What the?

The Dom-Post has a lengthy piece on Grant Robertson this morning, and it reveals that he was first tipped to be Prime Minister at the age of 12. But he clearly wasn't a student of history; this snippet stood out:

Mr Robertson was raised a Presbyterian. His family was middle class and he never went without, but he watched classmates and workmates struggle through the recession in the 1980s.

"The little guy wasn't getting a fair go," he says. "All those things led me to a party like Labour. I look at Labour and I look at the values that underpin the party and they're closely aligned with my own." 

Hang on a minute there; Labour swept to power in July 1984, and governed for the rest of the 1980's. And as necessary as the reforms that Sir Roger Douglas instituted were, they caused widespread pain across middle New Zealand, especially in terms of job losses. And those reforms were especially hard felt in provincial New Zealand.

So what is Grant Robertson saying here? Is he a closet Rogernome? Was it the values that Labour espoused in the 1980's that attracted him to the party?

It's early in the morning, and our brain hasn't yet responded to the first cup of tea. But if the "little guy wasn't getting a fair go" under the policies of the 1980's, why would Grant Robertson have joined a party under which the sharemarket and the corporate raiders flourished, the government sold off state assets at will, and the "little guy" and his mates lost their jobs in record numbers?