[imc-auckland-video] Someone Else's Country & In A Land of Plenty Broadcasts {PLEASE FORWARD TO YOUR CONTACTS}

[Geraldene Peters]

>From Alister Barry:

The screenings are on the sunday and monday of Labour weekend on TVOne
at noon on each day. (24th and 25th Oct)

TVNZ refuse to do any on air promotion or pay for any advertising
although they have sent out a press kit and I have worked with them on
that. Alternative advertising and promotion is consequently very
important to achieving an audience.

_____________________________________


Someone Else¹s Country

             The story of the new right revolution in New Zealand



Perhaps 75,000 people have already seen ³Someone Else¹s Country²,
Alister Barry¹s feature documentary telling the story of  the politics
of Rogernomics. It has come to be regarded as a New Zealand classic.
After eight years TVNZ is finally screening it.



In the 1980s and 90s the nation¹s assets were sold off at bargain
basement prices, generally into foreign ownership. The nation¹s oil and
gas resources,  vast tracts of forest, the railways, and Telecom all
went. For the small elite of right wing businessmen, public servants and
politicians behind this transformation, privatisation were just a part
of a wider agenda to turn New Zealand into a model free market state.



The film uses extensively researched library footage and interviews with
people Alister Barry calls, ³witnesses to history², to craft a moving
and eye opening account of  the decade after 1984. We see David Lange,
Richard Prebble, Roger Kerr, and Rod Deane in their glory days insisting
that there can be no gain without pain. Tax cuts for the rich would
bring prosperity to the poor.



The subjects of this ³experiment² found it difficult to defend
themselves.  Here, ordinary New Zealanders speak for themselves without
being shouted down by experts and business commentators. Workers made
redundant, communities watching their local post office close voice
their anxieties and outrage.  Some of the most moving interviews are
with the older breed of  public servant who enacted the Rogernomics
revolution while disagreeing with it.



³Underneath, this film is about the strength and weaknesses of our
democracy,² says Alister Barry, ³Ironically,  it was the popular outrage
at the abuse of our democratic processes during those years that led to
the most significant advance in democracy in New Zealand in a century,
the adoption of  proportional  representation.²



³Someone Else¹s Country² has been described as a coherent and
comprehensive account of  the Rogernomic years, but more important, it
brings alive the years which changed our political landscape for
generations to come.



Short and lively.



In a Land of Plenty In a Land of Plenty



New Zealand currently has 89,000 registered unemployed. The Reserve Bank
is trying to slow the economy which will lead to this number  increasing.



³In a Land of Plenty² is an historical documentary describing how New
Zealand moved from being a country of genuine full employment to one
where unemployment is used as a  tool of economic management.  With
rising unemployment workers are less likely to seek wage increases.
Wages make up the largest part of the cost of goods and services and so
by constraining wages the general level of prices is held steady.
Inflation is contained.



Economic theory aside, unemployment is an emotional subject and this
documentary  gives voice to the low paid, the beneficiaries and their
dependents whose quality of life is now  shaped by Reserve Bank policy
makers.  Reserve Bank officials like Don Brash are seen explaining their
actions. One of the most shocking scenes involves young Treasury
officials deciding on a ³poverty line². To increase the motivation of
the unemployed to search for work, they decide that benefits should be
cut to a level at which the recipient would have only just enough to eat.



Extraordinary footage from WINZ training videos shows Christine Rankin
personifying the steady shift in attitude from compassion to compulsion
in our welfare state. Pearl Biggs gives a moving account of  having to
choose whether to buy food for her children or to pay the power bill.



Director/researcher Alister Barry says ³I am delighted that this film is
to be screened on tv, I never expected it. The more people understand
the way power really works in New Zealand,  the more they can get some
control over their lives. Michael Cullen says there is no alternative. I
believe we can return to genuine full employment.²



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