Tsar, mate, this is one awesome story. Here I am, 3 in the morning finally finishing reading it all in one go. First time I've read a modernish NZ alt history. Being born in the late 80's all these names are familial but still historic, with family and workmates mentioning their names from time to time, and with me being a politics and history nerd, this story is just great. I was born in Wellington a few years after this all happened, but my parents had only just moved there, so ITTL they would of stayed in Wanganui, so I may still come to exist lol. Keep up the good work Tsar Of New Zealand!!
There Is No Depression: Protect and Survive New Zealand
- Thread starter Tsar of New Zealand
- Start date
Thanks for the praise! Being born in the 90s myself it's hard to ever be sure of getting the aesthetic right - though fortunately I, like you, am a politics and history nerd, so I wasn't completely clueless - it's pretty much a different world to today.
To business, though: clearly, I failed to get a July update done. I'll offer the requisite excuses and blame in no particular order myself, study, and the internship I just started, though I seem to have accumulated enough assignments that working on this is once more a welcome distraction.
So if progress is what you want, it's what you'll get: I'm about 80% of the way through the next update, and I'm finally happy with the vignettes I'm writing for it. So hey, who knows, maybe we'll see something in the next fortnight.
To ginger up interest I'll throw one out there I could do with input on: I was thinking of doing a 'where are they now' installment as an intermission in a couple updates' time. So, if you can think of any people who are world famous in New Zealand, feel free to respond with some, and I'll rack my headcanon for them.
Hey Tsar I saw this the other day, not directly related to P+S but in the same ballpark so might be interesting
http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/70373592/ghosts-of-wellington-past
Also I was born in the 70's and you're getting the 80's aesthetic pretty well for someone who didn't experience it firsthand.
XIII. We Have No Racism
XIII. We Have No Racism
Te poi
Patua taku poi
Patua kia rite
Pa-para patua
Taku poi e!
From Braithwaite, A., A Century of Maori Struggle in New Zealand (Palmerston North: Massey University Press, 2014). Reproduced under license.
Chapter 12: Fallout
The situation of race relations in New Zealand had been somewhat strained for some time by the time of the Exchange, with the Maori Renaissance carrying on through the heightened feelings and sensitivities of the Springbok Tour of 1981 to the Porirua riots during the Three Days’ Hate in February 1984…
…in the days after February 22nd (a date which has taken on an even greater significance for New Zealand since 2011, if that ever seemed possible), many urban Maori in the poorer districts of Auckland and Wellington found themselves cast adrift on the same uncertain sea as their Pakeha neighbours. It was a telling impact of the power structures which had restrained Maori for fourteen decades, though, that triage operations in even those areas where Maori constituted a majority of the population largely saw Pakeha receive greater rates of recovery and treatment, particularly those of European descent.
…the patronising attitude of the Muldoon Government towards Maori (an example in microcosm being his tacit support for harmful gangs as focal points for communities, as if they were simply bored children) was, unfortunately, one present in a large proportion of the collective consciousness of New Zealand. The occupation of Bastion Point was identified in the previous chapter as an illustration of this attitude and while it was understandable that land claims were forced to take a backseat to a nuclear attack, 1984 has proved almost as insurmountable a barrier as 1840 in terms of the damage done to those seeking an equal position for their culture and people in a bicultural society…
…[F]ollowing the assembly of the Palmer Government in Christchurch and the appointment of MPs to positions in the Emergency Cabinet, the strategy of lumping Maori in with Pakeha continued, disengaging from the tentative process of ata which even Muldoon had seen fit to begin (Pohatu, 2005)...
…Palmer was personally ambivalent on Maori issues, seeing them as essentially legalistic matters to be dealt with in the same framework of Pakeha contract law as that in which he had worked prior to his political life…the presence of other matters meant that his Government left these issues on the back-burner, with vague “returns to discussion” foisted upon iwi for the rest of the decade...
