What was happening?
What was happening in New Zealand/Aotearoa in 1999?
A brief glimpse into who we once were.
This was a watershed year in a lot of ways. After the poor hapless but “bloody good bloke” Mike Moore muffed the previous election, Helen Clark became the first female leader of the Labour Party, but missed out on being the first female PM after Jenny Shipley stabbed Jim Bolger in the front, back and sides to take line honour as first female PM.
To purists it doesn’t count, so Sir Helen Clark can rightly be acknowledged as the first elected female PM in New Zealand. Not a woman to be trifled with, she led a remarkably disciplined team from 1999 to 2008.
Auckland hosted the significant APEC Summit this year and amongst the glittering and good were leaders from Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, South Korea, some place called Australia? And of course Bill Clinton from the USA. It is understood no blue dresses were compromised during this visit.
In rollicking good news for booze hounds everywhere, 1999 saw the legal drinking age reducing from 20 to 18. Personally, I’d been bullshitting my way into pubs since I was 15, so it didn’t seem like such a big deal to me, but for many spotty faced youths, it was a very good deal.
Almost unbelievably, it took until this year to pass the Animal Welfare Act that set standards for the treatment of both farm and domestic animals. Looking around today, there is still a great deal of work to be done before we can truly say we have committed to animal welfare.
In extraordinary plastic news, this was the year we shifted from the cosy old paper banknotes to the weird, shiny, colourful ones almost no one uses now. I don’t know about you, but whenever I find an actual note in my wallet I have to scratch my head to figure out what on earth it’s for and what exactly to do with it.
Big year for trans rights when Georgina Beyer became the first trans MP. In further social progress, the Human Rights Act 1993 was revised and removed the ability to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Just got to say – why do these things take so damned long and hurt so many people along the way.
We sent peacekeepers to East Timor as part of an international force, It seems that peacekeeping is something we are pretty damned good at.
In race relations news, the Maori Television Service Act passed, paving the way for the use of Te Reo to go turbo.
In the past, there had always been “dry” electorates dotted around the country. What for I cannot imagine, but in November of 1999, the last three holdouts – Eden, Roskill & Tawa joined the rest of the country in an unalloyed sea of booze.
As cultural touchstones go, it doesn’t get much bigger than the launch of the very famous “Bugger” TV ads from Toyota. Sophistication personified.
TVNZ sold it’s stake in SKY TV which surprised me since I never knew they had one in the first place,
In the world of film, a couple of standout Kiwi efforts were Scarfies by Robert Sarkies and What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted? By Ian Mune.
Music time again. The Album of the Year went to The Feelers for Supersystem, single went to Che Fu for Scene III, To Male Vocalist was Neil Finn, just heading off Dave Dobbyn and Top Female Vocalist was Betty-Anne Monga from Ardijah. The International Achievement Award went to Bic Runga. Thoroughly well deserved.
In TV, we were watching a lot of BBC content, plus Dads Army, Country Calendar, Doctor Who, Fame, Goosebumps, Lotto, The Simpsons and some truly batshit stuff from TV3.
Let’s wind up with a political scandal. In October, NZ First Minister of Immigration was forced to resign after granting permanent residency for a bunch of Chinese businessmen in exchange for boat loads of cash for some of his pet projects.
Jenny Shipley, in one of the most ham-fisted scandal management operations, repeatedly lied and prevaricated over a Tourism Board matter that is while too boring and tedious to go into in detail, unravelled into one of the most tawdry grifting and glad-handing episodes to embarrass a NZ Government. Bad Shipley. Bad many others.
In good news, we are right at the point of the Y2K bug collapsing global society so hang around for that overblown nothingness.
So that’s what we were doing in 1999.
Bugger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUNJd06iyWU&ab_channel=TheHallofAdvertising
Scarfies trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGGhdUxZ26c&ab_channel=GeckoTheatre
The Feelers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tsZDBBxppg&ab_channel=WarnerMusicNewZealand