed. “If a political leader has a bad week in parliament,” Fraser stated, “that reflects through in the commentaries, it reflects in the headlines. Even if it is theatre, that can be used to influence the way people think about events and people” (Weller 1989, 177). To get his message across to the people, in parliament Fraser doggedly restated his position – persuasion being borne by repetition (Weller 1989, 178).

In communicating perceptions, Weller stated, parliament provides an important opportunity for presenting a case. Television, electronic and print media are the second forums that a politician needs to master. Since it matters to governments what the media say, prime ministers have not been able to ignore them; nor ever completely control them. Constantly selling the political direction of the government to the nation nevertheless is part of the prime minister’s responsibility (Weller 1989, 175-176).

Concerned about the growing concentration of ownership in the media industry since the early 1970s, Paul Keating played a leading role in the mid 1980s in introducing legislative changes for the restructuring of the media industry. By this time, the power of the Australian media was firmly in the hands of an elite few: Fairfax, Packer, Herald and Weekly Times, and Murdoch. These major players dominated the industry under a system of government regulation that made their corporate existence both comfortable and profitable. “Under the rules, no individual or company could own more than two television stations and eight radio stations in Australia. The twenty-year-old two-station rule had been designed to restrain the concentration of influence in television ownership. But in reality the rule had fostered concentration: two stations were two stations,

irrespective of their size, so that an operator owning two small regional stations was no more able to expand than a larger player with a station in each of two capital cities” (Carew 1992). As Keating stated, what made the situation frightening was that most of the owners of these groups shared a common social background and, in political terms, a common point of view (Carew 1992, 187-188, 189).

In press conferences with the prime ministers, however, the media were generally neither in control of the agenda nor desired representation of information. New Zealand’s Rob Muldoon was notorious for lambasting the press and individual journalists over misrepresentation; his affectations toward political cartoonist Tom Scott were a national example. In describing his own experiences, David Lange stated, press conferences were usually well attended so it was important to prepare for them. “The idea, not always achieved, was to set the agenda at the press conference and make it look like those who wriggled away from reporting it were somehow letting down the profession of journalism” (Lange 2005, 187).

From 1991 until his premature death in 2005, David Lange NZ wrote a few hundred words every fortnight for the Dominion and other papers in the same ownership. Leaving Parliament in 1996, Lange made a comfortable living for several years writing and speaking to audiences in Australia and New Zealand. Preferring to address live audiences rather than appear on television, Lange stated, the Australian market was rewarding – political issues and audiences there were similar enough to New Zealand to make frequent travel worth the effort. His speaking engagements were not, however, limited to Australia and New Zealand: Europe, Canada, Japan, Taiwan and the United States of America also provided forums for his talent (Lange 2005, 283-284).

Then, there were the more adventurous prime ministers like Sir George Reid, Sir Earle Page, Gough Whitlam, Sir John Marshall, Sir William McMahon, Sir Robert Muldoon, Bob Hawke, Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Mike Moore (also including Alfred Deakin and David Lange), who wrote their

© Marcelle Slagter 235 own memoirs or political thoughts in books. It cannot go unstated that the prime ministers who authored their own autobiographies or political ideas were also (with the exception of Mike Moore) generally more educated than their peers, and less willing to leave to chance the reconstruction of their life story by another author. For these prime ministers, their own words provide a power beyond the grave (in most cases) and beyond the perspective of other authors. The value of the autobiography, overall, may be seen to check (or throw doubt upon) exposure of undesirable personal characteristics, support political perspectives, and reiterate political thoughts. Through this medium, therefore, the prime ministers have sought to provide continuity in both their established public image, and the public perceptions of them as people, politicians and leaders.

In analysing and addressing the question of whether perceptions about poverty were learned and created by the prime ministers from books and television viewing, no definitive answer can be given. Simply speaking, no one has previously posed or addressed this question in the biographies of the prime ministers. The nineteenth century example of Robert Stout, nevertheless, provides an indication that printed ideas were persuasive, as does the general fact that many of the prime ministers were avid readers and published writers. The means and method, or to cite Marshall McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’26 idea, for conveying their political thoughts and perceptions to the Australian and New Zealand public, both orally and in writing during the twentieth century, has generally been imbued by values of popular temporal custom, or, in simpler terms, doing something better than what the competition are doing.

For the first seventy years of the twentieth century, prime ministers communicated their poverty perceptions to the nation largely through printed media and speech making. Some film footage did exist but this was dependent on theatre attendance. During World War II, nevertheless,

26 This phrase was first used by McLuhan in Understanding the Media: The Extensions of Man (1964). McLuhan claimed that different media invite different degrees of participation on the part of a person who chooses to use a medium (McLuhan 2002).

© Marcelle Slagter 236 greater use began to be made of radio in promoting party policy, psychological security, and the perception of competent government control over the circumstances and events of the war. From the early 1970s and onward however, significant change through the advent of television provided Australian and New Zealand communities with both an ‘at home’ depiction of their national political representatives, and a wider, global window for conveying political rhetoric and political journalism.

There is no evidence in the biographies of the twentieth-century prime ministers to suggest that television documentaries displaying the destitution of communities affected by war, famine or natural disasters in, for example, Africa, South America or South East Asia, altered the prime ministers’ perceptions of poverty in their own countries. Yet the presentation, and international reflection, of poverty through this visual medium must have given some opportunities for national comparison.

While the arrival of television as a medium for the dissemination of information and entertainment in the 1970s was momentous, it also coincided with the emergence of new native-born middle-class educated prime ministers in Australia and New Zealand. For these prime ministers, subjective experience of poverty and insecurity was limited; knowledge of poverty was largely acquired more through a level of secondary intersubjective experience than direct personal experience. For these prime ministers too, the ability to perceive poverty in their time, and reflect an understanding of the conditions of poverty that affected their people in their time, was beyond their subjective capability. Who could reflect on the absence of food, shelter and clothing, if the absence of those life necessities had never been experienced in their life-world? The prime ministers could imagine, commiserate and empathise, but they could not subjectively understand this experience among people who lived in their communities, nor could they communicate their life-world inexperience of poverty to a media that lacked interest in the working classes and valued upper class and upper-middle-class values in the community.

Was this lack of experience and knowledge enough to create an epistemic shift in the constitution of poverty in Australia and New Zealand after the 1970s? In his speech to the National Press Club on the eve of his defeat at the 1996 Federal election, Paul Keating warned voters that ‘when the government changes, the country changes’(Curran 2004, 2). Keating’s statement may be viewed as sheer arrogance or historic reflection; either way it does raise the question of voter choice.

At the same time that conservative middle-class political thinking progressively replaced the dominant working-class thinking instilled by the labour movement in Australian and New Zealand communities (during the second half of the twentieth century), the difference in poverty perception between the Labour and conservative parties also diminished. The NZLP and ALP governments of the second half of the twentieth century could no longer produce the polarity of change in political direction witnessed in previous eras. Keating’s warning was outmoded – the country (community) could not change with a new government because the politicians in the country were largely conservative in their political direction and poverty perception. The epistemic shift in the constitution of poverty had already happened. As Stuart Macintyre states, “The third quarter of the twentieth century was an era of growth unmatched since the second half of the nineteenth century… People lived longer, in greater comfort. They expended less effort to earn a living, had more money for discretionary expenditure, greater choice and increased leisure. Sustained growth brought plenty to Australians… It was a golden age” (Macintyre 2004, 199). Barry Gustafson in comparison describes the period from 1960 to 1971 as “the most prosperous years in New Zealand’s history” (Gustafson 1986a, 82).

Increased community wealth and an abatement of white poverty, together with a consequent growth in middle-class Australia and New Zealand, as well as changes in economic discourse (a change from the ideal of an interventionist state and sheltered economy to a deregulated economy), government political arguments and policy and legislation, had already transformed the constitution of poverty (Macintyre 2004; McClure 1998).

6.3 Two Countries in Perceptual Reflection It is a little uncanny to see, from the history of the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, that political thought and the rise and fall of both the ALP and NZLP and conservative governments was successively mirrored between the two countries during the twentieth century. For example, when Ben Chifley AU and Peter Fraser’s NZ Labour governments lost their respective elections in December 1949, both countries entered a long period of governance by a conservative government, ended only by the emergence of the Labour governments of Gough Whitlam AU and Norman

Kirk NZ in December 1972. The subsequent return of a conservative government in both countries, with Malcolm Fraser AU and Rob Muldoon NZ in November and December 1975, heralded the re-emergence of middle class prime ministerial ideas, and the end of an era in sustained protection in political thought.

