Who’s Going Up The Media Mountain?

Mr Bombastic: Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to expanding social justice. 

WILLIE JACKSON is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also offered up ten names for Jackson’s consideration. The idea is not a bad one, especially in light of Labour’s success in bringing together a similar collection of experts to discuss the pros and cons of New Zealand signing up to Pillar 2 of AUKUS. It won’t work, however, if there’s only one song-sheet.

The cynics among us will no doubt wonder aloud why Jackson, when he was the Minister of Broadcasting and Communications, did not think to summon a similar colloquium to chart a path forward for the country’s struggling Fourth Estate. It is certainly highly frustrating to see former Labour cabinet ministers calling upon the good and the great to debate the burning issues of the moment in circumstances where they are structurally powerless to give force to their advice.

It would seem that Labour is only keen to listen and discuss policy with New Zealanders when giving practical effect to their ideas is impossible. Once in office, however, the opinions of those Labour deemed worthy of consulting whilst in Opposition rapidly lose their persuasive power. Those masters of deflation, the Public Service are quick to prick their new masters’ policy balloons. Big ideas are prone to creating big consequences – and by no means all of these are favourable. Best to leave the difficult business of devising and implementing policy-change to the professionals.

Few political observers would blame Jackson for telling these “professionals” to bugger-off. After all, they were the ones who spent months and months chewing over Labour’s plans for merging Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand into a single public broadcasting entity. They were also the ones who oversaw the expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars on private consultants. Not that this lavish spending on “expert” advice in any way empowered Jackson and his colleagues to offer the voters a succinct and compelling explanation of the merger plan. Perhaps there wasn’t one. Perhaps that’s why, in spite of the vast sums already spent, Chris Hipkins knocked the entire project on the head.

Would the names advanced by The Daily Blog Editor do any better?

Certainly, the academics on Bradbury’s list, Professor Wayne Hope, Dr Joe Atkinson and the key figure in AUT’s “Journalism, Media and Democracy” (JMAD) research team, Dr Merja Myllylathi, have all, over many years, written and spoken out forcefully on what they perceive to be the strengths and weaknesses of the New Zealand news media.

Ironically, the media they wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to expanding social justice. The challenge now, for these wise members of the academy, is to explain why the media they wanted is not what so many of its readers, listeners and viewers wanted.

Perhaps the seasoned journalists on Bradbury’s list of media luminaries could help them? Although it’s possible that John Campbell, Barbara Dreaver, and Mihi Forbes are not entirely sure that being on the list of a radical left-wing blogger is something that will necessarily rebound to their advantage.

Most media observers would hail Dreaver as a journalist of the old school: that is to say, a gutsy television reporter who has always worked tirelessly to uncover the facts, and then been content to let those facts speak for themselves. Campbell and Forbes, by contrast, often come across as fully-paid-up members of Team Truth.

Given that the truth is not always factual, and the facts don’t always align with the truth, the work of journalists like Campbell and Forbes tends to be the sort that raises hackles. As Bradbury’s academics are, perhaps, only now discovering: the Great New Zealand Public is more in love with the tellers of “good yarns”, than they are with the campaigners for the right (or should that be left?) kind of morals.

Few would dispute the wisdom of putting Myles Thomas on a list of New Zealanders seeking to rescue the Fourth Estate. As the spokesperson for Better Public Broadcasting Trust, Thomas brings a refreshingly Alexandrian approach to the Gordin Knot that is New Zealand broadcasting policy. 

Anyone who can tell a parliamentary select committee: “TVNZ’s annual budget is roughly $300 million. For the cost of just $5 a month per capita, New Zealand taxpayers could fully fund TVNZ so that it need no longer rely on any advertising at all”, is blessed with a very sharp intellectual sword indeed! Sharper, certainly, than Jackson’s blunt old blade.

It is not very likely that the “Old School” Gavin Ellis, former NZ Herald Editor and university lecturer, and the bombastic Mr Bradbury would have got along very well had Fate thrown them together in the same newsroom or classroom, and yet, Ellis’s name is also there on The Daily Blog editor’s list.

Fiercely loyal to his beleaguered profession, Ellis struggles, like all of us, to square the circle of a Fourth Estate that is crucial to democratic politics, with a Fourth estate that can no longer command the advertising revenue that made people like himself such key players in the game. Ellis knows that social media has already transformed the game of politics, and not necessarily for the better, but he can come up with no better remedy for the desperately ailing “legacy media” than for the state to help it to dip its bucket into the New Media giants’ “rivers of gold”. In the meantime, Ellis, like AUT’s Myllylathi, is at pains to fend off all those critics who cry: “Physician, heal thyself!”

Quite why Matthew Tukaki and Michael Wood appear on the list of media sages is anybody’s guess. Bradbury has friends in Te Ao Māori, and the Labour Party, but even so …

Conspicuous by their absence from Bradbury’s list are the critics of, and challengers to, the Fourth Estate that Jackson is now so keen to rescue. And, right there, is the besetting sin of both the Labour Party and the besieged bastions of broadcasting and the print media – a dread of giving those whom they perceive to be their enemies access to the microphone. Twenty years ago, key players in the Fourth Estate would have recognised that for what it was: cowardice – and dumb cowardice at that.

All the “summits” in the world will avail their organisers nothing, if all they are willing to listen to are their own fears.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 22 April 2024.

The Folly Of Impermanence.

“You talking about me?”  The neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned. Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of a public service that contributed nothing useful or worthwhile to the nation.

THE ABSENCE of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands would have engendered a much more aggressive response from the state-sector unions. The bonds of solidarity were a lot stronger then than they are now.

So, too, was the idea that public servants should not be laid-off in the same way as private sector workers. Offering workers in the state-sector a job for life was seen as critical to preserving both the Public Service’s effectiveness, and its integrity. It was also a way of paying workers in the state sector wages and salaries well below the “going rate” in the private sector. The state’s guarantee of permanence – job security – was an important part of retaining its workers’ loyalty, and preserving their bureaucratic efficiency.

Even in the depths of the Great Depression, it was considered more prudent to apply an across-the-board reduction in public servants’ wages and salaries than it was to engage in mass lay-offs. When the right-wing Coalition Government of 1932 announced a 10 percent cut in Postal and Telegraph workers’ wages, their protest meeting in the Auckland Town Hall, from which the unemployed were excluded (the venue being full-to-overflowing) became the catalyst for the Queen Street Riot that shook conservative Auckland to its core.

How many of today’s public servants are aware of their own history? Judging by their reaction to the loss of so many of their colleagues’ jobs – not many. A more likely proposition is that a clear majority of them would regard the idea of a job for life as just another of those absurd practices condoned by the protectionist regimes swept away by the reforming governments of the 1980s and 90s. For younger workers, in particular, impermanence of employment is a fact of life: a reflection of the economic “rationalism” to which all employees are subject; including public servants.

This tearing away of citizens from their nation’s past is the most important confirmation of the neoliberal ideology’s cult-like practices. Among the very first things that a cult seeks to do is engineer a complete break with the individual follower’s past. More than that, the cult leaders will go to extraordinary lengths to characterise everything that has come before as evil and destructive. The follower’s old reality is blamed for everything that has gone wrong with their lives; it has no redeeming features; and must be abandoned completely.

Anyone old enough to recall the transition from New Zealand’s formerly social-democratic society, to the market-driven neoliberal society ushered in by Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, will also remember the way in which everything that came before 1984 was cast in the worst possible light.

This neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned. Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” endearing caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of a public service that contributed nothing useful or worthwhile to the nation.

This invalidation of New Zealand’s past, operating relentlessly for forty years, has come at the price of growing cultural discontinuity. In the words of the distinguished American sociologist, Daniel Bell:

Today, each new generation, starting off at the benchmarks attained by the adversary culture of its cultural parents, declares in sweeping fashion that the status quo represents backward conservatism or repression, so that, in a widening gyre, new and fresh assaults on the social structure are mounted.

