Luxon And Leadership.

What Kind Of Leader? It’s the only definition of leadership that makes any sense in the world most people live in – which is not the corporate world. A leader has followers. If a person lacks followers, then they are not – by the reckoning of most human-beings – a leader. The other real world distinction between corporate and political leaders is that the former have power given to them, while the latter take it for themselves.

LEADERSHIP. The corporate world is obsessed by it. In the absence of strong corporate leadership an adequate return on the shareholders’ investment cannot be guaranteed. Poor corporate management can lead to poor dividends, lower share prices, disinvestment and, ultimately, disaster. That’s why corporate leadership matters. In theory, anyway.

Many critics of contemporary capitalism argue that corporate managers exercise excessive influence over the businesses they run. That neither the corporate board, nor the shareholders, any longer exert any real influence over the management – until it’s much too late. Poor corporate leadership can, indeed, lead to failure, but the price paid by bad leaders is often in inverse proportion to the size of the disasters for which they are responsible. When they leave the scene of their managerial crimes, it is only very rarely that they depart empty-handed.

Poor corporate leadership is seldom punished.

Poor political leadership, by contrast, is almost always rewarded with the Order of the Boot.

The reason lies in the very different kind of power that corporate leaders wield. Corporations are permanent hierarchies in which vacancies are filled from the top down. Political leadership works from the bottom-up. If corporate leaders are measured against the power and wealth of the corporations they command, then political leaders are judged by the number and enthusiasm of their followers.

It’s the only definition of leadership that makes any sense in the world most people live in – which is not the corporate world. A leader has followers. If a person lacks followers, then they are not – by the reckoning of most human-beings – a leader. The other real world distinction between corporate and political leaders is that the former have power given to them, while the latter take it for themselves.

It is why all the books written about corporate leadership ring so hollow. The behaviour prescribed for leaders in these breathless volumes is the behaviour of a successful courtier – and the only power successful courtiers wield is the power given to them by their sovereign. A courtier retains power by retaining the confidence of the person at the very summit of the hierarchy. Political chiefs stay at the top only for as long as those below them are willing to trust and follow “their” leader. Without the trust and confidence of their followers, political leaders are powerless.

Christopher Luxon has plenty of experience in the intricacies of corporate leadership. He knows what must be done to retain the support of those above him. His successful career as a corporate executive amply confirms that he has mastered the politics of hierarchy. But, New Zealanders are still awaiting confirmation that Luxon has successfully transitioned from the politics of the boardroom to the politics of the caucus-room. Does he fully grasp, even now, that it is only the support of National’s MPs – along with the more than a million party followers who elected them – that keeps him in the top job?

Luxon became the parliamentary leader of the National Party in November 2021. Not, it must be said, after a strong and successful demonstration of his political leadership skills – particularly those relating to the attraction and retention of followers – but because the National Caucus had run out of options.

Bill English, the man who had led them to a Party Vote of 44 percent in the 2017 General Election, while an excellent Finance Minister, and a deep political thinker, had never quite managed to convince himself that he had what it took to lead the NZ National Party. A great pity, because it is one of the ineluctable rules of democratic politics that politicians who doubt themselves find it extremely difficult to convince others.

English’s replacement, Simon Bridges, appeared equally plagued by doubts. At times he seemed like a nervous adolescent, heading-out with his stylish girlfriend for the end-of-year school ball, wearing his father’s suit. Leadership of the National Party never quite seemed to fit Bridges: it was always too big for him.

Bridges nemesis, Todd Muller turned out to be living proof of “Dirty Harry’s” warning that “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Like Labour’s disastrous leader, David Cunliffe, Muller proved himself to be much more adept at winning the leadership of his party than wielding it. The difference being, Muller took only a few weeks to realise that he was completely out of his depth. A conclusion not reached by Cunliffe, even after winning just 25 percent of the Party Vote!