When the economic rationalist, reformist, and conservative Labour governments of Bob Hawke AU and David Lange NZ came to power in March 1983 and July 1984, the stage was set for public confusion – a reflection of the similarity in conservative policies between Labour and its opposition. The similarity in conservative political thought between parties was at this time so evident that a change in government was hardly noticed in either country following the election or change of leadership of the new conservative governments of Jim Bolger NZ, Jenny Shipley NZ and John

Howard AU. Yet, the change in government was unmistakeably conservative. Gone was any consideration of protection for the poor; control was of the essence. The edge of reason in both countries reflected the nineteenth- century antecedents of Australia’s and New Zealand’s ruling class British forebears; political party thinking and activity began to imitate the perceptions of the right wing British poor law reformists with their untroubled laissez faire governance.

Much was lost in the wake of the conservative change in the constitution of poverty within Australia and New Zealand from the early 1980s. With the close of the twentieth century, the conditions of employment of the working

© Marcelle Slagter 239 classes (including small business owners), so hard fought for by the many supporters of the labour and trade union movements since the nineteenth century, deteriorated. Companies with large capital reserves, and banks (many now foreign-owned), flourished; the profits of the governing classes soared (Kelly 2001; Macintyre 2004; McClure 1998).

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the cost of land and housing spiralled heftily upward. The basic affordability of accommodation in the community in comparison to income reduced, but did not yet ebb working- class hopes for private home ownership.

6.4 Terrorism and Poverty Although Australia and New Zealand have presented many similarities in their history and political thought, small contrasts in circumstances and political events did induce widening differences between the two countries (which were little spoken about) as the twentieth century progressed. The analysis of history, and the differences in the communities of Australia and New Zealand during the twentieth century, has much to offer future prime ministers in coming to grips with the relationship between their political directions, perceptions of poverty, and the conditions, characteristics and constitution of poverty in their countries in their time.

In contrast to Australia in 1938, the New Zealand Social Security Act provided New Zealand citizens with a more generous and liberal income support and welfare system than that which was later introduced in Australia. In addition, the nineteenth-century introduction of four permanent Maori seats in the New Zealand House of Representatives provided the Maori people with political representation in New Zealand’s centralised (federal) government throughout the twentieth century (Macintyre 2004; McClure 1998).

Through the Treaty of Waitangi, the Maori people of New Zealand were legally recognised as British citizens and, with later New Zealand independence, New Zealand citizens. This however, did not provide the

Maori people with immunity from the ethnic bias so manifest in both Australia and New Zealand at this time. Nonetheless, it did provide them with greater rights than were accorded to the indigenous people of Australia. While forced assimilation and integration (including the phenomenon of ‘the stolen generations’) of the Aboriginal people with the dominant Australian population created passive resistance toward government among the Aboriginal people, these experiences were not shared by New Zealand’s indigenous Maori people (Macintyre 2004, 292-297; Sutch 1942; van Krieken et al. 2006, 282-283).

After the Maori Wars of the nineteenth century, the excesses of white domination and capitalism attracted less violent protests from the Maori people. As a result, the dominant New Zealand population became more accepting of Maori rights, citizenship and culture. In time, this produced a substantial change in the dominant New Zealand population. Acceptance of the Maori language as a language of New Zealand was introduced in the second half of the twentieth century, as was conciliation and compensation for land violations under the Treaty of Waitangi. With the slow but continuous recognition and promotion of equality between Maori and Pakeha (white people) in the community, Maori also became more politically empowered. Moreover, increased Maori political activity and visibility in the traditional New Zealand political parties in the latter half of the twentieth century only served to strengthen the growing bicultural structure of governance in New Zealand (Brooking 2004).

At the end of the twentieth century, differences were clearly noticeable between the Houses of Representatives in New Zealand and Australia. New Zealand had not only seen a number of prominent Maori political representatives throughout the twentieth century, but a Maori representative from an ordinary parliamentary seat had become a mainstream party leader (Winston Peters, as leader of the New Zealand Party). New Zealand had also welcomed into office its first female prime minister, and first elected female prime minister.

A smaller and less wealthy country than Australia, the biographies of the prime ministers of New Zealand indicate that as New Zealand-born prime ministers came to power, they identified themselves more with their country of birth than with Britain and the British Empire. This national self- identification, when coupled with a residue of political thinking stemming from the labour movement among the working-classes, the ethos of fairness and justice, and a culture of government intervention and protection in New Zealand, contributed to greater recognition and identification with the Maori people in the face of Britain’s capitalistic self-interest. In line with the dominant and historic political thinking in the labour and trade union movements, a spark of interest also began to grow in accommodating the needs of the Maori people within New Zealand’s dominant monocultural government structure and welfare system; albeit that this system was not moderated to address those needs with any understanding of cultural dignity. In short, as the Maori people were citizens of New Zealand they were not excluded from the community but, instead, their culture and language were slowly accepted into New Zealand community protocols (Brooking 2004; Gustafson 1986a, 241-255).

In terms of governance (i.e. the way in which the conduct of individuals or groups might be directed through modes of action), the twentieth century history of the New Zealand Maori people, albeit still chequered, stands proudly, justly, and more liberally, above that of the life-world of indigenous Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders in Australia. With New Zealand governments focused on bi-cultural interests in the community because of Maori citizenship, New Zealand’s ethnocentric political history, and eye on white poverty, came under increased scrutiny during the twentieth century (particularly under unisocialism). The immigration to New Zealand of people from other cultures, nevertheless, received little attention, with political focus remaining more assimilative than integrative, and more bi-cultural than multicultural.

As the twentieth century passed by, Australia’s Aboriginal communities also shared their struggle for cultural recognition with politically invisible

© Marcelle Slagter 242 minority cultures and ethnic groups. By the start of the twenty-first century, Australia and New Zealand had multicultural communities, communities that were heterogeneously bound to a historically monocultural and homogeneous political system.

While governments in New Zealand in the latter years of the twentieth century gave recognition to the political input of the Maori people, the constitution of poverty and its recognised characteristics and conditions remained inherently ethnocentric and focused on monocultural solutions (Brooking 2004). On the other hand, because the Australian Aboriginal people: a) were not recognised as citizens in their own country until 1963; b) were not granted permanent political representation in either the state or federal governments of Australia after the introduction of responsible government; and c) had not achieved substantial in-roads into formal independent (traditional) political representation within the Australian government since acquiring citizenship; their status remained marginal in relation to the mainstream population of Australia. The ongoing nature of this marginality posed, and continues to pose, oppressive cultural and life-world conditions, and potential adverse political consequences (a cost that has mostly been borne by the Australian Aboriginal people themselves) (van Krieken et al. 2006, 282-283).

As Macintyre stated “There were few advantages in being Aboriginal. Those who identified themselves in the census had a higher rate of unemployment and lower income levels than the rest of the population. More of them were arrested and imprisoned. Their life expectancy was fifteen years below the national average, and this despite a quarter-century of government activity that was meant to overcome their disadvantages. …The relationship between the settlers and the indigenous peoples remains uncertain… All attempts to ease their conscience, whether by protection, reservation, conversion or assimilation of the Aboriginals, failed. …The colonisers are confronted with the fact that they share the land with the colonised” (Macintyre 2004, 280, 292-293).

In reflection, just as increased nineteenth-century working class journalism provided a powerful and rapid means for the dissemination and expression of new political ideas, by 1978 communication and technology in Australia and New Zealand had moved on and taken both countries to a new world hierarchy – one more focused on global governance than on British Imperialism. A call by poorer nations in this year was the establishment of a new world information and communication order (NWICO). UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) took up this call, and a bid was made to give journalists the global right to “have freedom to report and the fullest possible access to information”. A UNESCO declaration about mass media suggested that, among other things, the mass media should contribute to peace and understanding. UNESCO argued that this could be achieved “by giving expression to oppressed people who struggle against colonialism, neo-colonialism, foreign occupation and all forms of racial discrimination and oppression and who are unable to make their voices heard within their own territories” (Gerbner, Mowlana and Nordenstreng 1993, 176, 178 in Croteau and Hoynes 2000, 354-355).