Compounding the culturally disintegrative effects of neoliberalism’s hatred of history, has been the parallel growth of the universities’ disparagement of Western culture in general. The extraordinary achievements of Western art, science, and politics have been reconfigured as expressions of White Supremacy. In a cultural pincer movement of remarkable social malignancy, the young Westerners of the early Twenty-First Century find themselves prevented from drawing anything but shame from the past, while moving into a future belonging to everyone but themselves.

The historical contrast presented by the current bureaucratic milieu, and that of the culture enveloping the public servants of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries is stark. Drawing immense pride from their past, and comfortable in the cultural certainties of their present, they confronted the future of their country with enviable confidence. Christian or atheist, New Zealand’s public servants’ determination to bring “God’s Own Country” ever closer to its maker was manifested in the impressive cultural, social and physical infrastructure they bequeathed to future generations. Built to serve generations its creators would never meet, “Old” New Zealand’s infrastructure proved strong enough to withstand every challenge – except neoliberal hostility and neglect.

It is possible that the quietude of the 2024 Public Service: it’s apparent willingness to mount the scaffold without protest; is explicable not only in terms of its incapacity to draw strength from New Zealand’s past, but also on account of its lamentable failure to make the slightest impact on its present. Could it be persuaded that the charges levelled against public servants by the Coalition Government (and plenty of other New Zealanders besides!) are justified? Is the Public Service pleading “Guilty, as charged”.

After all, those public servants who had been given jobs for life seemed remarkably proficient at getting things done. They created an industrial relations system, an education system, a health system, and an accident compensation system, that ranked among the world’s finest. It designed and helped to construct a national network of roads and railways, as well as a hydro-electric power grid that allowed New Zealand to become a modern economy.

The public servants who rejected the very idea of jobs for life have very little to show for their market-inspired governance. Industrial relations in New Zealand would make America’s Nineteenth Century Robber Barons blush. Education and Health, post-1984, have steadily declined to their present parlous states. New Zealand’s rail network is a joke, and its roads are an obstacle course of potholes and plastic cones. The previous government, briefly seized by the future focus of its Labour predecessors, could not rely upon public servants to get its “transformative” plans off the ground. Labour’s successors – National, Act and NZ First – seem content to leave New Zealand’s future to their private-sector mates.

Impermanence, it would seem, is a guarantee of very little else but failure, and the inability to even envisage success. Denigrating the past has proved to be the most effective way of ensuring that the future never moves beyond the failures of the present. Disinheriting the owners of a culture, while demonising its creators, merely confirms Bell’s insight (following W. B. Yeats) that “in the widening gyre”, where “the falcon cannot hear the falconer”, the future will, indeed, belong to one “rough beast” after another.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 15 April 2024.

Apposite Quotations.

How Long Is Long Enough? Gaza under Israeli bombardment, July 2014.

This posting is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

No Longer Trusted: Ageing Boomers, Laurie & Les, Talk Politics.

Turning Point: “What has turned me away from the mainstream news media is the very strong message that its been sending out for the last few years.” “And what message might that be?” “That the people who own it, the people who run it, and the people who provide its content, really don’t like, or approve of, people like me. 

IT WAS THAT MOMENT of the year when comfort teeters on the divide between hot and cold. Les and Laurie didn’t often venture out onto the little pub’s wooden deck, but today, officially autumnal, but generously waving through Summer’s diminishing throng of shirt-sleeved stragglers, they’d decided to risk it.

The two old friends sat there in the silence that descends upon the elderly when the sun is warm, the ale is cold, and the view is full of familiar and friendly detail.

“We should sit out here more often”, said Les, breaking the mellow silence.

“Nah” Laurie responded. “Most days its bloody awful out here. It’s only on the rare, Goldilocks-days of autumn, like this one, that I’m prepared to venture out.”

“Met Office is predicting another one tomorrow.”

“Good Lord! Do you still listen to the news?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Les gave Laurie a quizzical look.

“Why wouldn’t I? Because I no longer believe what the media is telling me is true.”

“Even the Weather Forecast?”

“Even the Weather Forecast. Haven’t you noticed how the whole thing is being sensationalised? I mean, the other day, I heard a forecaster warning that the Met Office might be issuing a Heavy Rain Warning for the West Coast of the South Island. Just imagine that. Rain on the Coast. Stop the bloody presses!”

“I think they call that ‘Click-Bait’, Laurie. It’s everywhere these days.”

“Look, I don’t mind the odd bit of sensationalism. When all is said and done, the media are in the business of getting ads in front of eyeballs. I get that. No, what has turned me away from the mainstream news media is the very strong message that its been sending out for the last few years.”

“And what message might that be?”

“That the people who own it, the people who run it, and the people who provide its content, really don’t like, or approve of, people like me. What was the quote you once gave me from Lenin? After he purged the Bolshevik Party of all the members who disagreed with him?”

“Fewer, but better.”

“Yep! That’s the one! It’s as though the Media doesn’t care if it has fewer readers, listeners and viewers, just so long as the ones who stick with them are better than the ones they drive away. The young journalists, in particular, they just aren’t interested in communicating with the, with the, oh, what did Hilary Clinton call them?”

“The ‘Deplorables’.”

“Yeah. That’s it. The Deplorables.”

“Though it pains me to say it, Laurie, I agree with you. Two things, really, got me going. The first was when the Stuff newspapers apologised for their racist past.”

“I’d have thought you would have approved of that.”

“Well, part of me did. But another part of me winced. A newspaper is a record of the times in which it is published. The record it leaves may not meet with the approval of tomorrow’s readers, but that’s okay. News stories aren’t written for the future, they’re written for the present. Journalism has been called ‘the first rough draft of history’ – composed of the facts, or, at least, such facts as an honest, diligent and courageous reporter is able to assemble under pressure. It’s called a rough draft because it is – or should be – lacking in opinionated analysis. That can come later: from political scientists, historians, economists, and philosophers. But, it is not the job of the working journalist. Their job is to tell us what happened – not what we should think about what happened. I just thought that it was professionally indefensible for Stuff to apologise for its past. What can we possibly learn from a past we’ve just dismissed as morally imbecilic?”

“What was the second thing.”

“Oh, right, the second thing. The second thing is Radio New Zealand. Its rising level of editorial and journalistic bias is becoming a national embarrassment. The public broadcaster seems determined to make every New Zealander pick a side in the Culture Wars. RNZ is saying good-bye to its most steadfast listeners, and, more in sorrow than in anger, those listeners, now deeply mistrustful of the publicly-owned media institution they have for so long relied upon for accurate, fair, and balanced journalism, are leaving.

“They no longer accept us,” Laurie sighed, “and we no longer trust them.”

This short story was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 12 April 2024.

In Whose Best Interests?

On The Spot: The question Q+A host, Jack Tame, put to the Workplace & Safety Minister, Act’s Brooke van Velden, was disarmingly simple: “Are income tax cuts right now in the best interests of lowering inflation?”

JACK TAME has tested another MP on his Sunday morning current affairs show, Q+A. Minister for Workplace Relations & Safety, Brooke van Velden, once boasted the only economics degree in New Zealand’s Parliament. Since the general election, however, this select fellowship of the dismal science has been augmented by fellow Act MP, Andrew Hoggard. What he would have made of his colleague’s response to Tame’s seemingly innocent question we can only guess.

The question Tame asked was disarmingly simple: “Are income tax cuts right now in the best interests of lowering inflation?”

If looks could kill, then Tame would have died then and there. Van Velden is a very intelligent woman, so, in the very few seconds she had to formulate a response to Tame’s question, she assessed the consequences of providing him with an honest answer, realised that, in this case, honesty would be absolutely the worst policy, and so, summoning her most earnest tone of voice, and with only the tiniest hint of embarrassment, she replied in the affirmative.

