Political Compass: New Zealand Liberal Era Edition

From 1891 to 1912, New Zealand was governed by the Liberals, a loose collection of factions organised in opposition to a discredited government. Only at the end of this period would any parties emerge to challenge them - so the colony saw two decades of a government that is generally regarded as liberal, progressive and marked by world-first advances in labour rights and female suffrage.

So, 21st century left-liberals - take this quiz to find out which type of 1890s New Zealand Liberal you would have been, and show off the result to your friends on Twitter!

Created by: David Hoggard

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As a colony built largely on processed grass, New Zealand’s most pressing political issue is to decide the best ownership system for the land - how can it be most effectively brought into productive use?
- All land should be owned by the state and leased to the good honest farmers who came out here for fresh air and clean living.
- Steady on, these settlers came out here to escape landlords - break up the large estates, by all means, but sell the new owners the full freehold.
- How about a compromise? Break up one or two large estates and sell the new lots by leasehold - but at a fixed rate for 999 years. No, I’ve never heard of the word ‘inflation’.
- Actually, I come from London, so I don’t really know what a ‘farm’ is - can I just have a job, please?
- Wait, what’s all this stuff about breaking up the large runs? Surely you understand that respect for private property is what separates British civilisation from Socialism and native barbarity?
- This leasehold idea is great - how about letting Māori iwi lease out their land in the same way?
- Look, I’ll vote for whatever you like - but only if you promise to extend the road up to my electorate of Waikikamukau (pop. 3).
Despite the glowing phrases in ads aimed at prospective colonists, New Zealand has a dark secret: endemic urban unemployment, mounting up in the growing slums of Auckland. Meanwhile, the labour movement is making ever-stronger demands about pay and working conditions. What’s your solution?
- Shorten the working day, abolish piece-work, and relieve unemployment by banning Asian people from getting jobs.
- Shorten the working day, abolish piece-work, and provide unions and employers with facilities for state-sponsored arbitration. Also, ban strikes.
- All of these industrial disputes will surely disappear once we provide the urban poor with 25 acres apiece and transform them overnight into stout yeomen. Nobody would come here for any other purpose than to be a farmer, surely?
- I agree, the problem will solve itself once we enable these slum-dwellers to own their own farms. Break up the large estates and buy up all that empty space that’s currently occupied by a bunch of lazy, nearly-extinct natives.
- These urban workers are none of my concern as a high-status rural leader - we only ever see them in our areas when they’re trying to sell home-brew to my rangatahi.
- These urban workers are none of my concern as a high-status rural leader - but the contrast between my electorate and the slums round here in Wellington is quite striking, something really ought to be done.
- If you want to spend money on all that, well, let a thousand flowers bloom. But I’m not spending any time on it while the road up to Waikikamukau (pop. 3) remains unfinished.
The remains of the Maori tribal landholdings are now occupied by a defeated and depressed race. Their population has halved in the last half-century (from smallpox and the ‘mata Maori’ - just giving up on the future and dying), and those that are left are on a subsistence diet without hope of riches or a cultural renaissance. What is to be done?
- I’m confused - surely the problem will solve itself once they’ve all died of smallpox? Then we can get our hands on their land without going to all the bother of paying for it.
- Yes, it’s a great pity, but all we can really do is smooth the pillow of a dying race. Still, at least we can be civil about it. Sir James is a native, and he’s almost as good as any other man in the Cabinet.
- One way we could make things easier for them would be to enforce Temperance and prevent them from falling into drunkenness and languor. Still, I do think we should do a lot more to stop them squatting on their waste lands and open them up to industrious settlers.
- This state socialist policy of restricting the right to buy Maori land to the Crown alone is abhorrent to the values of civilisation. We must permit private contracts between Maori owners and British purchasers - the introduction of competition would enable the natives to get a better price, and the innate superiority of the whites’ commercial senses would enable us to get a better price.
