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On Thursday JM White wrote a thoughtful essay attacking Roger Douglas and his disastrous economic policies: the chickens of which have come home to roost in recent times. Predictably, the ‘true believers’ who swallowed it whole 40 years ago jumped in to defend him in the comments. There seems to be something in the water whereby no matter how much evidence and proof you put forward, Douglas is unable to be criticised.
I suspect the reason for this is the brainwashing, which continued on regarding Rob Muldoon, was the result of an endless media campaign of personal denigration for many years and some swallowed that whole. In short, many probably feel criticism of Roger Douglas means they support Muldoon.
There are, however, a couple of things to bear in mind. First, why did Muldoon hang around in politics almost until his death? Why not slink away like Ardern, Cullen, Robertson and Clark? They slunk away into the nearest sewer because they all had ‘guilty consciences’ – knew they’d failed, knew they were wrong and in the wrong. But Muldoon remained in politics. Why? (Hint: because he and everyone else knew none of what his opponents were saying was actually true.)
Secondly, consider the following scenario. Bill Rowling, former Labour PM, was a self-styled ‘New Zealand Nationalist’, who believed development of the NZ economy should result in assets retained in New Zealand-owned hands; his brief period as PM showed this was not idle talk. In 1978, Rowling led Labour to a surprisingly strong election result: gaining 11 seats, getting more votes than National, and leaving a handful of ultra-marginal National seats to target in 1981.
After the 1978 general election Labour was riding high. They were 10 per cent ahead in May 1979, and consistently around five per cent ahead for the rest of the year in both the Heylen and NBR polls. So what did Roger Douglas and his cronies do? They kicked over the applecart. First they replaced Bob Tizard as deputy leader with David Lange and then commenced a highly damaging campaign to undermine Bill Rowling. It worked.
Now why would you do such a thing? Why act as if you deliberately wanted to lose? (Hint: perhaps because they did). Perhaps some people had been ‘bought and paid for’ with instructions to prevent an ‘economic nationalist’ becoming Prime Minister again, so that a prize bunny – Lange – could be the patsy in charge whilst a series of polices got instituted that ripped the guts out of New Zealand and enriched some really bad dudes?
Oh, and on the subject of ‘bought and paid for’, some questions: guess who sold their family business to Sonata Laboratories in 1983? Guess who ultimately owned Sonata Laboratories? Guess who plonked the (tax free) proceeds into a couple of companies soon after? Hint: check out a company called COTY Incorporated. Guess who bought them in 1963? Oh and guess who was so dumb he actually wrote about all this in one of his silly books? If this were about Rob Muldoon or Donald Trump, it’d be taken as gospel truth but because it’s criticism of the sainted Roger Douglas, it will all be seen as some sort of conspiracy theory lunacy. It just happens to be all true.