At this point there should have been a very loud klaxon-blast, and the word “WRONG!” should have flashed across the screen – in much the same way as incorrect answers are blasted on the British television show “QI”. Because, as Van Velden, herself, Hoggard, economics graduates everywhere, and even the reasonably well-educated person in the street, knows: cutting income taxes right now is most assuredly NOT in the best interests of lowering inflation.

I was still a teenager in the early 1970s, when inflation began to take off in New Zealand, and I remember asking my father what it was. His answer still stands as the best summation of the phenomenon I have heard. “Inflation”, he said, “is what you get when too much money is chasing too few goods.” Economists can encumber the simplicity of that definition with all kinds of impenetrable jargon; they can make it difficult and mysterious by rendering it algebraically; but, boiled right down, that is what inflation is.

If Tame had asked Van Velden another question related to inflation, her answer would likely have been entirely sensible. Zimbabwe, with a current inflation rate of 55 percent, has just issued a new currency – the “Zimbabwe Gold” (ZiG) – backed, at least partially, by the nation’s gold reserves. For those who remember the hyperinflation of the Mugabe era (I still have a Zimbabwean banknote which promises to pay the bearer, on demand, $100,000 “on or before 31st July 2007”) this will be good news. Certainly, Van Velden, if asked, would applaud the Zimbabwean Government’s efforts. At the very least, Zimbabweans will no longer be forced to rely on American currency for their day-to-day transactions.

As an economist, Van Velden would not hesitate to condemn the idea of putting additional dollars in the hands of people already under severe cost-of-living pressures. She would know that the increased spending power being injected into the economy would inevitably lead to further price rises, as the extra money chased the same quantum of goods and services.

Van Velden would also know that the prospect of tax cuts fuelling inflation would place additional pressure on the Reserve Bank to keep the Official Cash Rate higher for longer – a strategy intended to ensure that the ordinary person’s pockets remain as empty as possible, for as long as it takes to reduce demand and lower inflationary expectations – even at the cost of inducing an economic recession.

Van Velden, wearing her economist’s hat, would also understand that Finance Minister Nicola Willis, in order to avoid the consequences of being seen to replenish the reduced state revenues occasioned by tax cuts by borrowing (the example of the British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, who attempted to do exactly that, is salutary) will have no other option but to slash state expenditure dramatically. The economic and social outcomes of such policies are readily predictable. The recession will deepen, public services will falter, and the population’s pain will intensify.

It is also possible, of course, that throwing the New Zealand economy into a deep recession, and increasing social misery, will bring the inflation rate down dramatically. It is even possible that such a strategy could produce deflation – too little money chasing too many goods – with a resulting fall in retail prices. Those tempted to welcome such a turn of events should ask themselves what falling retail prices are likely to do to business profitability and employment.

It should be clear by now why Van Velden the politician and Cabinet Minister chose to answer Jack Tame’s question as she did. Tax cuts in the midst of historically high inflation and a shrinking economy are not something any responsible government should be contemplating. Had she said as much, however, her comments would be leading every news bulletin and political journalists would be speculating avidly about her own, her party’s, and the Coalition Government’s future.

On the other hand, Van Velden could have thrown all caution to the wind and affirmed that the planned tax cuts were definitely in the best interests of the country, because they would necessitate policies aimed at shrinking the size and responsibilities of the state – something hardline neoliberal economists like herself and her boss, David Seymour, have wanted for a very long time.

Cuts in spending would also reduce the ordinary working family’s room for economic manoeuvre. With more expected of them financially, the importance of holding onto their jobs, which are (just) keeping them afloat, could only grow – making them much less likely to resist their employers’ demands to work longer and harder for less. From Van Velden’s perspective, that can only be good for productivity, good for business, good for the country.

Honesty on that scale, however, would likely have a devastating impact on Act’s performance in the opinion polls. A party that grows increasingly excited at the prospect of a large proportion of the electorate sinking into poverty, economic exploitation, and despair is hardly likely to see its poll numbers rise.

Better by far to engage in a few seconds of outrageous flannelling: “I think [the tax cuts] are. I think they are for those New Zealanders who have really, really, really been struggling […] Giving them that little bit more money in their own back pocket makes it easier for them to keep up with that rising cost of living.”

Bullshit economics, but better-than-average politics. So: Jack Tame vs Brooke van Velden? I’d call it a draw.

This essay was originally posted on The Democracy Project Substack website on Monday, 8 April 2024.

Something Important: The Curious Death of the School Strike 4 Climate Movement.

The Hope That Failed: The Christchurch Mosque Massacres, Covid-19, deep political disillusionment, and the jealous cruelty of the intersectionists: all had a part to play in causing School Strike 4 Climate’s bright bubble of hope and passion to burst. But, while it floated above us, it was something that mattered. Something Important.

THE YOUNG MAN is every centimetre the twenty-first century revolutionary: youthful, indigenous, and draped in the keffiyeh of martyred Palestine. Like so many of his generation, raised with-on-by the smart-phone, he communicates faultlessly with his audience. And what he says is every bit as revolutionary as his looks.

Except … Except his message is aimed at an audience that until this week had not, generally, been associated with the Palestinian, or the Toitū te Tiriti o Waitangi, causes – secondary school students.

Posted on “X”, the young revolutionary’s video-post was intended to mobilise the tens-of-thousands of students who had turned out five years ago to play their part in the global “School Strike 4 Climate” (SS4C) movement. Presumably, he and his comrades had reasoned that their own causes would be immeasurably strengthened through this “intersectional” linking of the Treaty, Palestine and Climate Change.

In his own words:

“The primary tool used against the people is division – divide and conquer. Our response must be to unite. We cannot win with fragmented movements.”

Had the young revolutionary’s expectations been met, it would, indeed, have been a political triumph.

On Friday, March 15 2019, an estimated 170,000 New Zealand secondary school students took to the nation’s streets. RNZ still ranks that turnout as the “second largest” protest in New Zealand history. There is no precedent, however, for 170,000 demonstrators turning out on a single day. Those kids represented an astonishing 3.5 percent of the total population!

On Friday morning (5/4/24) RNZ was carrying the SS4C protest organisers’ predictions of a turnout in excess of 100,000. Protest rallies were scheduled from Whangarei to Invercargill. RNZ was also careful to share with its listeners the six demands of the protesters:

• A ban on oil and gas exploration 
• Halting the Coalition Government’s fast-track approvals bill 
• Honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi 
• “Climate education” for all 
• Lowering the voting age to 16 
• Free Palestine - Stop the Genocide

By the end of the day, however, it was clear that something very serious had gone wrong with the plan to unite the Left’s fragmented movements by, in effect, piggy-backing on the huge numbers formerly responsive to the SS4C’s summonses. Rather than a turnout in the range of 100,000: across the whole country, and by the most generous estimate, the organisers of the “Strike” turned out a derisory 5,000 people.

By any measure, the “Strike” was a disaster. Indeed, the whole event turned out to be less than the sum of its parts. That is to say, more people turned out to rallies organised in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and/or to protests against the Coalition Government’s Treaty policies, when these were staged as separate events, than turned out for SS4C’s unity demonstrations on Friday afternoon. As for New Zealand’s secondary school students, well, apart from a few hard-core “intersectionists”, they were nowhere to be seen. The largest turnout of 5 April was in Wellington, where a few hundred kids gathered in Parliament Grounds to chant “From the river, to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

What the hell happened?

To answer that question we have to go back to 2021, and the tragic demise of SS4C Auckland at the hands of the very same intersectionist forces responsible for Friday’s debacle.

The young people behind the Auckland chapter of SS4C were responsible for turning out 80,000 protesters in 2019 – beating Labour legend John A Lee’s 1938 record of 70,000. Predictably, such extraordinary support bred deep resentment and hostility among less fulsomely supported activists. Homing in on the whiteness of the SS4C organisers’ and their middle-class origins, the “decolonisers” and “indigenisers” within the Auckland chapter’s ranks “persuaded” the leadership to shut down the most successful protest organisation in the city’s political history.

