Alister Barry - Neoliberalism in NZ director's exclusive interview

Alister Barry: 'Someone Else’s Country', because it had the biggest impact and because it has turned out to be a sort of standard text telling and explaining the story of the neoliberal in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Looking back we can see that after the Great Depression, the new right revolution that began in 1984 was the biggest transformation of our country in the last century or more. Most of the reasons we find it so hard to fix the big problems we have today – in health, low wages, increasing inequality, child poverty, housing, and even climate change – can be traced directly to that revolution and the men and women responsible. If we want to know why New Zealand is the way it is today, we have to understand that revolution.

Alister Barry: When we made the film, I thought the last scene was a bit weak, but now I think it is vital. It makes the point that while the neoliberal revolutionaries were driven by free market ideology, it is the beneficiaries – business people and investors – who continue to defend and extend it as the years roll by.

Alister Barry: The film was premiered and screened around the country to packed houses by the New Zealand International Film Festival. We had a panel discussion after the first screening in Dunedin with me and a right wing academic who was hoping to be elected to parliament in the 1996 general election, plus a chairperson. In response to a question from the audience, I made the point that neoliberalism, as it has come to be known, is fundamentally anti-democratic. The academic replied by saying it was a different sort of democracy, by which he meant a society where individuals’ rights would be more important than the collective will of a community. As Margaret Thatcher, the right wing prime minister of Britain, once said, “There is no such thing as society”. The less democracy, the better.

Alister Barry: 'In a Land of Plenty', because it explains why we still have tens of thousands of people unemployed. Or perhaps my first documentary 'Mururoa 1973' which tells the story of a protest voyage to oppose nuclear bomb tests in Polynesia. It was the success of that documentary which led me on to a life of documentary-making.

Alister Barry: Another way of describing 'Someone Else’s Country' is to say it tells the story of how our democratic institutions failed to stop the neoliberal revolutionaries. But there was one group that did largely succeed in their opposition– the teachers and the teacher unions – and I thought it was important to tell their story to show that resistance was and is possible. Treasury officials and their political allies planned to privatise schools, but teachers, supported by parents, fought for over ten years to stop that happening, and pretty much succeeded. We made 'A Civilised Society' to tell that story.