tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37534865180850913992024-03-30T00:03:19.503+13:00Bowalley RoadRuminations of an Old New ZealanderChris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comBlogger2679125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-63277161520420674252024-03-19T16:07:00.008+13:002024-03-19T16:15:36.127+13:00Promiscuous Empathy: Chris Trotter Replies To His Critics.<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaavjE06gGWPp6aQoC6A5svxXp57GcS0bts1ypyfgw1Uc7ZfEfde0tjn8QZLjDEnLDdMsLmPrLVtroNea4AjWL9CF0oEYyUSryFTk9zF8HAttBHen2rjKnHvPgYzC_UTC3Usi7fIRflKVdiVOgbbByPIZrLhyY0pAyfVtzhcK90YM8JjWUP-cGifVkgrY/s894/The%20Family%20of%20Man.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="894" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaavjE06gGWPp6aQoC6A5svxXp57GcS0bts1ypyfgw1Uc7ZfEfde0tjn8QZLjDEnLDdMsLmPrLVtroNea4AjWL9CF0oEYyUSryFTk9zF8HAttBHen2rjKnHvPgYzC_UTC3Usi7fIRflKVdiVOgbbByPIZrLhyY0pAyfVtzhcK90YM8JjWUP-cGifVkgrY/w400-h211/The%20Family%20of%20Man.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Inspirational: </b></i><span style="text-align: left;">The Family of Man</span><span style="text-align: left;"><i> 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.</i> </span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><p></p><span style="font-size: x-small;">“Somebody must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.”<b> – Franz Kafka. The Trial. 1925. </b></span><br /><br /><b>NOW</b>, 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.<div><br /></div><div>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!”<br /><br />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”.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <i>He Puapua Report</i>? Linda Tuhiwai Smith – author of <i>Decolonising Methodologies</i>? The Greens? Labour? Willie Jackson? All of the above?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />But, what sort of leftist could possibly surrender their right to question, challenge, and <i>join </i>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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />But that has never been my Left. As a democratic, dammit, as a <i>libertarian </i>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.<br /><br />All very fine, Mr Trotter, but what about your support for Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza?<br /><br />That’s easy – there is no such support.<br /><br />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. <a href="https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/opinion/chris-trotter/chris-trotter-winning-strategies/">This was the picture I painted</a>:<br /><br /><i>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.</i><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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, <i>The Family of Man </i>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.<br /><br /><i>The Family of Man</i> 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.<br /><br />And that’s it. The best I can offer to those who have been telling lies about Christopher T.<br /><br />I very much doubt that it will be sufficient to get the people’s commissars off my case.<br /><br />If it is a crime to want to build the nation of Aotearoa-New Zealand out of the dreams of <i>all </i>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.<br /><br />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 <i>The Family of Man</i>:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Fill the seats of justice</i></div><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i>With good men, not so absolute in goodness</i></div><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i>As to forget what human frailty is.</i></div><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay is exclusive to the </i>Bowalley Road<i> blog.</i></span></b></div></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com60tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-84989517339897754312024-03-19T15:23:00.002+13:002024-03-19T15:59:32.450+13:00Misremembering Justinian’s Taxes.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3IjL6iEPEmqPTLqggc7R-bTrGBZzR5DJMGwjMK4CF-SC38b6mPKHzOwhl7EQ2jCnGuPx9H6S3wzESe6GG4ZtscYUpxDziccheReZyqhXJTihjLOS9ibyUnJEDZ5VLi5Zu9Z8eJR_jj9dpaHrP5XhDqkx577OOBYmPQLOEMPsZ3s0ffQL-A9O0iCkreKE/s712/Barbara%20Edmonds%20and%20Justinian.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="712" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3IjL6iEPEmqPTLqggc7R-bTrGBZzR5DJMGwjMK4CF-SC38b6mPKHzOwhl7EQ2jCnGuPx9H6S3wzESe6GG4ZtscYUpxDziccheReZyqhXJTihjLOS9ibyUnJEDZ5VLi5Zu9Z8eJR_jj9dpaHrP5XhDqkx577OOBYmPQLOEMPsZ3s0ffQL-A9O0iCkreKE/w400-h268/Barbara%20Edmonds%20and%20Justinian.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds </i>vs<i> Emperor Justinian I</i></b><i> <b>- </b></i><b>Nolo Contendere</b><i><b>:</b> False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS</b> 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.</div><br />Rounding off his interview with Edmonds on the current affairs programme <i>Q+A</i>, Jack Tame asked: “What does tax policy have to do with the fall of the Roman Empire?” Edmonds responded:<br /><br /><i>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 </i>[indistinct]<i>. So, the lesson I learned from that was that if you over-tax people, well, in Justinian’s case, it broke down an empire.</i><br /><br />Sadly, none of this is true.<br /><br />The Emperor Justinian ruled over the Eastern Roman Empire – better known to history as the Byzantine Empire – from 527-565 <span style="font-size: x-small;">AD</span>. 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />“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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential. Perhaps the most pernicious example of historical disinformation is the <i>Dolchstoßlegende</i> – 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.<br /><br />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!<br /><br />Then there’s the question of why Edmonds misremembered her ancient history so comprehensively. Could it be that she <i>wants </i>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 <i>is </i>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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <span style="font-size: x-small;">AD</span> – very nearly costing Justinian his throne.<br /><br />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.”<div><br /></div><div>The trick, Ms Edmonds, is to remember the words correctly.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> website on Monday, 18 March 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-6160988156332578752024-03-16T16:48:00.002+13:002024-03-17T20:09:37.147+13:00Expert Opinion: Ageing Boomers, Laurie & Les, Talk Politics.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpa67k0jVu_V-SaXvN4A7d_FwFfAbXWOyPyIlJYtuyFKHiMgfzOTLtHwOAazgkdS1FzDRG9rS940DsjCV-gacn4o06LSQnJmJ9AYaTk0Wi_dnw6Ibf2yJRYBSkl6nWVTwEQuodHV_y4Qc7yewqCViMs7DzihGRHsLpylQ_cY5KRt9BdQfbNIXzgCtCTAI/s635/Laurie%20and%20Les.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="353" data-original-width="635" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpa67k0jVu_V-SaXvN4A7d_FwFfAbXWOyPyIlJYtuyFKHiMgfzOTLtHwOAazgkdS1FzDRG9rS940DsjCV-gacn4o06LSQnJmJ9AYaTk0Wi_dnw6Ibf2yJRYBSkl6nWVTwEQuodHV_y4Qc7yewqCViMs7DzihGRHsLpylQ_cY5KRt9BdQfbNIXzgCtCTAI/w400-h223/Laurie%20and%20Les.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>“<span style="text-align: start;">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.”</span></i><br style="text-align: start;" /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG</b> 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.</div><br />“That’s welcome rain”, observed Laurie, nodding in the direction of the passing squall. <br /><br />“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?” <br /><br />“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.” <br /><br />Les winced in recognition of his friend’s point. “You got me there, mate.” <br /><br />“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.” <br /><br />“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?” <br /><br />“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.” <br /><br />“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.” <br /><br />“Didn’t someone take him to court? Some civil servant, citing the Bill of Rights of 1688?” <br /><br />“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.” <br /><br />“Something of an own goal, though.” <br /><br />“What do you mean?” <br /><br />“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.” <br /><br />“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!” <br /><br />“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?” <br /><br />“But …” <br /><br />“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.” <br /><br />Les stared mutely into his ale. The thunder sounded a lot closer now. <div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This short story was published in </i>The Otago Daily Times<i> and </i>The Greymouth Star<i> of Friday, 15 March 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-66506787558021060702024-03-16T16:34:00.000+13:002024-03-16T16:34:24.284+13:00Manufacturing The Truth.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc-dVLMuZCg08YZMcpiczzy9CGBdFwAjM08yrprDAZAbMz2CAC5ge66hii8jt8WBi8ON26sS6qVk8tI51fPElBwBCMSR-3ogbLyGvXPyp9wEuBU8_WOlkiDeYsZYyC-ym4_mvavf4dxBkXgUJa7oP7UMr5wjXF0iJHBkqu2BG1QNJrxcB2iP0EO17ST6M/s756/Printing%20Press%20and%20Internet%20Server.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="756" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc-dVLMuZCg08YZMcpiczzy9CGBdFwAjM08yrprDAZAbMz2CAC5ge66hii8jt8WBi8ON26sS6qVk8tI51fPElBwBCMSR-3ogbLyGvXPyp9wEuBU8_WOlkiDeYsZYyC-ym4_mvavf4dxBkXgUJa7oP7UMr5wjXF0iJHBkqu2BG1QNJrxcB2iP0EO17ST6M/w400-h201/Printing%20Press%20and%20Internet%20Server.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: </b>Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology</i> – <i>the Internet</i> – <i> is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will not tolerate competition.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>HISTORICAL PARALLELS</b> between the impact of the printing press and the impact of the Internet are not new. Both inventions almost immediately began to undermine the command and control hierarchies of their respective societies. In the case of the printing-press, the reimposition of elite control became the work of centuries. And, even then, the technology was constantly falling into the hands of rebels and revolutionaries. Judging by the amount of noise they are making, the elites of the twenty-first century are terrified that the social and cultural upheavals produced by the printing-press are about to be replicated by the subversive communications made possible by the Internet.</div><br />Most of the noise is being made by those who claim that the Internet – social media in particular – is unleashing a veritable <i>tsunami </i>of what they call misinformation, disinformation and malinformation against societies ill-equipped to defend themselves against its pernicious influence. To amplify the elites’ unease, unholy alliances have been forged, right across the Western democracies, linking state agencies (often including the organs of national security) with the mainstream news media, in a crusade against the misinformers.<br /><br />New Zealand’s own “Disinformation Project” is matched by similar joint ventures in information control in the United States, Canada, the UK and the European Union. While it is not at all difficult to understand why the state and its agencies might have cause to fear the spread of information inimical to its ability to control the population’s general understanding of reality, the participation of the news media – working journalists in particular – in what amounts to a grand censorship project requires further explanation.<br /><br />After all, the reaction of editors and journalists to even the suggestion of state censorship should be visceral. No less vociferous should be their reaction to the idea that everyone and everything – apart from the state – is capable of spreading serious misrepresentations of reality. Those journalists working in close proximity to the political and bureaucratic branches of the state cannot be ignorant of the lengths to which their servants will go to shape and control public perceptions. Attempts by these agents to set themselves up as dispassionate adjudicators of truth and falsehood ought to be laughed out of the room by any journalist worthy of the name.<br /><br />So, why isn’t this happening? Why are editors and journalists closing ranks with political and bureaucratic institutions determined to bring the flow of information back under their control. Much of the explanation is to be found in the ideological shift, from right to left, that has accompanied the generational shift from the economically radical, but socially conservative, pre-war generations, to the economically “dry”, but socially radical, post-war generations.<br /><br />From the late-1940s until the 1980s, the overwhelming majority of editors and journalists were eager supporters of, and participants in, the Cold War consensus that declared anything more challenging than mild social-democracy to be subversive of the democratic order. Equally difficult to accommodate were those who challenged the equally conservative social consensus of the period. Patriarchal, heterosexual, racially-stratified: little, if any, space was afforded to those who rejected its monolithic institutions – and assumptions.<br /><br />How things have changed. Fifty years after the West’s very own “cultural revolution” succeeded in, if not demolishing, then seriously damaging the rigid post-war social edifice, the overwhelming majority of editors and journalists have become eager participants in the suppression of whatever remains of the conservative social and political order.<br /><br />Any intellectual branded as a “communist” in the 1950s and 60s would struggle to find a mainstream newspaper, or broadcaster, willing to publish their material, or allow their views on the air. To be branded a TERF in the 2020s immediately precipitates a similar struggle to make one’s views known. A regime of censorship every bit as ruthless as that which characterised the “Red Scare” of the 1950s has been erected to defend the cultural and political verities of the twenty-first century. Today’s editors and journalist have become the new McCarthyites.<br /><br />Except that the seepage of forbidden ideologies into the public mind is far greater in the 2020s than was the case in the 1950s. We all know the reason why. In the 1960s, the Communist Party might set up its own, very small, printing press in a comrade’s garage, running-off maybe a thousand copies of “The People’s Voice” – of which only a few hundred might be sold. In 2024, a gender-critical blog, costing its contributors precisely zero dollars, can spread its views to millions, worldwide, at the stroke of a key.<br /><br />And not just their “views”. Blogs and websites are perfectly capable of turning out journalism as well as commentary. Exposés of mainstream media perfidy are contributing to the fast-growing mistrust of mainstream news media institutions. Fewer subscribers to newspapers, shrinking television audiences: all manifestations of reader and viewer migration to content providers outside the mainstream; are rightly construed by the former masters of information as a direct assault upon their power. It is steadily transforming what were once idealistic and free-thinking journalists into brutal and unforgiving political commissars.<br /><br />The situation is not helped when editors reveal themselves to be openly contemplating imposing a collective ban on reporting the Deputy Prime Minister’s criticisms of – you guessed it – the behaviour of the mainstream news media!<br /><br />In the howling moral vacuum that opened up in the years immediately following the calamitous First World War – a period that coincided with the beginnings of the technologically-driven mass societies we still live in today – there were profound misgivings among the elites and their ideological enablers about how the masses would respond to what was emerging from the collision of capitalism and democracy.<br /><br />The solution they hit upon came in two parts. Firstly, it would be necessary for the emerging mass media to devote itself to “manufacturing” the consent of the governed. Secondly, the new science of public relations was charged with redirecting the desires of the masses away from dangerous participation, and towards harmless consumption.<br /><br />These are still the prime objectives of elite socio-political policy. Achieving those objectives, however, has been made increasingly problematic by the manner in which the Internet has developed. Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will not tolerate competition. The elites and their defenders in the mainstream media talk nobly of defending the truth, but what they really mean to re-establish are the key, system-protecting lies which ordinary people must then be denied the information to challenge.<br /><br />Precisely what the printing-press gave, and now the Internet gives, to the people. The power to manufacture the truth.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on </i>The Democracy Project <i>website on Tuesday, 12 March 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-82896546020676237042024-03-16T16:05:00.000+13:002024-03-16T16:05:08.639+13:00A Powerful Sensation of Déjà Vu.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW-9XZuHs5qHmawCzyAMVK2B8tuljx8PSj74Y_wjPajTfMOYV1uD_DZBGUdVT2CHIgGfaZeuFk-an39BrVH5xQR-ZUGezqXgzZ0z2zJCwGcMckVZOy40TuIgHjMuxb9anLr7KHrpcSq3Xv2bq3U-TUxzgC6gSci_R44AGPPmfSSdjFjS5gqugdFagJGLk/s656/Muldoon%20and%20Luxon%20Side-by-Side.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="443" data-original-width="656" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW-9XZuHs5qHmawCzyAMVK2B8tuljx8PSj74Y_wjPajTfMOYV1uD_DZBGUdVT2CHIgGfaZeuFk-an39BrVH5xQR-ZUGezqXgzZ0z2zJCwGcMckVZOy40TuIgHjMuxb9anLr7KHrpcSq3Xv2bq3U-TUxzgC6gSci_R44AGPPmfSSdjFjS5gqugdFagJGLk/w400-h270/Muldoon%20and%20Luxon%20Side-by-Side.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Been Here Before:</b> To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>THE COALITION GOVERNMENT</b> has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It is angry with the poor. It is angry with the regulatory environment. It is angry with those who resist its policies. Some would say it is angry with the last 50 years of New Zealand history, and with the political forces that have driven it. Inevitably, anger breeds nostalgia. The explanation, presumably, for the powerful sensation of <i>déjà vu</i> in which this government is now wreathed.</div><br />The Coalition’s anger at the poor is manifested in many ways. It began with the restoration of the sanctions which Labour had removed from the MSD’s repertoire of responses to what it regarded as the delinquent behaviour of beneficiaries. As the first 100 days drew to a close, the Housing Minister, Chris Bishop, reinforced this trend by announcing the phasing-out of emergency motel accommodation for the homeless who have run out of options.<br /><br />On the face of it, putting an end to accommodating homeless people and their families in motels sounds like a positive and compassionate policy. What began under Bill English’s government as a genuinely ad-hoc and temporary response to the burgeoning housing crisis, morphed under Labour into a seemingly permanent answer to the growing discrepancy between need and supply. Entirely predictably, this concentration of the most vulnerable into the “motel rows” of New Zealand’s cities and tourist towns attracted all manner of dangerous predators. What had started out as a short-term fix, turned into a long-term nightmare.<br /><br />And an expensive one. By the time the government changed, the state was pouring in excess of a million dollars a day into the pockets of New Zealand’s motel owners. Just as well, given that it had not taken New Zealanders and travel organisers very long to twig that motel accommodation was not an option to be considered seriously unless one actually enjoyed the soundtrack of immiseration. Loud music played at all hours, accompanied by frighteningly imaginative offensive language and behaviour, frequently spilling-out into the motel car-park, where a situation could deteriorate from the merely disruptive to the outright criminal in the flash of an illegal blade.<br /><br />Stories multiplied of kids roaming unsupervised under the predatory gaze of gang members; of drunkenness and drug-use, and of the MSD’s wards “trashing” motel units. The effective nationalisation of the nation’s motel accommodation, far from mending homelessness, had created crime-ridden no-go zones, where defenceless victims were thoughtfully gathered for the convenience of their victimisers. Included among whom, as the years passed, turned out to be the very same state that had set the whole sorry mess in motion.<br /><br />It was enough to make anybody mad. But, what turned out to be much harder for the Coalition’s ministers was getting mad at the right people. Rather than ask themselves whether the clamour from moteliers and developers to kick out the homeless beneficiaries might have been prompted by the end of the Covid emergency and the steady recovery of the tourism industry, the ministers called for ever more aggressive invigilation of the homeless.<br /><br />MSD was instructed to make even tougher checks of their wards’ eligibility. Were they guilty of biting the hands that fed them? Did they have a history of trashing their rooms? Was there really no one who could take them in? Never mind that in the absence of such MSD scrutiny the homeless would never have been provided with a motel room. Scrutinize them harder!<br /><br />Such intensification of what is already a profoundly stressful environment only makes sense if those responsible believe poverty to be the fault of its victims. It’s what happens when it is both ideologically and politically impossible to address fundamental causes.<br /><br />A society which, forty years ago, gave up on the idea that it is the state’s duty to ensure that all its citizens are adequately housed, is left with no option but to look to the market for solutions. These will not be forthcoming, for the very simple reason that there is nowhere near enough profit in poverty. (Unless, of course, the state is willing to provide that profit by paying exorbitant prices for the motel rooms in which the market economy’s victims are warehoused.)<br /><br />And then there’s the state’s ever-increasing collection of rules and regulations – society’s legal acknowledgement that an unregulated marketplace is a dangerous marketplace. How can society be so sure? Because, 150 years ago, society witnessed with its own eyes the consequences of allowing public health and safety to be ignored. It was around the same time that people began to become alarmed at how rapidly their country’s natural environment was falling foul of Capitalism’s costless externalisation of its waste. The response of the politicians was to create reserves and national parks.