Build The Surge For Chloe Swarbrick!

The One To Watch: If Chloe Swarbrick, backed by the votes of young Aucklanders, surges into second place in the Auckland mayoral election, outperforming both Victoria Crone and John Palino, she will identify herself as a political phenomenon. She will be feted by the news media as the voice of her generation – proof of the Millennials’ potential to completely upset the calculations of “politics” and “politicians”.

 

THE SO-CALLED “MILLENNIAL” GENERATION has been harshly criticised for its lack of political engagement. Clear away the red mist of Boomer rage, however, and the under-30s disinclination to participate in electoral politics takes on a very different aspect. Be it inspired by sophisticated political science, or simple gut instinct, the Millennials’ refusal to validate the politics of neoliberalism by joining in its electoral rituals is easily defended.

 

Sometimes, however, casting of a ballot can inflict a serious blow to the neoliberal order. The most obvious recent example is the British electorate’s decision to leave the European Union. A great many young Britons who hadn’t yet voted in a general election (because “politics” and “politicians” always win) voted for Brexit because they sensed that, if they did, politics and politicians would, for once, be the losers.

 

Chloe Swarbrick’s decision to run for Mayor of Auckland has given the city’s young voters a similar opportunity to make a real difference. With virtually no money, and in spite of being excluded (until very recently) from the mainstream news media’s coverage of the election, a recent poll showed Swarbrick in fourth place, after Phil Goff, Vic Crone and John Palino.

 

Essentially, only 15 percentage points separate this 23-year-old political prodigy from second place. A concerted effort by voters under 30 could easily see Swarbrick surging towards runner-up status in the 2016 Mayoral contest.

 

What good is coming in second? The answer is simple and important. By outperforming both Crone and Palino, Swarbrick will identify herself as a political phenomenon. She will be feted by the news media as the voice of her generation – proof of the Millennials’ potential to completely upset the calculations of “politics” and “politicians”.

 

More than a few political commentators have observed that the next centre-left prime-minister has yet to be elected to Parliament. If Swarbrick is propelled into second place in the Auckland Mayoral election, then Labour and the Greens will soon be competing fiercely to get her to accept a winnable position on their Party Lists.

 

I remember meeting Helen Clark for the first time when I was an undergraduate student at Otago. She was just six years older than me, but I could tell, even back then, in the early 1980s, that this junior political studies lecturer from Auckland was going to play a major role in New Zealand’s political history. I defy anyone to watch Swarbrick’s performance on last Sunday’s Q+A and not reach exactly the same conclusion.

 

The Millennial Generation’s progressives have their representative – now all they need to do is vote for her!

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 19 September 2016.

Reinvent Auckland, Simon? If Only We Could!

A Safe Pair Of Hands: The whole point of the neoliberal Auckland supercity is to ensure that “big visions” and “bold execution” in the pursuit of anything other than neoliberal objectives is rendered impossible. As a tried and tested neoliberal himself, Phil Goff gets this. Producing “incremental improvements with greater efficiency” constitutes the outer limits of his political imagination. It’s what makes him the perfect candidate.

 

SIMON WILSON is an odd fellow – with some odd opinions. Here, for example, is the Metro Editor-at-Large's opinion on the general public response to the National Government’s forced amalgamation of Auckland, North Shore, Waitakere and Manukau cities. “Aucklanders were cynical about everything before he [Len Brown] and the supercity came along in 2010. But we lost that cynicism and we set about reinventing the city.”

 

I would be most annoyed if I thought Simon was including me in that “we”. Long before the legislation setting up the supercity came into force the level of my cynicism was already off the scale.

 

Everything about the supercity’s establishment: from the man chosen to oversee the process (the Act Party leader, Rodney Hide) to the deliberate exclusion of the people of the Auckland region from any meaningful say in whether or not the merger of their four cities should finally proceed; highlighted the profoundly anti-democratic spirit in which the entire process was conceived.

 

The reason for this hostility to democracy wasn’t difficult to discern. Far from being a bottom-up exercise: driven by angry residents’ from across the Auckland region; the supercity was a top-down exercise: the joint creation of local and national elites. Their common purpose? To create a model for local government in the neoliberal era. And the central feature of that model? The almost total disempowerment of the citizens of Auckland and their elected representatives.

