Dave Stewart

In 1983 the rich and powerful in New Zealand were being held back by the then Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon and his National Party government.

Their champion was backbencher Derek Quigley, the National MP for Rangiora, espousing what would become known as Rogernomics. Muldoon was frustrated by this faction of National and demoted Quigley after Quigley released an alternative budget to Muldoon’s which advocated state asset sales, a consumption tax (GST) and massive reductions in high earners income tax and savage cuts to public service jobs. The division in the right was as sharp then as it is today.

Muldoon demoting Quigly signalled a need for those on the more extreme right to destabilize the Muldoon Government and bring on a regime change.

A coup was hatched.

Back-room deals were done with the Labour right wingers such as Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble and before long organisations like Federated Farmers, the Business Roundtable and The Employers Federation were making public statements supportive of working with a Labour Government.

Trade Unionist conservatives in the labour movement were fobbed off with lies and deception and were conned senseless by Labour and made to shut up and sit in the back of the bus. And they did.

But Muldoon was still popular and there was no sign of the voters throwing their lot in with the rich and powerful and their new (still in the closet) Labour turncoats.

Enter property tycoon, Bob Jones.

Jones threw a shipload of money into a new party, The New Zealand Party. The design was to attract the more extreme right of political voters and sabotage the National vote and secure a Labour Government.

Muldoon was onto him, and the stage was set, but Jones and his money were making huge headway into the voting population.

Muldoon threw a snap election, but it was all too late.

The New Zealand Party split the National vote, and the 1984 Labour Government was formed.

Within days after the election result Bob Jones disbanded his party declaring that the objective (to get rid of Muldoon) was achieved.

New Zealand began its slide into the neo-liberal hell these free market, trickle down conmen, created.

Quigley went on to co-found the ACT Party with Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble.

Jones went on to become Sir Robert Jones.

At the time, the move Jones made to buy an election to secure hard right economic policies, and therefore a hard right social policies, wasn’t clearly seen for what it really was – the beginning of the fragmentation of the right-wing parties into a myriad of smaller parties as we see today.

It marked the beginning of the Me versus We era that politicians today rely on to divide and conquer and advance ever more right wing financial, and therefore social, policies.
We must never underestimate the harm Jones and his fellow elites did to our democracy.

Sir Robert Jones died on May 2nd, 2025.