<br /><br />It wasn’t enough. Post-war New Zealand was hungry for energy, and its electrical engineers, working alongside the Ministry of Works, gave it to them. It wasn’t until the early-1970s that the costs of such breakneck development became insupportable. The campaign to “save” Lake Manapouri grew into New Zealand’s first mass environmental movement. The “Baby Boom” generation, now old enough to vote, made sure it would not be the last.<br /><br />The electoral heft of that generation was sufficient to limit the plans of those who had been encouraged to “rip-in, rip-out and rip-off” in the name of national development. It presented the Right with a problem: how to keep National’s long-term love-affair with mining companies, forestry interests, roading contractors, and urban developers hot and steamy. The strength of the environmental movement, and the rise of “green” politics, enforced a frustrating measure of discretion – and it rankled.<br /><br />But in 2024, with the political phenomenon of “wokeness” having driven strategically devastating wedges into the Left’s electoral coalition, the numbers are finally with the Parliamentary Right. All that pent-up fury with the constraints imposed upon those willing to dream and think “big” is now being released. For the first time since the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and 90s, New Zealand has a government that understands the state’s key role in fostering and protecting national development. That, without the state riding shotgun, the market – especially in a country the size of New Zealand – is too weak to play the role of nation-builder.<br /><br />The truth of this proposition has been clear since the 1870s, when Sir Julius Vogel launched New Zealand’s first “national development” plan. It was equally clear to Bill Sutch in the 1950s. And even clearer to Rob Muldoon when he launched his own “Think Big” push for economic growth in the late1970s and early-1980s.<br /><br />To make it work, however, the House of Representatives will have to reassert its supremacy over all the other players in the New Zealand polity: the judiciary, the public service, te iwi Māori, the trade unions, the universities, and the mainstream news-media. All the elements, in short, whose resistance to the Coalition Government’s plans, be it actual or merely potential, is fuelling the Coalition’s leaders’ resentment and anger.<br /><br />That the Coalition’s political conduct harks back to the days of Rob Muldoon is no accident. To find the precedents for what this government is proposing; and for its willingness to engage in the most ruthless kind of majoritarian politics to make it happen, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.<br /><br />No wonder so many New Zealanders are gripped by the feeling that they have been here before.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> website on Monday, 11 March 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-67544600590972391582024-03-07T15:26:00.000+13:002024-03-07T15:26:40.248+13:00For the Self-Loathing Left, Charity Definitely Does NOT Begin At Home.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPkjd2w5nHaM03a2cGlktzSn9WXB3E5_9gca_buGx3RNSEuR0CuJJx9L8XJ6aMGtv5Pq6qTKlyRWiBfTkWBLDIEIXzjW1DhWroOk3Uya0Eu1jBv66hbAFPkCY1EnOTM85e8rOVYulfFHyl1Z_QyPgF7G1vn26BXlBTjGvHBBqzEvzEvF799L-ITnO58ss/s958/George%20Galloway.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="958" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPkjd2w5nHaM03a2cGlktzSn9WXB3E5_9gca_buGx3RNSEuR0CuJJx9L8XJ6aMGtv5Pq6qTKlyRWiBfTkWBLDIEIXzjW1DhWroOk3Uya0Eu1jBv66hbAFPkCY1EnOTM85e8rOVYulfFHyl1Z_QyPgF7G1vn26BXlBTjGvHBBqzEvzEvF799L-ITnO58ss/w400-h199/George%20Galloway.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>The Ill Wind’s Beneficiary:</b> George Galloway’s Rochdale by-election victory will make not one whit of difference to the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza. He will be despised by virtually the whole of the British Establishment, including the overwhelming majority of his parliamentary colleagues. Aside from making speeches in front of evermore bloodthirsty assemblies of Israel’s enemies, Galloway will have little to offer the people of his constituency, or the broader labour movement.</i> </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b>GEORGE GALLOWAY’S STUNNING VICTORY</b> in Rochdale has provoked a sharp response from leftists whose primary analytical focus remains socio-economic. Galloway turned the by-election into a referendum on the two main British political parties’ stance on the war in Gaza. Successfully exploiting the fact that 30 percent of the Rochdale electorate (located on the periphery of Greater Manchester) is Muslim, Galloway secured 40 percent of the votes cast. <br /><br />A minority of leftist commentators lamented the fact that the immediate needs of the working-class people of Rochdale had been superseded by the needs of the Palestinians. Galloway’s win has, however, been hailed as a triumph by the sort of leftist who no longer sees white workers as a progressive force. For those who do, Rochdale isn’t worth the fuss all these “progressives” are making of it.<br /><br />Too harsh? Not at all. Galloway’s victory will make not one whit of difference to the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza. He will be despised by virtually the whole of the British Establishment, including the overwhelming majority of his parliamentary colleagues. Aside from making speeches in front of evermore bloodthirsty assemblies of Israel’s enemies, Galloway will have little to offer the people of his constituency, or the broader labour movement. There are precious few red flags to be found amongst the thousands of Palestinian flags being brandished by anti-Israel demonstrators. And those that do appear are not announcing an English revolution. <br /><br />Not that New Zealand has any need of a George Galloway to defend the Palestinian cause in its Parliament – not with the Green Party of Aotearoa so willing to do the job. New Zealand’s Labour Party, in sharp contrast to its British counterpart, is only marginally less supportive of Palestine than the Greens. Meanwhile, Te Pāti Māori has been quick to link the Palestinians’ fight against “racism” and “colonialism” with their own. <br /><br />That a majority of New Zealanders stand with Israel in its war against Hamas, daunts not one of this country’s “left-wing” parties. On this issue, as on so many others dear to the hearts of “progressive” Kiwis, there is no room for dissidence; no possibility of debate. <br /><br />How did the New Zealand Left come to abandon the politics of class, in favour of expressing unquestioning solidarity with emphatically non-progressive religious/political movements in far-off lands – and why? The following comparison may help to clarify at least some of the issues in play. <br /><br />The Destiny Church is a fundamentalist Christian organisation pursuing a radical right-wing political agenda. It recruits most of its followers from the indigenous poor, to whom it offers practical, as well as spiritual, assistance. Its religious doctrine is theologically conservative, militantly patriarchal and virulently homophobic. Brian Tamaki, the Destiny Church’s charismatic leader, is constantly striving to win political power. His objective is to acquire the means to enforce what he believes to be the will of God upon a nation of unrepentant atheists, apostates and sinners. <br /><br />Destiny’s pursuit of political power has been singularly unsuccessful. His parties’ share of the Party Vote in successive elections has hovered around 1 percent. Tamaki’s uncompromising religious fanaticism does not sit well with New Zealand’s largely secular electorate. Certainly, no one describing themselves as a leftist would ever consider voting for Tamaki’s religious/political enterprises. <br /><br />Why, then, are so many leftists coming out on the streets in support of a Palestinian religious/political regime drawn from a movement bearing a more than passing resemblance to Brian Tamaki’s? Hamas is theologically conservative in its interpretation and application of the Muslim faith. It, too, is militantly patriarchal and virulently homophobic in its socio-cultural attitudes. It has also pursued political power relentlessly to restore spiritual order and punish the unfaithful. The fundamental difference between these two movements is that Destiny remains politically powerless, while Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. <br /><br />All those “progressives” spluttering and guffawing at this comparison, should consider this follow-up question. If New Zealand was occupied by what its people considered an alien nation, a nation which New Zealand’s secular resistance movement, in spite of plentiful military and financial support, had consistently failed to defeat, how confident could they be that the passionate certainties of a body like the Destiny Church would continue to be rejected by a majority of voters? <br /><br />Not confident at all, is the honest answer. Except Western “progressives” would never submit to the rule of such a government. Their innate sense of superiority, and their lofty disdain for the credulous and the ignorant, would prevent them supporting such a movement – unless, of course, it was a movement located in a country far enough away for them not to have to worry too much about the manner in which its people are governed. <br /><br />The truth is that it’s not the people, or the nature of their government, or even the fact that they are suffering, that engages the western progressive, it’s the identity of the nation, or nations, inflicting the suffering. If the nation inflicting pain and suffering on the Palestinians was an Arab nation, a Muslim nation, would hundreds-of-thousands of westerners be marching in protest? After all, while tens-of-thousands of Gazans are dying at the hands of the IDF, similar numbers of Sudanese Christians are being shot and starved by their fellow citizens. Who is chanting and waving flags for them? <div><br /></div><div>Not many, if any. Because, it isn’t death and suffering that western progressives are concerned about, it’s who’s to blame. If the pain isn’t being inflicted by human-beings like themselves, upon human-beings emphatically unlike themselves, then really, they’re not that interested.<div><br />Where is the international movement against the oppression of women in Afghanistan to equal the international movement that emerged to fight the oppression of Blacks in South Africa? There is no such movement. Why, because those responsible for oppressing Afghan women and girls are defiantly misogynistic, murderously homophobic, Islamist fanatics. If only they were Americans or Europeans! Then it would be a very different story!<br /><br />Can it really be that simple? Is it simply a matter of the Western Left’s overwhelming self-loathing? Having failed to change their own societies – doubtless because “their” workers were too fat and happy to bother, or, more likely, too culturally conservative to see revolution as anything other than a mortal danger to all but the most unpleasant kinds of human-being – did the Western Left simply decide to stop cheering for the “genocidal” cowboys, and start rooting for the “colonised” Native Americans?</div><div><br />Or, in George Galloway’s case – the Palestinians.<br /><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on </i>The Democracy Project <i>of Monday, 4 March 2024.</i></span></b></div></div></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com30tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-82001775608433970572024-03-07T14:40:00.000+13:002024-03-07T14:40:03.241+13:00Why Newshub Failed.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF-qWygjhRYSSTaJIJhgF60vq6vSl7iJIS8XZ3fDR2WqY9_pCnhmsRqvcF0qE3R_AayyLjujE4JiCyeT3wmvGvjxxs6qwJXb0oM5kQ0sRW75CHlGWEzUQ6LeeOhk7LzGGFPieVxfwscx-GNyhsN2BjwQ5gy088zDh05rh07Vst3YBe65-hq3jyPuaO60k/s959/Newshub.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="959" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF-qWygjhRYSSTaJIJhgF60vq6vSl7iJIS8XZ3fDR2WqY9_pCnhmsRqvcF0qE3R_AayyLjujE4JiCyeT3wmvGvjxxs6qwJXb0oM5kQ0sRW75CHlGWEzUQ6LeeOhk7LzGGFPieVxfwscx-GNyhsN2BjwQ5gy088zDh05rh07Vst3YBe65-hq3jyPuaO60k/w400-h225/Newshub.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Too Small To Survive:</b> Was it ever realistic to believe that two commercial television networks could profitably share such a tiny market?</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED</b>, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared to present levels) amount of commercial advertising. This arrangement reinforced both the public character and the public obligations of the state broadcaster. As the network’s primary funders, the viewing public constituted TVNZ’s most important clientele. These were the citizens to whom TVNZ’s professional broadcasters believed themselves accountable.</div><br />And then everything changed. The Broadcasting Act (1989) transformed TVNZ from an entity dedicated to serving the public, to an entity legally required to conduct its affairs in the manner of a private company. The Broadcasting Licence Fee survived (until it was finally abolished in 1999) but under the new act the funds it raised were funnelled into NZ On Air – a body whose hi-falutin objectives would be forever compromised by its obligation to first obtain a commitment, from what were now commercial broadcasters, to screen the productions they were being invited to commission.<br /><br />This was a devastating Catch-22 for all those producers and directors dedicated to producing high-quality television programmes. Why? Because before switching-on a single camera, they had to satisfy TVNZ – and later TV3 – that the product they were pitching would deliver the right number of eyeballs to the right number of advertisers. It didn’t really matter to the executives compiling the broadcasters’ schedule if the proposed programme was topical, powerful, much-needed, or culturally outstanding: what they needed to know was whether it could meet – or exceed – the opportunity-cost of not slotting-in a high-rating/high-earning programme in the schedule upon which the production house was asking to be placed?<br /><br />What this meant was that drama and documentary features – the most expensive to make – had to work so much harder than the makers of the relatively cheap “Reality TV” shows in order to secure that all-important sign-off from the networks. Once those same networks saw how well Reality TV rated, the difficulties confronting the makers of programmes not tailored to the tastes of “ordinary viewers” became practically insurmountable.<br /><br />For the Minister who drafted the Broadcasting Act this was not a bug, but a feature. Richard Prebble wanted his new State-Owned Enterprise, TVNZ, to tailor its production and its schedule to the signals it was receiving from the entertainment marketplace. The commercial enterprises with advertisements to place before the network’s viewers’ eyeballs, the enterprises now funding the networks’ running-costs, would, henceforth, be the ones sending the most important signals. But the viewers who rated the shows in which the ads were being broadcast, they sent signals that were only marginally less important.<br /><br />The signals communicated to the networks’ schedulers and programme-makers by viewers could hardly have been clearer. They liked to watch programmes in which one group, or multiple groups, of people were pitted against each other in a highly competitive environment. They lapped-up the nastiness and pettiness that such environments elicited. They relished the betrayals and laughed at the tears. Ancient Rome knew the type – they had filled its amphitheatres and cheered-on its bloodiest gladiators.<br /><br />Those programme-makers who believed the public deserved something better than these crude theatres of cruelty were scorned. The schedulers demanded to know why they thought their product was superior to the output of Reality TV. Wasn’t it just the teeniest bit elitist, they inquired, to think that your sort of television – which rates like a dog – should take precedence over shows that rate through the roof? Who are you to tell the people what they should be watching? Who are you to defy the rough-and-ready democracy of the remote control? Cultural snobs – that’s who!<br /><br />There were those who watched, as TV3 attempted to carve out a profitable niche in this increasingly cut-throat broadcasting environment, and shook their heads sadly. New Zealand was a country with a population smaller than Sydney’s – so television’s infamous “money trench” was never going to be all that big. Which raised the questions: Was it ever realistic to believe that two commercial television networks were going to profitably share such a tiny market? Wasn’t it inevitable that one network would claim the lion’s share of viewers and revenue; while the other was condemned to fight off every hungry hyena and vulture for the rest?<br /><br />It is not well understood (outside broadcasting circles) just how viciously TVNZ fought, from the very beginning, to be the network that claimed the lion’s share. It fought TV3 every single inch of the way: moving heaven and earth to head it off at every conceivable strategic pass; competing with it aggressively for every pair of eyeballs; scheduling against it with ruthless precision.<br /><br />Ever since 1989, the truth of the matter has been that it was TVNZ that behaved like the rapacious capitalist television network, and TV3 that strove, against all the odds, to produce programmes that had something more to offer than carefully contrived <i>schadenfreude</i>. This weird reversal of roles is attributable to the fact that, from the very beginning, TV3 was driven by the sort of cussèd under-doggery that always brings out the best in New Zealanders. It was the founders of TV3, not the administrators of TVNZ, who believed most fervently that, given the chance, Kiwi broadcasters could astonish the world.<br /><br />(Which isn’t to say that there weren’t broadcasters in TVNZ who shared their TV3 counterparts’ faith in the possibilities of television, merely that in the years that followed the passage of the Broadcasting Act (1989) they were purged from the TVNZ payroll with an efficiency that would have made Stalin proud.)<br /><br />Perhaps the saddest part of the lopsided battle between TVNZ and TV3 is that it simply never needed to have happened. The answer to the problem posed by two competing commercial networks in an advertising market as small as New Zealand’s was always blindingly obvious. Turn TVNZ into a genuine public broadcaster. That is to say, a state-owned, commercial-free, broadcaster, paid for by redirecting most of the taxpayer dollars currently funding New Zealand on Air. That would leave the television advertising market, which, even in this digital age, remains large enough to support one (carefully managed) private television network. (Especially if the Government waived its transmission charges.)<br /><br />Imagine, then, a scene reminiscent of the prisoner exchanges between Ukraine and Russia. All the hard-nosed bastards who regard Reality TV has high-culture trooping in a body from TVNZ headquarters to the studios of the newly resurrected private network. While moving past them, in the opposite direction, go the mavericks, the dreamers, and the journalists who still understand the meaning of the word. All of them eager to claim their place in the genuine public broadcasting network that should always have been their home.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> website on Monday, 4 March 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-30313375395320812532024-03-05T16:40:00.000+13:002024-03-05T16:40:53.644+13:00Unintended Consequences.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuoguqvIhL5Hab5Hfa-I5-BB5KUh5TolRud-zsTfTeTtAEuM-LnLo9jXFDG12Yind7x2k0fT70ldGQ2LElF7TpGoleRfnKX8tYSZaRSXYnOkP9VpdZlWzpXauyKZArek_mb6QchBmsLQ1mi89DsYYEx8mig4KF6bj54ZdB6u4oBaC1CEcI92QhWSL0cHk/s1017/Putin's%20Glance.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="662" data-original-width="1017" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuoguqvIhL5Hab5Hfa-I5-BB5KUh5TolRud-zsTfTeTtAEuM-LnLo9jXFDG12Yind7x2k0fT70ldGQ2LElF7TpGoleRfnKX8tYSZaRSXYnOkP9VpdZlWzpXauyKZArek_mb6QchBmsLQ1mi89DsYYEx8mig4KF6bj54ZdB6u4oBaC1CEcI92QhWSL0cHk/w400-h260/Putin's%20Glance.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>The Basilisk’s Glare: </b>From his eyrie in the Kremlin, Putin’s eyes remain fixed upon the United States. Not in fear does he gaze upon the world’s unconquerable continental Goliath, but with rising hope. In President Biden’s palsied hand, the sword of freedom is loosely held. Meanwhile, from the heartland of the continent, the people America has left behind are steadily pushing their comb-over Moses towards Washington.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>TWO YEARS AGO,</b> when Vladimir Putin sent his armed forces across Ukraine’s borders, he was expecting a quick war. His generals had reassured him that the Ukrainians wouldn’t fight, Nato would sit on its hands, and his soldiers would be welcomed with kisses and flowers. Kyiv, they told him, would be his within three weeks – tops.</div><br />Putin’s advice was ill-founded in every respect. The Ukrainians did fight – and are still fighting. Nato, far from sitting on its hands, has backed the Ukrainian war effort with massive quantities of munitions and economic aid.<br /><br />Everything short of unleashing Nato’s own forces against the Russian invaders has been thrown into this war in Eastern Europe. More important, at least from Putin’s perspective, Nato has expanded.<br /><br />Daunted by Russia’s naked aggression, and its disdain for international law, Sweden has abandoned 200 years of neutrality for Nato membership, Finland has done the same. Nato navies now control the Baltic from Copenhagen to Helsinki. And Russia has given itself an additional 1,200 kilometres of “hostile” borders to patrol. To paraphrase Winston Churchill: From the Gulf of Riga to the Black Sea, all the ancient nations of Europe are gathered behind Nato’s security guarantee – its tripwire for Armageddon.<br /><br />And yet, from his eyrie in the Kremlin, Putin’s eyes remain fixed upon the United States. Not in fear does he gaze upon the world’s unconquerable continental Goliath, but with rising hope. In President Biden’s palsied hand, the sword of freedom is loosely held. Meanwhile, from the heartland of the continent, the people America has left behind are steadily pushing their comb-over Moses towards Washington.<br /><br />Donald Trump’s army is distinguished not only by its enormity, but by its indifference to the rest of the world’s troubles. “Beware of foreign entanglements”, warned their first President, George Washington, and Trump’s followers are ill-disposed to gainsay their founding father.