Muller’s replacement, Judith Collins, had long been hungry for the leadership of her party – and her country. It was just that her preferred means of getting there, beneath the daunting mask of “Crusher”, put off a great many more voters than it attracted. The New Zealand electorate has, over the years, displayed a worrying willingness to elect frightening male leaders. Scary female leaders, with the obvious exception of Helen Clark, have enjoyed considerably less success. National’s terrible showing in the 2020 General Election (25 percent) dissolved what little was left of Collins’ political judgement – along with the confidence of her caucus colleagues.

And that just left the man acknowledged by all to be the preferred option of National’s most successful leader since Keith Holyoake – John Key. Never mind that Christopher Luxon had been a Member of Parliament for barely a year, his successful career as a corporate leader – as CEO of Air NZ – was deemed to be more than sufficient preparation for the job of Leader of the Opposition.

But was it, really? Luxon had been seized upon by his fellow Nats with the same desperation as the drowning man seizes upon a lifebuoy. He was new, he was fresh, he had a bright smile and he wore a suit like the boss he had been. But, unlike his patron, Luxon never quite understood that voters are not employees. You can’t just instruct them to vote for you and your party; you have got to give them a reason for voting that way. In a democracy, politicians cannot simply demand people’s votes, they have to earn them.

Yes, yes, yes: National won 1,085,016 Party Votes in 2023, which is a great deal more than Judith Collin’s 738,275 in 2020, but, Luxon’s 38.6 percent of the Party Vote falls a long way short of Key’s winning percentage of 44.6 in 2008.

That’s because Key, unlike Luxon, had spent two years giving New Zealanders a reason to vote for him. Speech by speech, stunt by stunt, goofy-grin by goofy-grin, Key had done what all political leaders do – he had gone out and got himself some followers. Key may have been a highly successful player in the grand financial casino, but he knew the difference between corporate and political leadership. The electorate doesn’t vote for designations, it votes for ideas. 38.6 percent is what Christopher Luxon got for not being Chris Hipkins. It isn’t enough.

And it’s not at all clear, yet, what Luxon’s ideas are. He had very little that was inspiring to say before the election, and he has had virtually nothing even interesting to say after it. The man doesn’t yet seem to understand that he hasn’t been appointed to lead New Zealand, he’s been elected. There’s a difference.

A political leader would have used the three weeks between Polling Day and the counting of the Special Votes to talk to New Zealanders. There were horrors in Israel and Gaza. There were things to say about Te Tiriti and Democracy. About economics and security. About a world gripped by multiple crises, and about the Prime-Minister-Elect’s confidence that New Zealand would get through them all. Because this, the country he has been given the extraordinary privilege to lead, is a remarkable place, filled with remarkable people.

He could then have strode into those coalition talks, and David Seymour and Winston Peters would have risen from their seats and applauded – their nation’s leader.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 20 November 2023.

Rating The Contenders.

There Can Be Only One: Some might ask why National MPs would install yet another “successful business person” at the helm of their party? Isn’t one Todd Muller enough? Especially when Simon Bridges could become the first National politician of Māori descent to become Prime Minister.

LET’S GET SOMETHING out of the way from the get-go. There is nothing unprecedented about a former leader of the National Party reclaiming that position some years after losing it. Those “pundits” who blithely dismiss the likelihood of New Zealand following in the footsteps of Australia’s political parties, really don’t merit the description. Was it not Bill English who led the National Party to the worst defeat in its history in 2002? And was it not the same Bill English who succeeded John Key as National Party leader – and Prime Minister – in 2016? That established, I hope readers will find the prospect of Simon Bridges Redux (if that is the final outcome of this contest) just a little bit easier to accept.

Whether Bridges is the right person for the job is, obviously, a very different question. One worthy of just as much careful consideration as the putative candidacy of Christopher Luxon. Given the general agreement among National Party watchers that one of these two contenders will be the next Leader of the Opposition, it seems only sensible to weigh the pros and cons attached to both men.