In their final communique to the people of Auckland, SS4C’s local leadership stated:

“We are disbanding because, since 2019, SS4C AKL (as well as the wider national group, though we can’t speak on their behalf) has been a racist, white-dominated space. SS4C AKL has avoided, ignored, and tokenised BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Colour – C.T.] voices and demands, especially those of Pasifika and Māori individuals in the climate activism space. As well as this, the responsibility and urgent need to decolonise the organisation has been put off for far too long. SS4C also delayed paying financial reparations for the work BIPOC groups/individuals within and alongside the group have done for this organisation in the past.”

There is much, much more, all in the same vein, in this cringing example of polemical self-criticism (which would not have been out of place at a Maoist Red Guard rally circa 1967) admirably concluding with this, its guilt-tripped authors’ parting admonition:

“We fully discourage any future and current Pākehā-led groups from occupying the space we leave behind.”

Strangely enough, neither this incident, nor the subsequent collapse of the fight against global warming in Auckland’s secondary schools, is mentioned on the SS4C website promoting the 5 April “Strike”. Those intending to join the demonstrations are, however, urged to chant: “The people united – Can never be divided!”

Equally strange, but much less excusable, is the almost complete absence of mainstream media analysis of this mass-event-that-wasn’t. How could a movement that had put 3.5 percent of the country’s population on the streets, on a single day, have crumbled to virtually nothing in the space of five years? How could the organisers of Friday’s event have deluded themselves to the point of predicting a turnout of 100,000? And what do those same organisers make of New Zealanders’ apparent indifference (if not downright hostility) to the causes in support of which they had been invited to demonstrate?

These are important political questions.

Certainly, the dismal turnout must have given Green co-leader, Chloe Swarbrick, considerable pause. After all, she has staked a great deal of her political credibility on the proposition that she and her party can mobilise, electorally, the young, the alienated, and the disenfranchised. After Friday, however, transforming the 2026 general election into a people’s crusade would appear to be a much taller order.

Contrariwise, the failure of the “Strike” offers Messers Luxon, Seymour and Peters considerable cause for celebration. Their coalition is described on the SS4CNZ website as: “the most conservative government in our history” – a claim that would doubtless bring a wry smile to the lips of Bill Massey, Sid Holland, and Rob Muldoon. Still, if Friday’s flop is the best the New Zealand Left can set against the Great Strike of 1913, the 1951 Waterfront Lockout, and the 1981 Springbok Tour protests, then our Coalition Government can breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Perhaps the most important lesson of Friday is that political consciousness cannot be assembled like so many Lego blocks. The huge SS4C mobilisations of 2019 were symbolic of a confrontation as old as history. The intergenerational hostility encapsulated in the young Swedish founder of the movement, Greta Thunberg’s, choked challenge: “How dare you!” She spoke for the children and grandchildren of the men and women who run this world. “If you cannot save the planet for yourselves,” she seemed to be saying, “then, in Gaia’s name, save it for us – your own flesh and blood!”

The Future confronted the Present – and demanded action. Its partisans may not have displayed the revolutionary chic of the young man in the video with whom our story began, but they made their parents simultaneously proud and penitent. One-hundred-and-seventy-thousand strong, they convinced the system, if only for a little while, to stop, and listen.

The Christchurch Mosque Massacres, Covid-19, deep political disillusionment, and the jealous cruelty of the intersectionists: all had a part to play in causing the SS4C’s bright bubble of hope and passion to burst. But, while it floated above us, it was something that mattered.

Something important.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 8 April 2024.

Fair Enough!

Sounds About Right: It would seem that the realities of practical politics makes utilitarians of us all.

DOING THE GREATEST GOOD for the greatest number has long been the ethical rule-of-thumb for New Zealand politicians. At least, that is how they would argue if challenged to justify their own, or their government’s, actions. What’s more, if they present their crudely utilitarian arguments with sufficient force, then most New Zealander’s will nod decisively, and bestow upon them that supreme Kiwi benediction: “Fair enough!”

It was not always thus. Within the living memory of more than half the New Zealand population, the ethical quality of a political decision would have been judged according to how closely it followed the precepts of Christianity. But, are the moral calculations of “Do as you would be done by” really all that different from determining government policy on the basis of how many will benefit from its introduction?

A utilitarian calculation indicating that a policy’s benefits are likely to be received by 90 percent of the population will, in almost every case, allow it to proceed. Providing they are not too severe, the policy’s detrimental impact on the remaining 10 percent, will not be enough to stop it. It is this, the ruthlessness of utilitarian reasoning, that has contributed to the popular uneasiness that often accompanies its application.

Certainly, the utilitarian calculations that led to Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government introducing the vaccination mandates left a bitter aftertaste. Pushing vaccination rates up to 90 percent was generally accepted as being “a good thing” – even “the right thing” – to do by a clear majority of citizens. With the benefit of hindsight, however, the pain and suffering inflicted upon the 10 percent of Kiwis who refused the Covid-19 vaccine – not to mention the fury of their reaction at being made outcasts in their own land – raised considerable doubts as to its moral safety. The utilitarian arguments presented by those who believed that, for the sake of the economy, Covid-19 should be allowed to do its worst, were no more palatable, and even more unsafe from an ethical point-of-view.

Christian reasoning, however, is no less fraught. If we are bound to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, then the art of godly politics is immediately reduced to making the same political calculations as all the others.

Would a farmer welcome the construction of a hydro-dam that drowned three-quarters of his farm? No. After he had been offered generous compensation for the land lost? Probably. After he has been told how many people will benefit from the energy generated? Of course! If the farmer, no less than the hydro-electric company, is bound to do as he would be done by, then his objections will, perforce, be tempered by the Golden Rule.

It would seem that the realities of practical politics makes utilitarians of us all.

What, then, should the political philosopher make of the Coalition Government’s decision to repose with just three Cabinet Ministers – Shane Jones, Chris Bishop, Simeon Brown – the power to decide upon the utilitarian merits of nationally significant, if environmentally questionable, development projects, personally?

In many respects, the use of words like “nationally” and “significant” makes the Ministers’ jobs considerably easier. Half the utilitarian battle is won before the ministerial calculation has even begun. If what is being proposed is in the interest of the nation, and will be to the significant benefit of its people, then, for the arguments of environmentalist objectors to be upheld, they, too, will have to demonstrate that a significant national issue is at stake.

By the very nature of environmental issues, that is no easy matter. Especially since Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has already made it abundantly clear that arguments claiming a project will threaten the survival of a rare species of native frog will no longer be enough to stop it. It is the greatest good for the greatest number of human-beings that is being weighed in the ministerial balance – not the greatest number of frogs.

It is difficult to see how environmental issues – most especially those relating to Climate Change – can be judged according to anything other than anthropocentric considerations. Since concern for the environment is an entirely human phenomenon, the political response to deforestation, species extinction and global warming will be determined according to the usual utilitarian question: What is the policy response that produces the greatest good for the greatest number?

To your average Greenpeace member this question is a no-brainer. Obviously, the planet, and all the living things that depend upon it for their existence, must come first. Unfortunately, while such simple sentiments look fine on a T-Shirt, the politics of “saving the planet” are just a little more complicated.

For a start, neither the planet, nor all but one of the living things dependent upon it, get to vote. Indeed, in the more than 4 billion years of its existence, the planet has seen species come and go with monotonous regularity. What’s more, as a ball of hot rock, circling an average-sized star, in an average-sized galaxy, it really doesn’t care who, or what, is circling with it. The quality and duration of the ride on the planet’s crust is of importance only to the 8 billion murderous apes who call themselves homo-sapiens.

Tell these homo-sapiens that their lives must be made inconvenient by, for example, the banning of all fossil fuels, and see how the utilitarian calculation unfolds. If, for a very large number of the voting public, the “greatest good” is interpreted as meaning “free access to the latest, gas-guzzling SUV”, then the Greenpeace member better hope that the “greatest number” of voters, like her, defines it differently.