Since global ownership of the production and distribution of information was largely in the hands of a wealthy few (American, British, French, German and Japanese media conglomerates) (Croteau and Hoynes 2003, 366), efforts by developing nations to balance the scale of input into the mass media was seen in Western nations as a form of censorship. This censorship posed a threat to the freedom of Western nations to interpret the world and communicate their interpretation globally: “Western nations, threatened by the proposals, responded with a powerful campaign aimed at discrediting the idea of a new information and communication order – and UNESCO (The USA announced its resignation from UNESCO at the end of 1983). Critics of the ideas being aired in UNESCO argued that these ideas were controversial, political, and opposed to freedom. The campaign was successful, stalling any progress for NWICO and paralysing the work of UNESCO” (Croteau and Hoynes 2000, 356- 357).

With intersubjective perception, it is wise to understand the perspective of your enemies, and wiser still to know your weaknesses. The question must be asked, what freedom exists for poor nations and minority cultures in wealthier nations if the world is ‘interpreted’ only by the wealthy? What chances do the poor have when government representatives are unable to perceive poverty because they have enjoyed only a life of privilege and good fortune? What freedom exists when only the educated wealthy governing classes in our world are able to communicate their cultural ‘interpretation’ (perspectives and beliefs) about their life-world to the people of the world?

As Mitchell Dean has emphasised, in nineteenth-century Britain, poverty was integral to the formation of the theoretical discourse of the political economy (Dean 1991, 9). In twentieth-century Australia and New Zealand, poverty remained integral to the theoretical discourse of the political economy. Poverty’s conditions formed capitalism’s underbelly, its presence promoted fear, and its reflection and select subjective subjugation provided capitalism’s greatest weakness. In a world where the advent of technology and material production exceeded all nineteenth-century imagination, where time and space had new meaning, the necessities of life, and the fundamental integrity of cultural difference, received only a cursory glance from the governing classes.

Little wonder that global discontent amongst poorer nations and religious and cultural zealots inspired resistance to the arrogance and ignorance of the wealthy in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. Even less surprising to world leaders should have been the rise of acts of terrorism as a reflection of malcontent resistance against systemic global inequality, unfairness and oppression. A proverbial dam broke on 11 September 2001, when terrorists used the technology and transportation of commercial passenger aircraft as their weapons, and the World Trade Center in New York (USA) and Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia (USA) as their target. Why strike these monuments in the USA? In short, they housed the Department of Defense of the world’s most

During the 1990s, some 500 companies had offices in the World Trade Center complex, with approximately 50,000 people working in the Center buildings, and another 200,000 visitors per day. Added to this, the 110th floor of the North Tower housed a major communication transmission centre. This centre stored commercial and public service radio and television transmission equipment, and supported an antenna mast holding the television signals for almost all New York City’s television broadcasters. In the basement of the World Trade Center, was a large gold depository (owned by a group of commercial banks).

Seven weeks after the September 11 attacks, US$230 million in precious metals was removed from the basement vaults of ScotiaMoccatta Depository (COMEX warehouse) in building four of the World Trade Center, including 3,800 100-Troy-ounce registered gold bars and 30,000 1,000-ounce silver bars. The buried gold amounted to about two percent of the 600-tonne-a-day global bullion market.

Responsibility for the September 11 attacks was claimed by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden argued (in several film recordings) that the terrorist attacks were in retaliation for the USA ‘plundering’ of resources in the Middle East, oppression of the people in this region by USA- supported abusive regimes, the dictating of policy to legitimate leaders in the Middle East, and the occupation of Muslim holy land by USA military bases. Resistance against the specified abuses, bin Laden claimed, was aimed at restoring freedom in the Middle East and punishing the aggressor in kind by inflicting economic damage on the USA (Johnson and Ross 2007; Reuters 2001; Williams 2008). A brutal and extreme form of resistance to capitalism, the 9/11 attacks in New York (USA) were roundly condemned worldwide.

Focusing back from the global to the local Australian and New Zealand life- world, a number of mediums for the distribution of information to and from Maori, Aboriginal, and other people from ethnic minorities, were established in Australia and New Zealand during the twentieth century. These mediums of communication included radio, television and printed material. Statistics were used as a main indicator and control device in monitoring the lives of the indigenous people of both countries. However, as an indicator of community poverty, levels for government and interested non-government organisations, statistics (although helpful) tended to, colloquially, record the fact that ‘a horse had bolted long after its bridle was taken off’. To be effective, statistical interpretation requires wider community knowledge and perception. From a value base, the statistics gathered in Australia and New Zealand have most closely reflected the recording of the characteristics of poverty that in life-world relevance apply mostly to the dominant population (and its cultural and moral regulation and governance). The conditions and characteristics understood in the national constitution of poverty are, therefore, those communicated and understood by the wider community. In perception, therein lies a difficulty.

Long neglected, ignored or under-represented in the systemic development of political policies, legislation and administration for the governance and welfare of their people, in the late twentieth century the Maori and Aboriginal people were given an opportunity to provide their perspective in the form of new systems of government consultation and administration aimed at reducing social disadvantage (Macintyre 2004, 280-281; Spoonley et al. 1986, 276-282; van Krieken et al. 2006, 286-288). In addition, the specific employment of indigenous people in government was also supported, the aim being to diminish monocultural institutionalism within government and to encourage the acceptance of different community perspectives by stimulating equality of opportunity. It was argued in sociological studies such as those from Spoonley, Bedggood, Trigger, Sansom, Gale and Wundersitz, and Cowlishaw, as well as in political debate, that only the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand could ever describe their subjective experiences. Solutions to indigenous

© Marcelle Slagter 247 problems, it was further contended, should therefore come from the intersubjective experiences of the indigenous people themselves (Spoonley et al. 1986, 281-285; van Krieken et al. 2006, 285).

Debatably, however, this approach was age old. Like the ideas that led to the laissez faire policies and the arguments of the governing classes – that the poor should be responsible for themselves in nineteenth-century Britain – the idea that the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand should independently provide solutions to their own problems against the excesses of capitalism was unworkable.

At the end of the twentieth-century, the political directions of the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand reflected a narrow cultural perceptual understanding of poverty. One explanation for this narrow cultural perception of poverty is the idea (in existential phenomenology) that when an individual is subjectively unable to perceive the real life-world of another individual, the intersubjective connection between both subjects, based on the commonality of their shared experiences, is reduced. Merleau- Ponty emphasised this when he stated “The world is not what I think, but what I live through (Merleau-Ponty 2004, xviii).

While Merleau-Ponty teaches us that we do not live only in the real world of perception but also live in the realms of imagination, ideality, language, culture and history (Edie 1964, xvi), we cannot perceive the life-world of other people unless we intentionally and consciously can understand their values, perspectives and experiences (Merleau-Ponty 1974, 80). In other words, if our leaders lack the breadth of experience to understand the life- world values, perspectives and experiences of other subjects, or as Husserl advocated (Husserl 1970, 151-152), phenomenologically reduce or consciously abandon efforts to understand the values, perspectives and experiences of other subjects, presumption and causality take over. From a communal perspective, an outcome of this argument is that if, in turn, the governing classes of Australia and New Zealand do not understand the values, perspectives, and experiences of the indigenous people of these

© Marcelle Slagter 248 countries, they will not perceive what truly contributes to the conditions and characteristics of poverty in indigenous communities. For this reason, the constitution of poverty in Australia and New Zealand for indigenous people is not the same as that perceived intersubjectively by the governing classes and dominant population of these countries.

For Australia’s and New Zealand’s prime ministers, a great deal of work still needs to be done to develop perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty that reflect intersubjective multicultural experience. If the poverty perceptions of Australia’s and New Zealand’s indigenous people (or of other ethnic and cultural minorities) are to be valued and understood and indigenous poverty alleviated, governments must commit themselves to the development of laws and policies that reflect the intersubjective experiences and perceptual differences of their entire populations.

6.5 Findings Many political points of view have been described and analysed in this study of the twentieth-century prime ministers. Within the preceding pages of this thesis lies a veritable thematic genealogy of the historic perceptions and spatio-temporal structure of poverty’s meaning in twentieth century Australia and New Zealand.