Bridges first.

That Simon Bridges could become the first National politician of Māori descent to become Prime Minister is, potentially, a very big deal.

Though very few people engaged in mainstream politics are prepared to admit it, the future of Māori, and the future of Aotearoa-New Zealand, are becoming ever more closely entwined. The country’s politics cannot escape being caught up in this uncomfortable fact. The young people of 2021 – as the bitter recriminations surrounding the Pfizer vaccine roll-out attest – are disproportionately Māori. Far too many of these youngsters are inadequately prepared to shoulder the burden of preserving their country’s economic and social well-being in the years ahead.

The aforementioned Bill English understood the frightening dimensions of Māori underperformance better than most of his parliamentary colleagues. It was one of the primary drivers of his “social investment” strategy – an imaginative policy initiative that was, sadly, allowed to falter under Bridges 1.0, Todd Muller and Judith Collins. If he proves successful in his bid to reclaim the National Party leadership, Bridges 2.0 could do a lot worse than to take English’s idea and run with it.

Dramatic policy changes in education, health, housing and corrections cannot be avoided in the years ahead if Aotearoa-New Zealand is to avoid crippling skill deficiencies in its national workforce. A country that becomes dependent on imported skills cannot hope to exercise a decisive influence over its future development. Were Bridges to put himself at the forefront of this debate, and give his party the ideological space to develop new and innovative solutions to the problem of Māori underperformance, then National could steal an election-winning march on Labour.

The Government, urged on by its large Māori caucus, clearly grasps the urgency of indigenous underperformance. Its solutions, however, are of a race-based radicalism that many Pakeha (and not a few Māori) reject as constitutionally objectionable. If Labour proceeds along the lines suggested in the He Puapua Report, considerable political division seems inevitable. A National Party led by a Māori politician no less seized of the importance of indigenous underperformance, but promoting policies intended to benefit all underperforming citizens equally, could position itself as a force for unity and progress.

There is strong evidence in Bridges’ autobiography that he has given considerable thought to what it means to be a New Zealander in the twenty-first century. National is not the party most people think of when it comes to these sort of questions – especially those touching upon the future of Māori. It is, nevertheless, the party which, under Jim Bolger and Doug Graham, got the Treaty Settlement ball rolling. Nor should it be forgotten that it was John Key who sent Pita Sharples off to New York to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

In the chapter on race in Bridge’s National Identity, he contrasts his own way of being Māori with that of the Māori Party MP, Rawiri Waititi – with whom he went to school:

“Today Rawiri has a full face moko, which is beautiful and fierce and which I am in awe of. But you couldn’t pay me a billion dollars to get that done to myself. The pain would be one reason; the other is that it would change who I am – it’s not me. Rawiri’s tikanga is not a daily part of my life and never will be. Nevertheless, New Zealand needs to realise that I am just as Māori as Rawiri. Let’s not look down on him, and let’s not look down on me. He’s not too Māori and I’m not too Pākehā. Let’s celebrate [New Zealand’s] diverse garden.”

Is it really that difficult to see Bridges offering National its own “Nixon recognises Red China” moment?

Meanwhile, the other half of the National caucus will be asking themselves whether the former Air NZ CEO, Christopher Luxon, can give the party another John Key moment.

Those of a more ruthless mindset will demand to know how any intelligent right-wing politician could possibly entertain the idea of installing yet another “successful business person” at the helm of the National Party? Isn’t one Todd Muller enough?

When is the National Party finally going to understand that John Key didn’t become one of its most successful leaders on account of his career in business, but because he had an unerring instinct for where “Average Kiwis” positioned themselves politically. That, and a flair for institutional politics that could just as easily have made him head of the CTU as the Nats.

To put it bluntly: Christopher Luxon is no John Key.