Tell these clever apes that, in order to save an utterly indifferent planet, the overwhelming majority of them will have to renounce all the wonders of fossil-fuel-based civilisation and make do with the subsistence existence “enjoyed” by their ancestors, and they are likely to insist that you run the utilitarian calculation again – this time remembering that it is they who constitute the greatest number. Chances are high that the resulting definition of the greatest good will have little to say about the planet.

All of which may suggest that it is better to leave the judgement of what constitutes the greatest good to those who fully appreciate what’s at stake. Problem being, that even Philosopher Kings and/or Philosopher Technocrats cannot, indefinitely, ignore the interests and preferences of the greatest number.

Which can only mean that the essence of successful politics (which is not at all the same as rational politics) lies in persuading the greatest number of voters that your party’s definition of the greatest good, while not entirely fair, is “Fair enough!”

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 1 April 2024.

The Missing Body.

“And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.” –  Matthew 27:2

“THIS COURT OF INQUIRY will come to order!”

The Presiding Officer surveyed the room. The tables arranged to form a hollow square. The soldiers in their dress uniforms. The evidence folders placed neatly before them. The mood, he noted, was unusually sombre. The death of Palestinian militants while in the custody of the Israeli Defence Force was far from uncommon. Escapes from custody, however, were rare – and always investigated.

The bare facts of the incident were relayed without embroidery by the young Major who had overseen the investigation.

“Isa Al-Salām was arrested by the Palestinian Authority Police in a private garden in East Jerusalem. There was a brief scuffle between Al-Salām’s followers and the arresting officers which the prisoner, himself, brought to an end. At PA Police HQ, Al-Salām was questioned by several high-ranking Fatah officials. His answers led these officials to send him to the Commander of the IDF in East Jerusalem.”

“Why did they do that, do you suppose?”, the Presiding Officer interjected.

“The Fatah officials believed that Al-Salām’s ideas posed a profound threat to peace and good order across the whole West Bank. Not just to their own authority, but to ours.”

“How so?”

“The Isa Movement has already attracted thousands of followers. The man prophesises that the whole Israeli State, and the Palestinian Authority along with it, will soon crumble to dust. He preaches the imminence of the Kingdom of Heaven, where, all harms being healed, love and peace shall reign, and where Jew and Arab will be reconciled. The healing of harms part he has already begun. People repeat wild tales about him curing the sick and raising the dead. His followers call him the Son of God.”

“That’s a dangerous title in these lands. How did the Commander respond?”

“He questioned the prisoner in private, Sir, and emerged from the interrogation visibly shaken. Conferring with the Fatah officials, the Commander issued orders for Al-Salām to be held incommunicado at IDF East Jerusalem HQ. He then sent for his senior intelligence officer to join him in his office. The two men conferred together for more than an hour.”

“And it was shortly after this meeting that Al-Salām was shot and killed while attempting to escape?”

“Yes, Sir. That is correct.”

“How very convenient.”

“Subsequent inquiries indicated that the representatives of the Palestinian Authority thought it best if Al-Salām be eliminated by the IDF. They were fearful that should he die at their hands then the reaction of his followers would undermine what little authority it still possesses.”

“And the Commander agreed to this?”

“In his letter of resignation he confirms that: rather than have this individual alive in a city, and a country, sacred to at least three world religions; a man of astonishing presence and charisma, who, once taken-up by the international media, was quite capable of throwing the entire planet into chaos; it would be better if he died while attempting to escape.”

“And he did die, Major. There is no doubt surrounding his physical condition?”

“None whatsoever, Sir. The Medical Officer confirmed his demise at 12:01 Hours, Friday afternoon.”

“The same time as the earthquake?”

“Why, yes, Sir. I suppose it would have been about that time.”

“And yet, Major, this dead man somehow contrived to get up and walk out, completely unseen, from the Headquarters of the IDF in East Jerusalem?”

“His body was taken to the East Jerusalem Morgue. The door to the storage room was locked and armed guards posted with strict orders to admit no one without a signed order from the Commander.”

“But …”

“But, on Sunday morning some of Al-Salām’s followers arrived to claim the body. They came with a signed order from the Commander, so the soldiers on guard unlocked the door and led them to where Al-Salām’s body had been laid.”

“And the body was gone?”

“Yes, Sir. It was gone.”

“The guards had the key. At some point between Friday and Sunday could not the soldiers on duty have admitted Al-Salām’s followers to the Morgue and let them carry off the body?”

“The obvious explanation, Sir. But the men detailed to guard the body all swore that they saw no one. What’s more, the CCTV record bears out their stories.”

“So, Major. Isa Al-Salām, and his message, lives?”

“Yes, Sir. He is risen.”

This short story was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star during Easter 2024.

National’s Governing For (Crony) Capitalists – Not Capitalism.

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme! The late Bruce Jesson used to say that while National governed for capitalists, Labour governed for Capitalism. Jesson’s suggestion: that National was so firmly locked inside the individualist logic of the private sector that it struggled to see the broader capitalist picture; was a shrewd one.

WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s policy objectives. Even their most faithful supporters in the farming community are being neglected by National’s present crop of leaders. What has happened to the National Party?

The late Bruce Jesson used to say that while National governed for capitalists, Labour governed for Capitalism. Jesson’s suggestion: that National was so firmly locked inside the individualist logic of the private sector that it struggled to see the broader capitalist picture; was a shrewd one. Certainly, no politician with even the most rudimentary grasp of the public interest would consider doing today what made National Cabinet Ministers of the past so notorious: ensuring that the gravel roads leading to their farms (so many of them in those far-off days were farmers) received a generous topping of bitumen.

But, how different, really, is seeing nothing wrong with sealing a seemingly random collection of rural roads at the public’s expense, from accepting a $1,000 per week government allowance for inhabiting a property one already owns, mortgage-free? The first example might have fallen under the heading of ministerial discretion, the second remains a perfectly legal ministerial entitlement. Real effort was – and is – required to bring these “entitled” National Party grandees to a more realistic understanding of their responsibilities.

Christopher Luxon’s problem with his Wellington accommodation allowance reflects his background as a corporate leader and property investor. Such perquisites are taken for granted at the CEO level, and very few, if any, eyebrows arch upwards when they are accepted. Luxon and his ilk float freely in the gravity-free milieu of the privileged. For these types, getting reacquainted with solid ground can be a fraught process.

At least when National was the party of the farmers its leaders’ feet remained firmly rooted in the soil. Drawing one’s wealth from lamb-sales, wool-clips, and cow’s milk is very different from watching property and share prices surge. Farmers are intimately connected to the real world. The best one can say about money is that it is a representation of the real world. Which isn’t the same thing – not at all.

So who are these capitalists on whose behalf National is governing the country? Predominantly, they are the capitalists involved in building houses, apartment buildings, and all the ancillary infrastructure that goes with property development. Not far behind them are the capitalists who use and build New Zealand’s roads – the trucking companies and the big civil-engineering firms.

What little understanding of Capitalism’s priorities National does possess is reflected in its support for the extractive industries of mining, oil and gas, forestry, and fishing. The party’s perception of these industries’ importance is sharpened by the quantum of their donations to its campaign funds.

That said, the number of these “crony” capitalists is insufficient to sustain an electoral party. National needs a Party Vote approaching 40 percent to have any hope of governing the country in coalition with the other parties of the Right. (Forty-eight percent if it seeks to govern alone.) But, to achieve these sorts of numbers, National needs to make a plausible pitch for the support of close to half the population.

To forge the necessary synergy between National’s capitalist cronies and its electoral base, its strategists have targeted those older New Zealanders in possession of their own, mortgage-free, homes – along with one or more rental properties. These voters may continue to make their homes in the leafier suburbs of New Zealand (electorally-speaking, National has long been the party of the better-off suburbs) or, they may have joined the burgeoning number of ageing Kiwis living in retirement homes and villages.