<br /><br />“Why should we defend the borders of Ukraine”, they demand to know, “when Biden refuses to defend his own from hordes of illegal immigrants?” Sufficient unto the day are the troubles of these “deplorable” Americans.<br /><br />“Make America Great Again” is embroidered on their headgear, but the greatness they invoke is not the greatness of the American military cornucopia that supplied the Red Army with the wherewithal to defeat Hitler’s invasion. With the food that fed them, the boots in which they marched to battle, and the heavy trucks that carried their ordnance across the limitless East-European Plain – all the way to Berlin.<br /><br />Nor is it the greatness that saw America garrison Europe with its own sons: those young soldiers who stared down their Soviet opposite numbers across the narrow defiles of innumerable Checkpoint Charlies, all along the Iron Curtain, for the four frigid decades of the Cold War.<br /><br />No, the greatness Trump seeks to restore is the greatness of White America. The America that looks right through Native Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and all the other vibrant elements of the great American melting-pot – as if they don’t exist. The greatness of Christian America which, in spite of invoking “Jesus!” at every turn, conducts itself as though the New Testament does not exist. Trump’s people are seeking the greatness they passionately believe can be theirs only by putting “America First!” – and the rest of the world dead last.<br /><br />In the hands of these Americans, Putin is placing all his hopes. And yet, even if Trump wins the presidency and, to the cheers of his followers, tells Nato to go to hell, Putin’s dreams of a de-fanged Europe may still not come to pass.<br /><br />Even without the United States, Europe constitutes an unanswerable challenge to Russia’s imperial dreams. Half-a-billion strong, possessed of a technological and industrial prowess that far exceeds the Russian Federation’s, the nations of Europe have the capacity to become, in very short order, a truly formidable military power. Two of its nations (the UK and France) already possess nuclear weapons, Germany could easily become Europe’s third.<br /><br />Are these, the unintended consequences of his geopolitical hubris, truly the outcomes Putin was anticipating when, on 24 February 2022, his armies shattered the hard-won peace of Europe? An enlarged Nato, Germany furiously re-arming, and the Poles dreaming of once again rescuing Europe from eastern invaders, just as John III Sobieski did outside the gates of Vienna in 1683.<br /><br />The West is not beaten yet.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally published in </i>The Otago Daily Times<i> and </i>The Greymouth Star<i> of Friday, 1 March 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-27390970393008549402024-02-29T14:55:00.000+13:002024-02-29T14:55:35.846+13:00Tougher Love.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc8PP22Ut9ubvN04-HxBmuhB_YsjX34ZfLluU9N9LOIFFbVhzXnYNHbZYcl5x9U8P_2nsPV0SUvhcfmMCuhX1wnc0JBJLKXVBVXGlhKvPi3gO_VwSum93LkbmyX-nFxjN9cirHk80r8rgI0ZaHw1eTHHkIBOEgUX_87Gh5xeNYTKvTrJVLFSKpOdPW7-o/s509/SWAT%20Team%20-%20Tougher%20Love..JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="509" height="324" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc8PP22Ut9ubvN04-HxBmuhB_YsjX34ZfLluU9N9LOIFFbVhzXnYNHbZYcl5x9U8P_2nsPV0SUvhcfmMCuhX1wnc0JBJLKXVBVXGlhKvPi3gO_VwSum93LkbmyX-nFxjN9cirHk80r8rgI0ZaHw1eTHHkIBOEgUX_87Gh5xeNYTKvTrJVLFSKpOdPW7-o/w400-h324/SWAT%20Team%20-%20Tougher%20Love..JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>"Ullo, ullo, ullo, what's coming off here then?" </b>Mark Mitchell’s Gang Laws are separating the Liberal Sheep from the Authoritarian Goats.</i> </td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>THE INTENSIFYING POLITICAL CONTROVERSY</b> over the Coalition Government’s policy on gangs promises to be one of those sheep-from-goats moments. While the Left will veer instinctively towards the sociological, the Right will opt to (paraphrasing one of the best lines from <i>Pulp Fiction</i>) “get medieval” on the gangs’ collective ass. Practical questions, such as “Can this policy possibly work?” will crash into angry ideological responses, “Are you saying gangs are above the law?” The sociological “sheep” who believe in a world unconstrained by the shackles of “human nature”, will face the “goats” of realism, who recognise the necessity of keeping human-beings’ potential for chaos and cruelty under strict control.</div><br />One could argue that the gangs (or, at least, the Mongrel Mob’s) biggest political misjudgement of the past 12 months was to go large on the opportunity provided by the funeral of a fallen comrade. In retrospect, it almost certainly would have been wiser for them to pay their last respects in mufti, and to have hired busses for the journey to Opotiki.<br /><br />Where was Harry Tam when the Mob needed him? He could have outlined the risks, in an election year, of turning a fellow gang member’s tangi into a show of Mongrel Mob strength. Warning them that there’s not a conservative politician in New Zealand, or anywhere else, who could fail to register the extraordinary opportunity for making electoral capital out of the “gang takeover” of the little Bay of Plenty town.<br /><br />Certainly, Mark Mitchell – former police officer, onetime gun-toting international security contractor, Member of Parliament and, in 2023, the National Party’s spokesperson for matters relating to Law & Order, can only have relished the scenes of hundreds of gang members, some on motorcycles, others piled onto the backs of utes, riding into Opotiki in much the same way as the Wehrmacht rode into Poland and France.<br /><br />Mitchell knew, because he was one of them, exactly how conservative Pakeha males all over New Zealand would be responding to these scenes; was rolling the words around in his own mouth, even as they were spat out towards 100,000 screens: “Who the fuck is running this country!” Followed immediately by: “Where are the fucking cops!”<br /><br />Cue the Left’s standard intervention. Gangs are what you get when the pathways to personal and communal prosperity are blocked by the exigencies of capitalist macroeconomics – always and ably assisted by the systemic and individualised racism endemic to all white settler states. When the traditional cultural mechanisms for managing and socially integrating the young are rendered ineffectual by rapid and massive urbanisation. When being young and Māori in a Pakeha town or city makes you guilty of whatever’s bugging the cops until your innocence is proven. When the only way to make it through the rite-of-passage of a prison sentence is by accepting the protection of people in exactly the same predicament as yourself.<br /><br />All of which is true, but irrelevant. The how and the why of gangs cuts little ice when [insert small rural community’s name here] wastewater treatment plant is testing positive – very positive – for methamphetamine, and God knows what other drugs. Because, absent the criminality and the inevitable violence with which it is associated, a gang is nothing more than a club. One becomes a gangster by breaking the law. And one becomes a patched gangster by <i>seriously </i>breaking the law.<br /><br />Which is why a gang patch is so intimidating. It tells you that the person wearing it is someone you had better not mess with – someone you would be wise to fear. No police officer operating alone, or even as one of a pair, is ever going to attempt to make a gang member remove his patch.<br /><br />That Mark Mitchell and Paul Goldsmith are pledged to shepherding a bill through Parliament which will give police officers the legal right to require the removal of gang patch means nothing. Only with a hefty squad of armed police backing up the local constable/s will gang patches ever be removed from gang members’ shoulders and hung-up safely in the gang’s headquarters. And when the armed-up outsider cops have gone back to the big smoke, what then? What happens to the local cops the next time they’re out on patrol? What can they do when the gangs know where they live – where their <i>families </i>live?<br /><br />Is it possible that Mitchell and Goldsmith are well aware that the laws they are committed to passing cannot possibly be effective unless and until there has been a profound change in the way New Zealand is policed. And is that what they are planning? To move New Zealand away from its present policy of “policing by consent”, to policing the citizenry by threatening and, with rising frequency, <i>using </i>armed force?<br /><br />Because with the Coalition Government’s introduction of laws forbidding the wearing of gang patches in public; laws mandating the immediate dispersal of gang assemblies; laws prohibiting criminal association; it really wouldn’t take very much to set-off a bloody confrontation between the gangs and the Police. And if a police officer, or officers, were killed or seriously injured in that confrontation, how hard would it be to secure public support for arming the Police, and outlawing gang membership altogether?<br /><br />For all the “goats” out there, the idea of arming the police is no great cause for concern. Indeed, they would demand to know of their “sheepish” compatriots how else the situation might be brought under control. When the number of gang members in New Zealand is roughly equivalent to the number of sworn police officers, they would argue, not arming the frontline enforcers of the law could easily be seen as criminally negligent.<br /><br />The “sheep” out there would, naturally, be distraught at the loss of policing by consent. While it remains the firm policy of the New Zealand state, it is still possible to believe that the democratic impulse it embodies remains strong. That respect for basic human rights will, still, in the end, overrule the authoritarian impulses of those who see human nature as something dark, something to be controlled at all costs.<br /><br />But, as the recommended responses to the Christchurch Mosque Massacres should have made clear to all our “sheep”, further state-sponsored curtailment of citizen’s rights, undertaken from the most noble of motives, of course, is only another deadly tragedy away.<br /><br />The “goats”, meanwhile, can rest assured that once the liberals have been policed, and the police liberated, New Zealanders can anticipate tragedies in abundance.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted by </i>The Democracy Project <i>on Monday, 26 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-880945497106353552024-02-29T14:30:00.000+13:002024-02-29T14:30:21.739+13:00The Clue Is In The Name.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7kutmKTAez-RG5tijNNVjT3lQAbnntxV28c9hiV30sHpYvGx74-giCY_lITsYpcx04z3QrpHDuxIXv7TLTSL2BGUG2L_amy6GQI2VJ433QGRa8xFAl7u9FTTxjFRHgrmdFRCkFr-eigZHzqcH9UG3izXjGA_6LDYWFHRWloHOArnsJjDQ9hgElIW4J7U/s496/Christopher%20Luxon%20poses%20by%20a%20hoarding..JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="264" data-original-width="496" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7kutmKTAez-RG5tijNNVjT3lQAbnntxV28c9hiV30sHpYvGx74-giCY_lITsYpcx04z3QrpHDuxIXv7TLTSL2BGUG2L_amy6GQI2VJ433QGRa8xFAl7u9FTTxjFRHgrmdFRCkFr-eigZHzqcH9UG3izXjGA_6LDYWFHRWloHOArnsJjDQ9hgElIW4J7U/w400-h213/Christopher%20Luxon%20poses%20by%20a%20hoarding..JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Truth In Advertising?</b> The Nats do best when they take the “National” part of their name seriously, </i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>WHEN ITS FOUNDERS</b> christened New Zealand’s newest anti-socialist party “National”, they had two objectives. The first was largely cosmetic. The second, and much more important objective, was ideological.</div><br />In 1936, the year in which the New Zealand National Party was formed, the “Mother Country” – as a great many New Zealanders still referred to Great Britain – was under its third “National Government”. Although dominated by his own Conservative Party, the new Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, saw no reason to dispense with the fiction that he was leading something very similar to the government of national unity that had been formed to fight the Great Depression in 1931.<br /><br />Essentially a “grand coalition”, the first British National Government had contained a substantial chunk of the British Parliamentary Labour Party. Indeed, the first leader of Britain’s first National Government was the Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald.<br /><br />It isn’t difficult to understand why the men who drew together the defeated Reform and United Parties into a new and permanent coalition decided to call their creation “National”. By consciously referencing its British namesake, and the example it set of bringing together all “responsible” political actors for the sake of the nation; New Zealand’s conservatives hoped to borrow a little of its lustre.<br /><br />But, more important by far than referencing the Mother Country was the deeper, ideological objective behind the “New Zealand National Party” name. Its founders were determined to differentiate the new party’s purpose and principles from the class-driven imperatives of the Labour Party.<br /><br />Except for the most socialist of its followers, Labour’s name has always been a problem. It speaks unashamedly of the class conflict lying at the heart of New Zealand’s capitalist society, and of its founders’ avowed determination to put the interests of the working-class – Labour – ahead of those of the employing-class – Capital. Unsurprisingly, Labour’s enemies never tired of accusing Labour of sowing conflict and division. Years after the Great Depression, Labour leader Norman Kirk still fretted about the party’s name, confiding to his private secretary, Margaret Hayward, his wish to drop the word “labour” altogether, in favour, simply, of the “New Zealand Party”.<br /><br />Had National’s founders been as recklessly honest about their political goals as Labour’s socialists, they would have called their new party “Capital”. Given the numerical paucity of the country’s capitalist elites, however, such forthrightness would have been ill-advised. In New Zealand’s parliamentary democracy, such ideological candour would have condemned the new party to permanent opposition.<br /><br />Hence the bid to equate the interests of all those who belonged to, and/or voted for, the National Party with the national interest <i>per se</i>. In sharp contrast to the Labour Party, which it portrayed as sectarian, divisive, and disloyal, National presented itself as the great unifier, open to all New Zealanders, and dedicated to the nation’s continuing progress and prosperity.<br /><br />In a strictly practical sense, the new party was correct – it did represent the preponderant interests of New Zealand. United under its moniker were the rural-based interests of the country’s principal income earners, the farmers; along with the principal generators of New Zealand’s economic activity, the owners of private enterprises large and small. The poet and broadcaster Gary McCormick spoke more truly than he knew when, many years ago, he quipped: “The National Party stands for all New Zealanders – farmers and businessmen alike!”<br /><br />It is this curious, almost contradictory, combination of political motives: seeking to advance and unite the whole nation, while simultaneously protecting the private and special interests of its farmers and businesspeople; that has dogged National ever since its formation.<br /><br />In times of prosperity, when farmers and businesspeople, along with the rest of the nation, are doing well, the National Party’s expansive and inclusive political rhetoric finds a ready audience. When times are hard, however, and a choice must be made between looking after everyone, and making the welfare of farmers and businesspeople the National Party’s No. 1 priority, then New Zealand politics can turn decidedly nasty.<br /><br />Christopher Luxon, National’s ninth prime-minister, has assumed office in times that look set to grow increasingly hard. True to National Party form, he and his colleagues, egged on by their party’s coalition partners, Act and NZ First, are aggressively prioritising the claims of the farming and business communities over those of the rest of the New Zealand population – most particularly social-welfare beneficiaries. Under the rubric of “Tough Love”, Luxon is brazenly playing social and economic favourites.<br /><br />Historically, this class oriented strategy has not turned out well for the National Party. The last time it turned nasty, during the first and third terms of the Fourth National Government (1990-1999) it set the scene for nine years of Labour-led governments. National only recovered power on the strength of John Key’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge, commitment to pick up where Helen Clark left off.<br /><br />Luxon could do himself and his party a power of good by studying closely the strategy of National’s fourth prime minister, Rob Muldoon, who, in spite of holding the prime-ministership through some of New Zealand’s most challenging and tumultuous years, won three general elections on the trot. The secret to Muldoon’s electoral success lay in his decision to take the “national” part of National’s name seriously.<br /><br />His 1975 slogan, “New Zealand the way <u>YOU</u> want it” indicated clearly the populist path Muldoon was determined to follow. Three years later he insisted that his government had pulled off an “economic miracle” and counselled against doing anything rash (like voting for Labour or, yikes, Social Credit!) that might undermine it.<br /><br />In 1980 Muldoon refashioned the economic-nationalist policies formulated by the 1957-60 Labour Government – policies he had won his political spurs opposing back in 1960-61 – and presented them to the country as his own “Think Big” national development strategy. With these, and having demonstrated, with “batons and barbed wire”, his party’s unflinching commitment to New Zealand’s national game, Muldoon eked out a third consecutive electoral victory in 1981.<br /><br />Critical to Muldoon’s destruction of Labour’s 23-seat majority in 1975 was his populist promise to outdo Labour’s contributory New Zealand Superannuation scheme. Seldom has so much been offered to so pivotal a voting bloc! Muldoon’s “National Superannuation” promised what amounted to a universal basic income, equivalent to 70 percent of the average wage, to every New Zealand citizen over the age of 60 years. The elderly would remain National Party loyalists – “Rob’s Mob” – for the best part of the next decade.<br /><br />According to University of Auckland economics professor, Tim Hazledine, a similar opportunity exists today for a politician with imagination and daring to dramatically reconfigure the delivery of state support. Excluding the over-65s, there are more than 600,000 New Zealanders in receipt of transfer payments from the New Zealand state. Noting that many of the recipients of these benefits will remain dependent of the state’s charity for more than 10 years, Hazledine correctly observes that our social welfare system has morphed into something its creator, Labour’s Michael Joseph Savage, would struggle to recognise.<br /><br />The Professor’s solution? Redirect the $10 billion currently being spent on state transfer payments into a non-means-tested Universal Basic Income of $300 per week for all citizens currently receiving state support.<br /><br />“Yes, that is somewhat less than what beneficiaries get now,” writes Hazledine in his <i>NZ Herald</i> op-ed piece, “but not a lot less, and it would liberate the productive energies of several hundred thousand able-bodied citizens.”<br /><br />It might also do for Christopher Luxon what New Zealand’s original UBI did for Rob Muldoon: demonstrate that National is, as it says on the tin, a party committed to the welfare of the whole nation; and, as an added bonus, cement-in the support of a hitherto unresponsive voting-bloc for the best part of the next decade.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz <i>website on Monday, 26 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-41924630928130303892024-02-23T07:42:00.003+13:002024-02-23T07:42:48.134+13:00Democracy Denied.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FS6BOqL2B6SCI50yXIrLXbhprsXKduKRrLZNLi3L82PclsXkwOXXcqPDyPKDI7FzwI7CIh1BMTkOkMA9UlTpieRgiujHsXDj7diKdWBXNkFWQVysrWEWR2hh_z8uZmHWpSjfuMK-3QX2XWe0-mondZVmH9rOZH1Q0ILS52li27xzYi1JfcdV9rAU-y0/s564/Democracy%20or%20Autocracy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="564" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FS6BOqL2B6SCI50yXIrLXbhprsXKduKRrLZNLi3L82PclsXkwOXXcqPDyPKDI7FzwI7CIh1BMTkOkMA9UlTpieRgiujHsXDj7diKdWBXNkFWQVysrWEWR2hh_z8uZmHWpSjfuMK-3QX2XWe0-mondZVmH9rOZH1Q0ILS52li27xzYi1JfcdV9rAU-y0/w400-h236/Democracy%20or%20Autocracy.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Political Intervention From Above: </b>From the early-1970s on, lobbying firms and think-tanks have grown like Topsy all across the capitalist world. Had the progressive middle-class not drawn its teeth and clipped its claws, an angry working-class might have risen to meet the Robber Baron’s challenge as it did in the 1890s, the 1930s and the 1970s. Without the </i>kratos <i>of the unruly majority of the </i>demos <i>behind them, however, the paternalist strategies of the progressives were easily countered.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>DEMOCRACY WILL ALWAYS BE HATED</b> by the rich and powerful. This is a truth that should never be, but all-too-often is, forgotten. If the <i>kratos </i>(power) really does reside in the demos (<i>people</i>) then it cannot reside in the clubs and boardrooms of the corporate elites. The stronger the people become, the more determined the elites will grow to destroy the institutions through which popular power is expressed. Much has been made recently (not least by the Democracy Project) of the political influence of lobbyists and think-tanks, as if this was somehow a new and disturbing development. It is not. All that the growing power and influence of lobbyists and think-tanks reveals is the growing weakness of our democratic institutions.</div><br />Rather than devoting their energies to building up the strength of those institutions – by aggressively re-democratising the Labour Party and the trade union movement, both of which have long-since ceased to evince the slightest democratic energy – more and more leftists are avoiding the implications of their crushing political defeat by jumping down the rabbit hole of Mihingarangi Forbes’ Atlas Network conspiracy theory.<br /><br />According to Forbes’ narrative, New Zealand’s political life is increasingly falling under the influence of unseen bad actors. These dark forces are unfairly resourced with all the talents and resources needed to shape and steer decisions critical to New Zealand’s future without the public’s knowledge.