Brian Easton

Revised version of Address in the University of Auckland Winter Lecture Series, 20 June 1995, published in Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, Issue 7, December 1996, p. 17-28.[1]

The modern welfare state developed in most rich countries in the post-war era. It was a response to three major trauma. First, there was the interwar depression, in which the brutality of unconstrained capitalism generated a response of a kinder, gentler way of organizing society. Second the war itself led to upheaval in many European countries. The welfare state was seen as a means of integrating the people back into the nations struggling with the chaos of their recent past, in order to generate a degree of social cohesiveness. Third, but by no means least, industrial society was sweeping away the old forms of community provision.

Listener 10 June 1995.

Keywords: Maori

Our race relations are troubled by the Pakeha myth of the unified Maori. “Maori” did not exist before the arrival of the European. Since as far as they knew those that lived here were all the people in the world, they did not need a collective name for themselves. (Similarly “Earthling” arose with possibility of others out in space).