A powerful sensation of déjà vu

By Chris Trotter*The Coalition Government has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. The explanation, presumably, for the powerful sensation of déjà vu in which this government is now wreathed. By the time the government changed, the state was pouring in excess of a million dollars a day into the pockets of New Zealand’s motel owners. The electoral heft of that generation was sufficient to limit the plans of those who had been encouraged to “rip-in, rip-out and rip-off” in the name of national development. The truth of this proposition has been clear since the 1870s, when Sir Julius Vogel launched New Zealand’s first “national development” plan.