A great many of the people living in retirement communities will be cashed-up beneficiaries of the housing boom. As such, they have no interest whatsoever in Adrian Orr lowering the official cash rate. The higher the interest rates, the greater the return on their savings. They have no interest, either, in Wealth or Capital Gains taxes. When the time comes to sell the family business, they have no inclination to cut the Tax Man in on the deal. Certainly, National did not lose any votes by relieving these older landlords of Labour’s pesky tax deductions.

That these older-voters-with-money have children and grandchildren also works to National’s advantage. With more and more young people relying upon the Bank of Mum & Dad for the deposit on their first house, any measure depleting the Bank’s deposits is unlikely to be welcomed. Then there’s the touchy subject of their inheritance. Mum & Dad don’t live forever. These voters-waiting-for-a-legacy are not likely to support any party promising to impose an Inheritance Tax.

Which just leaves those Kiwis who want nothing more than to become the owners of the big mansions that feature on the front pages of the real-estate supplements. The sort of people without whom Lotto would go broke. “Aspirational Voters”, that’s what the political scientists (and the election campaign specialists) call them. The people who are never tempted to swap their avarice for a commitment to social justice – or even for a capitalist system that works! In their eyes, equality makes losers of us all. They may not be winners – yet – but by voting for National they at least get to feel like winners.

It’s just possible that National’s Simeon Brown has cottoned-on to the fact that these aspirational voters – especially the blokes – also feel like winners when they’re tearing down the highway in a gas-guzzling SUV. Nothing shouts “Freedom!” like a fast car. Not something that’s generally observed of busses and trains!

So, that’s National: the party that governs for capitalists – large, small, and aspiring. As proof of their commitment to the avaricious, they have promised, and are absolutely determined to deliver, tax-cuts. To pay for these National is perfectly willing to: defund the Police; keep the NZDF on its knees; run the risk that Foot & Mouth Disease will get past overworked border security staff; downgrade KiwiRail and the inter-island ferry service; pare-back public transport; see another generation of Māori and Pasifika children grow up poor, malnourished and angry, while they stand back and watch the public health and education services – those time-tested ladders out of poverty – fall apart.

It’s not the pathway to a thriving and profitable capitalist society. Capitalism works best when the state encourages it to lift the whole population to a level of comfort and security that makes increased productivity more than a pipedream. Historically-speaking, that’s been Labour’s goal – and achievement. More to the point, when National’s been intelligent enough to follow Labour’s lead, that’s been its achievement, too.

This essay was originally posted on The Democracy Project Substack on Monday, 25 March 2024.

Rapture and Rage.

When Push Came To Shove: If Jacinda Ardern’s government struggled to contain 3,000 angry Kiwis in 2022, how will Christopher Luxon’s cope with 300,000 in 2025?

THE OCCUPATION OF PARLIAMENT GROUNDS stands as one of the oddest moments in New Zealand political history. Not the least of its oddities was the mixture of what might best be described as rapture and rage. There were moments during the occupation when Parliament Grounds recalled the “human be-ins” of the 1960s. Others when it resembled a Mississippi lynch-mob. Day-to-day, the logistical sophistication of the protest organisers rivalled that of the NZDF – a true tour de force of Kiwi can-do. On the other hand, the apocalyptic scenes of the protest’s final day could have been directed by Francis Ford Coppola: it’s “fire and the fury” eclipsing anything seen in New Zealand for a hundred years.

Although the traumatic events of February-March 2022 are not discussed or debated with any enthusiasm in 2024, it would be most unwise for the present government to dismiss them as just another of their predecessors’ blunders. Without the political energy generated by the Occupation of Parliament Grounds, it is possible that Christopher Luxon, David Seymour, and Winston Peters (especially the latter) might have failed to amass the electoral heft needed to govern. The Occupation was the living expression of the political polarisation occasioned by the measures taken to fight the Covid-19 Pandemic. That polarisation has not ceased to exist. Indeed, it could be argued that it has gotten much worse.

The inflexible character of Christopher Luxon’s Coalition Government, his repeated assertion that its collective electoral mandate gives it the right to over-ride any and all objections to its policies, runs the risk of alienating still further an uneasy and politically volatile electorate. Understanding what led to the fire and fury of the first Occupation, may help to prevent New Zealand’s political class from igniting a second.

Perhaps the most startling effect of the original Occupation was how severely it tested the resilience and capability of the New Zealand State and its related institutions. From the moment the occupiers realised the scale of the challenge which their mere presence posed to the authorities, and the effort that would be required to reclaim Parliament Grounds, they began to develop a collective strategic confidence that left the state looking flat-footed and irresolute.

The protesters’ belief in themselves and their cause was hugely bolstered by the idiotic behaviour of Parliament’s Speaker, Trevor Mallard. Up there, on his granite balcony, looking down on the crowd, he bore a more than passing resemblance to Tolkien’s treacherous wizard, Saruman, as he surveyed the damage done to his mighty stronghold, Orthanc, by an angry army of Ents. Alas for Mallard, his spells: turning on the sprinklers; playing Barry Manilow at full volume; proved as inadequate as Saruman’s. There were plumbers and drain-layers in the crowd who made short work of the Speaker’s sprinklers, and the occupiers had a sound system of their own.

The most serious consequence of Mallard’s actions, however, was to reinforce the occupiers’ determination to go on saying “No.” Their blank refusal to be “moved-on”, placed the Police in a quandary they had not faced for years: determining the level of force required to compel the compliance of resisting protesters, without turning too much of the population against them. What is required, policing-wise, when a large number of citizens simply withdraw their cooperation from the state’s law enforcers? The answer came back forcefully when the Wellington Police Commander sent constables in their shirt-sleeves to clear the grounds: helmets, armour, shields, batons, pepper-spray, and lots more personnel!

It was only after the fires of the final day had been extinguished and the smoke had cleared, that New Zealanders discovered how terrified the Police and Parliamentary Security had been that the occupiers would attempt to storm Parliament itself. A sudden rush up the steps, the swinging of heavy battering rams, and there would have been very little to stop the crowd except the firepower of the Diplomatic Protection Squad which, if deployed, would only have made the situation worse.

But, the occupiers were not of a mind to turn their protest into a revolution. They had come to Parliament for a redress of grievances – most particularly the abandonment of their bête noir – the vaccination mandates. In spite of all the frightening rhetoric about Nuremburg Trials, and the gallows nooses carried aloft, the occupiers had come to “their house” not to hang the Government, but to make it listen to them. They had come to be heard.

That the Government and, more astonishingly, the Opposition, would not listen, or talk, to the occupiers requires careful explanation. Nothing communicated the politicians’ contempt for the people who elected them, more forcefully than Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s ban on any kind of communication with the occupiers. But, that ban, obeyed by all the members of the House, demonstrated something much more significant than contempt – it demonstrated fear.

What would have happened if the Prime Minister, flanked by her DPS bodyguards, senior ministers, and several dozen police officers, had come down the steps and invited the occupiers to parley? Would they have hurled abuse? Something more solid? Or would they have moved up to the barricades and begun to talk?

One of the reasons that never happened was because the News Media, which could have humanised the protesters and turned them into something more that scary caricatures, had, from the very beginning, declined to do so.

Partly, this was a manifestation of the media’s determination not to give an inch to those who challenged the Government’s handling of the Covid-19 Pandemic. In the eyes of many journalists (including the author of this post) those who refused the Pfizer Vaccine were – by the most generous estimation – dangerously misguided, and not to be indulged. Cast in the least favourable light, they were enemies of “The Team of Five Million”: spreaders of disinformation; weavers of absurd conspiracy theories; deserving of nothing but the unrelenting scorn of all intelligent people.

But, there’s no getting round the fact that the journalists were also petrified of the Occupiers. They were not the sort of people they were used to dealing with. Most of them came across as indefatigably ignorant and/or irrational. Undaunted, the Occupiers made no secret of the fact that they hated the journalists of the “mainstream” news media with a passion that the latter found genuinely terrifying. To make matters even worse, the Occupiers had their own media: “citizen journalists” who returned the mainstream reporters’ disdain measure-for-measure.

