Farewell Air NZ 737s - the noisy revolutionaries

On the 6th of September, NZ557 from Christchurch to Auckland marked the end of Boeing 737 service for Air New Zealand.  This was barely mentioned by the press, but there is history behind Air NZ (and its predecessor NAC) flying Boeing 737s, because they truly revolutionised travel within the country in the 1960s and in just over 10 years or so they had seen off the end of the Wellington-Lyttelton overnight ferry, the Christchurch-Dunedin-Invercargill overnight train and one of the two Auckland-Wellington overnight train services - despite best efforts by politicians to prop the latter three up with subsidies.

Before aviation enthusiasts jump on me, yes, I know the Boeing 737-300s that have been flying the last decade and a half are not the ones that started flying in 1968.  These were the 3rd generation of the type NAC first flew on the "main trunk" Auckland-Wellington-Christchurch Dunedin", and yes there is now a 4th generation (which are the types flown by the likes of Qantas and Virgin Australia to NZ today), but the basic design retain a lot of commonality.  Besides, I like an excuse for a bit of history, and this one contains a political element that demonstrates, once again, how "democratic control" of a business can so easily sow the seeds of failure.

NAC was wholly owned by the Government and had virtually a statutory monopoly on domestic air services.  Other airlines did provide services, but they had to prove to the bureaucracy that there was demand for the service (heaven forbid a business start up service risking it might not have customers!) and prove it would not interfere with the services provided by existing operators.  So NAC had a legal veto over competition.  Nevertheless, it almost always operated profitably overall, although the reality was that the "main trunk" was gouging passengers and making high profits, whereas services to provincial airports like Kaitaia, Gisborne, Oamaru and Westport were unprofitable, but considered politically important (unlike today, with Air NZ which is profit focused across the network).   Still, NAC, as government businesses were at the time, was run by aviation professionals and as the jet age started in the 1950s, by the early 1960s it was becoming clear that the next revolution in air travel would be pure jet travel.  It gained Government permission to go to tender for jet aircraft to fly domestic services in 1965.

The three main manufacturers at the time, Boeing, Douglas and British Aircraft Corporation all were shortlisted.  Boeing with its, as yet unflown, 737. Douglas with the DC-9, and BAC with its BAC 1-11.  NAC's criteria for the aircraft to choose included speed of turnaround, fuel efficiency and ability to manoeuvre safely and reliably at Wellington Airport (which had a runway even shorter than it has today).  Herein comes the "democratic control" element.  The then Holyoake National Government wasn't impressed by the conclusion of NAC's analysis, that the Boeing 737 was the best aircraft for the job.  It was more interested in international trade diplomacy and winning the support of the British Government in securing favourable trade access when it would eventually enter the EEC.  It insisted that NAC "look again" at its business case, delaying approval for its capital investment in the 737.

NAC did, and once again made it clear that the 737 was the right plane for the job, and so it proved to be.  Over 8,600 Boeing 737s have been built (and are still being built), of the four generations of the original design (and a fifth generation is being developed).  The BAC 1-11? 244 and production ended in 1982, although Romania's Ceausescu regime was licensed by the Callaghan government to produce 22 it struggled to complete 9 by the time the vile regime was overthrown in 1989.  It was not the last attempt by a New Zealand Government to intervene commercially in the decisions of its airlines, but fortunately the airline won and so NAC was one the earliest operators of the Boeing 737 (Lufthansa was the first), the plane that (after some slow years) would be Boeing's biggest selling variant ever.

So what was the result? It cut travel time on the routes it serviced by nearly half, and it was 50% faster than the Vickers Viscounts it was replacing, so one Boeing 737 could fly around twice as many services a day with 50% more passengers, saving them a considerable amount of time, but also enabling airfares to be more affordable, particular for growing business traffic between the main centres.   As a result, the competing modes were increasingly hit hard.

I blame Roger Douglas

The retirement of Sir Roger Douglas is not surprising given he could be described as the venerable man of New Zealand politics, particularly since none of his generation remain in Parliament.   He has outlived his first finance nemesis, Rob Muldoon, for some years.  Outlived the man who led him into power (David Lange) by some as well, and all subsequent Prime Ministers bar Helen Clark have long left direct involvement in politics (as did his successors, David Caygill and Ruth Richardson).

