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.