Michael Bassett
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- For the British screenwriter and director, see Michael J. Bassett
Michael Bassett was a Labour Party member of the New Zealand House of Representatives and cabinet minister in the reformist fourth Labour government. He is also a noted New Zealand historian, and has published a number of books on New Zealand politics, including biographies of Prime Ministers Peter Fraser, Gordon Coates and Joseph Ward.
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[edit] Life before politics
Bassett was born in 1938 in Auckland and educated at Owairaka School, Dilworth School, Mt Albert Grammar, and the University of Auckland. He completed BA and MA degrees in history at the University of Auckland before winning a fellowship to Duke University in the United States in 1961. He completed a PhD in American history there before returning to New Zealand in 1964. He then became a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland.
[edit] Political career
In 1971 Bassett was elected to the Auckland City Council. The following year he was elected as a Labour MP in the 1972 election, in which the Labour Party became government for the first time since 1960. Following the death of Prime Minister Norman Kirk the party was defeated in the following election.
Labour was re-elected in the landslide 1984 election, becoming New Zealand's fourth Labour government. Bassett became Minister of Health and Local Government, and from 1987 to 1990, Minister of Internal Affairs, Local Government, Civil Defence and Arts and Culture. He was chairman of the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board and of the 1990 Commission, tasked with the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. In his capacity as Minister of Internal Affairs he also helped reorganise Waitangi Day celebrations and encourage them around New Zealand.
The fourth Labour government enacted a major programme of economic and social reform, the economic arm of which is known as Rogernomics. Major social reforms included the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986. Bassett was a wholehearted supporter of the reforms, and when the government and party schismed over issues of economic reform, Bassett took the side of finance minister Roger Douglas, the main architect of the reforms. In 1990, Labour was defeated in another landslide election and Bassett retired from active politics.
He continued occasionally to be involved at an advisory level, for example unofficially advising Don Brash during his term as National Party leader. Bassett's apparent switch of sides reflects the present-day Labour Party's semi-repudiation of Rogernomics.
[edit] Subsequent career
Bassett resumed his academic career, publishing several books on New Zealand political history, and contributing to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography[1] and the British Dictionary of National Biography. He was a Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario on and off from 1992 to 1996, taught at the Auckland University Medical School from 1997 to 2000, and was a Fulbright Professor of New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University, Washington DC.
From 1994 to 2004 Bassett was a member of the Waitangi Tribunal, which investigates breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. He is a columnist for the Dominion-Post in Wellington and the Press in Christchurch.
[edit] Trivia
- Bassett is a cousin of late Prime Minister, David Lange. Lange's father, who was a doctor, delivered Bassett.
[edit] Personal life
Bassett is married to Judith Bassett, a historian at the University of Auckland and member of the Auckland Regional Council. They have two children and one grandchild.
[edit] Published works
- Depression of the Thirties (Heinemann Educational Books, 1967)
- Confrontation '51: The 1951 Waterfront Dispute (Reed, 1972)
- Three Party Politics in New Zealand, 1911-1931 (Historical Publications, 1982)
- Sir Joseph Ward: A Political Biography (Auckland University Press, 1993)
- Coates of Kaipara (Auckland University Press, 1995)
- Mother of all Departments: A History of the Department of Internal Affairs (Auckland University Press in assocation with the Historical Branch, 1997)
- Tomorrow comes the song : a life of Peter Fraser (with Michael King) (Penguin, 2000)
- The state in New Zealand, 1840-1984 : Socialism without Doctrines? (Auckland University Press, 1998)
- Roderick Deane: His Life and Times (with Judith Bassett) (Viking, 2006)
Bassett also wrote several Labour Party publications, and a personal memoir of the third Labour government.