Yet he had a profound effect that I blame him for.  He got me passionately interested in politics of principle not pragmatism.

See I was in my teens when Labour was elected in 1984, having remembered nothing other than Muldoon grumpily always being in charge, in an almost personality cult like perpetual presence on the news.  I remember, barring the exceptions outlined by Peter Cresswell (and voluntary unionism), Muldoon banning inflation, banning interest rate increases and directing the economy like someone who was always in control.

Yet all he did was fiddle and create unintended (but predictable) consequences.  Muldoon was known to get government departments like the Railways Department to hire people en masse in the year before the election, to soak up unemployment numbers, almost Maoist like to control politics.   Roger Douglas was something else.

David Lange's rhetoric about "consensus" and the banal anti-nuclear policy were the touchstones of the 1984 campaign, which was only made more exciting by Bob Jones and the New Zealand Party putting the boot into the insipidly spineless National Party.   However, behind the scenes Roger Douglas was ready to dish out the medicine New Zealand needed, to correct the gross distortions of many years of intervention, regulation, sclerotic state sector and stifling levels of taxation.

There is far far too much to recall about what life was like before the reforms started by Douglas, stifled by Lange, extended by Richardson and only slightly rolled back.   The left in New Zealand would rather forget about that era, because most were too blinded by the carrots of the anti-American anti-nuclear policy, the creation of the Treaty of Waitangi grievance industry, a bevy of new government departments (Women's Affairs, Pacific Island Affairs, Environment, Conservation), return to compulsory unionism and the hijacking of the education agenda.  You see whilst all of the things they liked were happening, Roger Douglas took a multi pronged approach, one which the economically illiterate left didn't understand, and which made the reforms of Reagan, Hawke and even to an extent Thatcher seem a bit wet.

Let's just briefly recall some of his biggest steps:

- Ending the wage, price and interest rate freezes, that had choked off credit and choked off any chance of prices and wages reflect demand and supply.  After a few years of intense pain, it all settled down;

- Floated the exchange rate, so the Reserve Bank wouldn't be pouring taxpayers money into propping up the NZ$, the immediate result was dramatic devaluation which eventually returned to somewhat higher levels;

- Tearing down the walls of import licensing, that gave a handful of businesses profitable monopolies to extract rents from consumers, whilst shutting out innovation, and dramatically reducing import tariffs so New Zealand would stop assembling TVs, telephones (and eventually cars) at prices several times that of other countries, and along with the acceleration of CER saw a wider range of food, clothing, shoes and other consumer goods at cheaper prices;

- Abolish umpteen statutory monopolies on market entry, and foreign investment restrictions which was visibly seen in new banks, domestic airline competition, new rental car firms, competing telephone companies for long distance and international calls (initially), new radio and TV stations, new service stations;

- Abolished subsidies for agriculture and most businesses, which saw many farms foreclose, but also the rise of diversification in agriculture.  The viticulture sector was able to take off, along with horticulture and the rise of more specialist producers.  The start of the phasing out of producer board saw exporters become more competitive, as they searched for new markets in Asia, South America and the Middle East, whilst Europe proved less and less accessible for agriculture;

- Reformed tax by abolishing the 66% top rate, flattening income tax rates, abolishing sales taxes that peculiarly penalised cameras and records at rates of up to 40%, replacing them all with a flat 10% on everything.  This simplification of the tax system killed all but the very high end tax advisory industry (H&R Block disappeared from NZ) and increased revenue;

- Drastically reformed and then privatised ailing state industries. From electricity generators to petroleum exploration, postal services, three banks, a steel company, television, state radio, land holdings, forestry holdings, coal mining company, the telecommunications company, two insurance companies, an airline, the weather forecaster, the air traffic control service, an international shipping company, a film company, a print works, a hotel company and a civil engineering company, were all either just restructured into commercial structures or sold.  Several subsequently went bankrupt, others had success (Peter Jackson bought the National Film Unit), but all dramatically improved performance.