Christchurch City Council Building
March 11, 1984
Geoffrey Palmer was very quickly coming to learn why Muldoon had suffered a breakdown. If orchestrating recovery efforts in the South Island had been taxing – he himself had had maybe three or four hours sleep per night since the 22nd – then trying to do so for the harder-hit North Island was unimaginably difficult. Still, a fun diversion was to be had in wondering how Roger was handling it all; personally, Palmer found it blackly humorous to think that the subsidised primary industries the would-be Finance Minister had been keen to get at with the financial equivalent of a bloody cleaver had proven the main reason the country had done so well so far. Credit where credit was due, Muldoon had had that one right. He may have flushed the economy down the lavatory and then smashed the septic tank open to try and stop the pipes backing up, but if he’d known a nuclear war was coming he could scarcely have done better preparing for it…
…with one or two exceptions. His Minister of Police was currently discussing one of those exceptions over the phone with a local area head from the Eastern District.
“So what you’re saying, Inspector, is that they essentially control half of Gisborne?”
A pause long enough for you to all but hear the face of the man being interrogated reddening, a protest faintly audible from the other side of the desk before Ben Couch cut him off. “Well, what fraction would you rather I said? Two-fifths? Three-quarters? Seven-twelfths? The facts on the ground, facts we’ve had people shouting at us from within your district, are that a sizable number of the locals are no longer playing ball in regard to rationing and relocation programmes. Do you deny that?”
Another pause.
“So that’s a ‘yes’ then, eh? Eh?...yes, Mr Pa – the…the Prime Minister – is here” Palmer idly noted Couch’s reluctance to give Muldoon’s usurper the respect of a title (but when it comes to running a country beggars can’t be choosers et cetera Geoff) “and I doubt he’d be happy to hear that you’re having trouble keeping a pile of striking layabouts and drug-addled gangsters away from camps full of women and children!”
Palmer calmly blew air through his teeth as he annotated a report on interisland shipping the commissioners at least know Ben; they’d’ve balked at Ann Hercus for being inexperienced, or for being a woman…he suddenly realised there was something under his nose. A receiver. A further look revealed that it was attached to a hand, which was attached to his cantankerous colleague. Couch nodded deferentially, and Palmer uneasily held the receiver slightly away from his head as if afraid it was going to bite his ear off.
“Ah…hello, Inspector?”
“Mister Prime Minister, sir,” began the policeman. “Look, I can’t find any other way to say it but we’re going to need the Army down here. My men are down to two-thirds in most of the district with desertions and injuries and God only knows what else; we were having enough trouble keeping a lid on the refugee camp out at Flaxmere without the rug being pulled out from under us up in Gisborne. We…we can’t manage this, sir.”
Geoffrey wondered if this was what Lange had mentioned about how Muldoon had sounded when he went to talk to him a fortnight (more like a lifetime) ago. Closer to dead than dead tired; held together by willpower alone. He idly clicked a pen as he replied to the Inspector.
“Alright, Inspector, here’s what we’re going to do. You told Mister Couch that the gangs had been looting throughout central Gisborne, yes?”
“So far, sir, yeah.”
“Right, now, is there any possibility that if the police you have available regroup somewhere more easily defensible, say…” he leafed through a 1976 atlas of New Zealand until he came to a city map of Gisborne “…right; let’s say you get your officers to the Gladstone Road bridge, can they hold on until we send some soldiers up from Napier?”
A pause as the line crackled. “Might be a bit late for that, sir. There’s already been a few arsons in the centre of town; so far the men up there have been trying to make sure nobody burns down the Council building or gets to the refugees in Kelvin Park.”
Palmer had no response to that but a terse swear word, taking a moment to think before he moved on. “Alright, I’ll get on the blower to the garrison in Napier. We’ll have people up there by Tuesday at the latest. If we strip the port bare we might get a machine gun or an armoured vehicle or something, but at the least rifles should beat whatever you’ve had to crib together so far.”
“Yes, Prime Minister,” said the policeman with a note of relief. “Thank you, sir.” After they ended the call, Palmer stared at his desk for a while as he contemplated what he had just done by siccing armed soldiers on their fellow countrymen. Had anyone ever done that before in this country?
After a pregnant pause, Ben Couch spoke. “You did the right thing, sir.” Palmer looked at him wearily. “Got to have law and order. Otherwise, we’ll go to the dogs.”
“Yes,” replied the Prime Minister with an emotionless, unblinking gaze. “I suppose so.”
“We’re not here to be popular, after all – we’re here to keep things in line and uphold the law.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” he repeated, clicking his pen again as the Minister of Police cleared his throat and excused himself from the room.
It was some time before Palmer could get back to those shipping reports.