<br /><br />If this all sounds like the plot of a Dan Brown novel, it’s because both Forbes and the author of <i>The Da Vinci Code </i>both deal in fiction. Forbes’ dark forces are, in fact, openly acknowledged and registered pressure groups, like the Taxpayers’ Union, which operate in the broad light of day and are constantly seeking to engage with the public via electronic newsletters, public meetings, and the media. Real conspirators do not behave like this. Prior to flying hijacked planes into the Twin Towers, Al Qaeda did not issue a press release!<br /><br />What Forbes is attempting to paint as sinister and illegitimate is actually a very real tribute to the power of grass-roots organising. What makes the Taxpayers’ Union so effective is what made Halt All Racist Tours (HART) so effective: a popular cause; generous donors; dedicated leadership; powerful propaganda; and a bloody huge mailing-list. It is ironic that the organising model which the Left now attempts to pass-off as diabolical, is what made the left-wing pressure groups of the past so politically effective.<br /><br />Perhaps the most dramatic example of the New Zealand Right borrowing the tactics of the New Zealand Left is the New Zealand National Party. National’s founders were determined that their fledgling organisation should grow into a mass party – as large, if not larger, than the New Zealand Labour Party. How else could they hope to defeat it?<br /><br />Just like Labour, National gave itself a branch structure which penetrated deeply into ideologically sympathetic communities. Membership fees were kept within the reach of the ordinary voter, and the members themselves were constitutionally empowered to choose parliamentary candidates and participate in the formation of National Party policy. The “divisional” structure of the party guaranteed a large measure of regional autonomy from the party’s central office.<br /><br />In short, until Stephen Joyce transformed it into a self-perpetuating oligarchy in 2003, National was a thoroughly democratic organisation. Had it not been, the party would not have been able to dominate New Zealand’s post-war politics so emphatically. At its peak in the mid-1970s, National’s membership topped a quarter-of-a-million.<br /><br />What Forbes and her fellow conspiracy-theorists fail to grasp about democratic success, is that the exercise of real political power by working-class people (as evidenced by Labour’s dramatic economic and social transformations of the 1930s and 40s) does not just alarm the corporate elites.<br /><br />When confronted by a confident and increasingly insubordinate working-class, broad swathes of the middle-class grow fearful that their superior social status is about to be eroded. To resist the rise of the working-class, two strategic options present themselves. The first is to effect a middle-class alignment with the ruling elites. The second is for the middle-class, using its credentialled expertise, to overwhelm the organisations of the working-class, turning lions into lambs and effectively giving the bosses two parties to play with.<br /><br />The New Zealand middle-class has chosen both options. It’s commercial and industrial half backs the corporate elites in National, while its professional and managerial half makes sure Labour remains the neoliberal party it helped it to become in the 1980s and 90s. Middle-class idealists may have migrated to the Alliance and the Greens, but their more “progressive” policies have not yet contributed, in any meaningful way, to the re-empowering of the working-class.<br /><br />Historically, “progressivism” represented the educated American middle-class’s answer to the brutally democratic working-class solutions developed by immigrant communities living in the United States’ largest cities during the Nineteenth Century. Dubbed “machine politics” by middle-class reformers affronted by its ruthless majoritarianism and unabashed clientism (which the reformers called corruption) progressivism successfully tamed the unruly beast that was American democracy, and made sure that working-class Americans kept their red crayoning safely inside the lines.<br /><br />But, just because the <i>kratos </i>has been relocated in the hands of the more respectable sort of <i>demos </i>doesn’t mean that the corporate elites were willing to leave the political stage to those who clearly saw themselves as stepping nimbly between the Scylla of an angry working-class, and the Charybdis of Robber Baron Capitalism. Progressivism (a.k.a social-democracy) needs working-class votes if it is to wield political power, so, at least some of its measures must be to the obvious advantage of the whole population.<br /><br />Not acceptable. As the capitalist elites discovered in the 1970s, even the middle-class version of democracy has a nasty habit of eventually encroaching on those parts of the system which capitalism has ruled off-limits. Give people of colour, or women, or the environment, enforceable rights and the next thing you know the cheeky so-and-sos will be wanting to use them.<br /><br />What to do? Easy. Raise several well-equipped ideological divisions and throw them into the battle of ideas. From the early-1970s on, lobbying firms and think-tanks have grown like Topsy all across the capitalist world. Had the progressive middle-class not drawn its teeth and clipped its claws, an angry working-class might have risen to meet the Robber Baron’s challenge as it did in the 1890s, the 1930s and the 1970s. But, without the <i>kratos </i>of the unruly majority of the <i>demos </i>behind them, the paternalist strategies of the progressives were easily countered.<br /><br />When the corporate elites discovered how intensely the working-class hated the educated middle-class that had shut them out of power, they must have known they couldn’t lose.<div><br /></div><div>And, that’s the problem with democracy, isn’t it? It’s indivisible. Deny it to some, and you end up allowing its enemies to deny it to all.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on </i>The Democracy Project<i> of Monday, 19 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-61233061890959717912024-02-20T15:47:00.000+13:002024-02-20T15:47:00.157+13:00Is Applying “Tough Love” To A “Fragile” Nation The Right Answer?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir5YZ9Lb6AlBgWYUiaowM2FKuW3sfr5hPMukhB3nT7dF6MSh7y5xywlcGp1yIGkOuok-aIs5Hw8gSGOzCIns2yPs2emGA2K1joFzX5egU9rduVwOyg_Ut5x763_paFP-zPyNvLibgbUrKB8jtY0Flc4RdwX6MsOR2G_aj7fSvzRiVip9rQWBH5BHzD2R4/s718/New%20Zealand%20From%20Space.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="718" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir5YZ9Lb6AlBgWYUiaowM2FKuW3sfr5hPMukhB3nT7dF6MSh7y5xywlcGp1yIGkOuok-aIs5Hw8gSGOzCIns2yPs2emGA2K1joFzX5egU9rduVwOyg_Ut5x763_paFP-zPyNvLibgbUrKB8jtY0Flc4RdwX6MsOR2G_aj7fSvzRiVip9rQWBH5BHzD2R4/w400-h200/New%20Zealand%20From%20Space.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>The Question Christopher Luxon Needs To Ask – And Answer:</b> How was it possible for a nation of barely three million citizens to create and maintain an infrastructure that functioned, schools and universities that turned out well-educated and enterprising citizens, a health system that kept its people healthy, and a workforce whose members could afford their own home and enjoy the weekend with their families? </i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>“THE STATE OF THE NATION IS FRAGILE.”</b> Such was Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s sobering verdict on the state of the nation. It was delivered in an address to the National Party faithful that left many questions unanswered – and even more unasked.</div><br />How, for example, does one strengthen a state when those charged with administering it believe the elected government is guided entirely by the wrong beliefs? How is public morale to be lifted when the nation’s key influencers hold huge swathes of the population in contempt? How is New Zealand’s crumbling infrastructure to be remedied in the absence of the sort of publicly-owned design and construction agency that oversaw the creation of so much of New Zealand’s key infrastructure from the 1940s to the 1980s? How can the nation’s productivity be lifted without a wholesale reduction in the size and influence of the professional-managerial class across both the public and private sectors?<br /><br />Christopher Luxon had distressingly little to say about these issues.<br /><br />It is not as though he doesn’t recognise the hostility of the political class towards the Coalition Government’s plans, or the obstructions being raised against them, it is just that he is unwilling to say much more about this resistance than that his policies “won’t be popular with everyone – I get it.” Someone should tell the Prime Minister that allowing your programme to be defined by the objections of its critics is never a good idea.<br /><br />It is all very well to describe the state of the nation as “fragile”, but if you don’t then explain why it’s fragile and how you intend to make it more resilient, then all you’ve achieved is a further demoralisation of the population. What the people of New Zealand need more than anything at this historical moment is inspiration. Telling them that their government’s policies won’t be popular will likely be judged as a pretty uninspiring prime-ministerial offering.<br /><br />Most voters would agree that it is a good thing for an incoming government to carry out its election promises in a timely fashion, but the fortunes of a “fragile” state cannot be turned around in 100 days – or even 1,000 days. Indeed, as a figurative device, this focus on “The First 100 Days” has drifted a long way from its historical origins in the rush of remedial legislation that distinguished the first three months of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration.<br /><br />These bills, many of them unread by members of congress, were passed in what was dangerously close to a state of panic. Roosevelt had delivered his inaugural address on a day when the doors of virtually every bank in the United States remained firmly closed to its distraught depositors. When FDR told his fellow Americans that: “The only thing we have to fear – is fear itself.”, he was not being rhetorical. There were many who believed that American capitalism stood on the brink of complete collapse, and that if the future didn’t belong to the communists, then it belonged to the fascists.<br /><br />Roosevelt’s avalanche of legislation was not about ticking-off promises made during the presidential election campaign of 1932, it was about showing the American people that he would do just about anything to haul the American economy out of the hole into which it, and the millions of Americans it sustained, had fallen. Those action-packed “first one hundred days” were immortalised by America’s leading political columnist, Walter Lippman, <i>after </i>– not <i>before </i>– Roosevelt acted.<br /><br />And action was the key. As Roosevelt declared: “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”<br /><br />It is this commitment to “bold, persistent experimentation” that is missing from Luxon’s State of the Nation speech. Present in spades, however, is Luxon’s condemnation of his predecessor’s experiments, and his delight at being able to purge them from the nation’s statute books. But, public gratitude for an incoming government’s repeal of unpopular legislation, and for its termination of unpopular policies, has a very limited political shelf-life. Eventually, as Roosevelt so rightly said, a government has to “try something”.<br /><br />What Roosevelt’s admonition does not envisage, however, is trying something that you and/or your party have tried before – many times – only to discover, each time, that it doesn’t work.<br /><br />What is it about National that leads them, inexorably, to the poorest and most vulnerable people in New Zealand society? The beneficiaries to whom they then insist on delivering fatuous speeches about “welfare dependency”? Luxon was certainly playing true to his party’s form on Sunday (18/2/24) when he declared to his anything-but-dependent audience: “We’ll do everything we can to help people into work, but if they don’t play ball the free ride is over.”<br /><br />Free ride? As if attempting to survive on a benefit in New Zealand is a matter of sitting back in your taxpayer-funded limousine, peeling-off $100 bills from your bankroll, and using them to light your fat Cuban cigars. That the constant deprivation, the acute humiliation, and the unrelenting stress of never having enough money to live on, is something beneficiaries actually <i>enjoy</i>; something they <i>seek out</i>; something they’ll do everything they can to <i>prolong</i>.<br /><br />Has Luxon ever done what every prime minister of New Zealand should do – sit down with a group of unemployed New Zealanders for a day and just listen to their stories? The chances are high that he hasn’t. A poll of National Party members revealed that 70 percent of them knew no one who was living on a benefit. Presumably, this is why Luxon is able to describe National’s latest effort at punishing the poor as “tough love”. Well, the “tough” is certainly there, but where is the love?<br /><br />The fragile state of our nation will not be strengthened by applying pressure to its weakest citizens. If New Zealanders really are the people Luxon describes: a people “big enough and smart enough to face reality when we need to”, then the questions he needs to put to them are pretty simple.<br /><br />How was it possible for a nation of barely three million citizens to create and maintain an infrastructure that functioned, schools and universities that turned out well-educated and enterprising citizens, a health system that kept its people healthy, and a workforce whose members could afford their own home and enjoy the weekend with their families?<br /><br />This is the nation that Luxon celebrates in his State of the Nation speech for splitting the atom and climbing Everest. The New Zealand that nurtured its citizens “from the cradle to the grave”, and where the Prime Minister knew the unemployed by name.<br /><br />At their simplest, the questions Luxon needs to ask boil down to just two: What made that earlier New Zealand possible? And what will it take to make it possible again?<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> website on Monday, 19 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-89471638513064822642024-02-19T13:45:00.001+13:002024-02-19T13:45:57.640+13:00Keynesian Wisdom.<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcChD7CWw-Hs0emVQLiwOsUV9lTiVmRM2kgnoxwwfBi24hv-HvRlahtUHvTEI8UYs8BzXnHSAzOFdeBxq3lcW1fqOkBei_3hfRPQqYaeKbD4kP5Zcy_JqvyzeE57mxZT-Bxh-tJMrXUmAn6PNHdYC2KGD092E5IWr4xqiqteXgpnNtRqM-q5mC9pkgpQo/s511/Keynes,%20John%20Maynard.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="302" data-original-width="511" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcChD7CWw-Hs0emVQLiwOsUV9lTiVmRM2kgnoxwwfBi24hv-HvRlahtUHvTEI8UYs8BzXnHSAzOFdeBxq3lcW1fqOkBei_3hfRPQqYaeKbD4kP5Zcy_JqvyzeE57mxZT-Bxh-tJMrXUmAn6PNHdYC2KGD092E5IWr4xqiqteXgpnNtRqM-q5mC9pkgpQo/w400-h236/Keynes,%20John%20Maynard.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /></div><span style="font-size: large;"><i>When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?</i></span><div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;">John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)</span></b></div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This posting is exclusive to</i> Bowalley Road.</span></b></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-3488783457263783792024-02-16T07:00:00.001+13:002024-02-16T07:00:00.128+13:00Iron In Her Soul.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJXLw3w-yiaq2ph0s1aS0ecDR0gY2h35XV6yjxredZXICqrcK3YwzQUzGKnYXWp_DoTbousBwSDVz6TI8YgHMp645deGJrQwYq2TAGV5-Gsq8kovIAvgzPHq-w1tw4PLM0dhSsVZOPOKwalwF_DiQ52PeA6-JPz_-YIGPYvlVXcKH_f0m9wr1zD3PtFeE/s391/Chloe%20Swarbrick%20Iron%20In%20Her%20Soul.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><i><img border="0" data-original-height="248" data-original-width="391" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJXLw3w-yiaq2ph0s1aS0ecDR0gY2h35XV6yjxredZXICqrcK3YwzQUzGKnYXWp_DoTbousBwSDVz6TI8YgHMp645deGJrQwYq2TAGV5-Gsq8kovIAvgzPHq-w1tw4PLM0dhSsVZOPOKwalwF_DiQ52PeA6-JPz_-YIGPYvlVXcKH_f0m9wr1zD3PtFeE/w400-h254/Chloe%20Swarbrick%20Iron%20In%20Her%20Soul.JPG" width="400" /></i></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – </i><b>Friedrich Nietzsche</b><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><b>TELEVISION NEW ZEALAND</b> is to be congratulated for inviting Chloe Swarbrick onto its <i>Q+A</i> current affairs show. The Green MP for Auckland Central is the odds-on favourite to become the next co-leader of the Green Party, making her a vital player in the trio of left-wing parties (the other two being Labour and Te Pāti Māori) that together constitute our alternative government. Allowing the public to get to know Swarbrick a little better was a sensible editorial decision.<br /><br />There will be many Green members and supporters, however, who, having watched <i>Q+A</i>’s Jack Tame interrogate Swarbrick, may be wondering whether accepting TVNZ’s invitation to be interviewed was as shrewd as issuing it.<br /><br />Tame is an exceptionally talented broadcaster whose boyish good-looks mask a daunting interrogative talent. If there are weaknesses in any given political persona, Tame may be relied upon to find them. Last Sunday (11/2/24) he found Swarbrick’s – and goaded her into revealing them, live, on free-to-air public television.<br /><br />The weakness Tame homed in on was Swarbrick’s political inflexibility – a flaw which has only grown as her time in Parliament has lengthened.<br /><br />When she first burst upon the political scene, as an independent candidate for the Auckland mayoralty in the 2016 local body elections, the clarity of her thought and expression was Swarbrick’s greatest asset. Here was a young woman who was capable of presenting her ideas forcefully, without prevarication, and then supporting them with a truly intimidating army of facts and figures.<br /><br />Swarbrick’s campaign may have been run on a shoestring, and mostly on social media, but it made sufficient political impact to leave her the third-highest-polling candidate for Mayor. Clearly, this diminutive, articulate and courageous young woman was destined for great things. That Labour and the Greens set out immediately to recruit her, surprised nobody.<br /><br />With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to observe that Swarbrick’s choice of the Greens may not have been the best one. While, on paper, the Greens’ determination to arm their politics with the weaponry of reason and science made it a perfect fit for the serious, almost scholarly, Swarbrick, there were risks. The currents of unreason that were flowing with ever-increasing force beneath the surface of Green Party politics were bound to end up battering her core intellectual and political principles.<br /><br />Swarbrick’s candidacy for the Greens’ co-leadership was prompted by the departure of James Shaw. In spite of an impressive record of political wins – most obviously the Zero Carbon Act – Shaw has found it increasingly difficult to make his colleagues understand that their electoral success depends on voters seeing them as the only party dedicated to combatting global warming effectively. Shaw’s implied warning: that a Green Party which cares less about climate change than it does about fighting the culture wars will end up bleeding away its support (a proposition confirmed by the latest Curia poll) went unheeded.<br /><br />The politician who emerged from Tame’s interview with Swarbrick cannot replace the qualities the Greens are losing with Shaw. Her six years in Parliament appear to have diminished her faith in democracy as the most effective political system. Swarbrick has observed politicians of all colours tapping into the raw emotional power of ignorance and prejudice, and it appears to have hardened her and made her brittle. There no longer seems to be as much “give” in the Swarbrick of 2024, as there was in the Swarbrick who entered Parliament in 2017. Iron has entered her soul.<br /><br />Swarbrick’s declining faith in representative democracy is reflected in her conviction that “the people” possess a power that overmatches the tawdry compromises of professional politicians. In her pitch to Green members Swarbrick hints that this power may be sufficient to bring the whole rotten, planet-destroying system crashing down. That, with the masses at their back, the Greens can build a new and better Aotearoa.<br /><br />How many times has revolutionary zealotry offered this millenarian mirage to an angry and despairing world? How many times has it all gone horribly wrong? And how sad is it that a politician as talented as Chloe Swarbrick now finds herself wandering this arid trail?<br /><br />Many have praised/condemned Jack Tame for identifying Swarbrick’s unflinching defence of the Palestinian cause as the most effective means of exposing her zealotry. But, to those who once saluted Swarbrick’s political promise, Tame’s uncompromising interview proved profoundly depressing.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally published in T</i>he Otago Daily Times<i> and </i>The Greymouth Star<i> of Friday, 16 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-1756907774618152712024-02-15T15:43:00.000+13:002024-02-15T15:43:04.672+13:00Shrugging-Off The Atlas Network.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgLTCcePpWoAjXsNeQJsfUQdR6lZZTPooyArsQknZSxq6p5wzC51A7pe2DiC-sc8kN17oRvc8MH9CT7wbQhyphenhyphenMxMOuayxZg3Rlvtz3BssLgcLT5b4OF5OWu_VVP_kQVFy0vva1WWVWjKcL-i4atJEEz2iTLtUBRCwYNNFAIMAz2VLKC-qrcPx93Q-o2vg/s503/Atlas.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="503" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOgLTCcePpWoAjXsNeQJsfUQdR6lZZTPooyArsQknZSxq6p5wzC51A7pe2DiC-sc8kN17oRvc8MH9CT7wbQhyphenhyphenMxMOuayxZg3Rlvtz3BssLgcLT5b4OF5OWu_VVP_kQVFy0vva1WWVWjKcL-i4atJEEz2iTLtUBRCwYNNFAIMAz2VLKC-qrcPx93Q-o2vg/s320/Atlas.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Upholding The Status-Quo:</b> The Left’s election defeat is not the work of the Atlas Network. It is not even the work of David Seymour and Act. It is the work of ordinary citizens who liked the Right’s stories better than they liked the Left’s. If the Right’s stories were made more convincing by a sympathetic think tank, then the Left should not be getting mad at their opponent’s effective apparatus, it should be getting mad at itself for not having one of its own.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>THE ATLAS NETWORK</b> has been trending lately – in the minds of the New Zealand Left. Devastated by the election result, and further demoralised by recent polling showing the Right increasing its grip on New Zealanders’ political imagination, the Atlas Network has provided the Left with what it most needs – an explanation for its failure.