Mike Moore, 1949-2020

On Labour: "It was Nye Bevan ... who said that Labour used to be the cream of the working class. Now it is an intellectual spittoon for the middle class."
~ from his valedictory speech, 1999

"We're full now of people with [an] upper-class nature, [from] private schools, who now lecture to us [working-class people] about what we should do. I find that very funny."
    ~ from the 2017 interview for The Ninth Floor

"How many of those people on Country Calendar do you think vote Labour now? ... Because we’re not seen to be on the side of those who are strivers. I do think we’ve got trouble.”

    ~ from the interview for The Ninth Floor

On leaving parliament: "My friends wanted the best for me, and my enemies wanted to see me go. For once, I was able to please everyone. At last, I enjoyed the total support of my party."

On foreign investment: "The central purpose [of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment] is to ensure that foreign investors are not the subject of discriminatory or xenophobic behaviour on the part of governments in the host country... This is not a new wave of colonisation or the rise of corporatist world government. The Agreement is designed to PROTECT and ENCOURAGE foreign investment because it is such investment that has helped fuel global economic growth and the increasing globalisation of wealth... The MAI will be of the greatest long-term benefit to developing nations."

    ~ from his 1997 recommendation on the agreement to the Labour caucus 

On globalisation: "When the Berlin wall came down, when Nelson Mandela was freed, and when freedom has flourished elsewhere, the world celebrated. We celebrated the universal values of political and economic freedom. No one shouted, cursed and swore about the evils of globalization or common values then."

    ~ from a 2000 speech as Director-General of the WTO

On poverty: "Poor countries need to grow their way out of poverty. Trade is the key engine for growth... Open markets can play an important role in lifting billions of people out of abject poverty...

    "Liberalisation works. The multilateral trading system works. The last 50 years have seen unparalleled prosperity and growth and more has been done to address poverty in these last 50 years than in the previous 500."
    ~ from a 2001 speech as Director-General of the WTO

On freedom: "The more closed the economy, the more corrupt the practices.... We have learnt that freedom works, and as it grows, so do people’s living standards... "
    ~ from a 2002 speech as Director-General of the WTO

On peace and free trade: "Internationalism and globalisation will be to the 21st Century what Nationalism was to the 20th Century. Thus mankind has learnt the most profound lessons of this century from the great depression and the second world war."

    ~ from a 1997 address by Moore to a seminar on “International Liberalisation”

On Keynesianism: “The lesson of the last 25 years tells us that no individual country can anymore successfully prime an economic pump, even Mitterand discovered this in the 80s when, by priming the French pump, all he did was flood his country with imports from Italy and from Germany. He reversed that position."

    ~ from a 1997 address by Moore to a seminar on “International Liberalisation”

On protectionism: "The 1987 stock market crash was greater and deeper than the Wall Street crash of the 20s. But, the world did not plunge into lasting depressions. Leaders nerves held, there wasn’t an orgy of protectionism and tariff increases which exacerbated the 20s crash... We got through it, we have learnt.”

    ~ from a 1997 address by Moore to a seminar on “International Liberalisation”

On global institutions: "The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have unearned reputations born of the Cold War of being anti-poor, anti-developing countries. The opposite should be the truth. [But] no one believes that any more, except a few deranged misfits on the edges of obscure universities, people who tuck their shirts into their underpants, the remnants of pressure groups and a few geriatrics who claim that Marxism, like Christianity, has not been tried yet.”

    ~ from his 1998 book A Brief History of the Future: Citizenship of the Millennium

On betrayal: "In the end, it's the silence of your friends you remember, not the misdeeds of those who dislike you."

    ~ from the 2017 interview for The Ninth Floor

On Moore: "Mike Moore was like the opposite of L&P: world-famous, just not in New Zealand."

    ~ attributed to Jane Clifton

Here's John Lennon:

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