E rere ra e taku poi poro-titi
Ti-taha-taha ra whaka-raru-raru e
Poro-taka taka ra poro hurihuri mai
Rite tonu ki te ti-wai-waka e
-.. .- -.-- / .- ..-. - . .-. / -.. .- -.-- / ... - .-. .- .. --. .... - / .-. .- .. -. / ..-. .- .-.. .-.. ... / -.. --- .-- -.
Civil Defence Processing Centre AKL-04 [Mangere]
March 10, 1984
The rain kept on coming, a steel-cold downpour from a pig-iron sky. With several thousand people packed into what was effectively a tent city, the ground was soon saturated enough that a trip to the latrines became a hike through clinging, ankle-deep mud (and that wasn’t even counting the struggle not to fall in the ditch once you got there).
If there was one thing to be grateful for, it was that at least the other girls had agreed on the necessity of going in groups. After all, the ditches and the mess tent were some way away, and there were certain unpleasant individuals around who might take advantage of a bedraggled young woman out in a thunderstorm. From what Alexandra – Alex – had told her, word on the street (well, on the beaten track, anyway) was that this had happened in more than a few cases, and that they’d actually found a body heaped in one of the cremation pits, one which definitely hadn’t been dead from natural causes. Teuila wasn’t sure how true that was, but it was enough to keep her going only in a group.
Which was how she found herself in the line for slop out with a two of the girls flanking her; Alex on one side and Melanie, the most capable member (and therefore more-or-less head) of the group, on the other. They usually did it this way; three would go for food or to the latrines or to go on the obligatory pilgrimage to the tent near the main gate to see whether anyone’s nest of kin had been located. Given that the fragile one – Grace, that was her name – was two days deep into some truly awful cramps and the fifth girl, Kathleen, was still wringing wet from going on a latrine run, Teuila had gotten to go on her second visit of the day. She was grateful; by this stage that had become more important to her than going for meals, the faint hope of finding family members keeping her going far more than the waterlogged potatoes the bored-looking trusties doled out in the evenings.
“See anyone?” asked Alex as she lifted sheets of paper to search the lower levels of the pile.
Teuila sighed and shook her head as she scanned the photographs and scrawled notes pinned to the plywood noticeboards. “No, nothing.”
“Where did you say they picked you up from, again? Sorry, always have to ask twice so I remember.”
“That’s okay,” she replied absently, trying in vain to keep the memory of that Wednesday morning from coming back in stereo sound and living colour. “I was in Papatoetoe when it happened. I saw the flash and heard it go off and everything, lost my family in the crowd near the train station later.” A shrug as she tried to shake off the weight of memory. “They’re probably alright. Fuck knows where they are, though.”
A knowing nod in response from Alex. They said nothing more until all three had established that nobody had miraculously shown up for them in the last day or two, when Melanie finally sighed and told the other two they may as well all get back to the dining hall before the crowd got too bad.
They hadn’t been fast enough, as they found out while spending fifteen minutes in the rain waiting to actually get near shelter. Underfoot the mud only got thicker as hundreds trampled the ground where thousands had stood and the rain got even stronger, thundering down in a torrent which flowed off every waterproof or waterlogged surface to saturate the soil even more. The crowd pressed on towards the steaming vats and the relative warmth of the mess tent, steam rising off them in a haze as it fizzed against the rain. In the thick of it the three girls huddled warily, tensed up and washed out as they finally came under the green canvas of the antiquated tent.
“It’s like the world’s shittest wedding,” said Melanie out of the corner of her mouth, which got a surprised laugh from Alex and a smile from Teuila. It didn’t last long, however, when a middle-aged woman jostled into the three and elbowed Teuila in the side, sneering at the questioning glances she got from the girls and giving her own social commentary in acid tones
“What’s the matter, coconut, don’t like it so much here anymore?”
Teuila could only blink, surprised as Melanie and Alex began to protest. The woman, a frumpy, housewifely sort, ignored them and continued to focus on the brown one in the group, her voice rising as others began to pay attention.
“Christ, can you even understand English? Typical Islanders, coming over here without learning the bloody language, going about staring at people like Martians when they’re spoken to!”
Teuila finally processed enough of what was happening to give some sort of response, brow furrowed in bewilderment as the line’s pace slowed to a crawl around the slowly-developing argument.
