The Great Experiment: Labour Parties and Public Policy Transformation in Australia and New Zealand.

• Author: Rabel, Roberto

Labour Parties and Public Policy Transformation in Australia and New Zealand Editors: Francis Castles, Rolf Gerritsen and Jack Vowles Published by: Auckland University Press, 1996, Auckland, 262 pp, $39.95. This book takes its impetus from the dearth of public policy analysis comparing Australia and New Zealand. These neighbouring societies have followed parallel paths of historical development since the nineteenth century, and perhaps never more so than in the mid-1980s when Labour governments on both sides of the Tasman embraced an agenda of reform which seemed to reject much of their mutual social democratic heritage. While the dramatic transformations which ensued have elicited many scholarly studies, most have been national in scope rather than comparative.

By adopting an explicitly comparative approach, the eighteen scholarly contributors to this collection seek to provide a fuller explanation of the causes and consequences of both national experiences than hitherto evident in single-country studies. To this end, the book consists of nine substantive chapters comparing different facets of public policy during the Labour years. Each is coauthored by an Australian and a New Zealand scholar. The technique works well in making the book more focused than most edited collections. The excellent introductory and concluding chapters written by the editors also help tie together the work into a cohesive whole.

The substantive chapters reveal considerable divergence in the reform strategies of the two governments, albeit within a shared `more market' framework. Within that framework, the Australian Labor Party opted for a `corporatist' (or `consensual') approach in collaboration with the trade union movement while the New Zealand Labour Party adopted a more `commercialist' model which favoured market mechanisms over state intervention wherever possible. The divergence was most notable in economic and administrative reforms, but was also evident in other areas, such as differing approaches to anti-nuclearism. Interestingly, it was less marked on issues associated with the so-called `new politics', such as gender equity, indigenous rights and environmental protection.

The contributors offer many reasons to explain the divergences between the two variants of the `Great Experiment'. They include such factors as constitutional differences, the different legacies of the conservative governments which had preceded the two Labour governments, the...