Most of all he brought to politics a new honesty of principle and purpose.  In essence, New Zealand was going bankrupt and was so tied up in regulations and monopolies it was stagnating its way to developing country status.  New Zealand had dropped from being one of the three countries with the highest GDP per capita in the world in the 1950s to being ranked below Spain by the 1980.   He stopped the rot, and set the stage for a more service, export and dynamically oriented economy to emerge.

The magic of his approach was speed, he liked to say that he would aim at multiple targets at once, so at any one time those who might oppose would be split between multiple causes - causes of course based on spending other people's money, protecting monopolies or protecting failure.   However, it was the slowing down that started the failure to complete his "unfinished business".

What hamstrung him was the growth of the "new-left" public service that came with Labour, the reintroduction of compulsory unionism and the unwillingness to go further and faster with spending cuts, and cutting taxes (to a flat rate of income tax).  With the heavily unionised health and education sectors subject only to base level reform, it proved difficult to seriously address the underlying issues of those monopolies - and so it remains.

He didn't do what was popular, he thought of the long term, and I appreciated that.  I saw through the calls from those wanting their businesses protected, businesses that ripped off consumers and taxpayers by charging more than the excluded competition, and taxpayers by demanding subsidies.  I saw through the bleets of the worshippers of state owned trading departments, having experienced the ineptness of the Post Office, the extortion of its national phone service (the days when making a "toll" call required careful planning and was for birthdays or emergencies only), the infamous railways that lost freight, manufactured its own rivets, bought cheap and nasty underpowered buses and couldn't make a profit even while it had a statutory monopoly on most of its business!   

Roger Douglas rescued New Zealand's autarchic import substitution economy, that enriched a select few monopoly holders, kept tens of thousands in easy low productivity employment, inflated prices of everything from appliances to cars to shoes to records.   Only a tiny handful of Alliance retards would turn the clock back, prop up farmers with subsidies, have the Post Office run all of the phones and have a monopoly on delivery services, have Air NZ protected from "too much" foreign competition, and expensive locally produced clothes.

I supported Labour in 1990 because of Roger Douglas and the ongoing courage that government showed in doing what was unpopular in the face of a media that was consistently in favour of more state.  It sold Telecom months out from the election, whilst National gutlessly got elected on the back of a moaning public.  Of course after that Ruth Richardson carried the banner and did more of the good work for three years, till National's conservative gutless instincts took over, and reforms were stopped, reversed or slowed down.  Douglas wrote Unfinished Business, and it had a grand plan to move health, education and superannuation into personalised private accounts, with choice, and despite the mean spirited lies of the left - he wanted universal coverage.

You see Roger Douglas still believed in an element of socialism.  He wanted to retain the welfare state, funded from GST, with no income tax.  He wanted universal pensions, just provided with private accounts, topped up from GST for those who didn't save enough.  He wanted compulsory health insurance and education accounts for children, which would be topped up for those who didn't earn enough.  He believed in universalism, he believed in taxation, he even believed in ACC (just full competition between private providers that were compulsory to buy insurance from).  He simply believed that state providers are rather inept and monopolies deliver poor service inefficiently.

So while he is no libertarian, I am glad he got me fired up.  There is no compare between him and Bill English.  He is a giant compared to other MPs and it is a travesty of politics and New Zealand that he couldn't be a Cabinet Minister in the current government.

You see the revolution he started was, as Lindsay Perigo once said, not a revolution in the hearts and minds (although quietly most MPs wouldn't reverse what he did).  

For John Key to appoint him a Finance Minister would have required testicular fortitude that is scarce in the National Party, after all it was Jim Bolger who opposed Douglas in Opposition, and did nothing to reverse any of his policies as PM.   However, National just reflects the appalling inability of so many New Zealanders to understand their own history, in part because the minority who would turn the clock back have bulwarks in the media and education sectors.   National doesn't have it in them to defend Douglas - but he doesn't need defending.

With the exception of the economically illiterate socialist Greens, Jim Anderton, remaining Alliance retards (and the Alliance retard wing of Labour) and Winston Peters, Douglas's legacy is quietly acknowledged. 

His faults were real, for he was no libertarian, but I'm not going to dwell on those today.  For quite simply I blame Roger Douglas, for showing me that politics can include politicians brave enough to take on the braying mob, to not be a smarmy populist like Winston Peters, or a shrieking harpie like Pam Corkery, or a hand-wringing compromiser like Jim Bolger.  