“Coconut? I’m from Mount Albert!”
The attempt to use logic was ineffective, which became apparent when the bedraggled woman (what had she been, before everyone here ended up here?) rolled her eyes and opened her mouth again.
“You’re still a bloody boonga, though; your parents couldn’t stay in their own country, could they? Now your lot are all stranded here, you’re taking the food out of our mouths.”
It was the hate in her voice which hurt the most. You got used to a bit of racism; someone might call you a coconut now and then, but you could at least call them a white idiot to their faces. This…this was altogether different.
She didn’t know if she’d ever come up against such concentrated hate based on her appearance. And still the tirade continued, as people around them began to look their way and Teuila wished to disappear into the earth – or better yet, to see at least one sympathetic face in the crowd.
As the woman’s abuse began to repeat itself and Teuila struggled to respond in the few respites a reprieve eventually came in the form of a soldier who materialised behind them.
“Right, what’s going on here, then?” he asked in an almost bored tone. Teuila’s eye was nearly put out by the grimy finger jabbed in her direction as the woman crowed at the camouflage-clad man.
“It’s her. She shouldn’t be here.”
The soldier glanced at Teuila, gave her a look up and down, and asked to see her meal card. Gently, Alex fished the piece of card out of the purse which was the only dry place they had to keep such things, and after a cursory inspection of it the soldier shrugged and handed it back.
“Looks like she’s got as much right to be here as anyone else, miss,” he said, black eyes impassive as she began to restate her argument. The tall Maori cocked an eyebrow for half a second after she made her point about “people coming over here to take our land off us,” but seemed to humour her for long enough to let her wind down before blinking slowly and speaking again.
“Well if she has her card, miss, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to get in the line. We’ve got a lot of people to feed, and I’m sure you don’t wanna leave them out there” his nod took in the increasingly agitated people queuing in the rain “for too long.”
She opened her mouth to protest, closed it, and opened it again before thinking better of whatever she was about to say, shaking her head and muttering as she squelched back into the gloom. The soldier turned to the three girls.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “If yez could move forward now, please.”
He nodded, spared the briefest of glances at Teuila in which you could, if you were particularly keen-eyed, make out a glimmer of sympathy before he slid back into the fug of the tent.
As the three moved along the line and those around them shrugged and got back to their conversations or their thoughts Melanie and Alex tried to make light of whatever the hell it was that had just happened. Teuila put up a smile and nodded and laughed along with them, hoping her voice didn’t sound too hollow as she thought over some things. Her family had often thought her a fiapalagi, one wanting to act white; it was always jarring to be reminded that she’d never be white to the actual palagi. So she smiled and laughed and joked along, reminding herself that for the time now at least, misery had made equals of them all.
Outside, the cold, hard rain continued to fall.
.- .-.. .-.. / --- ...- . .-. / - --- .-- -. --..-- / .-. .- .. -. / -.-. --- -- .. -. .----. .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.-
Ka pare pare ra pī-o-o-i-o-i a
Whaka-heke-heke e ki a kori kori e
Piki whaka-runga ra ma mui-nga mai a
Taku poi poro-titi taku poi e!
.. - .----. ... / -... . . -. / .- / -.. .- -.-- / --- ..-. / - .. -. -.-- / - .-. .. ..- -- .--. .... ...
Around Poverty Bay, East Cape
March 13, 1984
The convoy sped along the deserted highway north, the train track which periodically criss-crossed their path and the occasional lights of a small town or farmstead the only signs of life in the half-light of the grey morning. A thunderstorm was rolling in from the Pacific, and already a light rain had begun falling as soldiers sat shivering under canvas roofs and watched the road hiss behind them as the spray showed up in the headlights of the trucks behind them.
Before too long (but then no trip was ever too long in this country, especially if you paid as little attention to the road rules as these drivers) they were roaring down the main drag of Gisborne. Over thirty thousand people lived in this town, and from the looks of it half of them had set about terrorising the other half. As the green-grey trucks rumbled down wide streets lined with cabbage trees and ferns, the occasional local peered out from a kitchen window or the footpath.