 

The full measure of the supercity’s creators’ contempt for democracy was revealed in the proposed size of the supercity’s “Governing Body”. In the equivalent decision-making structures of Auckland, North Shore, Waitakere and Manukau cities, the ratio of elected representatives to citizens was roughly 1:15,000. In the new supercity it would be 1:70,000! Supercity councillors were being asked to represent more citizens than a directly elected Member of Parliament.

 

My own level of cynicism (and, I suspect, the cynicism of thousands of other Aucklanders) was in no way lessened by the Ports of Auckland dispute. It was during this brutal test of strength between the supposedly municipally-owned Port and its employees that Aucklanders learned just how misnamed their “Council Controlled Organisations” (CCOs) truly were.

 

Aucklanders elected representatives turned out to be equally mischaracterised. Far from being the people’s democratic tribunes, Auckland’s elected councillors proved to be little more than powerless pawns. The real game was controlled by legally cocooned CCO boards of directors – over whom the so-called “Governing Body” (including the Mayor) exercised no effective control whatsoever.

 

Indeed, so politically impotent was the Mayor made to feel in relation to the day-to-day management of National’s neoliberal supercity, that the poor fellow felt obliged to demonstrate his potency “by other means”. A better symbol of Auckland’s vast democratic deficit than Len’s and Bevan’s affair is difficult to imagine. Turned out the Mayor’s Office was good for very little else!

 

Even Brown’s signal achievement: the National Government’s final approval of his beloved City Rail Link; owes as much to the projected massive inflation of property values along its inner-city route, as it does to any rational realignment of Auckland’s public transport system.

 

In his latest Metro article, Simon Wilson opines that the job facing the next Mayor of Auckland is “not simply to produce incremental improvements with greater efficiency and better relations with the government in Wellington. Auckland has fallen into crisis. Growth has far outstripped expectations. Housing policies have had a catastrophic outcome. A big vision is required, all over again, and bold execution has to follow.”

 

Except, of course, the whole point of the neoliberal supercity is to ensure that “big visions” and “bold execution” in the pursuit of anything other than neoliberal objectives is rendered impossible. (That the Unitary Plan was so heavily promoted by the National Government and the Auckland City bureaucracy, both of whom threatened dire consequences should the councillors fail to approve it, tells us all we need to know about the document’s ideological complexion!) As a tried and tested neoliberal himself, Phil Goff gets this. Producing “incremental improvements with greater efficiency” constitutes the outer limits of his political imagination. It’s what makes him the perfect candidate.

 

Poor Simon. He seems to have been both surprised and distressed to learn that in a Citizen Insights Monitor survey released by the Auckland Council in June 2016, “just 15 per cent of us said we were satisfied with the council’s performance. Only 17 per cent of us said we trust it. This is disgraceful.”

 

Really, Simon? Disgraceful? Frankly, I’m astounded as many as 17 percent of Aucklanders place any trust at all in National’s neoliberal supercity. I do, however, understand completely why 83 percent of us find little, if anything, to like about the “governance” of the unresponsive bureaucratic monstrosity into whose tender care we were delivered without so much as a confirming referendum.

 

Nor am I surprised that only 35 percent of eligible voters bothered to return their ballots in 2013. Not when the people elected by those ballots are so bereft of power that – even if they wanted to – it wouldn’t be “within the purview of their lawful governance function” to make the trains run on time.

 

In terms of empowering the people who live within its boundaries, there’s nothing I’d rather do, Simon, than “reinvent” the Auckland supercity. It’s why I’m voting for Chloe Swarbrick. Not because she stands the slightest chance of winning, but because, alone of all the Mayoral candidates, she demonstrates some understanding of just how much we have lost.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 13 September 2016.

Blurred Vision: Why Labour Isn’t Trusted To Govern New Zealand.