From the information gathered about the prime ministers’ perceptions of poverty, several findings can briefly be presented: • the prime ministers’ perceptions of poverty differed in accordance with their life-world values, understandings and experiences; • prime ministers who had their own personal subjective experiences of poverty were generally more able to empathise with the poverty experiences of other people and adopt more humanitarian social initiatives (rather than value-laden causal restrictions and sanctions) in their political direction; • prime ministers with dominant humanitarian beliefs tended to govern from a more unisocialistic perspective;

• until the early 1980s, the conditions and characteristics of poverty reflected a constitution that focused on the minimisation of absolute poverty (i.e. deprivation of the basics for human existence – food, shelter and clothing) and the universal protection of living and employment conditions; • due to their own cultural antecedents, the twentieth-century prime ministers of both Australia and New Zealand pursued and endorsed ethnocentric and monocultural policies that (inadvertently or intentionally) protected the interests of the dominant white populations in their countries, and remained a part of the national constitution of poverty throughout the century; • historically, in the structure of community relations, ownership of property determined an individual’s class. Class identification and citizenship are realms of experience that are intricately woven into the national constitution of poverty; • the introduction of ‘labour’ legislation, coupled with urbanisation, produced a change in the national constitution of poverty in both countries in the early twentieth century. This change supported a decline in the importance of property ownership as a solution for poverty until the last quarter of the twentieth century; • increases in population in the early twentieth century contributed to a reduction in the importance and value of land ownership for determining class divisions and class identification in the community. However, in the 1950s to 1960s, property ownership was again given emphasis as a tool for class division through political rhetoric and fear. From this time on, property ownership was perceived as a fundamental attribute of capitalism and a preventative against socialism and communism; and • in their political direction, and through their perceptions of poverty, prime ministers, before the middle class economic rationalists of the 1980s, pursued a level of security and protection that was believed to be best for their people. After the 1980s, Prime Ministers pursued what was believed to be best for their country’s economy.

From the review and analysis of both the biographies of the prime ministers, and the historical literature about poverty in Australia and New Zealand, it is evident that changes in the conditions and characteristics of poverty can, and do, occur as much from a change of subjective perception as from an event or circumstance. Major social changes like the gradual urbanisation of the population, improvements in education, transportation, technology, communication, and increases in women’s participation in the labour market, all produced consequences that affected the characteristics of poverty in Australia and New Zealand, particularly from a causal perspective.

In their lifetimes, the twentieth-century prime ministers of both Australia and New Zealand temporally witnessed many changes. These changes included, for example, increases in the education and skills of the nations’ populations and a reduction in the numbers of people available for domestic/labouring work. Education also produced improvements in the technology used in domestic/labouring situations. Improvements in transportation subsequently increased the speed of delivery of goods, and reduced the time taken for employees to get to work. Improvements in communication through the mass media enabled the faster gathering of, for example, knowledge information (key information about customers or the community, or the availability of products, and the ability to know when demands could be met). Time and space became more ordered and regulated.

Significantly, however, in the later years of the twentieth century, changes in the characteristics of poverty brought about through changes in subjective experiences were not supported in governmentality. The reliance by prime ministers on a causal philosophic approach to poverty, failed to produce an understanding of the changes in the conditions and characteristics of poverty in both New Zealand and Australia. Instead, political thinking in these countries continued to endorse solutions that promoted the minimisation of poverty based on historic perceptions. From this historic platform, governments in Australia and New Zealand

continued to identify and address poverty as a problem requiring the minimum, most economic, input. Overall, only the subsistence needs of individuals were objectively catered for (largely in cash payments); but without adjustment for market and local (spatiotemporal) differences.

The paradox in this political thinking was the publicly created perception that an adjustable safety net or poverty line existed that – when triggered – would prompt governments to respond to changes in the communal condition of poverty. In fact, as several authors like Easton, Garton, Saunders, and Macintyre have indicated, a widening gap developed in relation to the proportion of people assisted by government and those in relative poverty. This circumstance, when combined with a spiral of dereliction or absence in government maintenance and development of community infrastructure and services, ensured that the specific conditions for absolute poverty would again appear (ABCNewsOnline 2005; Boston et al. 1999; Easton 1986; Easton 1993; Garton 1990; Macintyre 2004, 246, 250,252-253, 261-262, 264, 269-270; Saunders 1999; Saunders 2005; The_New Zealand_Herald 2006).

In support of the preceding statement of finding, it has been emphasised that from the history of Australia and New Zealand, as well as from the prime ministers’ biographies, a clear movement occurred during the twentieth century in political solutions to address the conditions and characteristics of poverty. The historic idea that the fair dispersal of land (both through property ownership or lease) was vital for the political economy, and for addressing poverty, steadfastly remained in both conservative and labour political thinking until increases in population and urbanisation produced both a change in the values of social occupation and in the value of property ownership.

Urbanisation, age, environmental factors (including droughts and over- population of the land) and growing temporal demands for greater diversity in labour skills to ensure a buoyant national economy, highlighted weaknesses in continued reliance on the use of land as a primary solution

© Marcelle Slagter 252 for poverty. A weakness that twentieth-century history was also to emphasise, for example, was the government reliance and use of the gold standard as a medium of exchange for settling international business dealings and maintaining domestic monetary stability. The notion of providing cash benefits to the poor (at a subsistence level) along with free medical and education services therefore began to replace the emphasis on land use in the mid twentieth-century, along with government intervention in the supply of housing.

Security of employment and housing rapidly produced positive attributes in the form of a growth in communal stability, and ability to govern the population. Urban homeownership ensured less local geographic movement of the population (housing reduced the wandering of unemployed people from one town to another; a displacement in the population that occurred during the 1930s Depression), and centralised labour market availability and participation. The increased availability and affordability of mortgages for home ownership provided an incentive for ordinary individuals to seek gainful ongoing employment (for debt repayment), and was doubly beneficial in allowing capital accumulation.

Government intervention and government rationality in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century provided the impetus for market creation. With at least 80% of the population of Australia and New Zealand of working-class origin, lacking substantial capital, there was insufficient hereditary wealth within the population to support rapid new nation development. Desires for the fair and just distribution of wealth in the community, or a unisocialist political, economic and social approach, placed the task of securing capital for infrastructural development and community redistribution in the hands of the government. This included raising low interest overseas loans for the financing of national infrastructural development, as opposed to private borrowing, which was seen as too costly and time-consuming for the community. Better bulk-centralised government borrowing at a negotiated low interest rate than mass individual or local community borrowing that may attract higher interest rates through

The poverty perceptions of the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, as party leaders, leaders of government, and participatory, if not whole, policy decision-makers, were paramount in determining to what level government intervention existed and continued in each country at any one time for the benefit of the community. The prime ministers’ perceptions were also paramount in regulating government priorities.

In revealing the structure of the prime ministers’ poverty perceptions, the prime ministers’ biographies have shown the importance of different (other) levels or realms of experience – experiences, such as heritage, intersubjective social thought, culture, education, religion, and national self- identification. In taking a causal philosophic approach and analysing the rational origins of the poverty perceptions of the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, the evidence is clear. Until the mid-twentieth- century, the personal experiences of the working class settlers of these countries strongly influenced liberal political thinking and repulsed conservative theory as a way of advancing social interests of a fair and just community.

In the second half of the twentieth century, economic and social prosperity, coupled with advances in education, transportation, communication, technology, and the availability of ‘the welfare state’, changed the speed of productivity and availability of goods and services, the spatial environment of work places, and provided some relief from the characteristics of poverty. The historical signs and characteristics of poverty in the community, however, were pushed to the outer limits of consciousness and understanding as the lifestyles of people in Australia and New Zealand became more middle-class and comfortable. Added to this, as state education imprinted historic ideas of poverty from a causal philosophic perspective into the minds of the population, metaphysical perceptions of

In the second half of the twentieth century, the dominance of complacent and unquestioning causal scientific perceptions of poverty made it easier to accept and believe the historic values and understandings prescribed in conservative theory. At the same time, the rationality in educated and history-based economic thought began to dominate political and community relations. Meanwhile, resistance to unfair and unjust political outcomes by people in the lower socioeconomic echelons of the Australian and New Zealand population waned as unions became less focused, less organised, and less powerful. Little by little, the perceptual values, understandings and experiences in the community became dominated by the perspective that poverty, now economically rationalised, was being fairly managed by the ‘welfare state’ and thus, working-class political representation in parliament disappeared.

For the poor in Australia’s and New Zealand’s communities, changes in the conditions and characteristics of poverty, and in the sufficiency of subsistence levels of assistance, were subjugated as governments looked to the positive characteristics of national ‘economic growth’ and rhetoric in a laissez-faire approach to the causes of poverty. Changes in the values of social occupation ensured that government models about the living conditions and characteristics of the ‘unemployed’ and the ‘employed’ became outmoded. Governmentality and the gathering of static evidence supporting the status quo reinforced causal philosophic ideas that unemployment was a fault of the individual, and largely working class (or in the language of economics, the lower socioeconomic group).