I didn't always agree with Roger Douglas's principles, but I often agreed with his policies and he did far more good than harm in New Zealand.  Had his business not been unfinished, it wouldn't be quite what I would agree with, but I don't doubt New Zealanders as a whole would be a lot wealthier,  happier, healthier, better educated and have a far more vibrant and diverse economy.

The fact that we don't can be laid at the memories of David Lange, Margaret Pope, Jim Bolger, Jim Anderton, Winston Peters, Helen Clark, and the million or so New Zealanders who consistently vote for dependency, mediocrity and mundane fear driven politics of envy.

So farewell Roger, this government never deserved you and in some ways neither did New Zealand.   However, I'm glad I lived and grew through you being courageous and steadfast - and I know you don't need the endorsement, recognition and gratitude of others to know you were largely right.

Oh and Rodney? You are not even half the man he is, and you know it.

Berlin Wall season

As the existence of the Berlin Wall had a significant impact on how I thought of freedom, as a child, this week I will be writing of the Wall, the countries behind the Iron Curtain and the events of 1989 and beyond that have changed Europe and the world for the better.

To start, here is Christopher Hitchens in Slate about what to learn. Take this piece, which may ring a distant bell in our ears:

This 20th anniversary has seen yet another crop of boring articles about how so many people, especially in former East Germany, are supposedly "nostalgic" for the security of the old Stalinist system. Such sentimental piffle—which got a good airing in that irritating movie Good Bye Lenin!—would not long survive a reading of another new book: Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, by Victor Sebestyen. Making effective use of archives opened since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Sebestyen describes the day in late October 1989 when the head of State Planning in the German Democratic Republic, Gerhard Schürer, presented the party leadership with the unvarnished economic news. "Nearly 60 per cent of East Germany's entire economic base could be written off as scrap, and productivity in mines and factories was nearly 50 per cent behind the West." Even more appalling was the 12-fold increase in the GDR's national debt—a situation so grotesque that it had been classified as a state secret lest loans from Western creditors dry up. "Just to avoid further indebtedness," wrote Schürer, "would mean a lowering next year of living standards by 25 to 30 per cent, and make the GDR ungovernable." So the wall came down just before the hermetic state that it enclosed would have imploded. I doubt that there would have been much "nostalgia" for that.

or how about this wonderful quote:

they wanted the unexciting objective of "normality"—a life not unlike that of Western Europe, where it was possible to express everyday criticism, register a vote, scrutinize a free press, and become a consumer as well as a producer. These unexciting demands were nonetheless revolutionary in their way, which gives you an idea of the utter failure and bankruptcy of the regimes that could not meet them. In 1988, in a public debate with a hack official of the Polish Communist Party, Lech Walesa won over the audience with his simple statement that "Europe moves by car, and we are trying to catch up with them by bike."

The waste of humanity for this 50 years of fear, sacrifice and oppression, the fact half of Europe was freed from one tyranny by another tyranny, and the so easily collapsed system once those with guns got consciences. It is a reason to never forget, and never forget those who so readily apologised for the prison states that are long confined to the slag heap of history.

Remember 9th of November

Boris Johnson writes in the Daily Telegraph how we should all remember the 9th of November - the day the Berlin Wall was breached for good.

He says:

It is precisely now, when the public mood is so bitter towards bankers, so hostile to profit, so seemingly brassed off with the very idea of wealth creation that we should remember how ghastly, grim and unworkable was the alternative – state-controlled socialism.

He said it was a moral disaster, a cultural and artistic wasteland and ... "It was a complete and utter environmental catastrophe, as anyone who travelled behind the Iron Curtain will remember. I don't just mean Chernobyl; I mean the cynical way in which socialist planning obliged human beings to endure the proximity of some of the filthiest factories in the world, the roiling clouds of smoke that seeded the warts and the cancers on the skin and in the lungs and the eyes of an innocent public."