</div><br />It is important to state at the very start that the Atlas Network is not the Left equivalent of Q-Anon. It is a real organisation, founded in 1981, by Antony Fisher (1915-1988) devotee of the fanatical anti-collectivist, F.A. Hayek (1899-1992) and a tireless proponent of the monetarist and free-market ideas that ultimately found practical political expression in the government of Margaret Thatcher and the administration of Ronald Reagan.<br /><br />Fisher’s objective in forming the Atlas Network was to encourage like-minded individuals and groups to do as he had done nearly thirty years earlier: set up “think tanks” dedicated to advancing free-market ideology. His own creation, the Institute of Economic Affairs, was founded in 1955 and played an important role in formulating what would become Thatcher’s economic programme. But, just as Che Guevara wanted “one, two, many Vietnams”, Fisher wanted one, two, many right-wing think tanks. He had witnessed at first-hand what could be achieved by a handful of people “thinking the unthinkable”. The more there were of these ideological handfuls, the faster the “New Right’s” ideas would spread.<br /><br />None of this information is new, Fisher’s exploits are documented comprehensively in Richard Cockett’s book, “Thinking The Unthinkable: Think-tanks and the Economic Counter-revolution, 1931-83”, published in 1995.<br /><br />Paying close attention to who is influencing whom behind the scenes is, however, something activists on the New Zealand Left engage in only intermittently. There was a brief flurry of left-wing journalists twitching back the curtains in the late-1980s. They were motivated, mainly, by the dramatic emergence of the Business Roundtable as the New Zealand free marketeers’ ideological powerhouse.<br /><br />The fact that Roger Douglas, father of New Zealand’s neoliberal revolution, was a member of Hayek’s high altitude think tank, the “Mont Pelerin Society”, prompted even more left-wing interest in the influence of think tanks on New Zealand’s political life.<br /><br />With the election of the Labour-Alliance coalition government in 1999, however, the power of the Business Roundtable began to wane, leading to a corresponding falling-off of interest in venturing behind-the-scenes by left-wing journalists. This decline was compounded by the death of the Left’s principal keeper-of-tabs on the machinations of the business-backed Right, the editor, author and journalist, Bruce Jesson (1944-1999).<br /><br />The death of the Business Roundtable’s indefatigable Executive Director, Roger Kerr (1945-2011) was similarly demoralising for the Right. In 2012, having already merged with the New Zealand Institute, the Business Roundtable became a new, much sunnier, think tank, the New Zealand Initiative. Led by the ebullient Oliver Hartwich, the New Zealand Initiative has carefully avoided acquiring the sinister reputation of its big-business-backed predecessor.<br /><br />Growing alongside the Business Roundtable for most of the 1990s was what began as the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT). Founded in 1993 by Roger Douglas, the former National cabinet minister, Derek Quigley, and multi-millionaire, Craig Heatly, ACT was to serve as a vehicle for those classical liberal ideas no longer deemed acceptable by either Labour or National. In 1994, a year after New Zealand’s adoption of the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral system, ACT became the Act Party. In the first MMP general election (1996) Act (now led by Douglas’s former henchman, Richard Prebble) secured 6.1 percent of the Party Vote.<br /><br />The question being asked by left-wing journalists in 2024 is whether or not the Act Party has always been associated with right-wing organisations like the Atlas Network. Or, is the Network’s sole link with Act its present leader, David Seymour, who, prior to entering Parliament, was employed by two conservative Canadian think tanks, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the Manning Foundation, both of which were, at one time or another, members of the Atlas Network.<br /><br />Neither of these questions make much sense.<br /><br />To begin with, the Atlas Network has never made any secret of its existence (even if, after years of left-wing attention, it now keeps its membership list secret. It was not illegal to set up such an organisation in 1981, and it is not illegal now. Think tanks, and organisations dedicated to facilitating the establishment of think tanks, have been a feature of the global political landscape for decades – and that is as true of the Left as it is of the Right.<br /><br />Indeed, the rise of right-wing think tanks in the 1970s and 80s was a direct response to what their big-business backers (including, entirely unsurprisingly, big oil and big tobacco) saw as the near conquest of their capitalist societies by left-wing ideas and left-leaning institutions.<br /><br />The free-market fightback, pioneered by think tanks like Fisher’s Institute of Economic Affairs, represented UK and US capitalists’ last-ditch defence of their profits and power. They had witnessed the trade unions bring down a British government in 1973, and the liberal press force the resignation of an American president in 1974. These unprecedented defeats had struck them as harbingers of doom – <i>their </i>doom.<br /><br />That the Right was smart enough to realise that the battle for the hearts and minds of voters living in democratic states would be a battle of ideas – ideas that those same voters could believe in and be inspired by – and against which the Left, still mired in the demonstrably inadequate economic doctrines of the past, could offer nothing remotely competitive, was hardly the Right’s fault.<br /><br />Nor is it fair to blame a young man, inspired by the libertarian and free-market doctrines of the right-wing counter-revolution of the 1980s and 90s, for accepting offers of employment from conservative Canadian think tanks. Where else was he supposed to go looking for a “political” job – the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions? Greenpeace?<br /><br />It is highly instructive that left-wing politicians with CVs that show them working for “progressive” organisations, NGOs, and yes, even left-wing think tanks with links to billionaire donors, are not portrayed as evil-doers by the mainstream media. Having a background in the trade unions, student organisations, environmental groups, etc, is seen as perfectly natural. Where else are left-wingers going to learn their trade? Exxon? British & American Tobacco? Pfizer?<br /><br />David Seymour’s links to the Atlas Network do not make him a villain. Working for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy is not the same as working for Hamas. Morally-speaking, is taking money from oil companies really all that distinguishable from giving money to oil companies every time we fill up our petrol tank? Getting from A to B; winning the battle of ideas; the Devil clips our tickets either way.<br /><br />The Left’s election defeat is not the work of the Atlas Network. It is not even the work of David Seymour and Act. It is the work of ordinary citizens who liked the Right’s stories better than they liked the Left’s. If the Right’s stories were made more convincing by a sympathetic think tank, or two, then the Left should not be getting mad at their opponent’s effective apparatus, it should be getting mad at itself for not having one of its own.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on </i>The Democracy Project <i>of Monday, 12 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-46362837214479361452024-02-15T15:14:00.000+13:002024-02-15T15:14:08.286+13:00Luxon Rejects The “Rejection Election” At His Peril.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqOB6KfKNhoBbLwnRUYAaKR4aY78b7LITf8bmEkvywXOPx3vKWld-wFYRhH__3Qo7rnnwrIYmG6aZ0wxqmbFAFE4Qy5FN5SbsRe1cuw0bzasInn-HLywwevwW1adsPFOI3fa26NauQLrExAttZbt0BlnolO47S3OucTEM3nzLjQ_8X9oeuiBFdpLa7hfw/s890/Luxon%20Seymour%20Peters.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="890" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqOB6KfKNhoBbLwnRUYAaKR4aY78b7LITf8bmEkvywXOPx3vKWld-wFYRhH__3Qo7rnnwrIYmG6aZ0wxqmbFAFE4Qy5FN5SbsRe1cuw0bzasInn-HLywwevwW1adsPFOI3fa26NauQLrExAttZbt0BlnolO47S3OucTEM3nzLjQ_8X9oeuiBFdpLa7hfw/w400-h229/Luxon%20Seymour%20Peters.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Fitting Right In:</b> National retailed a reactionary manifesto of right-wing, racially-charged policies to the electorate throughout 2023. No talk back then of ignoring the overwhelming political preferences of the voting public and making a strong stand on principle. If Luxon’s pollsters and focus-groups were telling him that the public was in a mood to discipline and punish – then discipline and punish it would be.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>MUCH HAS BEEN MADE</b> of Prime Minister Chris Luxon’s definitive rejection of Act’s Treaty Principles Bill. Why? Because Luxon not only confirmed that National will vote against giving David Seymour’s bill a second reading, but at the same time acknowledged that the only reason he agreed to support it to the select committee stage was because he did not want to precipitate an unscheduled general election so soon after 14 October. In addition to providing us with a useful gauge of Luxon’s prime ministerial fortitude, Luxon’s “slap-down” of Seymour’s bottom-line policy also betrays his fundamental misreading of the election result’s meaning.</div><br />The General Election of 2023 was a rejection election, and rejection elections are powered, overwhelmingly, by popular anger. Not only was there a broad-based and vociferous element within the electorate determined to punish the incumbent Labour Government, but also a coterminous movement to roll back what was perceived to be Labour’s extreme, ideologically-driven, cultural agenda.<br /><br />At no time during the election campaign did either Christopher Luxon or the National Party attempt to draw a clear distinction between themselves and the other right-wing parties – Act and NZ First – on matters relating to Māori sovereignty.<br /><br />When Winston Peters announced his party’s policies in relation to removing Treaty principles from legislation, and reframing the mission of the Waitangi Tribunal, Luxon did not recoil in horror. Nor did he remind New Zealanders that it was National, under Jim Bolger and Doug Graham, that kicked-off the Treaty Settlement process back in the early-1990s. Or recall with pride that it was John Key who sent Pita Sharples to New York to sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.<br /><br />To be sure, when questioned directly about Act’s desire to clarify the principles of the Treaty by way of a binding referendum, Luxon described his most obvious coalition partner’s policy as “unhelpful and divisive”. That this response was a sop to the liberal wing of Luxon’s party, and to its more “moderate” voters, was made clear by his promotion of policies that unequivocally aligned the National Party with the right-wing populist mood of the nation. Most notably, National’s policy of curbing co-governance by abolishing Three Waters and the Māori Health Authority.<br /><br />A National Party willing to send that sort of reactionary message to the electorate was not in the least bit concerned about being seen as “unhelpful” or “divisive”. And neither was the National Party committed to reinstating English at the top of official government stationery.<br /><br />But those were only the most openly acknowledged efforts to align National with the majority’s determination to reject, repeal, rip-up and remove the ideological advances of Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori. Voters who understood the secret language of New Zealand conservatism were in little doubt that National had plenty more punishment in store for Māori New Zealanders.<br /><br />Conservatives have long exploited the tendency of the racist Right to associate the social pathologies of drug use, domestic abuse, gun violence, aggravated robbery, juvenile delinquency, and truancy with Māori New Zealanders. That these are the pathologies of poverty, afflicting the lives of Pakeha as well as Māori, cuts little ice with right-wingers, who reject structural explanations for anti-social behaviour in favour of those highlighting personal and/or racial deficiencies.<br /><br />Nor does the Right care overmuch that “cracking down hard” on crime will send Māori New Zealanders to prison in disproportionate numbers, leaving behind broken families and ruined lives. Even though, historically, “tough on crime” policies merely ensure that the cycle of crime and incarceration continues, most National Party voters regard the policy not as “a fiscal and moral failure” (as Bill English described it) but as a necessary evil.<br /><br />National retailed a reactionary manifesto of right-wing, racially-charged policies to the electorate throughout 2023. Spooked by Act’s record poll numbers, and watching NZ First’s steady rise with alarm, Luxon and his team were in no mood to front-foot National’s liberal traditions. No talk back then of ignoring the overwhelming political preferences of the voting public and making a strong stand on principle. If Luxon’s pollsters and focus-groups were telling him that the public was in a mood to discipline and punish – then discipline and punish it would be.<br /><br />Not that Luxon, himself, was personally suited to playing the Hard Man. Robotically positive, with his happy-chappy platitudes playing on continuous loop, Luxon left the dog-whistling to his lieutenants. The nearest he came to playing rough was when he dressed up as a pirate – and even then he had to be instructed on how to wield his sword. Even so, when all the votes had been counted and there was a three-way coalition to negotiate, Luxon struggled to locate his inner-thug. The National Party leader’s priority (in almost every setting) is to get whatever he is doing, done – whatever it takes.<br /><br />And what it took was Luxon’s commitment to Seymour that his Treaty Principles Bill would be backed by National and NZ First to the select committee stage. What that meant was that Act’s coalition partners were supportive of the broad, open-ended debate that sending this particularly controversial bill to a select committee was certain to set in motion. It defies all logic to sanction this course of action if, in utter contempt for the consultation process, and regardless of what the debate reveals about the wishes of the New Zealand people <i>vis-à-vis</i> Te Tiriti o Waitangi, your Party’s next move is to vote it down.<br /><br />Such a profoundly cynical political strategy would be dangerous at the best of times – and these are not the best of times. New Zealand is in the early stages of the same populist distemper that has polarised and paralysed the United States. Luxon and his party opted to climb on the back of this populist tiger, getting off it will be no simple matter.<br /><br />To the hundreds-of-thousands of right-wing voters who backed National, Act and NZ First to bring together a government committed to disciplining and punishing Labour and its allies, it looks like Luxon’s National pony has refused its very first fence. Spooked by hui, hikoi and haka at Turangawaewae, Ratana and Waitangi, and bowing to the relentless bullying of the “legacy media”, Luxon has publicly slapped-down the Right’s young champion which, as far as they’re concerned, is the same as slapping them down – the people whose votes put National in power.<br /><br />But that is not how populism works. You can’t just switch it on and off like a lightbulb. Nor can you boast about ignoring the wishes of the “overwhelming majority” of the New Zealand people. Not if you want to remain the dominant right-wing party.<br /><br />The sharp up-tick in Act’s support in the latest Curia poll should be taken as a warning. So, too, should the findings of the latest Research New Zealand survey. Against all the confident prognostications of the punditocracy, a solid plurality of Men, New Zealanders aged 18-34, Kiwis living north of Taupo, and (astonishingly) Māori, are in favour of confirming the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi by referendum.<br /><br />Small wonder then, that in spite of Luxon’s very public slap-down, David Seymour is not at all disposed to giving-up the fight.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> website on Monday, 12 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-5743157644622432112024-02-15T14:54:00.000+13:002024-02-15T14:54:35.461+13:00Are You A Leftist?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSiXMz54wdoS3ab-Vbu2HGMDErXgppjBZY0q0K4q-vYsCOMOqM90WvW8WlFQxFqzMgEqhnqRlh_ul0KhREcOnVLSz3i5GRGt5di858OlPv17f8YI-HdB9qFv9lGkNR9A3y4eR2iq7SeKHuVHHSRXILqP2yZRBL_PZD_x3d0K8D-BjD9UFwz9gNxEoqhbg/s688/Marx%20the%20Saviour%20AI%20Image.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="684" data-original-width="688" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSiXMz54wdoS3ab-Vbu2HGMDErXgppjBZY0q0K4q-vYsCOMOqM90WvW8WlFQxFqzMgEqhnqRlh_ul0KhREcOnVLSz3i5GRGt5di858OlPv17f8YI-HdB9qFv9lGkNR9A3y4eR2iq7SeKHuVHHSRXILqP2yZRBL_PZD_x3d0K8D-BjD9UFwz9gNxEoqhbg/s320/Marx%20the%20Saviour%20AI%20Image.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Nothing To Lose But Our Chains:</b> The emancipatory movement which the Left, understood correctly, has always been, cannot accommodate those who are only able to celebrate one group’s freedom by taking it from another. The expectation, always, among leftists, is that liberty enlarges us. That striking-off a person’s shackles not only frees the person who wore them, but also the person who fastened them in the first place.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>THERE WAS A TIME</b> when a leftist’s definition of “leftism” corresponded pretty closely to everybody else’s definition. The term identified a coherent world view – to the point where knowing where someone stood on one issue enabled others to predict with surprising accuracy where they stood on a host of others. If a person was opposed to the death penalty, then the chances were high they were in favour of free speech. If they believed in the closed union shop, then they probably also believed in the public ownership of natural monopolies like power and water. It wasn’t easy being a left-winger – especially during the Cold War – but it was remarkably easy to define what it meant.</div><br />Today, the term “left-winger” is applied to persons holding an impossibly diverse and self-contradictory set of beliefs. From the traditional leftist who insists that the content and direction of policy should be informed by science; to the contemporary “leftist” who insists that: “Trans women are real women.” From left-wing parties determined to reinvigorate the public sector; to “left-wing” parties with neoliberal economic agendas indistinguishable from those of their right-wing competitors. From leftists who stand firm on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; to “leftists” who insist that “Hate Speech” be criminalised.<br /><br />The use of scare quotes is, of course, intended to communicate the author’s rejection of the term leftist being applied to any person or party guilty of rejecting science, endorsing <i>laissez-faire</i> capitalism, or favouring the ideologically-driven restriction of their fellow citizens’ freedom.<br /><br />There is one more test for determining whether or not one is a leftist – the History Test. If the study of history is reduced to little more than a search for evidence of the crimes of pre-ordained “enemies” and “oppressors’”, then by no means can the “historians” doing the searching be accurately described as left-wing. Indeed, those attempting to harness history to ideology are much more likely to be radical nationalists than radical democrats. Always remembering that another name for radical nationalism is “fascism”.<br /><br />Leftists underserving of scare quotes regard history as a teacher, not a prosecutor; as a well, not a syringe. Ideology retreats before history in the same way that contaminated judgement retreats before the advance of uncontaminated evidence. Nothing gives away fake “leftism” more irretrievably than its deliberate falsification of history in the name of “social” or “national” justice.<br /><br />A word or two needs to be inserted here to distinguish “leftism” from its numerous component ideologies: social-democracy, socialism, communism and anarchism. In brief: social-democracy seeks to significantly restrict the size of the capitalist marketplace; socialism attempts to extinguish the capitalist marketplace altogether; communism promotes a state dedicated to operationalising the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”; and anarchism seeks to eliminate the state altogether.<br /><br />As the world discovered, socialism and communism, precisely because they both sought to replace the economic and social structures with which most human-beings were familiar, provoked a great deal of resistance. In crushing that resistance, the socialists and communists were increasingly driven to rely on state-directed repression and terrorism. Consequently, the states which emerged from these struggles, although proudly describing themselves as socialist democracies, were in fact the cruellest of tyrannies, far removed from the emancipatory well-springs of the radical-democratic project called leftism.<br /><br />That word, “emancipation” is crucial to a proper understanding of leftism. In societies where power and wealth are distributed in such a way that huge numbers of people are rendered economically, socially and politically defenceless, freeing the oppressed must always take priority.<br /><br />The working-class, whose subsistence depends upon permitting the tiny capitalist minority who pay them to appropriate the “surplus value” of their labour. Women, denied their rightful share of life’s bounty by the systemic and oppressive violence which characterises societies dominated by men. Diverse ethnic communities, economically and culturally subjugated by those who claim superiority over all other ethnicities and who have shaped their societies to reward their prejudices. LGBTQI+, discriminated against because their behaviour challenges society’s gendered norms. One way or another, all these groups seek emancipation. Leftists are committed to making a world fit for free people to live in.<br /><br />But, the emancipatory movement cannot accommodate those who are only able to celebrate one group’s freedom by taking it from another. The expectation, always, among leftists, is that liberty enlarges us. That striking-off a person’s shackles not only frees the person who wore them, but also the person who fastened them in the first place.<br /><br />A fair redistribution of wealth and power ultimately liberates the capitalist as well as the worker. By ceasing to be men’s slaves, women make it possible for men to cease being their masters. The emancipation of the queer marches hand-in-hand with the liberation of the straight. Only by freeing the oppressed can the oppressors themselves become free. Slavery invented the whip, only freedom can make it disappear.