Socialism and State Housing in New Zealand: From Ballance to Clark

Abstract

This thesis explores the role of socialist and social democratic ideas in the development of state housing in New Zealand. Early ideational concepts of the state’s role in housing are traced from the 1890s to the aftermath of the neoliberal reforms of the Fourth National Government in the 1990s. Theoretical concepts from the fields of discursive and historical institutionalism are utilised to identify the role of socialist and social democratic ideas in the development of state housing in New Zealand over time. This thesis challenges the notion that the state housing programme of the First Labour Government was developed on the foundations established by the Liberal Government and highlights key ideational and institutional differences which reinforce this argument. The initial social democratic ideas which informed Labour’s policy are examined in detail and highlight the institutional fragmentation of the policy which, it is argued, contributed to its decline as a legitimate alternative to the private market and home ownership in New Zealand. This thesis outlines the gradual development of the ‘welfare’ role of state housing and the residual form of tenure that it has become in the contemporary era. It is argued that the development of state housing as welfare provision undermined the original social democratic intentions of the scheme. This contributed to the decline of social democratic ideas in state housing discourses and their replacement with social liberal concepts of state provision of housing; exclusively for those in need. The thesis concludes with an examination of key ideational concepts and institutional developments, within the context of the radical changes to the institutional landscape of state housing policy during the reforms of the Fourth Labour Government and Fourth National Government, which contributed to the consolidation of a social liberal state housing model in the current era. The conclusion highlights the lack of social democratic ideas in contemporary mainstream state housing politics in New Zealand and the legacy of Labour’s state housing scheme.