In the small, 3.4 million person nation of New Zealand,  one of the most radical social experiments of the Twentieth Century has been underway for the last twelve years. Beginning when the Labour Party took power in mid-1984, and continuing under National Party governments, the most radical "free market reforms" in the world have been applied to almost every aspect of life in the country. The reforms are modelled upon, but are much more radical than those Margaret Thatcher introduced into Britain. Thus, such groups as the World Trade Organisation, the OECD, and the IMF and World Bank, in near-orgasmic cries of delight, have proclaimed New Zealand to be "the most free country in the world."

The reports of New Zealand's economic success are all lies. The only "freedom" in the country is that enjoyed by financiers and speculators to loot the stored-up wealth created by generations of New Zealanders past, just as the Nazis wrung wealth from the very bodies of their victims in the concentration camps. The comparison to the Nazis is no hyperbole; as we document in our Special Report in this issue, New Zealand, today, is a dying society. Among other things, we show that:

* New Zealand has the highest youth suicide rate in the Western world; since 1985, the rate at which its youth are killing themselves has doubled (State of the World's Children Report, UNICEF 1993)

* The living standard of the average New Zealander, as measured in per household market basket consumption of physical goods, is falling rapidly. One of every six New Zealanders now lives under the  poverty line, in a country where poverty had been generally unheard of (at least among New Zealanders of European descent), before 1984.

* Unemployment and part-time employment (under 20 hours per week), has soared to 32%, this in a country where unemployment was almost nonexistent before 1984!

* New Zealand's foreign debt has rocketed from $16.359 billion at the start of the reforms, to over $74 billion at present; cutting down the debt was the proclaimed chief motivation for carrying out the reforms in the first place.

* Businesses are collapsing at the fastest rate in the country's history, victims of the unprecedented speculative bubble which is sucking the lifeblood out of productive industries and farms.

But the impact of the free-market "reforms" has been perhaps most dramatic in the health sector. Under that sector's partial "privatisation," public hospitals have closed left and right, hospital beds per capita have been slashed, and hundreds of the country's most senior nurses have been sacked or forced into retirement or other jobs. The cutbacks have been so savage, that over 94,000 New Zealanders now languish on official waiting lists for operations, while some 100,000 more who also need them, are not even allowed on the lists!

As we show, these health care "reforms" are killing people! Thus, the standards by which the victorious Allies hung Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg-- that they "knew or should have known" that their policies were responsible for mass murder-can, and must be applied to those responsible for what is now taking place in New Zealand.

As bad as New Zealand is, it is only a step or two ahead of Australia. Point by point, the murderous Kiwi "reforms" are being adopted here at breakneck speed, as in the health care reforms of Jeff Kennett's Victorian government.

The similarities are not surprising: both have been orchestrated by the elite London-based Mont Pelerin Society--the premier free-trade think-tank/economic warfare unit of the British Crown. In past issues of the New Citizen, we have shown how such Mont Pelerin "free trade" front groups as the Institute for Public Affairs, the Centre for Independent Studies, the Tasman Institute, and the H.R. Nicholls Society, since the late 1970s, have taken over both major political parties in Australia.