The previous chapter's discussion of the international empirical literature challenged theoretical assumptions that public attitudes to social citizenship will have shifted comprehensively and coherently over the last three decades. It did so by highlighting the varied policy feedback effects known to shape public opinion. Building on this discussion, the present chapter provides an overview of New Zealand's turbulent political and policy history between 1984 and 2011. Exploring neoliberalism's shifting nature over its roll-back, roll-out and roll-over phases, it finds good reason to believe New Zealand attitudes towards social citizenship may also fluctuate over time. Discussion of each key phase in New Zealand is punctuated by brief analysis of significant variances in the type, strength and/ or timing of policies implemented in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia, identifying where trends in public attitudes may also differ across geographical space. In focusing on four key policy areas – economic policy relating to employment; social security; healthcare, education, pensions; tax and redistribution – the chapter also stresses that neoliberalism's implementation has been far from uniform, even within one time period or country. Nor has it gone uncontested, with both political divisions within government and public demand for electoral reform and policy reversals providing a final reason why we cannot assume that New Zealand attitudes towards social citizenship have been comprehensively and coherently transformed. Indeed, while economic crises were behind the earlier and later phases of neoliberalism, the electoral impacts of this public concern contributed to the internal crises driving the roll-out period. This background provides a crucial context for the following chapters, which each examine how neoliberalism – in all its diversity – shaped attitudes towards social citizenship in one of four key policy areas.

Roll-back neoliberalism: 1984–1999

Neoliberalism's ‘destructive’ moment is said to have been facilitated by external economic crises justifying government-led restructuring projects that dismantled Keynesian institutional frameworks and subordinated social welfare policies to economic considerations (Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Peck and Tickell, 2002). Both New Zealand's Labour (1984–1990) and National (1990–1999) governments certainly used economic conditions to justify the rolling back of institutions supporting social citizenship. An unexpected foreign currency crisis rationalised the newly elected 4th Labour government’s immediate macroeconomic reforms from 1984.