<br /><br />Applying these ideas to the salient political issue of the hour – how best to protect and/or give expression to Te Tiriti o Waitangi – where are the leftists to be found? Are they located at the side of those Māori who insist that Te Tiriti is sacrosanct, and must remain inviolate; that the descendants of those who signed the document 184 years ago – Māori and Pakeha – have no right to interrogate its meaning and relevance in the Twenty-First Century?<br /><br />The answer can only be “No.” To treat Te Tiriti in this way is to fetishise it and, by doing so, eliminate its power, as a living document, to guide the New Zealand people. It would also entail ignoring the historical fact that notions of the Treaty of Waitangi’s intentions have changed radically over the years. Even worse, it would require leftists to turn a blind eye to the blatant revision of the Treaty’s meaning and purpose by Māori-aligned historians and jurists to facilitate the ideological aims and objectives of Māori irredentism.<br /><br />If the leftist’s goal is emancipation, then the leftist’s role in this issue is to open up the space for a respectful, but open-ended, national debate on Te Tiriti – beginning, ideally, with the ideas contained in Margaret Mutu’s and Moana Jackson’s “Matike Mai Aotearoa”, and the “He Puapua Report”, and expanding outward from there.<br /><br />To attack the idea of progressing a national debate on New Zealand’s “foundation document” is to expose oneself as someone who elevates ethnic identity above democracy, and, in the context of the current “official” understanding of Te Tiriti, honours the concept of “rangatiratanga” (chiefly leadership) above the democratic rights of individual citizens. Set within the context of the last 100 years of world history, these beliefs could not be defined, even vaguely, as left-wing – quite the reverse in fact.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on </i>The Democracy Project<i> of Thursday, 8 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-71192575866185303412024-02-05T15:34:00.000+13:002024-02-05T15:34:06.643+13:00She Says She Wants A Revolution.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhht4kBM0_542cGzzc4b1elj4MRnZ1ZxN0ag87ISUAjylJ1nhfKR_Z5XYZK9wy6VzkOkLIR8I9F_nsNOLX2bEbLXAplqeMWMKT7WcTo15c_JVEPeiVpmMVd6siFrWK27llte4GnyY8ubtfW3kce76lLcB-jwoTubeuUqjClxSurmI_kCbA5L9gtyZK_M8E/s923/Chloe%20Announces%20Her%20Run%20For%20Green%20Co-Leadership.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="923" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhht4kBM0_542cGzzc4b1elj4MRnZ1ZxN0ag87ISUAjylJ1nhfKR_Z5XYZK9wy6VzkOkLIR8I9F_nsNOLX2bEbLXAplqeMWMKT7WcTo15c_JVEPeiVpmMVd6siFrWK27llte4GnyY8ubtfW3kce76lLcB-jwoTubeuUqjClxSurmI_kCbA5L9gtyZK_M8E/w400-h269/Chloe%20Announces%20Her%20Run%20For%20Green%20Co-Leadership.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Heads Up:</b> Jeremy Corbyn’s greatest mistake was to give the ruling elites and their enablers advance warning that he was coming for their power, their purse, and their privilege. Candidate for the Green Party co-leadership, Chloe Swarbrick, appears to share Corbyn’s naïve assumption that those who own the system will sit idly by while a genuine left-wing leader organises a revolution at the ballot box to take it from them.</i><br style="text-align: start;" /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>CHLOE SWARBRICK WANTS A REVOLUTION.</b> Her “announcement speech” has been hailed as a “once in a generation” oratorical triumph. I wouldn’t go that far, but there’s no disputing that Swarbrick took full advantage of the media’s interest in her candidacy for the Greens’ co-leadership to lay her programmatic cards on the table.</div><br />“Conventional, incremental politics has failed to rise to the challenges we face”, Swarbrick declared, “those intertwined climate, inequality, biodiversity and housing crises.”<br /><br />So far, so good left-wing boilerplate. But, it was in the next few sentences that the young MP’s revolutionary intent was revealed:<br /><br />“What is possible in politics is only ever defined by the willingness of those in power. As Co-leader, I want to show everyone in this country the power running through their veins to choose our future. We cannot leave politics to the politicians.”<br /><br />Opined the Green politician.<br /><br />And it is here that the problems confronted by all revolutionaries begin: with those beguilingly inclusive words; “everyone in this country”.<br /><br />There was a time and place – late-eighteenth century France, to be precise – when appealing to “everyone in this country” made a certain kind of sense.<br /><br />When the King, supported by an aristocracy encompassing approximately 1 percent of the population, ruled over everybody else, most notably a rightless and impoverished peasantry comprising 90 percent-plus of the population, “everyone in this country” (who wasn’t a king or an aristocrat) had a strong and direct interest in transforming their society.<br /><br />But that was more than 200 years ago. The power that runs through the veins of New Zealanders, today, does not, alas, run uniformly. Some Kiwis are better equipped to choose their futures than others. Indeed, there are hundreds-of-thousands of New Zealand citizens so bereft of cultural, social and economic capital that speechifying to them about choosing their futures could be seen as grossly insensitive.<br /><br />Swarbrick is a highly intelligent person, with an impressive and oft-demonstrated capacity to marshal facts and figures in support of her arguments. It is strange, therefore, that her announcement speech largely fails to address the manifest power differentials in the society she is proposing to transform. Especially when she goes out of her way to preface her call for a grass-roots uprising with the eminently sensible – and accurate – statement:<br /><br />“What is possible in politics is only ever defined by the willingness of those in power.”<br /><br />Like the willingness of farmers to shoulder the not inconsiderable cost of cleaning-up their rivers and streams and reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions.<br /><br />Like the willingness of small business owners to pay a capital gains tax.<br /><br />Like the willingness of big businesses to redistribute the lion’s share of corporate surpluses from their shareholders to their employees.<br /><br />Like the willingness of landlords to shoulder the costs of upgrading their properties, and empowering their tenants.<br /><br />Like the willingness of those whose salaries place them in the top quintile of income-earners to pay higher taxes.<br /><br />Except, of course, the willingness of all the above groups to redefine politics in ways that not only make them poorer, but also undermine their ability to set the boundaries of acceptable change, is NIL.<br /><br />These New Zealand socio-economic interests are no more willing to surrender their power and privilege than were their British counterparts when the Labour Party membership elected a leader determined to govern “for the many, not the few”.<br /><br />That last was a powerful rhetorical flourish – adapted from the final verse of Percy Bysshe Shelly’s incendiary poem “The Masque of Anarchy”.) Too powerful, as it turned out.<br /><br />Jeremy Corbyn’s greatest mistake (apart from his failure to back Brexit) was to give the ruling elites and their enablers advance warning that he was coming for their power, their purse, and their privilege. Corbyn’s political destruction is thus attributable to his naïve assumption that those who owned the system would sit idly by while he organised a revolution at the ballot box to take it from them.<br /><br />Clearly, Swarbrick has not learned the lessons embedded in the depressing saga of Corbyn’s rise and fall.<br /><br />“I will grow the Green movement to achieve tangible, real-world, people-powered change - as I have since I first signed up - but now, at even greater scale.”<br /><br />That’s telling ‘em, Chloe!<br /><br />“I will challenge this Government’s cruel agenda and communicate the imagination, potential, and the necessary hope to mobilise for the sustainable, inspiring and inclusive Aotearoa that I see reflected every day in our communities”<br /><br />And that’s telling them even more!<br /><br />“They” will not move immediately to remove the potential threat that is Chloe Swarbrick. Like the British ruling-elites, New Zealand’s defenders of the neoliberal status-quo will wait to see if the putative Green co-leader’s revolution at the ballot-box amounts to anything more than yet another middle-class firebrand’s pipe-dream.<br /><br />There’s no denying that “they” have every reason to be sceptical. After all, Jim Anderton’s Alliance had promised something very similar thirty years ago. It’s unashamedly socialist component, the NewLabour Party, had also set out to make its followers “local body members, councillors and mayors” They, too, promised “more [Alliance] MPs in Parliament and ultimately, our nation’s first [Alliance-led] Government.”<br /><br />Didn’t happen. With the notable exception of Anderton’s proletarian redoubt of Sydenham, the Alliance did well (even, like Swarbrick, capturing Auckland Central) where, thirty years later, the Greens still do best. Those central-city electorates composed of university students and young professionals. Where it mattered, however, in the electorates of the poor and marginalised, the Alliance failed miserably. Against their most formidable competitors, Labour voters, and those who didn’t vote at all, Alliance candidates struggled to reclaim their deposits.<br /><br />Just how steep a mountain Swarbrick has set herself to climb is evident in the votes received by Labour and the Greens in the electorates where citizens’ life choices are most seriously constrained. Let’s look at Mangere. Labour: 61.40 percent; Greens: 7.85 percent. Or, Mana. Labour: 62 percent; Greens: 9.8 percent.<br /><br />It is always possible, of course, that Swarbrick, unlike Anderton, will succeed in heating the blood of enough New Zealanders to turn those stats around. That in 2025 there will be a Green tsunami that lifts unabashed insurgents into council chambers and mayoral offices all across New Zealand. That the polls will register a massive shift from Labour to Green and, month after month, confirm Swarbrick’s preferred prime minister status. It is possible that, against all the odds, her revolution at the ballot-box progresses from pipe-dream to probability.<br /><br />If that is the case, however, then Swarbrick’s troubles will only just be getting started. Every weapon the Establishment possesses will be pointed in her direction, and every right-wing journalistic scalp-hunter will be powering-up his keyboard.<div><br /></div><div>By the time the Powers That Be were through with Corbyn, working-class Brits were cursing his name. By the time our own elites are through with Chole Swarbrick, she’ll either be a broken political doll – or New Zealand’s first Green prime minister.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> website on Monday, 5 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-10376868405016069472024-02-05T12:51:00.001+13:002024-02-05T12:51:26.210+13:00Bunching Up.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvWZPoIneEDfMQmo2JRRqGG1nKyXhxinJkwTqkeLjd_rVnUsXoyE3gefTfaeWrKJUAlSKkBGnqE01uDONhYIpZOq0D88g8jOglB7m_AoNrpJOtG69df2OxDorybJWPrj5ebKi5llN1o0J0oNmuwgfzWV9fYwK7ekoBCDdqloNO5DS0SB7sxYCx96sji1g/s794/Bunching%20Up%20Image.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="794" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvWZPoIneEDfMQmo2JRRqGG1nKyXhxinJkwTqkeLjd_rVnUsXoyE3gefTfaeWrKJUAlSKkBGnqE01uDONhYIpZOq0D88g8jOglB7m_AoNrpJOtG69df2OxDorybJWPrj5ebKi5llN1o0J0oNmuwgfzWV9fYwK7ekoBCDdqloNO5DS0SB7sxYCx96sji1g/w400-h208/Bunching%20Up%20Image.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Shoulder To Shoulder:</b> With Labour only 8 percentage points away from descending into what most political scientists encouragingly call the “death zone” – i.e. a poll result under 20 percent – the instinct, like raw recruits under fire, is to bunch-up alongside the other parties of the Left.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>STRATEGICALLY-SPEAKING</b>, the Labour Party has positioned itself in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong leader.</div><br />The Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, uncomfortably sandwiched between the Treaty revisionists of Act and NZ First, has precious little room in which to manoeuvre. Labour should, therefore, be taking full advantage of Luxon’s discomfort by presenting itself as the only party capable of leading New Zealand out of the Badlands of racial disharmony and conflict. This it cannot do, however, because it has positioned itself alongside the Greens and Te Pāti Māori at the uncompromisingly radical end of the political spectrum.<br /><br />The reasoning behind Labour’s eagerness to present itself as every bit as radical as the Greens and Te Pāti Māori isn’t difficult to grasp. Having secured just 26.91 percent of the Party Vote in the General Election, seen six of the seven Māori seats fall to Te Pāti Māori, and watched the Greens rack up their largest share of the Party Vote ever, while holding Auckland Central and picking up the former Labour strongholds of Wellington Central and Rongotai, Labour’s strategists are keen to keep as little daylight as possible between themselves and their left-wing competition.<br /><br />They are terrified that any attempt to distance Labour from the positions carved out by the Greens and Te Pāti Māori will only encourage more desertions. When your (supposedly major) party is only 8 percentage points away from descending into what most political scientists encouragingly call the “death zone” – i.e. a poll result under 20 percent – the instinct, like raw recruits under fire, is to bunch-up.<br /><br />Which only makes it easier for your enemies to shoot you down.<br /><br />Labour needs to put as much daylight as possible between itself and their radical comrades as possible. Especially when it was the electorate’s negative reaction to what seemed to be Labour’s wholehearted embrace of the same ideological positions that have, for years, kept Te Pāti Māori and the Greens trapped in the Death Zone, that drove thousands of former Labour voters into the arms of National, Act and NZ First.<br /><br />This is not only necessary for Labour to have any chance of recovery, but also for the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to have the slightest hope of ever being in a position to pull the big levers of government. Holding six of the seven Māori seats is all very well, but what can Te Pāti Māori’s MPs do with them except engage in performative Pakeha-baiting on the floor of the House of Representatives? Pumping-up the Green vote to 11.6 percent is similarly unavailing if its only effect is to increase your party’s presence on the Opposition benches. For the minor parties to be effective, they must attach themselves to a major party.<br /><br />But, that’s the question – isn’t it? Are New Zealand voters convinced that Labour will ever again be regarded as a “major” party? Or, do they see Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori joining together in some sort of ideologically polyamorous commune at the “left-wing nutters” end of the political spectrum?<br /><br />Any half-way decent political leader of a centre-left party would by now have recognised the intensifying debate over te Tiriti o Waitangi as a golden opportunity to stake out a position close enough to the concerns of Non-Māori voters to make them very glad that Labour is, at long bloody last, talking sense; while remaining close enough to Māori voters for them to feel reassured that Labour is not preparing to consign Te Tiriti to the dustbin of history. Something along the lines of: “If Te Tiriti is to remain a living document, then all New Zealanders – not just Māori, judges, and academics – need to feel confident about what the document actually meant in 1840, and what it should mean in 2024.”<br /><br />Sadly, Chris Hipkins and his Labour caucus are unwilling to risk the wrath of Te Pāti Māori and the Greens by shifting their party out of its woke comfort zone. Instead they are still hurling accusations of racism and white supremacy at the political parties which attracted a majority of the votes cast in the 2023 general election.<br /><br />Oblivious, apparently, to the inherent unwisdom of branding the citizens whose votes you so desperately need if you are to have any chance of ever again forming a government – racists and white supremacists.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally published in </i>The Otago Daily Times <i>and </i>The Greymouth Star<i> of Friday, 2 February 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-82772115860307537262024-02-02T11:56:00.000+13:002024-02-02T11:56:16.196+13:00The Hollow Party.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQrGVVkx-w9uo-QNpeFlwmUm6JWISQnmZwVGDHBSMMdWuxmFi_Pb7Zu08GNg1wl2-GmsqcLH0eEmLoYWBbGFVFTCZ3iDX7TikYCc7kQn9IcxYHnS7bs-BWNVV6vTfpTrXcQ2YV6NDV5gRumIFe_-lEjAcp6B8-GWFg6UT8qM-s_ZAe0ONf69PPuMNX33A/s953/Hollow%20Party.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="537" data-original-width="953" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQrGVVkx-w9uo-QNpeFlwmUm6JWISQnmZwVGDHBSMMdWuxmFi_Pb7Zu08GNg1wl2-GmsqcLH0eEmLoYWBbGFVFTCZ3iDX7TikYCc7kQn9IcxYHnS7bs-BWNVV6vTfpTrXcQ2YV6NDV5gRumIFe_-lEjAcp6B8-GWFg6UT8qM-s_ZAe0ONf69PPuMNX33A/w400-h225/Hollow%20Party.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/<br />Headpiece filled with Straw. Alas!</i> – <b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The Hollow Men</i>, T.S. Eliot 1925</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>LABOUR’S GREAT GOOD FORTUNE</b>, as New Zealand emerged from the worst of the neoliberal revolution, was to possess Helen Clark. It was Clark who engineered the installation of Mike Moore to “save the furniture” as Labour’s popularity plummeted in 1990. And, it was Clark who made sure that, when Moore failed (albeit narrowly) to win the 1993 general election, she would be the one to replace him. Labour thus acquired a highly intelligent, politically savvy leader, steeped in the Labour tradition, but also fully acclimatised to the new ideological climate. She would remain Labour’s leader for the next 15 years – beating Harry Holland’s daunting tenure by one year!</div><br />Clark’s worth to Labour is confirmed by the fact that for 9 of those 15 years she was New Zealand’s prime minister. But, it must also be acknowledged that Clark cost Labour dearly. Her political skills were more than equal to seeing-off anyone who harboured thoughts of replacing her, and she was not the sort of person to groom a popular replacement. As a consequence, when she and her government were defeated by John Key in 2008, the best successor she could bequeath to the Labour Party was the worthy, but uninspiring, Phil Goff.<br /><br />What followed were nine years of bitter political in-fighting and ideological drift. Labour went through five leaders, the last of which, Jacinda Ardern, improved upon Clark’s losing Party Vote by a derisory 2.9 percentage points, and had to be elevated to the prime-ministership by the NZ First leader, Winston Peters.<br /><br />Ardern, while no intellectual, was a superb communicator who seemed to pass through history without touching the sides. Her initial response to the global Covid-19 Pandemic laid claim to the hearts and minds of so many New Zealanders that in 2020 Labour attracted sufficient support to govern alone. But, as the Coronavirus continued to evolve, and Labour’s efforts to control it proved insufficient, Ardern and her cabinet began to lose their lustre. The voters turned away.<br /><br />Aware that the political magic had deserted her, Ardern passed the mantle of leadership to Chris Hipkins. Perhaps aware of just how much love Labour had already lost, Ardern’s most obvious successor, Grant Robertson, had declined to accept her crown. What happened over the next 10 months spoke eloquently of just how hollow, intellectually and morally, the Labour Party had become.<br /><br />Part of Clark’s aptitude for electoral politics was her understanding of just how far the New Zealand electorate was prepared to tolerate a government stepping away from the politics of “Middle New Zealand”. In spite of the fact that her core personal beliefs were more closely aligned with the Labour Left than the Labour Right, she instinctively kept her distance. Only when there was overwhelming support for the Left’s position – as was the case with the Nuclear Free policy and the US-led invasion of Iraq – would she align herself with the more radical elements of her party.<br /><br />Understandably, Clark’s reticence gave rise to considerable frustration within the Labour Left which, following her retirement from parliamentary politics, found release when Labour’s Policy Council adopted a large number of policies which Clark and her right-hand woman, Heather Simpson, had for many years sidelined. So it was that, in 2011, Goff, the former Rogernome, was asked to sell the most left-wing Labour manifesto in years.<br /><br />Labour’s poor showing in 2011 (the worst since 1928) convinced the three young Labour politicians (all of them former Beehive staffers) who had entered Parliament in 2008 – Grant Robertson, Chris Hipkins and Jacinda Ardern – that the Labour MPs and activists responsible for promoting policies that threatened the neoliberal status-quo would have to be weeded-out of Labour’s ranks. Promoting women’s rights, Māori rights and gay rights was fine, advocating state ownership, higher taxes and stronger unions was not.<br /><br />In Labour’s caucus, the Robertson-Hipkins-Ardern Troika fought its way to supremacy. In the Labour Party organisation, however, it was not always in control. The Left’s success in giving the party’s affiliated unions, and its ordinary rank-and-file members, a major role in electing Labour’s leader earned it the Troika’s unflagging enmity. It is of no small importance that when Grant Robertson offered himself as a candidate for the Labour leadership, which he did twice – first against David Cunliffe in 2013, and then again, against Andrew Little, in 2014 – he was defeated. Had the party rules required Ardern to be elected by the whole party in 2017, rather than by caucus alone (permitted due to the imminence of the general election) would she have won?<br /><br />In the six years that the Troika dominated Labour (and New Zealand) the work that began with ensuring David Shearer – rather than David Cunliffe – became leader when Goff stepped down from the leadership in 2011, was completed. With Chris Hipkins doing much of the heavy lifting, Labour MPs associated with policies promoted by the Left found themselves politically outmanoeuvred and isolated – to the point where a number simply abandoned Parliament for more rewarding and less stressful careers elsewhere. The party organisation’s independence was similarly eroded, with MPs and their hangers-on exercising an increasingly unhealthy degree of influence over its key functions: policy-making, candidate selection and Party List-ranking.