The trucks didn’t stop for them, though, nor scarcely acknowledge them. They had bigger problems to deal with. They pulled up at the police station as the thunder started to boom out at sea, an ill wind rising as the soldiers disembarked and an officer practically leapt out of his Land Rover to get the measure of things from the local constables and direct the soldiers to take up positions. As boots thudded and splashed across concrete and mud, the locals began to take a substantially greater interest. Word gets out fast in provincial towns, and Gisborne was no exception. Law And Order, came the words, looters to be Shot On Sight.
The first two people to test that decree were a large couple of men wearing leather jackets and gang patches, who had split off from their cluster to take advantage of a dairy with a smashed-in door. The end result: a gunshot wound to the shoulder for one and a rifle butt toe to the face for the other.
Word gets out very fast in criminal circles, particularly when those circles overlap with tight-knit communities. As the rain got heavier and the wind began to howl in the trees, the groups massing near the bridge got larger. Return to your homes, came The Word From On High, so we can let the next train in from Napier. Return to your homes, it repeated, or we have Authority To Fire.
It was around four o’clock when the hailstorm broke. Hail pelted the spectators, the few who were close enough by to appreciate the unfolding spectacle as the dam broke and the mob advanced across the main bridge, a power unto itself. Another rushed declaration from the officer. Turn back immediately or we will be Forced To Act. This is your Final Warning.
They didn’t listen.
They sure as hell heard when the petrol bomb arced across to the west side of the bridge and set a terrified twenty-year old’s leg alight, and all were listening by the time shots rang out and a thirty-one year old father of three was shot in the stomach and arm.
A brief pause held after the first fusillade, the only sounds the moaning of the gutshot gunshot victim and the frantic pounding of a damp tarpaulin on a burning boy as the hail kept coming down like an avalanche of frozen peas, clattering off helmets and tyre irons and spelunking into the river.
And then a cry of havoc, before the men from the east came howling in like the dogs of war and the Crown’s soldiers Did Their Duty.
If there was an advantage to the hailstorm, it was that the melting ice helped wash away the blood afterwards. It took a long time for it all to clear away.
.. - .----. ... / -... . . -. / .- / .-- . . -.- / ... .--. . -. - / .. -. / -.. . ... .--. .- .. .-.
It would be wrong to claim that what popular memory has come to call the Battle of Gisborne was entirely the result of some sort of gang-centred attempt at taking advantage of (or at provoking anarchy); it would be similarly erroneous, however, to claim that they were in no way related to the riots of the prior month.
The unrest in Gisborne, in Mangere, in a dozen other majority-Maori locations throughout the North Island was reflective of deep-seated inequalities and insecurities within New Zealand society which had been scarcely short of boiling over since they climaxed at the Springbok tour. In 1984, as in 1981, the heavy-handed paramilitary response only exacerbated the divide between the two New Zealands, with Maori – and to an arguably greater extent Pacific Islanders, who would continue to be treated as third-class citizens through the decade – reminded of the subordinate position their separate identity was meant to take in order to preserve the veneer of a united, harmonious, and above all conformist Pakeha identity…
…the causes in Gisborne, a relatively prosperous town for its time, are indicative of the troublesome undercurrents in post-nuclear New Zealand. The rationing system imposed on an area already self-sufficient in most resources was a bitter farce, one to make the pre-War experiment with “carless days” appear a roaring success in comparison (this work has already touched upon the matter of counterfeiting elsewhere); the influx of an estimated two thousand refugees, primarily from Auckland, did not assist matters as regionalist sentiments (and, to be honest, some not-entirely-peripheral gang rivalries) eventually boiled over by about the second or week, as refugees camped near the centre of town began monopolising the fitful shipments of supplies from Palmerston North…
…however, there was a crucial difference in time. During 1981, the protestors could at least claim the moral high ground and from there broadcast to the rest of the world. In 1984, there was no similar coverage. And with half a million homeless, most New Zealanders had no time at all for people who were, on the face of it, just taking advantage of those who had nothing (never mind that the former group didn’t have much even before the bombs fell). So it was that, for the rest of the decade, the glacial advance of racial equality and multiculturalism in New Zealand would freeze over once more, with such small increments as came only due to the accommodating actions of certain better-resourced iwi in the central North Island…
Poi e … whaka-tata mai
Poi e… kaua he rerekē
Poi e… kia-piri mai ki au
Poi e… awhi mai-ra…
Poi e… tāpeka tia mai
Poi e… o taua aroha
Poi e… pai here tia ra
Poi… taku poi e!