Christopher Luxon and his colleagues would be wise to factor into their political calculations both the electorate’s increasing polarisation, and its declining faith in the mainstream news media. If his Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, is determined to unleash the sort of austerity programme that, in the early-1990s, under Ruth Richardson, gave New Zealand MMP; and in the UK, thanks to George Osborne’s spending cuts from 2010-2015, Brexit; then she should make herself aware of just how many New Zealanders get their political information from sources quite distinct from the six o’clock news.

The occupation of Parliament Grounds happened because a significant number of New Zealanders allowed themselves to be convinced that their government was out to ruin their lives. If the Coalition Government wishes to avoid another uprising of the “deplorables”, it should consider what these folk might be prepared to attempt if their “research” confirms that their government is doing it again – except this time to a whole lot more New Zealanders.

If Jacinda Ardern’s government struggled to contain 3,000 angry Kiwis in 2022, how will Christopher Luxon’s cope with 300,000 in 2025?

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday,  25 March 2024.

Promiscuous Empathy: Chris Trotter Replies To His Critics.

Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played. 

“Somebody must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” – Franz Kafka. The Trial. 1925.

NOW, those who object to Chris Trotter comparing his troubles to those of Joseph K. undoubtedly have a point. The Police aren’t knocking on my door – not yet. Nevertheless, there is something just a little bit Kafkaesque about finding yourself being misrepresented all over the Internet by people you have never met. Especially when their misrepresentation consists of disputing the veracity of Chris Trotter’s long-standing identification as a person of the Left.

Now, there will be plenty of people who, having read that last sentence, will demand to know why being drummed-out of the ranks of the Left is being presented as a bad thing. Given the truly awful place where the Left of the 2020s has ended up, they would argue that my expulsion from its ranks could only be taken as proof that I still possess a respectable intellect and a functioning moral compass. Their advice would be: “Crack open a bottle of Champagne! Celebrate! You’ve had a lucky escape!”

But, no matter how tempting that sounds, I’m not quite ready to say “good-bye to all that”. Principally because my online critics are not only challenging my bona fides as a person of the Left, but are also insisting that I have become a person of the Right. While no longer bearing the imprimatur of the Left may not be all that grim a prospect, I’m not quite ready – not yet – to be branded a “crypto-fascist”.

My secret fascist mission, apparently, is to do all within my power to secure two objectives. First, to prevent the establishment of a bi-cultural, Tiriti-centric Aotearoa. Second, to assist the Zionist entity in its genocidal war against the Palestinians.

These charges reveal a great deal about the individuals levelling them. Clearly, their expectation is that a leftist-in-good-standing will refrain from interrogating the propositions put forward by … well, that’s one of the most serious problems with the contemporary Left, isn’t it? One is never entirely sure who is setting the Party Line.

In the case of Te Tiriti, exactly who are the leftists-in-good-standing supposed to follow? The late Moana Jackson? The very much alive Margaret Mutu? The team who drafted the He Puapua Report? Linda Tuhiwai Smith – author of Decolonising Methodologies? The Greens? Labour? Willie Jackson? All of the above?

The answer, of course, is that, as an ageing Cis Pakeha Male, it is deeply racist of me to suppose that I have any say at all in matters pertaining to Te Tiriti, or the final shape of any society which might emerge from its fulfilment. My only role is to back te iwi Māori unreservedly and without question. My personal opinions are irrelevant. So, check your privilege, Mr Trotter, and shut the fuck up.

But, what sort of leftist could possibly surrender their right to question, challenge, and join any and every attempt to revolutionise their society? The idea that some people, on account of their ancestry, age, ethnicity, gender – or any other criterion beyond their personal control – should be denied the right to participate intellectually, culturally and/or politically in their nation’s affairs owes nothing whatsoever to the traditions of the Left.

Neither does the threat to unleash violence against anyone who proposes a thorough re-examination of the principles of Te Tiriti. Not unless one’s idea of the Left is drawn from the rigid orthodoxies of the Stalinist and Maoist communist parties, and the murderous totalitarian regimes they constructed to enforce them.

But that has never been my Left. As a democratic, dammit, as a libertarian socialist, my unwavering conviction has always been that it is only when people are free to receive and communicate information; free to discuss and debate all manner of ideas and policies; free to participate; that there can be any enduring hope for the human emancipation which has always been the true leftist’s desideratum.

All very fine, Mr Trotter, but what about your support for Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza?

That’s easy – there is no such support.

This is what I wrote, just weeks after the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October 2023, about the best possible response Israel could make to the horror. This was the picture I painted:

Drones and reconnaissance aircraft would be sent aloft, circling like eagles above the jackals’ lair. But not one bullet would be fired at, and not one bomb would be dropped upon, the crowded streets of Gaza. Across that whole benighted enclave only the whoosh of Hamas’s missiles and the pop of Israel’s interceptors would break the pregnant silence […..] Only then would the Hamas commanders realise what had happened. Rather than the global media focusing upon Israel’s hideous retaliation, and nightly displaying the broken bodies of women and children. Rather than the streets of the world’s capitals being filled with pro-Palestinian demonstrators calling for the death of the Jews. Rather than remaining safely hidden behind a curtain of civilian blood, Hamas would realise, with a deathly chill, that the whole world was staring in horror and disgust, not at Israel – but at them.

My curse as a political writer – if curse it be – is an ability to view the constantly unfolding human drama from multiple perspectives; to be able to stand, as it were, on both sides of the wire. Where did it come from, this dangerous faculty for promiscuous empathy? I’ve thought long and hard about this and decided, predictably, that it came from a book.

No, not the Bible, but from a book of extraordinary photographs and wonderful quotations from writers and peoples from all over the world. Published by the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, The Family of Man made me a leftist. Not by persuading me of the correctness of an ideology or religion, but by revealing to me the sad and beautiful continuities of the human species – the human family. The book also made me the enemy of all those who would smash those continuities by setting one part of the human family against another. An addiction to which the extreme Left has fallen prey with a fervour more than equal to that of the extreme Right. Indeed, political extremism, like the mythical serpent, Ouroboros, seems driven, ineluctably, to devour itself.

The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.

And that’s it. The best I can offer to those who have been telling lies about Christopher T.

I very much doubt that it will be sufficient to get the people’s commissars off my case.

If it is a crime to want to build the nation of Aotearoa-New Zealand out of the dreams of all its people, then I must plead guilty. Likewise, if it was wrong to recoil from the horrors of 7 October as forcefully as we daily recoil from the crucifixion of Gaza, then I was wrong. If it is a crime to understand the Jews’ need to build a home of their own since, as History has amply demonstrated, they are not safe in anybody else’s, then convict me. Convict me, too, if it is “antisemitic” to understand the longing of the Palestinian to, at last, insert the key in the lock of his family’s bullet-scarred front door, and return home.

To my faceless, Kafkaesque judges, I offer these words. They were written by the English jurist, writer, and radical politician, Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, and are to be found among the many other wise words included in The Family of Man:

Fill the seats of justice

With good men, not so absolute in goodness

As to forget what human frailty is.

This essay is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blog.

Misremembering Justinian’s Taxes.

Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I - Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.

WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity with the past – especially the distant past. To hear Labour’s shadow Minister of Finance offer the career of the Emperor Justinian as a cautionary tale about the dangers of excessive taxation was refreshing – and profoundly disappointing.

Rounding off his interview with Edmonds on the current affairs programme Q+A, Jack Tame asked: “What does tax policy have to do with the fall of the Roman Empire?” Edmonds responded:

When I was going through Law School, I was also doing some ancient history papers. And, basically, Emperor Justinian. It was the fall of the Roman Empire because, basically, they had to over-tax people to pay for the war and for the [indistinct]. So, the lesson I learned from that was that if you over-tax people, well, in Justinian’s case, it broke down an empire.

Sadly, none of this is true.