Then there’s the question of Luxon’s religious beliefs. Obviously, he’s not the only member of National’s caucus who professes the Christian religion. Bridges, himself, is a pastor’s son who, like Luxon and a not inconsiderable number of his caucus colleagues, proclaims himself to be an evangelical Christian.

Therein, lies the problem. What sort of evangelical is Luxon?

Essentially, there are only two kinds of evangelical. The first (and the most faithful to the biblical injunctions) is the evangelical who proclaims the “good news” of Jesus Christ to the whole world, unceasingly. The second kind of evangelical sees the hand of God at work in society and, in the case of far too many evangelical politicians (especially in the United States) feels the Almighty’s hand guiding them into preordained leadership roles. New Zealanders, a secular bunch for the most part, soon grow weary of the first kind of evangelical, and are profoundly wary of the second.

Now, Luxon is at pains to reassure New Zealanders that he regards his religion as a private matter, not to rammed down people’s throats, or enshrined in their country’s laws. All well and good, but if that really is his position, then he cannot truly call himself an evangelical. Ramming righteousness down the sinner’s throat is the noisy evangelical’s Christian duty. A quiet evangelical, on the other hand, is almost certainly convinced that God has a special plan for him – and the country. Something which should give both his colleagues, and the voters, pause.

On the other hand, Christopher Luxon strikes just about everyone who meets him, or watches him on television, as an intelligent, diligent and resourceful individual. His newness, seen by some as a distinct handicap, is just as easily construed as a recommendation. No, he doesn’t have parliamentary dirt under his fingernails, but neither does he have fratricidal blood on his hands.

By all accounts, Luxon was a very capable CEO. It is entirely possible that, by 2023, that is all most New Zealanders will be looking for.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 29 November 2021.

Recalling The Past - And Its Ghosts.

Raising The Dead: There is a reason why so many of the signposts to old battle sites are weathered and overgrown; why lichen has been allowed to obliterate the names of those who fell. Sleeping ghosts, like sleeping dogs, should never be needlessly awakened.

THE NATIONAL PARTY started this. Back in 2016, when the clamour for a more fulsome historical accounting of Maori-Pakeha relations was rewarded with an official day for commemorating the dead of the New Zealand Wars.

No less a personage than National’s Deputy-Prime Minister, Bill English, declared that the moment had come “to recognise our own conflict, our own war, our own fallen, because there is no doubt at [the Battle of] Rangiriri ordinary people lost their lives fighting for principle in just the same way as New Zealand soldiers who lost their lives fighting on battlefields on the other side of the world.”

To which I responded with a heartfelt “uh-oh!”

Or, in the words of a slightly more coherent response, penned shortly after English’s woefully ill-judged observation:

“Of one thing we can be certain […] the dead who have slept for one-and-a-half centuries beneath the disputed soil of Aotearoa will have a very different story to tell. There is a reason why so many of the signposts to old battle sites are weathered and overgrown; why lichen has been allowed to obliterate the names of those who fell. Sleeping ghosts, like sleeping dogs, should never be needlessly awakened.”

Pish-tosh! The government of Jacinda Ardern is having none of that self-serving colonialist amnesia. The recently announced Aotearoa NZ history curriculum – compulsory, no less – is all about issuing our kids with scrapers, cleaning agents and scrubbing brushes, and setting them to cleaning up all those lichen-covered monuments.

During his famous “Long March”, the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong and his followers were required to traverse the same mountain pass where an earlier revolutionary army had been wiped-out. “Fear no ghosts!”, Mao reassured his superstitious peasant soldiers: “The past does not return!”

But, Mao’s confidence was misplaced. If you ask it to return often enough, the past, just like the murderous ghost in the horror film, Candyman, is only too happy to oblige. The results are seldom pretty.

Reading between the lines of the government’s draft history curriculum the full extent of its revisionist ambitions soon become clear. Rather than the history of the colony-cum-nation-state that the world knows (pro-tem?) as New Zealand, the next generation of young New Zealanders will learn that the history of these islands actually began somewhere between a thousand and eight hundred years ago. In other words our national narrative must be understood as a Maori – not a Pakeha – story.

