Traditionally there has been boom or bust look to the New Zealand economy. Soaring meat and wool prices and Rob Muldoon’s expansionary Budget in 1972 led to full-scale economic boom that slipped out of Labour’s control after the first oil shock in 1973. The second, in 1978, exposed the weaknesses in Muldoon’s interventionist, tinkering approach and the country’s economic crisis deepened in the early 1980s. Today, after several boom years, the New Zealand economy is heading for ‘softer’ than usual landing. House prices and sales have levelled off, but not plummeted. Inward migration has slowed but not stopped; emigration is up but the workforce is not haemorrhaging. Inflation is within bounds, if only just; interest rates are unlikely to be seriously damaging; the exchange rate can be survived. Overall economic growth will be lower, but at about three percent sufficient to keep the economy ticking over.
Bob Brockie, National Business Review, 3 November 1980.
From the NZ Cartoon Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library, P O Box 12349, Wellington, Tel/fax 04-474 3154 The national collection of cartoons and caricatures
