A ride on the Ridgeway bus
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26686/pq.v13i3.4672Keywords:
welfare state, blame-shifting responses to tragedies, corruptive failure of responsibility, civil and human rights, inequality, better governanceAbstract
My father was a government tradesman (for all of his working life). As it happens, a next-door neighbour was one of the three public service commissioners. It was the late 1950s, and after work my father and the commissioner would often ride home together on a Wellington Tramways bus, departing from Courtenay Place and winding upwards through the steep streets of Vogeltown towards the Ridgeway terminus. They were both happy to be called ‘public servants’, though carrying out entirely different roles in New Zealand’s ‘homely state’, as described by Janet Fraser, wife of former Labour prime minister Peter Fraser.
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