"after an exhaustive test it was our system that triumphed, not just because of the material advantages of capitalism, but because a liberal free-market democracy has proved the best way of allowing individuals and families to realise their hopes, and to make something of their lives as independent and rounded moral agents. That is the freedom those crowds recognised and wanted in Berlin. It is the freedom of the human spirit, and it is worth infinitely more than some fancy BMW."

and then finally

"Remember, remember the 9th of November, and remember all the idiots – some now running this country – who supported communism in their youth. Peter Mandelson, Alistair Darling – how will you be celebrating the Fall of the Wall?"

Or indeed Keith Locke...

You may also read Richard Ebeling's piece on the Berlin Wall (Hat tip: Not PC Twitter):

"On this 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should remember all that it represented as a symbol of tyranny under which the individual was marked with the label: property of the state. He not only was controlled in everything he did and publically said, but his every movement was watched, commanded or restricted.

Freedom in all its forms – to speak, write, associate, and worship as we want; to pursue any occupation, profession, or private enterprise that inclination and opportunity suggests to us; and to visit, live, and work were our dreams and desires lead us to look for a better life – are precious things."

Remember, nobody was killed trying to move from the west to the east.

UPDATE: Mikhail Gorbachev reveals in the Daily Telegraph how he was advised he could have crushed the rebellion against the dictatorships in the Warsaw Pact countries, but refused because he believed in open democracy and feared World War 3 could have started from it.

He "quipped that he had "a good night's sleep" after the Wall was opened.

"I am very proud of the decision we made," he said. "The Wall did not simply fall – it was destroyed just as the Soviet Union was destroyed.""

The great shame must be that for all he did, so much has been rolled back in Russia, by a new generation of thuggish kleptocrats.

30 years ago today: Mountbatten murdered

Today, 30 years ago, a bomb went off in a boat off the coast of County Sligo in Ireland. On board was Louis Mountbatten, Nicolas Knatchbull (his 14 year old grandson), Paul Maxwell (a boy of 15) and Baroness Brabourne (the 83yo mother in law of Mountbatten's daughter Patricia). All would die as a result of that bombing, by the IRA.

The IRA called it an act of war, brave little men that they are. The man who planted the bomb, Thomas McMahon, is today living free, as part of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mountbatten's life was a full one. He had a distinguished naval career that took him into World War 2, although the military disaster at Dieppe, with particularly heavy casualties for Canadian forces would be a minor blot on his career. He oversaw the recapture of Burma from the Japanese and the surrender of Japanese forces in Singapore.

However, it is perhaps for his role as last Viceroy and first Governor General of India that he may be best remembered. He accepted early that India would have to be granted independence swiftly, and although he argued strongly for a united independent India, he faced the dogged determination of Muhammed Ali Jinnah, who pushed for partition. That partition, which Gandhi equally doggedly resisted, would see unforeseen bloodshed and dislocation. Whether Mountbatten could have insisted on a unified non religious India is a matter of conjecture, but his promotion of Indian independence saw him fall out with Winston Churchill at the time. Yes he was ambitious, and yes he was vain, but he was a significant figure in history - who fought for freedom against Japanese imperialism, and the rolling back of British colonialism in India.

The anniversary of the murder of Mountbatten will, of course, largely go unnoticed.

The sad filthy fury of the Red Army in Berlin

"A Woman in Berlin" is a film to be released early next year about the experiences of women raped by Red Army soldiers as Nazi Germany fell. According to the Daily Telegraph:

"An estimated two million women faced savage, multiple attacks which would start with the spine-chilling words – 'Frau, Komm'. The film is based on "Anonymous," an autobiographical account originally published by a German journalist and editor in the 1950s, describing her experiences between April and June 1945...Most have hidden their agony and shame since those terrible days in 1945 when girls as young as seven and grandmothers as old as 90 were attacked by legions of drunken, depraved and diseased soldiers. Women were raped on their death beds, pregnant women raped hours before they were due to give birth. Some women were raped by 30 men one after another and day after day. "I can smell them now," said Ingeborg Bullert, now 83, but 20 when the soldiers came for her in her bomb cellar in Berlin."

It is clear the atrocities of that era remain to be uncovered, but sadly it is unlikely that the current Russian government is likely to countenance any denegration of the great myth that the Red Army "liberated" Berlin. For it would be justice if those who committed such crimes could be brought to trial. Sadly it almost certainly is not to be.

