Publisher's Synopsis
New Zealand is famous for the welfare state, developed in the late 19th century and being dismantled a century later. But the welfare state was not in fact New Zealand's first ""welfare experiment"". Arriving in the early 19th century, European settlers shrugged off Old World values to demand, contrary to English law and practice at that time, that the elderly and the poor should take care of themselves. Settlers, building a new society afresh demanded active overnight support of the ""deserving"" - cheap land and loans for settlers, public works to create jobs, state savings banks. They passed vigorously enforced laws placing all welfare duties upon families. They kept handouts to the destitute miserly, demeaning and short-term. The ""world without welfare"" of early colonial New Zealand represents perhaps the purist 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 and personal independence. As the pendulum swings again, a century later, the first New Zealand welfare experiment is in need of review - with the accuracy of historical knowledge rather than the suppositions of political debate.