Indeed, the role assigned to the Pakeha in this narrative is almost entirely negative. At best, they might be described as disruptors. At worst, they will be painted as destroyers and appropriators: agents of an alien power that imposed its will unjustly on Aotearoa’s original inhabitants. If the history of this country is envisaged as a Hollywood western, then the Pakeha are wearing the black hats – they’re the baddies.

The logic of this new, profoundly revisionist, historiography is inescapable. If the story of Aotearoa is a Maori story, then the Pakeha intervention can only be understood as something temporary. Colonialism, and all the damage it inflicted on Aotearoa’s natural environment, and the culture of its indigenous population, will be presented as an historical phase through which it is passing. The direction of travel is clear: from a Maori past, towards a Maori future. And the Pakeha? Well, the Pakeha are tauiwi: strangers, outsiders, foreigners – just visiting. For them, the message could hardly be clearer: When in Aotearoa, behave like an Aotearoan – not a Roman.

All this is a far cry from the idea that Aotearoa-New Zealand is the creation of historical forces too vast for blame, too permanent for guilt, colliding in time. The achievements of the diminutive nation-state emerging from that historical collision once astounded the world.

In the 1958 edition of the Richards Topical Encyclopaedia, New Zealand’s entry is headed: “The World’s ‘Model Nation’”. The sub-heading is worth quoting in full:

“How little New Zealand, starting her career amid wars and many money problems, built up for herself a government so sound and humane that she came to be called the best-governed nation in the world.”

I like that story much better than the one embedded in the new curriculum. It’s an historical narrative in which all this country’s inhabitants once took enormous pride, and could again – if only the dead are allowed to sleep.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 12 February 2021.

Judith Collins’ State Of The Nation Speech Fails To Comfort – Or Connect.

Nothing New: State-of-the-Nation speeches are opportunities for those charged with their delivery to demonstrate renewed political credibility. Those hoping that Collins’ SOTN address to the Auckland Rotary Club on Tuesday, 26 January would constitute a significant step towards restoring her credibility must be feeling disappointed.

JUDITH COLLINS, remember her? She’s the woman who led the National Party to its second-worst defeat in 85-years. In a normal political party, leadership of that quality would have left the politician responsible with only one option: resignation. But, National hasn’t been a normal party for quite some time. Not since the departure of its last credible leader, Bill English, in 2018.

State-of-the-Nation speeches are opportunities for those charged with their delivery to demonstrate renewed political credibility. Those hoping that Collins’ SOTN address to the Auckland Rotary Club on Tuesday, 26 January would constitute a significant step towards restoring her credibility must be feeling disappointed. Certainly, National’s normality hasn’t been reclaimed.

A political party trounced as badly as National in 2020 owes the electorate two gestures – at the very least. The first is an apology to the voters for so egregiously misreading their mood and intent. The second is a promise to move beyond its clearly inadequate diagnosis of the nation’s ills and towards a whole new suite of remedies.

Collins’ speech did neither of these things. For the most part it was content to rehash the promises made to the electorate last October. The balance consisted of all the usual bromides of lazy conservatism.

The worst of these was Collins’ reflexive rejection of the Government’s plan to lift the minimum wage:

“Labour’s intentions are laudable but they are focused on alleviating the symptoms of stretched working families struggling to make ends meet rather than on the root causes of prosperity – supporting businesses to be more productive, investing in new capital, taking on new staff and lifting wages.”

We have heard it all before. The only way to lift wages is not to lift wages.

What would really make New Zealanders sit up and pay attention is an admission from National that it is precisely its own and the business community’s ingrained opposition to lifting wages that keeps New Zealand’s productivity so low. Recognition by Collins that only by winnowing-out our weakest businesses – i.e. removing the crutch of low wages – will this country’s long-delayed investment in skills, innovation and new technology become unavoidable. A brave declaration that low-wage economies are low-productivity economies. Now, that would have shaken the nation out of its Covid fever-dreams!

