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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

A Political Diagnosis

A Political Diagnosis

This survey of the causes of stagnation in New Zealand politics deserves to be read in every bus, office, and farmhouse kitchen. Mr Innes’s view of New Zealand businessmen as economic schizophrenics, who recognise the value of Government planning by its effect on their bank balances, yet publicly castigate their nurse, seems a fair one. Equally I agree with his analysis of the semi-religious basis of the Social Credit movement. But the hard core of the book – its timely contribution to the literature of protest – develops from his sympathetic understanding of the way in which the Labour Party has been digging its own grave with the very machine which it constructed to bring unprecedented prosperity to the people of New Zealand.

The absence of ideas – other than the idea that working men should be content with their lot, or alternatively, that pay packets should be fuller each year – in New Zealand political life is indeed a chasm of dullness. I agree with Mr Innes’s diagnosis. But in his suggested solutions – trade with Asia, the provision of economic data to representatives of management and workerpage 652 organisations, the establishment of a Corps of Economic Counsellors – he allows too little, I think, for the power of militant unionism, somewhat in the shade since the wharf lock-out, but never likely to be amputated. If the Labour Party were able to let go its doubtful compromise of liberal unionism, forget about vote-catching, and return to its militant sources, it would no doubt regain its lost energy. I regret also that Mr Innes has not discussed at all the unsatisfactory nature of Government dealings with Maoris. This hidden sore point will undoubtedly become a major issue in the next twenty years. Setting these matters aside, I find Mr Innes’s book a most valuable survey.

1963 (303)