Caption: Back row from left: Trevor Culley (fifth president); Vic Draper (second president); John Feast (seventh president); Harold Parsons (fourth president); Noel Margan (third president); and Dave Horlor (sixth president). Front row: Bill Kell (eighth president); Ron Tarr (National Secretary and author of A Strange Breed of Men – the history of the association between 1944 and 1972); and Dan Sloan (the association’s first president, 1944).
Last month I covered the 1940s – a defining era of war and peace for both the nation and its contractors, who gathered together in July 1944 to found a national organisation to respond to the growing power of the state. By Peter Tritt.
The 1950s post-war boom era that followed was quite unlike anything before or since.
Our population boomed, growing 25 percent from 1.89 to 2.36 million, due mostly to a post-war baby boom, but also to migration.
Throughout the decade, the birth rate stayed well above 25 per 1000 per annum (compared to today’s rate of 12.11). Over 125,000 migrants also arrived, including 50,000 assisted migrants from the United Kingdom, 5000 war-displaced people from Europe and 1100 Hungarian refugees following the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and Dutch from Indonesia.
The economy boomed too. Throughout the 1950s our annual GDP per capita growth rate was 125 percent of the OECD average and the nation took great pride in its GDP per capita always ranking in the world’s top three, taking turns with Australia for second and third place behind the United States.
But the decade also saw the first signs of the economic black clouds that would return again and again. This began with the world’s first post-war recession (1957-58) and the 1957 world-wide slump in commodity prices – butter prices halved, wool prices fell 42 percent, beef prices fell 34 percent and lamb prices fell 33 percent.
This caused a balance-of-payments crisis and the infamous 1958 Black Budget’s hefty tax increases on beer, tobacco, cars and petrol. Our heavy dependence on three farm-based commodities was an outlier in the developed world, and a warning for the future.
Watching old black and white newsreels and National Film Unit productions made in the 1950s (and the 1960s, the subject of next month’s column), it is striking how they ooze with pride, positivity, confidence and enthusiasm. Immense pride in what we had achieved as a nation in our brief history. We, a people whose voices brim with positivity, confidence and enthusiasm about getting on with building an even better future.
Building that better future in the 1950s meant building new infrastructure to meet the nation’s growing transport and energy needs and developing new industries to reduce our reliance on dairy, meat and wool.
We set about sealing roads and constructing new roads, bridges, tunnels and motorways to cater for the growing popularity of the private motor car – with New Zealand having one of the highest car per capita ratios in the world.
The nation’s first five-kilometre stretch of motorway (Takapu Road to Johnsonville) opened in 1950 and the state highway from Auckland to Wellington was finally fully sealed in 1954.
The National Roads Board was founded in 1954, with dedicated funding from petrol taxes and other charges. In 1950 the nation had 12,724 miles of “main highways” with 35 percent classified as “dustless”, 63 percent with a “gravel or macadam surface” and 2 percent with a clay or pumice surface. By the end of the decade there were 13,181 miles (up 3.6 percent) of state or main highways, with 56 percent being dustless and 44 percent gravel or macadam.
The nation’s rail network reached its peak in 1953 with 5500 kilometres of track. But the golden era of rail travel was over as we took to the new roads in our new cars.
New hydro dams and power stations, to harness our abundant water, coal and geothermal resources, were built to cater for a huge surge in electricity consumption, driven by both new industry and domestic consumers who were buying new electrical home appliances and lighting for their homes. By decade’s end, 54 percent of dwellings had a refrigerator and 57 perent had a washing machine.
Dam building continued at pace along the Waikato, with the construction of six of the river’s eight dams being either completed or started during the decade. In the South Island, both the Roxburgh dam and Tekapo A were completed and planning was under way for a huge new earth dam at Benmore.
It was questions about works on the Waikato dams and who would do the work on the new Benmore earth dam that prompted the beginnings of the Federation’s ‘Construct by Contract’ campaign.