Advances in technology, and in the demands of the community in the second half of the twentieth century, normalised into necessity, a desire for comfort and for time-saving products and communication devices like automatic washing machines, microwave ovens, computers, air conditioners, dishwashers and cellular phones. In relativity, changes in the

© Marcelle Slagter 255 composition of average household appliances and necessities were not commuted into the equation of poverty. Government welfare assistance continued to focus on the low level subsistence needs of the population, but the growing higher order needs of the poor to maintain and sustain normal community participation were subjugated.

Significantly, as housing costs and demands increased, and the balance between the cost of food, clothing and shelter in the community changed, the value and effectiveness of subsistence cash payments to the poor diminished, moving the deserving poor more closely toward the conditions of absolute poverty and further away from the real life-world living conditions of contemporary middle-class society. In other words, the difference between what was recognised as poverty in causal theory and what lay phenomenologically subjugated in the wider perceptual values, understandings and experiences of the community began to lead to a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Added to this perceptual view, successive governments in the late twentieth century reduced the membership of specific groups identified as deserving government assistance in the community by changing legal definitions of, for example, disability, unemployment, age, and sole parenthood – actions that supported economic rationalism.

Narrowing the meaning and constitution of poverty in Australia and New Zealand to sustain an out-of-date and historic perception of poverty limited the creation of new solutions to the prevailing but variable conditions and characteristics of poverty. Trying to address poverty through the existing solutions of income support and, for example, targeted housing assistance to a deserving few, was akin to trying to put size 6 shoes on size 10 feet.

State and community support ceased for people on the fringes of the government eye, as the perceptual values and experiences of the middle class prime ministers changed and fixed itself on outdated models and defunct theories of the causes of poverty in the community. Driven into a labour market in which infrastructural changes had not occurred to allow

© Marcelle Slagter 256 government withdrawal from the welfare state, disenfranchised people struggled to survive. It was for this reason soup kitchens re-emerged in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s.

By the end of the twentieth century, the conservative new right prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand no longer had any understanding of the real, rather than perceptually created, constitution of poverty in their own countries. Research into, and evidence for, the rationale supporting the changes in the conditions and characteristics of poverty in Australia and New Zealand did not exist. Moreover, while successive prime ministers in each country claimed, through pure semantics, that there was no poverty in their country, no precedent could develop or support a change in political direction in order to sponsor investigatory research on the subject. This is not to say that local research was not done. Organisations like the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS), the Brotherhood of St Laurence, and the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services (NZCCSS), continued to monitor the impact of economic rationalist thought. Statistics gathered to identify absolute poverty, however, slowly moved out of harmony with the changing characteristics of poverty in the community, as the perceptually undesirable and materially invisible population of poor in Australia and New Zealand failed to enter official records. No work was done to reform the 1940s-style welfare state other than to economise, redefine the poor, and relatively adjust expenditure figures.

With this approach, the new right governments were ‘keeping up appearances’ for their voters. However, no political acknowledgement was given of the real human cost of each nation’s political direction. Visibly, the evidence of new and increased poverty was inescapable. Young families, for example, began to emerge in a struggle to afford and obtain accommodation, and deinstitutionalisation foisted the severely disabled back into communities where their families and caregivers were under- funded, ill-equipped, and physically incapable of providing the intensive

If the conditions and characteristics of poverty were difficult for white Australian and New Zealanders, they formed a completely different constitution of poverty for Australia and New Zealand’s indigenous people. For the Australian Aboriginal people, the absence of a colonial treaty, and the lack of public political acknowledgement of, let alone reparation for, the damage and losses sustained since British colonisation, ensured the continuation of both cultural and perceptual alienation from the wider community. Attempts at assimilating and integrating the indigenous people of Australia failed to accommodate cultural difference, ethnic and political recognition, and wider community inclusion; the white-focused welfare state, instead of helping the Aboriginal people, bred nothing but dependence and complacency in isolated communities fractious with anomie. In contrast, the second half of the twentieth century produced positive government activity in tribal reparation for breaches to the Treaty of Waitangi for the New Zealand Maori people.

6.6 Poverty in Perception – Summary In twentieth-century Australia and New Zealand, the poverty perceptions of the British working classes dominated party political ideology, and the national constitution of poverty, until the accumulation of wealth and education reduced the experience of poverty for the greater proportion of the population. With increased education, and a middle-classing of experiences in the population structure, the meaning of poverty changed.

For the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand, and for other representative ethnic minorities of colour, however, the national constitution of poverty throughout the twentieth century differed in its conditions and characteristics to that of their experiences. The differences arose not only in language and perspective, but also through general ethnic and cultural exclusion from the dominant systemic ethnocentric and monocultural mode of governance in their countries of orientation (or destination).

Sir Robert Menzies once wrote: “…we must spare a morsel of pity for the future historian. He will sit down to write of a long dead statesman whom he neither knew nor heard. He turns to the statesman’s recorded speeches, hoping to perceive the man through his words. But if the words are those of the anonymous John Smith and not the statesman, the historian’s light on the statesman becomes a little dim. True, the ideas, the policies, may be there, but those sudden phrases and flashing turns of speech, those uncontrived expressions of emotion, which tell us so much about a speaker, will be lacking” (Sir Robert Menzies cited in Curran 2004, 22). It is apt to say, that in studying the poverty perceptions of the twentieth- century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, the biographical (archival) description of the experiences and actions of the prime ministers provided a greater guide with which to perceive them than pure reliance on their words ever could.

Throughout this thesis, descriptions of poverty perception have been presented to draw comparisons between the causal and existential phenomenological philosophic techniques of enquiry. In sociologically analysing the essential theme of poverty perception in this study, it has not always been obvious that either one philosophy stood absolutely apart from the other. Using sociological enquiry to connect one theme to another, as Merleau-Ponty stated, created an authored meaning and rationalised view of the poverty perceptions of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand that strongly reflected a more causal philosophic approach than a phenomenological one. Remaining true to the Merleau- Pontian approach was extremely difficult.

Merleau-Ponty believed that classical science is a form of perception that has lost sight of its origins and believes itself complete. It is evident from this research study that much can be learnt by revisiting history and revealing the structure of our perceived world. Doing so, however, enables the discovery of new knowledge from a social scientific perspective, and presents infinite potential for our perceptions of a given thing to be contradicted, or differently represented. Through Merleau-Ponty’s work, it is possible to recognise that our perceiving minds are incarnate minds that

© Marcelle Slagter 259 produce perceptions from which knowledge and communication sublimate meaning. In other words, through our perceptions we structure our life- world. Merleau-Ponty’s legacy has shown us that the structure of our incarnate life-world is always bound up with our spatial and temporal position, and realms of experience of the social, cultural, economic, and political worlds around us (Cole 1992, 106-107; Merleau-Ponty 1964, 3, 7; Merleau-Ponty 2004, 66). In meaning therefore, our perceptions of poverty are always mutable.

What this study has revealed is that to see is not always to understand, that to read is not always to value, and that imagination is nothing like experience. In our beliefs about poverty, theory and conjecture are reflective of historic realms of experience and perceptual structures that do not always augment truth. In our development of theory and reasoned argument, perception begins with the intentionality of human consciousness not with vision. It begins with the understanding of being, not with the reflection of the self, and at the end of the day, it is our subjective consciousness that learns to discriminate between what is and what our beliefs and values discern should be.

Given the theoretical perspective used in this thesis, history does not repeat itself because, like poverty, history exists only so far as an individual can consciously perceive it. In the twenty-first century (the Age of Communication and Information Technology) subsistence living has another meaning. Although a person cannot live without the basics of food, clothing and shelter, they must (in our temporal life-world) also have access to health care, transport and communication technology. Without the latter, employment and survival are socially impossible. The twentieth century produced different characteristics and conditions of poverty never perceived (valued, understood or experienced) communally in Australia and New Zealand before. For the twenty-first century governments of Australia and New Zealand time is of the essence. The structure and origin of the poverty perceptions of future prime ministers and their political directions can all be

6.7 Conclusion This chapter emphasised that there is a variation between the national constitutions of poverty in Australia and New Zealand and the constitution of poverty for the indigenous and minority ethnic populations of colour in each country. Discussion focused on access to media communication, and how the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand utilised various mediums of communication to convey their perceptions.

It was also emphasised that for many poor people, and poor countries, in the world, the ability to communicate their experiences is not newsworthy – community media values the interests of the governing classes over that of the poor. It was stressed, but not till now suggested, that by opening the means of communication to the poor, and other ethnic cultures within the community, the voice of the poor and working-classes may be heard, and more could be done to reduce the prevalence of poverty in the community. In understanding the paradox of perception, it was stated that in perspective, the possibility exists for understanding both our enemies and our own weaknesses.