<br /><br />The long-planned and impressively seamless transition from Ardern to Hipkins in January 2023 showed just how comprehensive the Troika’s victory over the party had been. No one dared stand against “Chippie”, who now attempted to execute a series of policy U-turns in the name of returning to Labour’s “bread and butter”.<br /><br />Without focus group approval, no policy – not even one promoted by the Finance and Revenue ministers working together – could count on the Leader’s support. Progressive initiatives in justice and corrections were jettisoned overnight for no better reason than the polls had pronounced them unpopular. About the only policies that remained sacrosanct were those related to the aims and objectives of identity politics. These had to remain in place – if only to reassure Labour MPs that they were still on the side of the angels. Unfortunately for Labour’s re-election chances, these were the precisely the policies that a majority of the voters hated most.<br /><br />When Cunliffe secured just 25.13 percent of the Party Vote in 2014, Hipkins – some say with tears in his eyes – begged his leader to recognise the uncompromising judgement of the electorate and step down. Nine years later, having led his party to a crushing defeat, and after securing just 26.91 percent of the Party Vote, Hipkins thought it best, all round, that he remain in place. Not one member of Labour’s caucus objected. After all, it was nobody’s fault, the changing fortunes of politics, as the theme song of “Only Fools & Horses” puts it, “is like the changing of the seasons and the tides of the sea”.<br /><br />If ever Labour needed a leader with an instinctive feel for how much Middle New Zealand will bear. Someone steeped in her party’s values and traditions, with the intellect and courage to argue for them positively and persuasively. A politician who understands that the essence of her craft is to be active, not passive; and who grasps that the duty of a leader is to heal, not harm. Then, surely, Labour – and New Zealand – needs that person now.<div><br /></div><div>Maybe Helen could have another go?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on </i>The Democracy Project <i>website on Monday, 29 January 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-29612564919293977862024-01-31T11:57:00.005+13:002024-02-05T12:57:52.384+13:00Intransigent Minorities.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHpMCzXsOZiCbjUqVD8LEmrUFgdalZacp24sMqdHjXLyNrRBfu0TfLjWHAttsTL9LVTajVjYXCoR7A5ZnB714hfk3LrHKQ47zf6VLEX_1PkJxcfgUmR909Zu13_Ql2vMe8r7IQ9gKSwOVqLplhG-SPuAKHmYTTDv0cCc8cOh0qxrogvNVLtGlADHP4Ylk/s792/Angry%20Protesters.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="792" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHpMCzXsOZiCbjUqVD8LEmrUFgdalZacp24sMqdHjXLyNrRBfu0TfLjWHAttsTL9LVTajVjYXCoR7A5ZnB714hfk3LrHKQ47zf6VLEX_1PkJxcfgUmR909Zu13_Ql2vMe8r7IQ9gKSwOVqLplhG-SPuAKHmYTTDv0cCc8cOh0qxrogvNVLtGlADHP4Ylk/s320/Angry%20Protesters.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>No Compromise! </b>The price of not keeping faith with the voters can be high. The Coalition Government would be wise to learn from the Left’s more recent mistakes. The most obvious of which is its truly bizarre belief that intransigent minorities will not be electorally punished for spitting in the face of the majority.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>WHEN THE UNITED KINGDOM</b> next goes to the polls, the Scottish National Party (SNP) will struggle to retain office. Currently, the Labour Party has a better-than-even chance of reclaiming its crown as Scotland’s electoral darling. After 17 years as the dominant force in Scottish politics, the SNP is running neck-and-neck with Labour. The reason: it allowed itself to get seriously out of step with Scotland’s voters.</div><br />The Scots are a well-educated and progressive people, but they drew the line at backing a premier, and a party, that saw nothing wrong with incarcerating a convicted rapist in Cornton Vale women’s prison on the grounds that she had subsequently self-identified as a woman.<br /><br />Though the Premier, Nicola Sturgeon, responding to public outrage, removed the rapist, Isla Bryson, from Cornton Vale, the damage was done. According to <i>The Guardian</i>, Sturgeon’s predecessor (and political mentor) Alex Salmond accused her of “throwing away” the hope of Scottish independence (the SNP’s <i>raison d’être</i>) for the sake of controversial gender recognition reforms.<br /><br />Things went from bad to worse for the SNP when, following Sturgeon’s resignation, she and her husband became the focus of a police investigation, and the SNP membership opted to reject the socially conservative candidate for Premier, Kate Forbes, in favour of the woke Humza Yousaf.<br /><br />One instance of challenging the voters’ values might be forgiven – but two? It may, or may not, be relevant that the SNP’s fall from grace occurred while it was in coalition with the Scottish Greens.<br /><br />Why allow a party currently polling at around 2-3 percent push you into backing reforms that most voters do not support? Why risk incurring the wrath of the electorate by allowing the perception to grow that the tail is wagging the dog? These questions are not restricted to the Scottish situation. There are people here in New Zealand asking very similar questions in relation to Act’s Treaty Principles Bill.<br /><br />Not the least of these inquirers is Dame Anne Salmond who, in an uncharacteristically tetchy post for the Newsroom website, observes: “The process surrounding the Treaty Principles bill is a farce. With 8.6 percent of the vote at the last election, Act has no democratic mandate to advance a referendum on Te Tiriti.”<br /><br />A perplexing observation which, on its face, suggests that even to “advance” the idea of a referendum (to resolve an otherwise irresolvable public issue) a political party must first secure 50 percent +1 of the Party Vote.<br /><br />As National Party gadfly, Liam Hehir, observed on X (formerly Twitter) :<br /><br />“Does Dame Anne Salmond have self-awareness enough to realise she is arguing against MMP and in favour of FPP? Is there an acknowledgement that you can’t construct a system where the Greens and TPM are allowed to ‘distort’ things but NZF and ACT are not?”<br /><br />We shall come back to Hehir’s question presently. But, before we do, the pithy response of lawyer, and all round go-to guy on electoral matters, Graeme Edgeler, to Dame Anne’s commentary is worth citing:<br /><br />“It seems like Anne Salmond is proposing a 15% threshold for MMP?”<br /><br />Why 15 percent? Because, ever since the introduction of MMP 28 years ago, no minor party has ever secured more than 13.35 percent of the Party Vote (NZ First in 1996.) Hence Hehir’s quip about Dame Anne calling for the reintroduction of the First-Past-The-Post electoral system.<br /><br />But, a return to the old system would not resolve the problem that lies at the heart of Dame Anne’s rather intemperate post. This, stripped of all its distracting rhetoric, boils down to one, key, question: how does one prevent the wrong sort of people, by which, presumably, Dame Anne means “right-wing” sort of people, from gaining access to the most important platform in the land – the House of Representatives?<br /><br />The answer, as Hehir points out in his tweet, is that you can’t – not without abandoning democracy altogether. If left-wing voters, and Dames, are willing to accept the right of a party receiving 11.6 percent of the Party Vote, let alone one attracting just 3.08 percent, to materially shape the policy agenda of a Labour-led coalition government, then they must also accept the reality of Act and NZ First shaping the policy agenda of Christopher Luxon’s National Party-led coalition.<br /><br />The problem is: “abandoning democracy” is exactly what a growing proportion of what passes for the Left in 2024 wants to do. Only by getting rid of democracy’s open-ended promises can the “correct” ideas be assured of winning through. Hence, the woke majority of the SNP’s <i>membership’s</i> refusal to acknowledge that the gender recognition reforms that they and the Scottish Greens were advancing would only end up sending a majority of Scottish <i>voters </i>in the direction of less radical electoral alternatives.<br /><br />We see the same ideological intransigence at work within the American Left. The radical wing of the Democratic Party simply refuses to accept that a clear majority of Americans have grown alarmed and dismayed at the number of migrants making their way into the United States. No matter how damaging their opposition to closing the US-Mexican border might be to the Democratic Party’s electoral fortunes: no matter how many voters the Left’s uncompromising zealotry is driving into the wide-open arms of Donald Trump; their ideologically-driven position is correct – and must prevail.<br /><br />That same unshakable conviction that they are right, and must prevail, is especially evident in the New Zealand Left’s insistence that the Treaty principles identified by Te Iwi Māori, the Waitangi Tribunal, the Judiciary, the Public Service and Academia are the only ones that count. That a majority of the population might feel uncomfortable with the current, “official”, interpretation of Te Tiriti simply does not signify. Under no circumstances can the ill-informed views of poorly-educated (deplorable?) New Zealanders be permitted to decide the issue.<br /><br />Hence, the demands from left-wing (and even some right-wing) political commentators for Luxon and the National Party to put their feet down and insist that the Treaty Principles Bill not proceed. Presumably, they are of the view that Act’s David Seymour, and NZ First’s Winston Peters, lack the grit to challenge Luxon. Such people are guilty of, to paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, weighing all things to a nicety in the scales of their own malice. They forget that the Right, no less than the “Left”, can, at need, be impressively intransigent.<br /><br />The opponents of the Treaty Principles Bill are also guilty of forgetting just how adroit a parliamentarian Seymour has already proved himself to be. His End of Life Choice legislation – the ultimate success of which few predicted at the time of the bill’s introduction – is now the law of the land.<br /><br />Nor should it be assumed that it is only Act’s 8.6 percent of the electorate that are committed to seeing his bill proceed all the way to a referendum. In Saturday’s (27/1/24) edition of the <i>NZ Herald</i> a group calling itself “Democracy Action” inserted a full-page advertisement headed “We Stand With You”, which urged Luxon, Peters and Seymour to be steadfast in the defence of both their electoral mandate and the democratic process. Formed by Aucklanders Lee and Susan Short, Democracy Action has long had the official interpretation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in its sights. The wealthy couple insist they are not alone.<div><br /></div><div>Nicola Sturgeon and the SDP discovered, to their cost, just how high the price of not keeping faith with one’s voters can be. The Coalition Government would be wise to learn from the Left’s mistakes. The most obvious of which is its truly bizarre belief that intransigent minorities will not be electorally punished for spitting in the face of the majority. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> website on Monday, 29 January 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-34220446000404565052024-01-29T09:58:00.000+13:002024-01-29T09:58:16.940+13:00The Cuckoo's Nest.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXfka5rM30V3y3AyuUYPQlknrG3Mee5Zzepm05_C0Kbb7yLcANIlmC1RdMHFkL37PaIOBFmth8bBisXZUDTziR0HFHBLS5vJiOznyj1YNpiX-ErxFYau37W0Ivkt3h4T1WNxkVwnVhT9Ld9W6hZcOQOBJqL2bkJ9991m1G6xt6FD4FIGR1Fd6vF-eJwtA/s634/Orson%20Welles%20as%20Harry%20Lime.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="358" data-original-width="634" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXfka5rM30V3y3AyuUYPQlknrG3Mee5Zzepm05_C0Kbb7yLcANIlmC1RdMHFkL37PaIOBFmth8bBisXZUDTziR0HFHBLS5vJiOznyj1YNpiX-ErxFYau37W0Ivkt3h4T1WNxkVwnVhT9Ld9W6hZcOQOBJqL2bkJ9991m1G6xt6FD4FIGR1Fd6vF-eJwtA/w400-h226/Orson%20Welles%20as%20Harry%20Lime.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;"><i>“Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”</i></span> –<i style="text-align: start;"> </i><b style="text-align: start;">Harry Lime (played by Orson Welles) in <i>The Third Man.</i></b></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>THEY SAY </b>that the distance between the Government and Opposition benches in the old House of Commons was the length of two drawn swords. True or apocryphal, the story all-too-accurately conveys the truth that violence seldom strays far from power’s shadow. Democratically-elected legislatures, modern ones in particular, do their best to maintain the pretence that the raw calculations of power and the brutal efficacy of violence play no part in their deliberations. But, the less idealistic among our parliamentarians tip their hat to those who came up with the two-drawn-swords rule. It is a frank acknowledgement of what politics is all about.</div><br />Sadly, this is not an age that welcomes the frank acknowledgement of political truths. For nearly a decade now, parliamentarians and the parties they serve have been lamenting the “bullying culture” that is said to permeate the precincts of power. The young staffers assigned to assist individual Members of Parliament by Parliamentary Services are said to have borne the brunt of this misbehaviour. Some have felt themselves so beset that they have quit the political life altogether. Others have waged long and emotionally draining legal battles against their alleged persecutors, only to discover that even when a rare victory over the parliamentary power structure is won, it is almost always the victor that loses.<br /><br />That is because the bullying isn’t a bug in the parliamentary power structure, it’s a feature. Not that anyone who hopes for a career in politics would ever own up to such a shocking admission. The whole proposition is too unfashionably Darwinian to be advanced publicly in 2024, but all the predatory animals who stalk the parliamentary corridors know it to be true. They make it their business to weed out all the little darlings who think that the political game has rules that must be followed, and that those who break them will be punished. That any staffer could subscribe to such nonsense is proof positive that they are manifestly unsuited to their jobs – of which the predators are only too happy to deprive them.<br /><br />One of the reasons the idealists cling to the notion that the power game is governed by a set of benign rules is because the news media is so willing to congratulate itself on dealing with the rule-breakers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Parliamentary journalists are jackals: that is to say they feed off the carcasses left behind by more successful predators. Certainly, there are few more violent spectacles in Parliament than a pack of media bullies ripping to pieces some unfortunate legislator’s political carcass.<br /><br />The question that must be asked, however, is: from whom does the Press Gallery get its stories? The answer, almost always, is from a politician and/or one of their staffers. Journalists pride themselves on keeping silent about <i>how </i>they know who has sinned. What they are even more careful to hide, even from themselves, is <i>why </i>they know. Whose power are they swelling?<br /><br />The chests of the Press gallery will, of course, swell with indignant rage at the suggestion they regularly allow themselves to be made the tools of political actors engaged in (unaccountably unreported) factional struggles on the Beehive’s upper-floors, or, in and out of the Opposition’s offices. These self-proclaimed speakers of truth to power would be more believable, however, if so many of them didn’t tread the well-worn path from gallery journalist to ministerial press secretary, and from there to the broad sunlit uplands of public relations and lobbying.<br /><br />That’s the thing about politics, there is always so much to be gained and, inevitably, even more to lose. Frankness and honesty are all very well, but it is vital – if one means to succeed – to recognise those situations where it is better to remain silent, or suffer a temporary loss of memory. Telling the truth is admirable, but telling the whole truth is just bloody silly. Much of Jacinda Ardern’s seemingly effortless rise to power is attributable to her finely honed sense of political discretion. She is living proof of the adage “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all.” Or, at least, not where the wrong sort of people might overhear the conversation!<br /><br />Difficult though it is to admit, the bullying of politicians and their staffers is the most effective way of separating the innocently ambitious – those who just want to make the world a better place – from the ruthlessly ambitious – those who just want to get to the top of the greasy pole.<br /><br />In the context of a democratic legislature, physical violence perforce gives way to emotional violence. In a kinder world such strategies would fail. In this one, however, emotional violence – like its physical counterpart – swiftly reveals those who possess the skills for turning such attacks aside. Wit, unrestrained verbal counter-aggression (just think of Malcolm Tucker in “The Thick Of It”), the ability to calm and smooth the feathers of the angry and offended, an astonishing ability to lie convincingly: these will all signal to those alert to such qualities – someone worth watching.<br /><br />Six hundred years ago Baldasarre Castiglione catalogued these political skills in his celebrated “Book of the Courtier”. Where his contemporary, Niccolo Machiavelli, was all about painting the big picture of political power, Castiglione concentrated on describing how best to manoeuvre one’s way through its mazes. The quality he was looking for he called <i>sprezzatura </i>– an Italian word which largely defies translation, but which may be rendered, roughly, as “studied nonchalance”, or, “grace under pressure”. Someone who has <i>sprezzatura</i>, is someone who can keep her cool.<br /><br />But, without pressure, the grace of the courtier (because, democracy notwithstanding, all centres of political power and influence still operate like the royal courts of yesteryear) is deprived of the opportunity to manifest itself. A Parliament bereft of bullies, where everyone is “nice”, and where nothing is ever thrown at anybody – especially not insulting language – is a Parliament that will manifest the strength and competence of a kindergarten.<br /><br />As Harry Lime, the character played by Orson Welles, wryly observes in the classic movie “The Third Man”:<br /><br />“Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on </i>The Democracy Project<i> website on Monday, 22 January 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-45873551112769387112024-01-27T16:13:00.000+13:002024-01-27T16:13:38.932+13:00By The Time We Got To Turangawaewae ...<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0exAX6aoP7hRIzpy3yiJPNLf5uk7dj7soxxLf2Z1dpjDb_NRGnTQogH6YMhIDNdhhwTe7ouV_RMii7buxSJnTf5W6H_By27zlBHuuVGKgT4Q7jeMbgn4LRSmIjhkq8Qra-cE7n4AJ0qko86um3IPHmBPYFY5llP47EErdIT4i8zSdbKMr4uzPnxisoF4/s585/Tuheitia's%20Hui%2020-1-24.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="585" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0exAX6aoP7hRIzpy3yiJPNLf5uk7dj7soxxLf2Z1dpjDb_NRGnTQogH6YMhIDNdhhwTe7ouV_RMii7buxSJnTf5W6H_By27zlBHuuVGKgT4Q7jeMbgn4LRSmIjhkq8Qra-cE7n4AJ0qko86um3IPHmBPYFY5llP47EErdIT4i8zSdbKMr4uzPnxisoF4/w400-h195/Tuheitia's%20Hui%2020-1-24.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>... We Were Ten Thousand Strong:</b> The activists know that for the next few weeks, at least, the advantage lies with te iwi Māori and their Pakeha allies. Their most effective tactic – at Ratana, the Waitangi Tribunal, and at Waitangi, itself, on 6 February – will be to up the pressure on the Coalition Government and the Prime Minister. After Saturday, 20 January, they’ll be confident that Christopher Luxon will blink first.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>KING TUHEITIA’S HUI</b> was an impressive demonstration of the power of te iwi Māori. The Kingitanga had planned for 3,000 attendees – 10,000 showed up. Since those present on the Turangawaewae Marae at Ngaruawahia on Saturday, 20 January 2024 were likely to be the most powerfully motivated defenders of te Ao Māori, it is reasonable to regard that number – 10,000 – as the core of Māori resistance to the Coalition Government’s policies.</div><br />Significantly, that number, 10,000, is greater than the active strength of the New Zealand Defence Force (currently around 9,000) and only slightly fewer than the current muster of sworn Police officers (10,549). Small wonder that veteran Māori nationalists Hone Harawira and Tame Iti, both present at Turangawaewae, invited the Coalition Government, via the news media, to “bring it on”.<br /><br />The activists know that for the next few weeks, at least, the advantage lies with te iwi Māori and their Pakeha allies. Their most effective tactic – at Ratana, the Waitangi Tribunal, and at Waitangi, itself, on 6 February – will be to up the pressure on the Coalition Government and the Prime Minister. After Saturday, they’ll be confident that Christopher Luxon will blink first.<br /><br />In the National Party, blinking may already be the preferred option. It is, after all, the party that kicked-off the Treaty settlement process more than 30 years ago. It was National’s John Key who brought the Māori Party into his coalition government (alongside Act!) in 2008. And it was Key who sent Pita Sharples to New York to sign the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. National’s record, <i>vis-à-vis</i> Māori Sovereignty and te Tiriti o Waitangi, is more than competitive with Labour’s.<br /><br />If Christopher Luxon, like Jacinda Ardern, had led his party to an absolute majority in the House of Representatives, then Kingi Tuheitia would never have had to hold his hui.<br /><br />But, that is not what happened.<br /><br />With its final Party Vote stalling at 38 percent, it was clear that those on the right of the political spectrum harboured significant doubts about National. The share of the vote secured by National’s rivals, Act (8 percent) and NZ First (6 percent) indicated that National’s MPs would not be permitted to simply shrug off all responsibility for giving voice to the political rage holding so many voters in its grip. The smaller right-wing parties were there to ride alongside National and make sure it didn’t veer-off to the left like John “Labour-Lite” Key. At the slightest sign that National was about welch on the Coalition Agreement, Act and NZ First were expected to shoot the Coalition Government in the head.