The Emperor Justinian ruled over the Eastern Roman Empire – better known to history as the Byzantine Empire – from 527-565 AD. Far from presiding over the fall of the Roman Empire, Justinian and his generals recovered many of the Western Empire’s lost provinces – an achievement which dramatically boosted Byzantine tax revenues. Justinian used this surplus income to construct the extraordinary Christian basilica of Hagia Sophia. This, the Emperor’s most tangible legacy, still stands in the heart of Istanbul (converted, now, to a mosque). Justinian’s other great legacy, known as the Justinian Code, still serves as the foundation of Europe’s legal system. The Byzantine Empire did fall – but not for almost another thousand years. Its mighty walled capital, Constantinople, was besieged and conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

No one academically equipped to lecture students in ancient history – especially classical history – could possibly have got the story of the Emperor Justinian so wrong. Clearly, Edmonds has misremembered the content of her ancient history course.

“Hardly a hanging offence!”, the ordinary voter would doubtless respond. “Most people don’t know anything about Justinian, or his empire, and care even less!” True enough, but they do care about being over-taxed. So, if Labour’s finance spokesperson cites the deeds of some long-dead dude as a warning from the past against taxing citizens too hard, then that same ordinary voter is likely to store her (mis)information in the back of their mind. A handy counter-argument to throw back at all those tax-and-spend radicals.

And, the political impact of Edmonds’ misremembered history doesn’t stop there. In the course of the next few months, New Zealanders will hear a great deal about being “over-taxed”. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will argue passionately that the Labour Government’s decision to allow inflation-generated “fiscal drag” to pour unwarranted billions into the state’s coffers stands as a text-book example of over-taxing wage and salary earners. To describe National’s policy of returning the state’s ill-gotten fiscal gains to the ordinary Kiwis from whom they extracted as a policy of “tax cuts”, Willis will insist, is most unfair.

Now, imagine that Edmonds’ caucus colleagues are as clueless about the history of Ancient Rome as the ordinary voter. (It doesn’t require all that much imagination!) In their minds, too, a little voice may commence insisting that what Labour did was wrong.

Grant Robertson, acting with the best of intentions, had connived in their working- and middle-class supporters being over-taxed year after year after year, the little voice will say. So, just as the Emperor Justinian’s over-taxation of Rome’s citizens caused the Empire to crumble, Labour’s reliance on the unfair extractions of “fiscal drag” contributed to the fall of its own electoral regime. If Edmonds’ misremembered history was to take hold of her colleagues’ imaginations in this way, then the Labour Opposition’s whole campaign against National’s tax-cuts could be seriously undercut.

False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential. Perhaps the most pernicious example of historical disinformation is the Dolchstoßlegende – the entirely false accusation, spread by the reactionary Right, that Germany’s World War I soldiers, far from being defeated by the Allied Powers on the field of battle, were actually “stabbed in the back” by Socialists, Bolsheviks and Jews agitating on the Home Front. This “Big Lie” contributed hugely to the undermining of the Weimar Republic.

If people can be so dangerously misled about the cause of events that happened only a few months earlier; then misleading them about events that happened 1,500 years ago ought to be a doddle!

Then there’s the question of why Edmonds misremembered her ancient history so comprehensively. Could it be that she wants the historical record to show that excessive taxation is politically unsustainable? Is that because she is personally and professionally convinced (as a tax lawyer) that promising to raise taxes is politically unsustainable? Were that the case, then her appointment as Finance Spokesperson, ahead of the considerably more experienced – and fiscally radical – David Parker, could easily be interpreted as a decisive power-play against the Wealth Tax Faction of the Labour Party by Opposition Leader, Chris Hipkins.

To head-off such dangerous speculation, Edmonds should ‘fess-up to her historical mistakes and treat her colleagues to a short corrective lecture on the actual achievements of the Emperor Justinian. She could tell them about his comprehensive reform of the Byzantine tax system. How he both simplified tax collection, and made it vastly more efficient – thereby increasing the flow of gold and silver to Constantinople.

She could point out, also, the parallels between Justinian’s experience and Labour’s. How the so-called “Justinian Plague”, by decimating the Byzantine Empire’s population, played havoc with its finances – just as the Global Covid-19 Pandemic deranged New Zealand’s economy. Or, how the “Blues” and the “Greens”, rival chariot-racing factions in Constantinople’s hippodrome, joined forces in the “Nika Riots” of 532 AD – very nearly costing Justinian his throne.

There was a time when politicians’ self-immersion in History was one of the profession’s most striking characteristics. Hardly surprising, given the enormous advantage a solid working knowledge of history confers upon those with a hankering to make it themselves. Human nature changes much more slowly than human technology. There are very few, if any, political scenarios that are entirely new. As Mark Twain is said to have quipped: “History may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

The trick, Ms Edmonds, is to remember the words correctly.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 18 March 2024.

Expert Opinion: Ageing Boomers, Laurie & Les, Talk Politics.

“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”

THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. Laurie watched as Les, taking exaggerated care not to spill a drop from the tall glasses of pale ale he was carrying, steadily closed the distance between the bar and their corner-table by the window.

“That’s welcome rain”, observed Laurie, nodding in the direction of the passing squall.

“Yep,” confirmed Les, glancing out the window, “I was beginning to think we were in for a drought. Perhaps its Nature’s way of celebrating the end of the Government’s first 100 days in office. Blue skies and sunshine just don’t seem appropriate. Or, are you still happy with their work?”

“I am, as a matter of fact. It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”

Les winced in recognition of his friend’s point. “You got me there, mate.”

“I reckon I have at that. It’s been so long since any incoming government put on such a show of political fidelity. That’s why so many of these young journalists have been so shocked by the roll-back – they’ve never seen one before. Well, not on this scale, at any rate.”

“You’re right. I was trying to think of the last time that an incoming government made such a fetish of dismantling practically every major reform its predecessors had put in place. When would you say it was?”

“That’s easy. You and I are about the same age, so we share quite a few of the same memories. It was Muldoon’s National Government of 1975. Unsurprisingly, he was even more hard-core than Luxon.”

“More hard core than Seymour! Do you remember how he just told employers to stop deducting workers’ contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation scheme? The law was still in place, Muldoon hadn’t had time to repeal it, but he just told them to stop – and they did.”

“Didn’t someone take him to court? Some civil servant, citing the Bill of Rights of 1688?”

“Nothing wrong with your memory, Laurie! That’s exactly what happened. And, if I remember rightly, his name was Fitzgerald, and he won his case. The Supreme Court ruled that Muldoon couldn’t simply cancel the laws of the land – even if he was the Prime Minister. Only Parliament can do that.”

“Something of an own goal, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, all these twerps complaining about this government forcing things through the House under urgency. If that’s the way the Bill of Rights of 1688 says it has to be done, and you’ve promised New Zealanders you’re going to make all these changes in your first 100 days, then of course your going to legislate in haste. After all, the people doing the complaining would be making an even bigger fuss if the Coalition had failed to achieve what it promised to achieve in its first three months.”

“Fair enough, Laurie. But, even so, you can’t be in favour of their decision to repeal the smoking legislation. I mean that went against all the best advice from all the experts in the field. Big Tobacco’s laughing all the way to the cancer clinic!”

“Speaking personally, Les, you’re right – I wouldn’t have repealed the Act. That said, I’m getting heartily sick of hearing people objecting to government policy on the grounds that it goes against expert advice. Who the hell governs this country, eh? Experts? Or the people who elect representatives to govern on their behalf?”

“But …”

“No! Don’t you tell me that the people are too thick to make those sort of decisions. Because, if you believe that, then why bother to have a Parliament at all? Why not just hand over the responsibility for governing us ‘deplorables’ to the experts? You know, all those over-educated idiots in the universities and the public service who can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman, and want to teach our grandkids that Mātaurānga Māori is the equal of Western Science. Jeez, Les, that’s the whole reason the Labour Party was thrown out on its ear – because it no longer trusts ordinary people.”

Les stared mutely into his ale. The thunder sounded a lot closer now.

This short story was published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 March 2024.