New Zealand has two major conflicting political discourses: the ‘old’ one of social equality and the ‘new’ one of public choice theory. In this paper I will show how these discourses interact in two recent developments in government education policy. In the last analysis, changes in discourse represent changes in power, mediated through knowledge. Such changes have been evident in NZ education policy as the ‘1%’, metaphorically speaking, endeavour to secure their advantage. However, a simplistic understanding of a Marxist kind is always confounded, or at least complicated, in New Zealand by the complexities of ethnicity and culture. The current ruling party of government in New Zealand is ‘conservative’ to the extent that it endeavours to preserve the ‘reforms’ of a Labour party which was hijacked by public choice neo-liberals. Despite a backlash from the electorate it has continued the programme of privatisation and privilege in education, through various means. Having now established such a norm, there are only pockets of resistance. In this paper I examine two recent policies which have aimed at furthering the public choice programme, but have come unstuck on political realities – the ‘Charter School’ or public-private partnership programme, and the changes in rules regarding university admission, which have resulted in an unexpected drop in the numbers eligible for admission to the university system.