In using Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenological technique to address the research question posed in this thesis, specific emphasis was given in the preceding chapters to providing a summary of the poverty perceptions of the majority of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. The findings from this research study indicate that a relationship did exist between the political directions adopted by the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, and their perceptions of poverty.

In finishing, it is emphasised that in our life-world the structure of our perceptions matter. Many solutions to poverty remain concealed through the way poverty is perceived by us. By learning to be more acceptant of

The Mutability of Poverty Perception: Conclusion

“New knowledge ... does not simply render the social world more transparent, but alters its nature, spinning it off in novel directions.” (Giddens 1992, 153)

7.0 Prologue In the opening sentences of Robert J. Hawke, Blanche d’Alpuget27 states: “I have taken the view that there is no single truth to be told about something as complex and shifting as a fifty-year life span, but rather many truths, from various perspectives which, when viewed together, reveal the dimensions of personality”.

Later d’Alpuget writes of Hawke’s biography: “I think it has been worth writing, for a number of reasons: one, obviously, is the intrinsic interest of the subject. Another is that it has provided an opportunity to trap information which otherwise will vanish as its living sources die, information about a social institution for which I feel profound respect (and often irritation): the Australian trade union movement. Frustrating and foolish as it sometimes is, I believe the freedoms of our society are carried on its shoulders” (d'Alpuget 1982, Foreword)

7.1 This Study in Overview In beginning this thesis, it was pointed out from the work of Hernando de Soto that the origins of capitalism lie in an implicit legal infrastructure hidden deep within the property systems of capitalist countries. It was stated that the documented historical evidence of poverty in Australia and New Zealand supports particular public and political perspectives and, subsequently, perceptions about poverty that are obscure and deserve to be recovered. This research study has provided a thematic genealogy of the poverty perceptions of most of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. It has also provided some clues as to the

27 In should be noted that Blanche D'Alpuget is Robert (Bob) Hawke’s second wife. Hawke married Blanche D'Alpuget in 1995.

In Chapter 2, it was stressed that philosophers have questioned what the perception of things as we experience them involves. Deliberating on the two main traditional philosophic positions in the Western philosophy of perception since the seventeenth century, Chapter 2 gave prominence to the development and application of the existential phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It was stated that Merleau-Ponty identified at least two distinct levels of perception – the objects of perception and the acts of perceiving. Most specifically, it was argued that Merleau-Ponty’s work could provide us with an opportunity to look upon our perception of things differently from that presented through classic scientific analysis.

Existential phenomenology, it was emphasised, is a philosophy that puts essences (elements) back into existence and can be described as “a study of the advent of being to consciousness, instead of presuming its possibility as given in advance” (Merleau-Ponty 2004, 71). The word perception, it was explained, indicates a direction rather than a primitive function. If applied phenomenology puts the essence of a phenomenon back into existence, then, it was stated, a good outcome of this technique is when the structure of a lived experience is revealed to us in a manner not previously seen but still understood.

Further describing the fundamentals of phenomenological research and methodology, the chapter then went on to assert the importance of language in both the development of perception and in phenomenological writing. The chapter presented a brief example of how poverty can be interpreted from an existential phenomenological perspective before arguing that if we can understand that our perceptions have emanated from historical values, understandings and experiences, then we can also recognise that any event or circumstance in our life-world could rupture or substantially change our established perceptions, particularly those pertaining to poverty.

Moving on from the description of Merleau-Ponty’s theory and methodology, Chapter 3 began with a description of Michel Foucault’s definition of liberal thought. It was argued, that in causal philosophic theory, when liberal thought is systematised to form a practice (liberalism), it still takes on a variable perceptual meaning. From the Foucaultian interpretation of liberal thought, it was argued that for Britain’s seventeenth to nineteenth century governing classes, facing a rapidly increasing and ageing population, liberal thought was perceived to mean: • self preservation –the progress of the enclosure movement and liberation of dependent serfs and slaves ensuring the protection of both land and capital holdings; • freedom – the ability to more intensely develop land for increased annual yields and potential profit, and to channel and utilise capital into other profitable ventures; and • independence – a release from further responsibility and accountability for the maintenance and security of dependent labourers.

Liberal thought, nonetheless, did not absolve the governing classes from their religious values or their feudal duty to provide philanthropic contributions to the community. This value was endorsed in, for example, the compulsory rate imposed in the law of the 43rd year of Elizabeth.

For the liberated serfs and slaves who became free labourers and eventually Britain’s working classes, liberal thought, on the other hand, meant alienation from a shared heritage imbued by class and ethnic deference, and a considerable loss in sovereign right, protection, and direction. It also meant however, increased class empowerment, and the possibility (if not the ability) to pursue social equality, rights, and independence before the law.

© Marcelle Slagter 265 preservation of personal ownership of property and the well-being of ‘the self’ amongst the British governing classes. This fear was driven, not by the thought of armed revolution, but by a conscious awareness that class emancipation was increasingly making ‘traditional’ rulers and their rules vulnerable to the exigencies and extremes of competitive self-interest in the shape of capital accumulation and poverty. In short, the governing classes of this period supported and propagated the direction and prevalence of good and bad conditions in their community through both their social and political conservative thought.

By the late 1880s–1890s, the practice of liberalism in Britain, Australia and New Zealand had lent itself in reflection to critique and change. A new rationalism and conduct of government (governmentality) began to emerge, driven by changes in the values of social occupation, the Labour Movement, colonial settlement, and capital investment in Britain’s colonies. In New Zealand and Australia the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of poverty brought by the settler populations from their countries of orientation, provided the motivation and organisation for a more unisocial form of government.

In the next two chapters, the existential phenomenological methodology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty was used to analyse historical and biographical data about the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand. The purpose in using this methodology was to emphasise the existence, at any one time, of more than one perceptual field and to reveal the structure of the twentieth-century prime ministers’ poverty perceptions.

Chapter 4 traced and described the essential themes in the structure of poverty perception of the early ‘humanitarian’ twentieth-century prime ministers. While Chapter 5 concluded the description of how the twentieth- century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand perceived poverty by revealing the essential themes in the structure of poverty perception of both the mavericks amongst the prime ministers, and the next ‘rationalist’ generations of prime ministers.

In Chapter 6, it was emphasised that there is a difference between the national constitutions of poverty in Australia and New Zealand, and the constitution of poverty for the indigenous and minority ethnic populations of colour in each country. Discussion focused on access to media communication, and how the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand utilised various mediums of communication to convey their perceptions.

It was also emphasised that for many poor people, and poor countries, in the world, the ability to communicate their experiences is not newsworthy – community media values the interests of the governing classes over that of the poor. It was suggested that by opening the means of communication to the poor, and other ethnic cultures within the community, the voice of the poor and working classes may be heard, and more could be done to reduce the prevalence of poverty in the community. In understanding the paradox of perception, it was stated that in perspective, the possibility exists for us to also better understand both our own weaknesses and the weaknesses of other people.

In summary, the findings of this research study indicated that a relationship does exist between the political directions adopted by the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, and their perceptions of poverty. It was argued that, historically, state and community support began and ended for people on the fringes of the government eye when the perceptual values, understandings and experiences of the prime ministers changed from the objective to the subjective, and the subjective to the objective; the latter producing acceptance of outdated models and defunct theories of the causes of poverty in the community. When a causal philosophic approach dominated, fringe beneficiaries of the welfare state were left to the mercy of a labour market where infrastructural changes had not occurred to bolster government withdrawal of support. It was for this reason soup kitchens re-emerged in Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s.

7.2 Final Conclusion It has been pointed out throughout the thesis that the biographical and historical material about the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand is limited in its presentation of the prime ministers’ perceptions of poverty. However, much can be done to improve what we know and what we can learn about our leaders given a different perspective and emphasis upon what is written.