A historic speech

Don't let the leftwing vapid minnow standing for the US Presidency erode the tru value of this day

Tunguska a century ago

I remember reading books when I was a child about the mysterious explosion, comet, meteor or whatever it was, that hit Siberia exactly 100 years ago today. Tunguska is now widely acknowledged by scientists to have been the site of meteoroid explosion or comet fragment.

The BBC has a good write up about it here.

"Some 80 million trees were flattened over an area of 2,000 square km (800 square miles) near the Tunguska River. The blast was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and generated a shock wave that knocked people to the ground 60km from the epicentre."

It took 13 years before any outsider is known to have actually visited the site, and another six years for a formal expedition to arrive (remember in 1927 the Soviet government had far more pressing things to do oppressing the masses and changing them into Lenin's new men).

As the article says, had it hit central London, the entire metropolitan area of Greater London would have been razed clear as far out roughly as the M25. It's a reminder that Earth is vulnerable to the flotsam and jetsam of the universe entering its atmosphere. Almost all of that burns up. Here is hoping that those watching the sky can warn us all sufficiently in advance and allow action to be taken - after all, a large object striking the oceans would be far more catastrophic than another one at Tunguska.

Of course there is also much interesting reading on the wiki post.

Margaret Pope

Following the NZ Herald article by Margaret Pope, repudiating Dr Michael Bassett, I have a small tale to tell about her. Quite simply I actually knew her briefly at university at around the same time as her relationship with David Lange became public.

Margaret Pope was a mature student studying law at Victoria University. She was in the same contract law class as I and to give her fair credit, she was witty and quite clever. Certainly you could see how Lange's speeches could come from this articulate and well-read woman. I was 19 at the time admittedly and of course, several of us would have casual conversations about politics. She made it abundantly clear that she despised Roger Douglas, and was quite devoted to Lange. Of course none of us knew at the time that she was Lange's mistress, that would appear in the papers later that year (1989). Pope did not come across as some hard socialist, but she also was uncomfortable with the policy focus on economic liberalism, she was supportive of the anti-nuclear policy. My impression was that she was somewhere between the left of the likes of Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson, and the Mike Moore, David Caygill centre-right.

Of course what happened between Lange and Douglas was simply that Lange used a press conference to repudiate a Cabinet decision, an experience that was bound to critically undermine confidence by Ministers in Lange's leadership. Why Lange did so is never going to be known, for those of us on the liberal right, we will simply believe he lost courage to sell flat tax and many on Labour's left contributed to his doubt, Pope presumably was part of that. Those on the left are likely to believe it saved the Labour government from splitting apart. As always, speculation on history at this level is little more than mental onanism - I look forward to reading Bassett's book because he has often come across to me as being intellectually honest, despite some on the left who prefer insults to actually debating him. After all, there is ample evidence that Lange became beholden to the Labour left on the anti-nuclear policy, wrecking NZ's relationship with the US by forcing Lange to backtrack on a commitment to the US to allow a non-nuclear powered non-nuclear capable ship into NZ (the USS Buchanan), because the US still maintained its "neither confirm nor deny" policy - but then I guess it was ok for him to do that, and to overturn Cabinet decisions when it suits him, because it suited the left. Indeed, to this day neither flat tax or nuclear ship visits are on the agenda of either major party. I doubt whether this was due to machinations by Pope, but I also don't doubt that she was unhappy with the outcome.

40 years since the Wahine

New Zealand's biggest shipping disaster in recent history happened 40 years ago on 10 April. Patrick Dunford's blog reports on the details surrounding that tragedy. It was in the twilight years of the Wellington-Lyttelton ferry service on the long gone Union Steam Ship Company. I remember being taught vividly about this at school in Wellington, it left quite a mark on people in Wellington around at the time.
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The Wahine, along with Tangiwai and Erebus, was one of the three major transport disasters since World War 2. They all seemed to show how small New Zealand's population was (and still is) in that so many knew someone or knew someone who knew someone who was part of it. Indeed, today you can't take a ferry from Wellington to Lyttelton, or an overnight train from Wellington to Auckland or take a sightseeing flight from Christchurch to Antarctica.