Ruth, Roger and Me. Debts and Legacies

Andrew Dean

Bridget Williams Books, $14.99 NEW ZEALAND Rhodes Scholar Andrew Dean, as one of the children brought up in the shadow of the 1991 “Mother of all budgets” tells the story of what his generation has inherited from three decades of economic reform ushered in by Finance Ministers Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson. With a mix of memoir, history and interviews, Dean explores the experiences of “discomfort” and “disconnection” of young people. “The student loan scheme, poverty wages, unpaid internships, casual contracts, unemployment, underemployment, the spiralling cost of housing, even doctor's fees – all of these have limited public histories”, Dean says. “Part of the project of this book is to give a fuller account of them.”

Dean concludes that young people have “a very deep sense of disempowerment and lack of belonging” – although this is a sentiment which Ruth Richardson, who Dean interviews, dismisses.

The author ends with a call for “a new national story” of aroha, empathy and compassion.

A call that resonates with me. (MEH)