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A bit of a wordy one - but hey, even this ignorant Pakeha has to try and convey some sense of race relations. At 4000 words it's the longest update I've done so far, but successive ones should be a fair bit quicker than this.
- TNZ
- TNZ
Loved the update. I'm really not sure what would happen up the East Coast of the NI. I don't know the area at all really. I would imagine, in addition to the gangs, that there would be loads of white farmers who would likely still be armed. This being the era where every farmer and his dog had at least one or two Army surplus .303s. I would imagine the gangs would have a few as well.
So I could see a lot of shootings in the rural hinterland around the gang infested towns.
So I could see a lot of shootings in the rural hinterland around the gang infested towns.
Great but sad update. It makes me wonder what is happening to the North, in Hawaii . . .
I suspect that Oahu is essentially gone, but I wonder about the hidden tension between the native Hawaiians and the haoles on Maui, Molokai, Lanai, the Big Island and Kauai . . .
bobinleipsic
I suspect that Oahu is essentially gone, but I wonder about the hidden tension between the native Hawaiians and the haoles on Maui, Molokai, Lanai, the Big Island and Kauai . . .
bobinleipsic
Oh, it's been getting hairy, alright. Everyone and their mums is packin' round there
The farmers are basically shooting anything that moves, which may lead to some interesting run-ins with the law. Especially if they should come a-calling to requisition food supplies...I'm not too familiar with the area either (I may go to RnV this year, though if anyone up there catches wind of me writing about them...), but Gisborne was and remains the cente with the highest proportion Maori population so it was a natural focal point for racially-motivated violence
Pearl and greater Honolulu are gone, you're right there; I imagine the locals are having fun dealing with radiation, AWOL soldiers, and paranoid nutcases.
BooNZ
Banned
Oh, it's been getting hairy, alright. Everyone and their mums is packin' round there
I'm not too familiar with the area either (I may go to RnV this year, though if anyone up there catches wind of me writing about them...), but Gisborne was and remains the cente with the highest proportion Maori population so it was a natural focal point for racially-motivated violence
Great timeline - really brings back the memories. As an aside, I was raised on the East Coast in the 1980s and do not recall any incidents of racially-motivated violence...
The only anti-tour passion I witnessed was from [mostly white] school teachers and from the hugely outnumbered protestors [probably school teachers] when I attended the SB - Poverty Bay match and SB - Maori AB match (in Napier). I believe most Maori had a stronger opinion about Rugby than the politics of apartheid, a seemingly intellectual debate, which lacked currency in a rural NZ.
In the mid 1980s Rogernomics gutted the NZ rural economies with its high interest rates and a high NZ dollar. The 1980s also brought a high number of both droughts and floods to the East Coast. Subsequently much of the farmland was salted with pine trees... The economy and population was far stronger on the East Coast in 1984 that it is today. There was a far larger population of farmers on the land and therefore stronger rural communities - by contemporary standards armed to the teeth with firearms and in some cases access to explosives.
Similarly support industries like meat workers, shearers, scrub cutters etc were also prevalent and doing comparatively well. I don't think the East Coast had a gang problem by contemporary measures - affluence and high employment does not provide a suitable environment.
BooNZ
Banned
Not cheesy so much as I'm not sure it agrees with the OF canon timelines and character wise
Just for colour (literally), here is what RNZAF Hercs, Orions, Hueys, Skyhawks and Airtrainers looked like in early 1984. These shots are from the 1981 Air Force Day at Ohakea. Relevance to the thread is that the Iroquois helicopter that whisked the PM and co away from the capital would have looked like the ones pictured here in that era:
http://rnzaf.proboards.com/post/77140/thread
As an aside the last of these very same Hueys will be retired in May 2015. The Hercs and Orions don't have a retirement date set yet.
Thank you for that link - I attended that show as a kid and loved it!
Huh, I never thought of that. I'll defer to your local knowledge; ITTL the popular narrative largely uses gangs (and non-whites in general) as a scapegoat for what was, in reality, rather a piss-poor management of rationing. The reason the police were trying to keep people away from the refugee camp in town, for example, was that they were getting in first for medical treatment and supplies which led to resentment among the locals, etc...