New Zealand’s first (and the world’s second) geothermal power station at Wairakei and its first major coal-fired power station at Meremere were also opened in 1958.
New airports were constructed to cater for the growing demand for national and international air travel. Wellington’s new airport at Rongotai commenced construction in 1953 and opened in 1959, Christchurch’s Harewood Airport was designated as an international airport in 1950 and its new terminal opened in 1960. In Auckland, the planning and design phase for a new airport at Mangere began in 1958.
Industry development in the 1950s focused on reducing imports through local substitution and diversifying exports. Local manufacturing factories, protected by both import licencing and tariffs, were encouraged to locally manufacture cars, household appliances and other goods. New mills were built in Kawerau and Tokoroa, to harness the wealth growing in the world’s largest man-made forest at Kaingaroa, and develop a new export trade in forestry products.
At decade’s end, planning was underway for a new steel mill to utilise our abundant supplies of coal and ironsand, and for a new aluminium smelter to be supplied with electricity from a new hydro dam and power station. The nation also entered a new age of oil and gas exploration, with the discovery of the onshore Kapuni gas-condensate field in Taranaki in 1959.
The association had not gained much traction in the 1940s and had failed to attract the membership numbers that it knew it needed for better national recognition. When its sixth annual general meeting was held in Wellington on 23 August 1950, with Baldy Margan in the chair (in President Vic Draper’s absence), only 14 members attended – compared to 23 in 1945.
The organisation reached a low point in 1951 when its founders even considered the prospect of winding up, but a well-publicised meeting that year with the new Minister of Works, Stan Goosman, to discuss the industry’s issues and problems marked a turning point in official recognition. Plans were put in place to gain the membership numbers needed for better recognition by government.
Goosman, who replaced Bob Semple as Minister of Works in the new National government (1949-1957), was a roading contractor before entering Parliament in 1938. He had started work at 13 on a dairy farm and later founded a large transport business and a road contracting business. Politicians like Semple and Goosman are hard to find nowadays.
But, as sympathetic as Goosman (and the government) was to the civil contracting industry, government departments tend to take on a life of their own and grow – and the Ministry of Works was no different.
Contractors likely expected a change of fortune with a new government that favoured private enterprise. But the party’s pledge to not undo Labour’s extensive social reforms should perhaps have been an indicator that it would be unwilling to upset the status quo it inherited.
Despite good intentions, the Ministry of Works continued to grow and prosper. After six years of National government, the work was split one-third each between the Ministry, local government and private contractors at the change of government; the relative proportions had been 40:32:26. Local government plant holdings also continued to grow.
The Federation also grew and prospered in the 1950s, with 1959 being its most successful year. It held a meeting of agricultural contractors in Rotorua in May; a national meeting of sealing and metal producing contractors (attended by important ministry officials) in Wellington in July; and its fifteenth annual conference in Christchurch in August, which had all the hallmarks of a professional well-run industry conference.
It included an opening telegrammed message of goodwill from the Labour Prime Minister, Walter Nash, and an address by the Minister of Works, Hugh Watt.
Hundreds of delegates were in attendance, this being the norm since the 200 mark was broken at the 1958 Wanganui conference.
President Trevor Culley put aside his formal report and asked: “Let us start then by asking ourselves – ‘Why is this conference being held?’.
“The answer is a simple one, to ensure that this industry of ours is accorded its rightful place in the national life and development of our country…”
His rousing address concluded with a challenge to the continued growth of the Ministry of Works, despite an abundance of idle contractors’ plants as measured by the Federation’s member survey, and a wartime quote of Winston Churchill’s that he used to call on the Ministry to “Give us the job, we will provide the tools ourselves”.
Competition from central and local government and the ‘construct-by-contract’ campaign would remain the Federation’s big issues for four decades to come.
Next month’s column will take a look at the 1960s – New Zealand’s Golden Era and its ending.
Parting words from Jeremy Sole- a final column