ABSTRACT
Democracy and equality are not words in currency these days, having been marginalized by the rhetoric of competition and efficiency and all it entails in terms of the authoritarian practices of the 'free' market and the 'new' managerialism. But the new rhetoric and its accompanying practices promise very little for most New Zealanders. Unemployment, increasing crime and disaffection with public institutions are not the temporary by-products of free market policies, rather theory and experience suggest they are integral to them. In other words, the current market-liberal experiment in New Zealand is not a solution at all, rather it is part of the problem.