...that's my whitewash, anyway
I felt writing on South Auckland would be somewhat cliche, and besides I wanted to set more things in the provinces. Another issue is that, like most people born since the mid-80s, I have trouble viewing New Zealand through the radically different lens of the time - the provinces with employment, Gore a livable place, price freezes...The expression "the past is another country" is one I've found applies in writing this TL.BooNZ
Banned
Huh, I never thought of that. I'll defer to your local knowledge; ITTL the popular narrative largely uses gangs (and non-whites in general) as a scapegoat for what was, in reality, rather a piss-poor management of rationing. The reason the police were trying to keep people away from the refugee camp in town, for example, was that they were getting in first for medical treatment and supplies which led to resentment among the locals, etc...
...that's my whitewash, anyway
You're doing a heck of a job, Tsar...
I think with the POD provided, the East Coast would be the next best place to be after the mainland. It's splendid isolation means independent refugees would more likely swamp other regions (Manuwatu, Hawkes Bay, Waikato, BOP) before running out of fuel. In all likelihood local councils would close access roads to all non-essential traffic (based on Civil Defence mind sets during Cyclone Bola).
As far as scapegoats, I think it would become apparent those pinko union organisers were responsible for anything that goes wrong - real or imagined. It would be a crime to waste a crisis. In general, the attention of the administration would need to be focused on the refugees and any urban populations. "We are concerned about people, not bloody farmers" - to paraphrase a statement made during Cyclone Bola.
IMHO re-establishing the North Island power network and figuring out how to secure on-going fuel for NZ military and production (mining/ farming) would be strategic imperatives.
Hmm. Errors have been made, it seems
Well, I can do one of two things here; rewrite the update to retcon it to somewhere else - Porirua, perhaps (positively swarming with refugees from Wellington), or maybe somewhere else in the provinces - Whanganui? Or...we could take the update as it lies, and move on? If it's clearly too implausible a situation, I'd prefer to spend some time on rewrites, but otherwise I could leave it be with the original intent (social decay, etc.) intact. On logistics, closing roads is a strategy which has been somewhat enforced, but only lightly - the police were at the breaking point before the bombs fell anyway, and petrol stations were largely sucked dry in any case. Plus side, fuel rationing to vital sectors is far easier now. IOTL 1984, gas field production was at about 4 billion cubic metres per year, which isn't going to cover self-sufficiency requirements unless the government enforces carless days (or, more likely, restricts people to their immediate locations in a move which has the added bonus of keeping them manageable). Nevertheless, Think Big did mean a hydrocracker had been installed at Marsden Point by this point IOTL, and even if the pipeline planned to be extended to South Auckland was hampered by strikes, at least it'll mean there's some spare pipe knocking about. You can also bet your bottom dollar that they'll be working to reopen Moturoa refinery to save on shipping the crude up to Whangarei.
Food is proving comparatively easy to sort out, compared to other countries, and for good reason - a quarter of NZ exports were meat, and a further 7% was butter. The war happened in late February, so weather's been good and the harvest will soon be in (expect government intervention to distribute fuel, assign refugees to jobs, and make sure every single piece of grain is accounted for) - an exception is the hailstorm in Gisborne, which (IOTL) damaged the apple harvest.
Electricity will be interesting. Although there is still a considerable amount of electricity generated from coal, these sources are comparatively easy to access and, when not so, hydropower is readily available - by this point Clyde Dam was only two years into the long construction process and will not be completed ITTL, but Manapouri's immense capacity is very much a going concern - why waste 585 MW [1] on Tiwai Point when there's no longer a Japan left to buy aluminium?
So yes, it'll be an interesting time. P&S isn't about cosy catastrophes, though; there's issues of medicine and technology and chemicals to be dealt with (the next installment, tentatively titled We Have No Drug Addicts, may touch on this issue).
[1] OTL maximum operating capacity, barring exceptional circumstances, until 2002 when a new tailrace tunnel allowed the full 850 MW to be produced.
Tiwai Point relies on imported bauxite, from Australia, so it would likely be disrupted
Precisely my point
The RNZN will conduct Viking-style raids on the defenceless Australian ore mines! It will be like Lindisfarne all over again
It's the perfect time; the Australian government is in disarray, and our hordes of emigrants had been conducting reconnaissance of the Queensland coast for years by this point. So the invaders will be bolstered by such reports as "the beer's not bad" and "Brisbane's bloody humid this time of year."