A World without Welfare: New Zealand's Colonial Experience

by David Thomson

Arriving in the early nineteenth century, European settlers shrugged off Old World values to demand that the elderly and the poor should take care of themselves. English law and practice had for several centuries given the needy a legal right to compulsory assistance from their tax-paying it was this history that New Zealand colonists reversed in New Zealand's first welfare experiment, a 'world without welfare'.
The 'world without welfare' of early colonial New Zealand represents perhaps the purest test to date of what happens when a society turns its face against public assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable, in pursuit of ideals of personal independence. As the pendulum swings again, a century later, between those conflicting goals of private provision and state support, the first New Zealand welfare experiment is worth reviewing - with the accuracy of historical knowledge rather than the suppositions of political debate.

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

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