Impaired Vision: Veteran Rogernome, Phil Goff, is leading his nearest rival for the Auckland mayoralty by an astonishing 33 percentage points in the latest UMR survey. That's 3 points more than Labour's total support! Clearly, Auckland voters have no difficulty in determining what Goff stands for. Unfortunately, New Zealanders are finding it much harder to determine Labour's ideological outline. This is highly problematic, because the electorate's trust and confidence will only be given to a political party whose features are easy to read.

 

STEPHEN MILLS, from Labour’s pollsters, UMR Research, today (7/3/16) confirmed that Labour’s support has slipped back to just 30 percent. He also informed RNZ’s listeners that Phil Goff is leading his nearest rival for the Auckland Mayoralty, Victoria Crone, by 33 percentage points. This is, of course, the same Phil Goff who, as Labour’s leader, failed to squeeze more than 27 percent of the Party Vote out of the New Zealand electorate.

 

It’s a grim parade of statistics for those of us hoping for a change of government at next year’s general election. And what it’s telling us is this: Labour isn’t trusted to govern. Phil Goff may be trusted to lead the country’s largest city – overwhelmingly trusted. But, Andrew Little is not trusted to lead the country.

 

This lack of trust is crippling. If it’s not addressed, and soon, it will produce yet another electoral defeat. Whether Labour can sustain a fourth rejection by the electorate – especially if it turns out to be worse than the 25 percent 2014 result – is highly debateable. A century-old party can only go on losing for so long before it simply fades away.

 

It is the privilege of historians to pinpoint the causes of an institution’s malaise, even when they have little to offer by way of immediate solutions.

 

In Labour’s case, the origins of its malady are easily discerned. The embrace of what were then called “free-market policies”, in the late-1980s, destroyed Labour as a mass party. Splits, first to the Left, and then to the Right, further weakened the organisation. That Labour survived at all as a viable electoral force was due, almost entirely, to the iron will of Helen Clark. All that has happened to the party since her departure in 2008 only confirms her pivotal role in delaying Labour’s disintegration.

 

What Clark was unable, or unwilling, to do, however, was the one thing that might have breathed new life into the Labour Party. To rebuild Labour as a trusted and decisive political force, it was necessary for someone to stand up and publicly repudiate Rogernomics.

 

This needed to be more than simply a half-hearted owning up to “mistakes”. It had to be a root-and-branch condemnation of the entire exercise – accompanied by a process of “rejuvenation” that completely denuded the parliamentary caucus of all its Rogernomes.

 

This latter exercise is crucial. Indeed, the repudiation of Rogernomics can only proceed successfully when the Rogernomes themselves are gone Any attempt to reassert democratic-socialist values and policies while convinced neoliberal MPs remained in caucus can only result in the most vicious kind of public political blood-letting – with all the inevitable electoral damage that such disunity entails.

 

What, then, do people see when they look at the Labour Party in 2016? The answer, sadly, is a blur. In the absence of a clear repudiation of its Rogernomics past, Labour can only present itself as an indistinct, ill-defined political notion. This is especially true of Labour’s parliamentary caucus where – believe it or not – there may still be found remnants of the David Lange-led, but Roger Douglas-controlled, Labour Government of 1984-1990!

 

With these veteran politicians, and their younger allies, still in place, even David Cunliffe’s relatively mild attempt (when compared to Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders!) to dislodge the party from its neoliberal past provoked the most extraordinary backlash. Andrew Little, has striven mightily to avoid his predecessor’s fate, but only at the cost of ideological prevarication and policy confusion. Labour’s stance on the TPPA, for example, gyrates wildly between opposition and grudging support. Meanwhile, Phil Goff (the most senior remaining Rogernome in caucus) gets a free pass to vote against his own party.

 

Auckland’s voters have rewarded Goff’s undeviating ideological clarity by making him their runaway favourite for the Mayoralty. And why not? When it comes to leading a monstrous neoliberal artefact like the Auckland Supercity, it’s difficult to think of anybody better qualified for the job.

 

But, for those of us who not only want to get rid of the National Party-led Government, but also the dangerously unequal neoliberal system that it supports, Labour’s blurred outlines and indistinct values inspire only disappointment and mistrust.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 7 March 2016.