<br /><br />What’s more, if Act and NZ First succumb to the same political pressures currently spooking National’s MPs, and simply abandon the commitments made to their followers on Te Reo Māori, co-governance, and te Tiriti, then the rage that propelled them into the House of Representatives will be forced to construct a new vehicle in which to carry the defenders of “New Zealand – as opposed to “Aotearoa” – into battle.<br /><br />This will not be pretty.<br /><br />Far too few New Zealanders fully appreciate what it took for 10,000 Māori to answer King Tuheitia’s summons. Inculcating the confidence needed to openly defy the policies of an elected government has been the work of decades. Tireless advocates of Māori sovereignty like the late Moana Jackson understood that the ultimate reclamation of their people’s patrimony would only become possible when Māori developed a political narrative that a significant percentage of educated Pakeha could be persuaded to endorse.<br /><br />At the heart of that process was a wholesale revision of the meaning of te Tiriti. So long as the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders looked upon the document signed at Waitangi on 6 February 1840 as a simple treaty of cession, te iwi Māori could not hope to treat with the Crown as “partners”. That could only happen if the entire notion of an historical cession of sovereignty was overturned. Only when the claim that Māori never ceded sovereignty to the British Crown was accepted by the New Zealand state and its key institutions could “indigenisation”, “decolonisation” and co-governance become realistic political propositions.<br /><br />Among a great many young, tertiary-educated Māori and Pakeha, the claim that Māori never ceded sovereignty has become an article of cultural and political faith. If one believes that the indigenous people of New Zealand never ceded sovereignty to their colonisers, then a constitutional revolution becomes not only morally desirable but politically necessary. Moreover, if right-wing political parties convinced that sovereignty was ceded back in 1840 are elected on a platform hostile to Māori claims, then forces unsympathetic to the “cession myth” will feel justified in opposing that right-wing platform by any means necessary.<br /><br />And, you get 10,000 people answering King Tuheitia’s summons.<br /><br />But, if Act is prevailed upon by National to back away from its promise to let the voters revise the Māori revision of the Treaty of Waitangi; and if it then refuses to step away from the coalition and move to the cross-benches; then somewhere between a tenth and a fifth of the electorate – and possibly a lot more – will find themselves in the market for a political champion who rejects entirely the niceties of traditional Māori-Pakeha relations, in favour of a new and unabashed ethno-nationalist vocabulary and manifesto.<br /><br />In exactly the same way as Māori intellectuals undermined the “cession myth”, this new political movement would aim to undermine the “sovereignty myth”, and, in a distressingly short period of time, the leader of this aggressive ethno-nationalist populist movement could well be in a position to successfully summon 10,000 followers to his own … rally.<br /><br />Exactly how Christopher Luxon chooses to navigate his government’s passage through these treacherous waters remains to be seen. He may be tempted to tear up the Coalition Agreement, call a new election, and seek an unequivocal mandate in support of decency, racial peace, and economic common-sense. But that would only work in circumstances where the rage of “traditional” Kiwis, the very same anger that propelled him into the prime-ministership, was subsiding. An unlikely turn of events, it must be said, with Ratana, with the Waitangi Tribunal looming and, beyond them, Waitangi Day.<br /><br />Then again, Luxon might decide to do what Slobodan Milosevic did as Yugoslavia started coming apart at its ethnic seams: make himself the leader of the biggest and meanest sonofabitch in the ethnic valley.<br /><br />As the person calling himself “Ricardo” commented on the author’s “Bowalley Road” political blog recently:<br /><br /><i>Massey’s Cossacks could reappear in any number of forms. There are approximately 100,000 to 200,000 ex-territorial soldiers (of all ages going back to the 1970s) who can still field strip an M16, make a bivouac, put up with rain and place the correct side of a claymore towards the enemy. Last reports say up to a million firearms are still to be registered. A direct threat to home and hearth could release basic impulses among their owners.</i><br /> <br /> When the drift of politics encourages this kind of speculation, it is difficult to feel optimistic about New Zealand’s – or Aotearoa’s – future.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> on Monday, 22 January 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-35596423306386267872024-01-18T13:05:00.001+13:002024-01-18T13:05:34.299+13:00When Push Comes To Shove.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ZYR6f1SSb_eeNmlV1d64JH75P2YUJ7E49yfStaFZ5Bxg4qoOvUMw2I45s7yPcRnXYxGZYX8FVEpQjutFv9YMg9XQUhQvHGXRAgQ_yqQgs_-GTufSTeDskWejGk6IhnUot98mV1t8uXq2JpU84xVkQJ0apYSNa2MTbWXDQBkJsYk9cRHZHBal4FAOzRc/s905/King%20Tuheitia.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="905" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1ZYR6f1SSb_eeNmlV1d64JH75P2YUJ7E49yfStaFZ5Bxg4qoOvUMw2I45s7yPcRnXYxGZYX8FVEpQjutFv9YMg9XQUhQvHGXRAgQ_yqQgs_-GTufSTeDskWejGk6IhnUot98mV1t8uXq2JpU84xVkQJ0apYSNa2MTbWXDQBkJsYk9cRHZHBal4FAOzRc/w400-h265/King%20Tuheitia.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Emerging From The Shadow Kingdom:</b> So devastating was the British victory over the Kingitanga that the movement tacitly foreswore any further assertions of political will. Henceforth, the Kingitanga would represent a shadow kingdom. What also remained unspoken, however, was the Kingitanga’s understanding that if the settler state’s ability to enforce its dominance ever faltered, then the substance of Māori power would return, and the shadow kingdom would turn into something much more solid.</i><br style="text-align: start;" /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><b>ONCE AGAIN</b>, the New Zealand state must decide if it should answer a Māori push with a Pakeha shove. The Māori King, Tuheitia, has summoned the leaders of Maoridom to the Kingitanga marae at Turangawaewae to formulate a response to the Coalition Government’s “de-Maorification” agenda. It is doubtful whether most New Zealanders, back at work now and already missing the sunshine and surf, are at all aware of the potential for disaster inherent in the King’s hui of Saturday, 20 January 2024. Not since the early 1860s have Māori and Pakeha risked so much over the meaning and status of te Tiriti o Waitangi.</div><br />The big difference this time is that the New Zealand state cannot count on brute military force to enforce its will. In the original stand-off between Māori and the Crown, the settlers were supremely confident that if push came to shove, then they would have access to massive military force. Rather than see their new colony compromised by an indigenous rebellion, the British Government was willing to deploy considerable military resources. Indeed, it was the arrival of approximately 12,000 imperial troops under Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron that kicked-off the Pakeha invasion of the Waikato in 1863.<br /><br />So devastating was the British victory over the Kingitanga that the movement tacitly foreswore any further assertions of political will. Henceforth the Kingitanga would represent a shadow kingdom. The kingdom of what might have been if the Pakeha settler government had been willing to keep faith with the letter and spirit of Te Tiriti. What also remained unspoken, however, was the Kingitanga’s understanding that if the settler state’s ability to enforce its dominance ever faltered, then the substance of Māori power would return, and the shadow kingdom would turn into something much more solid.<br /><br />Small wonder, then, that the Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, is said to be seeking an urgent private audience with King Tuheitia. [It took place on Monday, 15 January 2024. - C.T.] The Coalition Government needs to know just how pushy the Kingitanga and its allies are prepared to get if the National-Act-NZ First de-Maorification agenda is not abandoned. If, as seems likely, the King replies “wait and see” , then Luxon’s and his cabinet’s next step will be to assess the New Zealand state’s current capacity to enforce its will. One thing’s for certain: In 2024 the British will not be sending the New Zealand Government 12,000 troops!<br /><br />If Luxon hasn’t convened a meeting of the Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security (ODESC) in response to the Kingitanga’s ominous re-entry into New Zealand politics, then he’s not doing his job. Like the rest of the country, Māori leaders would have observed the enormous difficulties experienced by the New Zealand Police in assembling sufficient non-lethal force to clear Parliament Grounds of anti-government protesters in March 2022. Were such occupations and disruptions to be replicated all over the country, the ability of the Police to both keep the peace and enforce the law – without recourse to deadly force – would be seriously compromised.<br /><br />According to Wikipedia, ODESC “comprises the chief executives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Defence Force, the Ministry of Defence, the Security Intelligence Service, the Government Communications Security Bureau, Police, the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, the Treasury and others. The group is headed by the head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, [Rebecca Kitteridge].”<br /><br />On paper, at least, this group looks formidable. The presence of the security services and the Police should guarantee a continuous and accurate feed of political intelligence to the politicians. In reality, however, it is most unlikely that the SIS, the GCSB and Police Intelligence personnel have been monitoring the communications of the Māori king, other iwi leaders, Te Pāti Māori and/or Māori activists generally. The political fallout, should such interceptions be exposed, would be politically catastrophic.<br /><br />Ever since the Christchurch Mosque Massacres of 2019, the eyes of the spies have been firmly fixed upon New Zealand’s tiny community of Far Right extremists. Spying on Muslims and/or Māori would be construed by a large number of New Zealanders as evidence of state-sponsored white supremacism. ODESC’s ability to predict with any confidence the tactics and strategies of the rapidly coalescing Māori resistance movement is, therefore, negligible.<br /><br />It is also probable that New Zealand’s defence chiefs would urge caution when assessing the capacity of the Military to come to the aid the Civil Power. Morale in the NZDF is said to be at an all-time low. Intense dissatisfaction with successive government’s underfunding of the armed forces is reportedly running very high. Called onto the streets to reimpose civil order through the application of deadly force, the willingness of servicemen and women to open fire on their fellow citizens must be rated as exceedingly doubtful. The great danger would be the soldiers going over to the people – thereby transforming nationwide protests into a full-blown revolution.<br /><br />The New Zealand state has been here before, of course, back in the 1980s and early-90s, when Māori nationalist activists were tootling off to Libya and Cuba to pick up the rudiments of “freedom-fighting”. Back then, however, there were still plenty of concessions in the state’s briefcase: action on Te Reo, forests and fisheries, Māori health and education, cultural production of all kinds and – most important of all – the Treaty Settlement Process.<br /><br />Taken together, these concessions bought the state three more decades of peace between Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti. When “indigenisation” and “decolonisation” became the order of the day, however, all bets were off. Should those two projects become entrenched Crown priorities, then the economic, institutional and cultural dividends flowing from the Pakeha victories of the 1860s will be threatened, and the ability of the state to concede its way out of trouble will diminish towards zero.<br /><br />So, what will Messrs Luxon, Seymour and Peters do to placate the Kingitanga and settle down the angry rangatahi that are Te Pāti Māori’s nation? If they are wise, they will either defer, or scrap altogether, their de-Maorification agenda. Erect those bi-lingual road signs. Keep calling Hamilton “Kirikiriroa”. If necessary, retain the Māori Health Authority. Then, having secured the peace, spend the next five years pouring resources into the Police and the armed forces.<div><br /></div><div>As the bicentenary of the signing of Te Tiriti looms ever nearer, the Pakeha settler state faces two, equally unpalatable choices. It will either have to accede to a Māori-led constitutional revolution, or find its own, twenty-first century equivalent of General Cameron. A Pakeha military leader prepared to shove back harder than the movement for tino rangatiratanga can push.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on </i><a href="https://democracyproject.nz/">The Democracy Project</a><i> of Monday, 15 January 2024.</i></span></b></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-13839685980124315992024-01-18T12:27:00.007+13:002024-01-18T12:40:32.043+13:00Hitting The Houthis.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8dPunLNSSY5Mpd666LQSeOO37uA92LgDe8_YeU1Mp-JkrxH43qx8WvX9PFKfAoXOI7z7oIEUONOHZXMOlHPJ5zA_z84KFfYyV_J7NldejGnrmi9nq-Z8DAuX1KCfuN2AkVbZ-POuxCOwTXOuz-4rUo4ab1Z3orcy2L0PY6iM4ewSYbw3YoluE_Ww2nus/s549/Hitting%20the%20Houthis.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="341" data-original-width="549" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8dPunLNSSY5Mpd666LQSeOO37uA92LgDe8_YeU1Mp-JkrxH43qx8WvX9PFKfAoXOI7z7oIEUONOHZXMOlHPJ5zA_z84KFfYyV_J7NldejGnrmi9nq-Z8DAuX1KCfuN2AkVbZ-POuxCOwTXOuz-4rUo4ab1Z3orcy2L0PY6iM4ewSYbw3YoluE_Ww2nus/w400-h249/Hitting%20the%20Houthis.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Action Stations: </b>The New Zealand Left has conflated the ten UN members condemning Houthi attacks on vessels transiting the Red Sea with the six states involved in the air and naval attacks on Houthi military targets. Veteran leftist Robert Reid, like most New Zealanders, knows full well that the RNZAF possesses no aircraft even remotely capable of participating in attacks of the sort launched by American and British forces. </i></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><b>“SECOND NIGHT</b> of NZ’s coalition bombing of Yemen!” This hair-raising statement, from veteran leftist Robert Reid, was followed by an even more jaw-dropping claim: “So NZ is at war without any debate, mandate, cabinet or parliamentary resolution and while its government is still on holiday!!”<br /><br />While it is certainly the case that the New Zealand Left is currently in an excitable frame of mind, Reid’s posting on “X”, has taken that excitability to a whole new level.<br /><br />To describe the countries involved in the air and naval strikes against the Houthi regime in Yemen as “New Zealand’s coalition” is merely the most egregious of the errors contained in Reid’s posting.<br /><br />According to the statement released by the White House on 11 January, the strikes were launched at the initiative of the USA and the United Kingdom:<br /><br /><i>In response to continued illegal, dangerous, and destabilising Houthi attacks against vessels, including commercial shipping, transiting the Red Sea, the armed forces of the United States and United Kingdom, with support from the Netherlands, Canada, Bahrain, and Australia, conducted joint strikes in accordance with the inherent right of individual and collective self-defence, consistent with the UN Charter, against a number of targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.</i><div><br /></div><div>Clearly, Reid has mistaken the ten UN members condemning Houthi attacks on vessels transiting the Red Sea with the six states involved in the air and naval attacks on Houthi military targets. Reid, like most New Zealanders, knows that the RNZAF possesses no aircraft even remotely capable of participating in attacks of the sort launched by American and British forces. Nor does New Zealand currently possess the necessary hardware and personnel to participate effectively in the US-led “Operation Prosperity Guardian”.<br /><br />So, to be clear, New Zealand has not placed itself at the head of any military and/or diplomatic coalition. Nor has it participated in any military strikes against targets located in Houthi-controlled Yemini territory. The nation is not, therefore, at war with anyone. Hence the non-existence of any “cabinet or parliamentary resolution” authorising New Zealand’s participation in the escalating conflict.<br /><br />Ever since he was a teenager, back in the 1970s, Reid has been involved in anti-militarism activism. A person of his vast experience knows full well that this country played no part in the US/UK airstrikes. Even assuming it wanted to, New Zealand couldn’t participate. Why? Because it is saddled with a defence force that is currently incapable of participating in anything more rigorous than disaster relief at home and, if it’s lucky, the South Pacific. Reid must also know that New Zealand’s adherence to the aims and objectives of Operation Prosperity Guardian is largely a symbolic gesture of support from the Coalition Government to its Five Eyes partners.<br /><br />So, why the loud alarums and inflammatory claims from a man whose powers of political analysis were, for years, celebrated across the New Zealand Left? What is driving old lefties like Reid into the arms of an army of fanatical Shia fighters for whom the destruction of the “Great Satan”, America, and the utter elimination of the “Zionist Entity”, Israel, are goals for which they are only too willing to martyr themselves? Reid and his left-wing comrades used to be aggressively secular revolutionaries who dismissed religion as the “opium of the people”. What happened?<br /><br />In a nutshell, the enemy of their Twentieth Century ideological mentors – some in Moscow, others in Beijing – became the Western Left’s enemy also. They may not have viewed the USA as the “Great Satan”, but they certainly saw it as the planet’s foremost imperialist power, as well as the world’s most aggressive promoter of globalised free-market capitalism. And, if the USA constituted the world’s greatest evil, then simple political logic dictated that the Soviet Union/Russian Federation, the Peoples Republic of China, North Korea, Cuba, and all the other dubious propositions of the “Third World” and “Global South” must be “lesser evils”. Anti-Americanism became a left-wing reflex – as strong today as it ever was.<br /><br />Indisputably, the Americans made it easy for them. What was morally arguable in Korea swiftly became indefensible in Vietnam. And then there were the dictators Uncle Sam kept in power: the Shah of Iran, the Somoza family, Ferdinand Marcos, Augusto Pinochet, the list is as long as the historical record of those US-supported authoritarian regimes is bloody.<br /><br />It never appeared to register with Western leftists, however, that they were able to condemn the USA’s actions because they could see them on their television screens and read about them in their newspapers. Moreover, those same left-wing activists could give vent to their moral outrage on the streets without being killed. Unlike the Peronist trade unionists, gunned-down by the Argentinian generals’ goons. Or the protesting students, slaughtered by the Peoples Liberation Army in Beijing’s Tienanmen Square. Hatred of US imperialism and the effects of global capitalism has blinded the Western Left to the much, much worse atrocities committed by the West’s alleged “victims”.<br /><br />Nor was its moral clarity improved by the demise of the Soviet Union and the PRC’s embrace of capitalism with Chinese characteristics. With the great engines of proletarian liberation either shut down, or converted to less altruistic purposes, the Western Left was forced to cast about for an ideological substitute. In place of the now defunct doctrines of Marxism-Leninism and Maoism, Western leftists found themselves adopting the radically subjective nostrums of the so-called “New Social Movements” – better known today as “Identity Politics”.<br /><br />Where Karl Marx had made the “proletarians of all lands” the heroes of his revolutionary drama, Identity Politics is driven by the horrendous depredations of its super-reactionary villain – the White Oppressor. All whites are complicit in the vast historical crimes – slavery, capitalism, imperialism – that have made the European peoples so rich and powerful, and the rest of humanity so weak and poor.<br /><br />In this new ideological narrative, the pale, stale, former Marxists find themselves stripped of all positive agency. Immobilised by their “white guilt” and “white privilege”, Western leftists cannot hope to be the “good guys” of the ID-Pols’ emancipatory drama. Indeed, the only way they can avoid being lumped in with the “bad guys” is to back unreservedly the struggles of the non-white victims of Europe’s cultural cancer.<br /><br />And so it is that we find Reid prophesying war with an almost reckless disregard for what is actually unfolding across the Middle East. A Left enthralled to the notion that the oppressed are always guiltless, and the oppressors guilty by definition, will not hesitate to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Houthis and Hamas.<br /><br />As the British MP, Tom Tugendhat, lamented only yesterday on “X”: “It’s extraordinary to watch young men and women – who I’m sure would tell you they believe in freedom and equality – supporting groups like the Houthis who have reintroduced slavery, and systematically violate the rights of women and girls.”<br /><br />Extraordinary, too, that the Palestinian poet, Mohammed El Kurd, can say “Our day will come. We must normalize massacres as the status quo”, and be cheered by his Western left-wing “allies” at a weekend pro-Palestinian rally in London.<br /><br />It’s almost enough to make one wish that Robert Reid was right. That New Zealand was, indeed, unleashing war upon such reckless hate.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>This essay was originally posted on the </i>Interest.co.nz<i> website on Monday, 15 January 2024.</i></span></b></div></div>Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.com17