In describing the poverty perceptions of the twentieth-century prime ministers’ examples and comparisons were drawn between the causal and existential phenomenological philosophic outcomes of enquiry. In sociologically analysing the essential theme of poverty perception in this study however, it was acknowledged that it has not always been obvious that either one philosophy stood absolutely apart from the other. Using sociological enquiry to connect one theme to another, as Merleau-Ponty suggested, created an authored meaning and rationalised view of the poverty perceptions of the twentieth-century prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand that strongly reflected a more causal philosophic approach than a phenomenological one. Remaining true to the Merleau-Pontian approach was extremely difficult, but slippage into a more causal approach was allowed for in Merleau-Ponty’s writings in the consideration that it was only natural for people to misinterpret causal perspectives rationalised from consciously constituted relations. Merleau-Ponty described this by stating: “All the sciences situate themselves in a ‘complete’ and real world without realising that perceptual experience is constituting with respect to this world. Thus we find ourselves in the presence of a field of lived perception which is prior to number, measure, space and causality and which is nonetheless given only as a perspectival view of objects gifted with stable properties, a perspectival view of an objective world and an objective space. The problem of perception consists in trying to discover how the intersubjective world, the determinations of which science is gradually making precise, is grasped through this field. …The philosophy of perception is not ready made in life: we have just seen that it is natural for consciousness to misunderstand itself precisely because it is consciousness of things. The classical discussions centring around perception are a sufficient testimony to this natural error. The constituted world is confronted with the perceptual experience of the world and one either tries to engender perception from the world, as

realism does, or else to see in it only a commencement of the science of the world, as critical thought does” (Merleau-Ponty 2006, 219).

Merleau-Ponty believed that classical science is a form of perception that has lost sight of its origins and believes itself complete, yet through scientific perception we structure our life-world. The structure of our incarnate life-world nevertheless, is always bound up with our spatial and temporal position, and realms of experience of the social, cultural, economic, and political worlds around us (Cole 1992, 106-107; Merleau- Ponty 1964, 3, 7; Merleau-Ponty 2004, 66). In short therefore, our perceptions of poverty are always mutable.

In our intersubjective and incarnate life-world, how we perceive poverty significantly directs whether we will, for example, actively develop policies and research to find solutions for poverty, or whether we will adopt and allow the moralisation and labelling of poverty into classes of deserving and undeserving want. It is hoped that the perspectives and insights presented in this thesis are of assistance to those people who can bring into action new policies, new legislation, and above all new constitutions of poverty within Australia and New Zealand.

In closing and reflecting on the years spent working on this thesis, I must concur with the words of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “I have less the feeling that I am proposing something completely new than the feeling of drawing out the conclusions of the work of my predecessors” (Merleau-Ponty 1997, 127).

Appendix

Table 1 The Twentieth-century Prime Ministers Of Australia and New Zealand

Australia New Zealand

Richard John Seddon (Liberal) Sir Edmund Barton (Protectionist) b. 22/06/1845 – d. 10/06/1906 b. 18/01/1849 – d. 07/01/1920 PM 01/05/1893 – 10/06/1906 PM 01/01/1901 – 24/09/1903 Financial Occupation: Financial Occupation: Lawyer Engineer/Publican

Miners Advocate Alfred Deakin (Protectionist/Liberal) b. 03/08/1856 – d. 07/10/1919 PM 24/09/1903 – 27/04/1904 05/07/1905 – 13/11/1908 02/06/1909 – 29/04/1910 Financial Occupation: Teacher/Lawyer/Journalist

John Christian (Chris) Watson (ALP) b. 09/04/1867 – d. 18/11/1941 PM 27/04/1904 – 18/08/1904 Financial Occupation: Compositor Trade Union Advocate

Sir George Houstoun Reid (Free Trade) Sir William Hall-Jones (Liberal) b. 25/02/1845 – d. 12/09/1918 b. 16/01/1851 – d. 19/06/1936 PM 18/08/1904 – 05/07/1905 PM 21/06/1906 – 06/08/1906 Financial Occupation: Public Financial Occupation: Carpenter Servant/Lawyer

Sir Joseph George Ward (Liberal) Andrew Fisher (ALP) b. 26/04/1856 – d. 08/07/1930 b. 29/08/1862 – d. 22/10/1928 PM 06/08/1906 – 28/03/1912 PM 13/11/1908 – 02/06/1909 10/12/1928 – 28/05/1930 29/04/1910 – 24/06/1913 Financial Occupation: Clerk/Merchant 17/09/1914 – 27/10/1915 Financial Occupation: Miner Trade Union Advocate Sir Thomas Nobel Mackenzie (Liberal) b. 10/03/1853 – d. 14/02/1930 PM 28/03/1912 – 10/07/1912 Financial Occupation: Surveyor

William Ferguson Massey (Reform)

b. 26/03/1856 – d. 10/05/1925 Sir Joseph Cook (Free Trade/Liberal/ PM 10/07/1912 – 10/05/1925 Nationalist Party) Financial Occupation: Farmer b. 07/12/1860 – d. 30/07/1947

PM 24/06/1913 – 17/09/1914

Financial Occupation: Miner

Trade Union Advocate

______

William Morris Hughes (ALP/Nationalist Party/UAP/LPA) b. 25/09/1862 – d. 28/10/1952 PM 27/10/1915 – 09/02/1923 Financial Occupation: Teacher/Shop Keeper/ Lawyer Trade Union Advocate ______

Viscount Stanley Melbourne Bruce Sir Francis Henry Dillon Bell (Nationalist Party) (Reform) b. 15/04/1883 – d. 25/08/1967 b. 31/03/1851 – d. 13/03/1936 PM 09/02/1923 – 22/10/1929 PM 14/05/1925 – 30/05/1925 Financial Occupation: Financial Occupation: Lawyer Lawyer/Business Director/Soldier(Captain) Joseph Gordon Coates (Reform/United (Liberal)) b. 03/02/1878 – d. 27/05/1943 PM 30/05/1925 – 10/12/1928 Financial Occupation: Soldier (Major) /Farmer Farmers Union Advocate

James (Jim) Henry Scullin (ALP) Sir Joseph George Ward (Liberal) (2) b. 18/09/1876 – d. 28/01/1953 PM 22/10/29 – 06/01/1932 ______Financial Occupation: Farmhand/Woodchopper/Miner/Shop Sir George William Forbes (United Keeper/Journalist (Liberal)) Trade Union Advocate b. 12/05/1869 – d. 17/05/1947 PM 28/05/1930 – 06/12/1935 Financial Occupation: Farmer Joseph (Joe) Aloysius Lyons (UAP) b. 15/09/1879 – d. 07/04/1939

PM 06/01/1932 – 07/04/1939

Financial Occupation: Teacher Michael Joseph Savage (Labour) b. 23/03/1872 – d. 27/03/1940 Sir Earle Christmas Grafton Page PM 06/12/1935 – 01/04/1940 (ACP) Financial Occupation: b. 08/08/1880 – d. 20/12/1961 Labourer/Goldminer/Stationary Engine PM 07/04/1939 – 26/04/1939 Driver/Bakery Manager/Cellarman/ Financial Occupation: Medical doctor, Trade Union Advocate Captain AIF WWI, Farmer

Sir Robert (Bob) Gordon Menzies Peter Fraser (Labour) (UAP/LPA) b. 28/08/1884 – d. 12/12/1950 b. 20/12/1894 – d. 15/05/1978 PM 01/04/1940 – 13/12/1949 PM 26/04/1939 – 29/08/1941 Financial Occupation: 19/12/1949 – 26/01/1966 Stevedore/Journalist Financial Occupation: Lawyer Trade Union Advocate ______

Sir Arthur (Artie) William Fadden

(ACP) b. 13/04/1895 – d. 21/04/1973

PM 29/08/1941 – 07/10/1941

Financial Occupation:

Canecutter/Town Clerk

______

John Joseph Ambrose Curtin (ALP) b. 08/01/1885 – d. 05/07/1945 PM 07/10/1941 – 05/07/1945 Financial Occupation: Estimates Clerk/ Journalist Trade Union Advocate

Francis (Frank) Michael Forde (ALP) b. 18/07/1890 – d. 28/01/1983 PM 06/07/1945 – 13/07/1945 Financial Occupation: Railway clerk/Telegraphist/Telephone technician ______Trade Union Member ______Sir Sidney George Holland (National) b. 18/10/1893 – d. 05/08/1961 Joseph Benedict (Ben) Chifley (ALP) PM 13/12/1949 – 20/09/1957 b. 22/09/1885 – d. 13/06/1951 Financial Occupation: PM 13/07/1945 – 19/12/1949 Accountant/Soldier (2nd Financial Occupation: Train Engine Lieutenant)/Business Director Driver Trade Union Advocate ______Sir Keith Jacka Holyoake (National) Sir Robert (Bob) Gordon Menzies b. 11/02/1904 – d. 08/12/1983 (LPA) (2) PM 20/09/1957 – 12/12/1957 12/12/1960 – 07/02/1972 Financial Occupation: Orchardist/Farmer Farmers Union Advocate ______