- If they would just get rid of their aristocratic tribal structures, perhaps they would reinvigorate their race. As it is, we never see them down the factories, they just loaf around out in the country.
- We absolutely need to be reinvigorated to avoid extinction or depossession. Allow us to convert our land to individual ownership, teach us how to be good farmers, and help us get rid of our archaic cultural practices, and maybe I’d be able to lead my people into European civilisation.
- I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but this doesn’t sound like it has much to do with the Waikikamukau (pop. 3) roading project?
The city slums and market gardens, it is said, are filled with Asian immigrants who live in hovels and spend their evenings in gambling and debauchery. And some, I assume, are good people. How is the state to encourage these people to be less Chinese-y?
- It’s the Chinamen’s fault I can’t get a job! Filthy wasters, never done a day’s work in their lives…
- Yes, they’re certainly rather unpleasant to look at, and they’re not cut out for honest toil. Let’s get rid of any of them that can’t speak English or demonstrate that they’ve got a steady job.
- I don’t really spend as much time in the slums as you guys, all I ever see of them is the amazing amount of stuff they grow in those market gardens. Still, you’re probably right on the whole. Up the Empire!
- We signed a treaty with you Pakeha, so I guess we’re stuck with you now - but I can’t remember ever signing a treaty with China. And there’s now an epidemic of Maori girls miscegenating with these Asians in the market gardens (which is partly their own fault, of course).
- Finally, a sensible policy that everyone can agree on! Great stuff, we can push this through the House in five minutes. Hang on…
- Sorry to burst your bubble, but quite a few of these Asian aliens are contributing quite handsomely to our business community - they could almost be considered the equals of the English, if that weren’t a completely mad notion.
- Ignore him, I’m all for it - right after they’ve finished building the new road to Waikikamukau (pop. 2 (my wife’s gone off with a man from the work gang))
We’re just coming out of a decade-long Depression, characterised by policies to raise tariffs on imports competing with the old Government’s supporters, and by state spending on railway construction which might enrich property speculation companies owned by Cabinet ministers. How would you put NZ on the path to growth?
- Unlike the last Government, we will cut tariffs while balancing the budget, and promote development by building roads, bridges and railways in every township that votes for us. And we won’t borrow a single penny to do it! (Except for the top secret million pound loan we’ve deputised that shady businessman to negotiate).
- This doesn’t go far enough. We need to balance the budget, cut tariffs, build roads, fund innovative programmes, stop borrowing loans we can never pay back - and abolish all taxes except for a tax on large estates which will hopefully decline to zero when there are no longer any large estates.
- Well, I agree with free trade and a balanced budget, but what’s all this nonsense about a single tax? The land tax shouldn’t be for revenue, it should be a purely punitive measure to force the big runholders to sell up and subdivide into small, affordable farms.
- How many times do I have to explain to you that I don’t know anything about farming? Get the money however you like (although I’d prefer it if the imported food I have to buy due to not having a farm was not price-inflated by tariffs), but spend it on pensions and hospitals. Please!
- Look, this colony is in dire need of capital for development - so let the Government borrow overseas and spend or lend that money into the economy. By the way, tariffs are eminently justified when they protect farmers and businessmen (surely the backbone of our society) from succumbing to cheap imports when they’re just getting started.
- We must reject the brutality of Socialism and strive after austere fiscal responsibility - except where Maori purposes are concerned, of course.
- Listen, I completely understand the need to balance the budget, but surely there’s room for another £160 to replace the Waikikamukau (pop. 2) ford with a trestle bridge?
People are spending all their money on booze and turning violent, either on the street or at home - which would be fine if they were drinking port, but many of them can only afford beer! How can we defend our model society from this scourge?
- This is a model country, and must not become enervated by the Demon Drink. We must do all we can to legislate this menace away - maybe even full Prohibition.
- Bugger off, let me have a drink after work to keep me away from my bloody wife! Arwwwughblbly… fight you!
- Surely this is only a real problem in the cities, where - unfortunately - the refuse of society tends to congregate. How about we allow each district to make its own policy?
