The 1930s and 1940s was a formative era in nation-building, through the conscious ‘making’ of New Zealand. At the same time, New Zealanders had to ‘make do’ through depression and another world war, and these global onslaughts only intensified the quest for security at home and abroad. Making do and creating a nation moved in symbiosis because, as often happens with the evolution of a sense of national identity, panic, crisis, anxiety or rupture produces stories and rituals to soothe and explain. This context saw the rise to power of the first Labour government, which openly resolved to pick up where the 1890s Liberal model of state development left off. In this era politicians reinvented a tradition of a progressive, decent society that protected ordinary people from the icy winds of international competition and conflict. A geological reminder of living on the edge, the Napier earthquake of February 1931, magnitude 7.8 which killed 256 people, only added to the sense of fissure and fragility. New Zealand's worst environmental disaster of the twentieth century, the earthquake reinforced the urge to rebuild.

The depression

Even before the Wall Street Crash in 1929, global depression and unemployment had cast a pall over the Dominion. Already the dependent economy was hit by the fall in export prices. In just two years, 1928–29 to 1930–31, export income nearly halved. Export values returned to pre-depression levels only from 1936. To maintain funds in London, New Zealand had to adopt a deflationary policy of balanced budgets. A United government led by George Forbes, a North Canterbury farmer, made the economies necessary to meet local interests’ insistence on cost-cutting. Reduced debt repayments were unthinkable because that would have impaired the ability to borrow. The government therefore slashed expenditure. The cuts were particularly severe in education, which consumed nearly half of annual public spending, and in health.