Sir Walter Nash (Labour) b. 12/02/1882 – d. 04/06/1968 PM 12/12/1957 – 12/12/1960 Financial Occupation: Costing Clerk/Confectionary Merchant

Sir Keith Jacka Holyoake (National)

(2)

Harold Edward Holt (LPA) b. 05/08/1908 – d. 17/12/1967 PM 26/01/1966 – 19/12/1967 Financial Occupation: Soldier/ Lawyer/Media & Theatre Investor

Sir John McEwen (ACP) b. 29/03/1900 – d. 20/11/1980 PM 19/12/1967 – 10/01/1968 Financial Occupation: Public Servant/ Soldier/Wharf Labourer/Farmer Farmers Union Advocate ______

Sir John Grey Gorton (LPA) b. 09/09/1911 – d. 19/05/2002 PM 10/01/1968 – 10/03/1971 Financial Occupation: Orchardist/RAAF Pilot (Flight Lieutenant) ______

Sir William (Bill) McMahon (LPA) Sir John Ross Marshall (National) b. 23/02/1908 – d. 31/03/1988 b. 05/03/1912 – d. 30/08/1988 PM 10/03/1971 – 05/12/1972 PM 07/02/1972 – 08/12/1972 Financial Occupation: Lawyer Financial Occupation: Lawyer/Soldier ______(Major)/Children’s Book Author ______Edward Gough Whitlam (ALP) b. 11/07/1916 - Norman Eric Kirk (Labour) PM 05/12/1972 – 11/11/1975 b. 06/01/1923 – d. 31/08/1974 Financial Occupation: Lawyer/RAAF PM 08/12/1972 – 31/08/1974 Navigator (Flight Lieutenant) Financial Occupation: Stationary Engine Driver/Railway Engineer/Mayor ______

Sir Wallace (Bill) Edward Rowling (Labour) b. 15/11/1927 – d. 31/10/1995

John Malcolm Fraser (LPA) PM 06/09/1974 – 12/12/1975 b. 21/05/1930 - Financial Occupation: Teacher/Army PM 11/11/1975 – 11/03/1983 Captain/University Lecturer Financial Occupation: Farmer (Economics) ______(Grazier) Sir Robert (Rob) David Muldoon (National) b. 25/09/1921 – d. 05/08/1992 PM 12/12/1975 – 14/07/1984 Financial Occupation: Accountant/Naval Intelligence Corporal

Robert (Bob) James Lee Hawke David Russell Lange (Labour) (ALP) b. 04/08/1942 – d. 13/08/2005 b. 09/12/1929 - PM 14/07/1984 – 08/08/1989 PM 11/03/1983 – 20/12/1991 Financial Occupation: Lawyer/ Financial Occupation: Lawyer Journalist/Writer ______

Sir Geoffrey Winston Russell Palmer

(Labour)

b. 21/04/1942 -

PM 08/08/1989 – 04/09/1990

Financial Occupation: Lawyer/Writer

Michael (Mike) Kenneth Moore (Labour) b. 28/01/1949 - PM 04/09/1990 – 02/11/1990 Financial Occupation: Social Worker/ Printer/Journalist/Writer ______

James (Jim) Brendan Bolger (National) b. 31/05/1935 – Paul John Keating (ALP) PM 02/11/1990 – 08/12/1997 b. 18/01/1944 - Financial Occupation: Farmer PM 20/12/1991 – 11/03/1996 Financial Occupation: Clerk/Research Assistant Trade Union Advocate ______Dame Jennifer (Jenny) Mary Shipley John Winston Howard (LPA) (National) b. 26/07/1939 - b. 04/02/1952 - PM 11/03/1996 – 24/11/2007 PM 08/12/1997 – 05/12/1999 Financial Occupation: Lawyer Financial Occupation: Primary School Teacher

Helen Clark (Labour) b. 26/02/1950 - PM 05/12/1999 – Present (2008) Financial Occupation: University Lecturer (Political Science)

Key (Abbreviations):

ACP = Australian Country Party ALP = Australian Labor Party LPA = Liberal Party of Australia UAP = United Australia Party

Labour = New Zealand Labour Party National = New Zealand National Party

Table 2 The Prime Ministers’ Place of Birth

Twentieth-century Australian Prime Ministers

Name Born in Australia Born Overseas Barton Sydney, New South Wales Deakin Melbourne, Victoria Watson Valparaiso, Chile Reid Renfrewshire, Scotland Fisher Crosshouse, Scotland Cook Silverdale, England Hughes Pimlico, England Bruce Toorak, Victoria Scullin Trawalla, Victoria Lyons Stanley, Tasmania Page Grafton, New South Wales Menzies Jeparit, Victoria Fadden Ingham, Queensland Curtin Creswick, Victoria Forde Mitchell, Queensland Chifley Bathurst, New South Wales Holt Sydney, New South Wales McEwen Chiltern, Victoria Gorton Wellington, New Zealand McMahon Sydney, New South Wales Whitlam Kew, Victoria Fraser Toorak, Victoria Hawke Bordertown, South Australia Keating Sydney, New South Wales Howard Earlwood, New South Wales

The Prime Ministers’ Place of Birth

Twentieth-century New Zealand Prime Ministers

Name Born in New Born Abroad Zealand Seddon Eccleston, England Hall-Jones Folkestone, England Ward Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Mackenzie Edinburgh, Scotland Massey Limavady, Ireland Bell Nelson Coates Pahi Forbes Lyttelton Savage Tatong, Victoria, Australia Fraser Fearn, Scotland Holland Greendale Holyoake Scarborough Nash Kidderminster, England Marshall Wellington Kirk Waimate Rowling Motueka Muldoon Auckland Lange Thames Palmer Nelson Moore Whakatane Bolger Opunake Shipley Gore Clark Hamilton

Table 3 The Twentieth-century Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand (In order of Service) AUSTRALIA 2000- 1990-1999 1980-1989 1970-1979 1960-1969 1950-1959 1940-1949 1930-1939 1920-1929 1910-1919 1900-1909 Age at first 51 47 37 59 46 53 53 39 53 52 58 44 46 56 54 59 57 67 56 53 56 45 53 47 56 appointment Barton Deakin Watson Reid Fisher Cook Hughes Bruce Scullin Lyons Page Menzies Fadden Curtin Forde Chifley Holt McEwen Gorton McMahon Whitlam J.M Fraser Hawke Keating Howard Key: ___ Liberal Left/Protection ___ Labour/Labor ___ Liberal Right/National/Conservative

NEW ZEALAND 2000- 1990-1999 1980-1989 1970-1979 1960-1969 1950-1959 1940-1949 1930-1939 1920-1929 1910-1919 1900-1909 Age at first 47 55 50 59 56 74 47 61 63 55 56 53 75 59 49 46 54 41 47 41 55 45 49 appointment Seddon Hall-Jones Ward Mackenzie Massey Bell Coates Forbes Savage P. Fraser Holland Holyoake Nash Marshall Kirk Rowling Muldoon Lange Palmer Moore Bolger Shipley Clark

Key: ___ Liberal Left/Protection ___ Labour/Labor ___ Liberal Right/National/Conservative

Table 4 The Twentieth-century Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand (In Order of Birth)

Prime Ministers Born in the Nineteenth Century

1990-1999 1980-1989 1970-1979 1960-1969 1950-1959 1940-1949 1930-1939 1920-1929 1910-1919 1900-1909 Age at first appointment 47 52 58 75 39 55 56 59 54 56 44 46 59 47 51 55 74 59 56 50 47 53 46 53 37 61 63 53

Coates Lyons Page Nash Bruce Fraser P. Curtin Chifley Forde Holland Menzies Fadden Reid Seddon Barton Hall-Jones Bell Mackenzie Massey Ward Deakin Cook Fisher Hughes Watson Forbes Savage Scullin

Prime Ministers Born in the Twentieth Century

2000- 1990-1999 1980-1989 1970-1979 1960-1969 1950-1959 1940-1949 1930-1939 1920-1929 1910-1919 1900-1909 Age at first appointment 67 53 63 57 56 59 56 54 49 46 53 45 55 56 47 41 47 41 49 45

Keating Moore Clark Shipley McEwen Holyoake McMahon Holt Gorton Marshall Whitlam Muldoon Kirk Rowling Hawke Fraser J.M Bolger Howard Palmer Lange

Key: ___ Liberal Left ___ Australia ___ Labour/Labor ___ New Zealand ___ Liberal Right/National/Conservative

Bibliography

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