A Fair Deal

Film (Full Length) – 1979

Parental Guidance

This headline-grabbing 1979 documentary examines inequality via interviews with an unemployed student, a young widow and a Porirua family of eight; plus visits to a Fijian village and a Hong Kong housing estate. The film's arguments that business and government monopolies had caused poverty in “egalitarian New Zealand”, and that NZ trade practices had added to it elsewhere, displeased Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. State television refused to screen the Greg Stitt-directed documentary; CORSO, the charity who commissioned it, was removed from the government’s funding list.

It’s a disturbing fact of life: underprivileged groups are becoming increasingly obvious in egalitarian New Zealand. Money and power are being accumulated into the hands of the few.
– From the opening narration