- Or how about a compromise? We’ll have district licensing polls every three years, plus a nationwide prohibition poll to keep the wowsers happy - but you’ll need a supermajority of the vote to win. Look, I run a pub, I know how to convince people to go home quietly at the end of the night.
- Whatever you Pakeha decide, there should be absolutely no sale of alcohol in Maori areas - I’ve seen the horrors it can cause.
- What’s all this populist nonsense about referendums? Let the market decide: if the locals really are against the sale of liquor, then surely the pubs will cease to make a profit.
- Ordinarily (hic) I’d be agin’ it, but I’m prepared to do anything to piss off those drunken, cuckolding louts on the Waikikamukau (pop. 2) public works gang.
The wowsers and Methodists of the Christian Temperance brigade are gathering a petition in favour of extending our existing system of universal suffrage to include even the female of the species. If we accede to this demand, we would be the first nation in the world to give women the vote - what do you think?
- The woman’s place is in the home - absolutely not!
- The woman’s place is in the home - if we give them the vote, maybe we’ll finally elect a government that can run a household budget!
- Let’s set an example to the world by giving women the vote - it’s abhorrent that nice middle-class women are forbidden the rights that we’ve already accorded to criminally violent, drunken layabouts!
- Excuse me! I can see exactly what you suffragists are doing: you’re diluting the voting strength of the working man! How will we be able to trust our wives when they have an actual say in whether we can go to the pub?
- If we give these silly women what they want, maybe they’ll shut up about temperance and let us men get on with the business of running the country. Plus, I bet they’ll be grateful to the Government that grants them the vote.
- The involvement of Maori women in the suffrage campaign of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union is precisely the sort of compromise with Pakeha institutions that we need to encourage.
- I will make a steadfast moral stand on the side of whichever faction offers to build a branch railway line to Waikikamukau (pop. 4 (the wife’s come back now her fancy-man’s been deported, and our mare’s just foaled (nobody’s quite sure who the father is)).
As loyal subjects of Her Majesty’s Empire, we were horrified to hear that a bunch of Republicans with weird Dutch names had provoked an armed struggle against our fine brother colonists in South Africa. Should we volunteer to help Britannia fight off her foul attackers?
- This is nothing more than an Imperialist war! The Boers are probably just blameless, peace-loving egalitarians.
- Exactly! It is our duty and our honour to defend the Empire against uppity races!
- Quite right, but the really key thing is to ensure that our troops get there a few days before the Aussies do. b------s!
- This will be a fantastic opportunity to find out whether the Premier’s son is corrupt! I sure hope I don’t get confused between Captain Seddon and Captain Sneddon!
- We stand fully behind the British Empire in this matter - but for goodness’ sake let us natives prove our worth on the battlefield. Or have you forgotten how we out-fought you back in the 1860s?
- Of course we must defend Britain from all attackers, no matter how minor. But this attention-seeking stuff about beating the Australians is really rather undignified. And what’s this I hear about us paying for a dreadnought we’re not even going to get any use out of?
- We may not have any young men to send off to war, but it fills my heart with pride to supply a gallant young horse for the Mounted Rifles, as the patriotic contribution of the Borough of Waikikamukau (pop. 3 (my wife found out)).
It is 1912, and it looks like the Liberals will lose a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives. How will you respond?
- Wait for them to rip each other apart. Soon enough, we will have freehold tenure, less jobbery in the public service, and single transferrable vote for the upper house.
- Ditch the Prime Minister and replace him with a strike-breaking invalid. We must appeal to the moderate Independents.
- Ditch the Prime Minister and replace him with a guy who used to be in the Opposition until he got offered a Cabinet post.
- Simple - bribe one of the Independent Labour MPs to vote our way.
- Abandon all the progress we've made towards a separate Labour Party by voting in the Liberal leadership election.
- Perhaps if that new railway line were diverted to the back door of my stable, we could come to some arrangement.
Should politicians have facial hair?
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- Yes.
- No, a beard is the first step on the self-indulgent path towards Drunkenness.

Political Compass: New Zealand Liberal Era Edition

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