Another of those lazy conservative bromides holds that households and economies are subject to exactly the same constraints. That living beyond one’s means is as disastrous for countries as it is for individuals. Save all we can, reduce our debts as quickly as possible, keep the government’s nose out of our businesses’ business: these are National’s new remedies – same as the old remedies.

For the homeless, the solution is equally traditional – and facile. Make a bonfire of as many regulations as possible. Collins has promised her party’s support for emergency legislation designed to strip away what’s left of New Zealand’s social and physical environmental protections. It would be open-slather for property investors and developers.

“We need to reform our planning and RMA processes with one goal: freeing up land and getting more houses built”, Collins told the Rotarians. “And if councils won’t do it, we will do it for them.” (Some forms of state intervention, it would seem, cannot be done without.)

So far, so “same-old, same-old” from the Collins-led National Party. That familiar conflating of the particular interests of farmers and businessmen with the general interest of the whole nation.

“[W]e had a strong sense of community”, confided Collins, recalling her childhood in the Waikato. “We were surrounded by farming families who got stuck in and helped each other out, particularly when times were tough. It wasn’t something to be remarked on or exclaimed over, it was just the way things were – as a Collins, as a farmer, as a Kiwi.”

As if working-class families, a layer of New Zealand society considerably more familiar with tough times than Collins’ comfortable cockies, wouldn’t know how to get stuck in and help their neighbours.

It has always been there: National’s profoundly objectionable assumption that the only real Kiwis are people like themselves. That the rest of the nation are either parasites or problems. Probably both.

Collins has yet to learn the lessons of Holyoake, Bolger, Key and English. That National only regains credibility electorally by opening its arms wider – not to crush voters, but to comfort them.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 29 January 2021.

Who Is The Best Judge Of The People’s “Wellbeing”?

Happiness Relocated: The revelation that the model, and her young daughter, whose smiling faces adorned the cover of Grant Robertson's "Wellbeing Budget" had departed New Zealand in search of a better life on Australia's Gold Coast, provided a powerful symbol of the disconnect between the  experts' top-down approach to wellbeing, and the practical judgements of real people, on the ground, about their wellbeing - or the lack of it.

“THE WELLBEING BUDGET.” What a fantastic public relations confection this year’s budgeting exercise has turned out to be! Who could possibly raise a reasonable objection to the idea of gearing all the Government’s revenue-gathering and spending efforts towards securing the “wellbeing” of the New Zealand people?

Not Simon Bridges, that’s for sure. The Opposition’s case seems to rest on the assertion that they thought of it first. That “wellbeing” is just another name for former National Party leader Bill English’s programme of “social investment”.

And that’s a worry. Because the thinking behind both the “Wellbeing Budget”, as well as English’s “social investment” programme, runs counter to the most fundamental tenet of parliamentary democracy. Namely: that before money can be appropriated from the people in the form of taxes, their consent must first be obtained; and that such consent must be renewed annually, on the people’s behalf, by their freely elected representatives.

The entire Westminster System rests on the notion that there can be “no taxation without representation”. For breaching this fundamental principle, King Charles I lost his head, and King George III lost his 13 American colonies.

These grim precedents notwithstanding, the “wellbeing” principle enunciated by the Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, in yesterday’s Budget Speech, involves shifting the responsibility for signing-off on how the people’s money is to be spent from their elected representatives to their supposed servants in the Public Service.

Apparently, the whole notion of Members of Parliament determining and overseeing how the people’s taxes are spent has become woefully outdated. How much more efficient to simply vote money to a collection of government agencies and allow them to spend it as they see fit over the next four or five years. Annual appropriations, voted by the House of Representatives, is such an archaic way of operating what has become a fearsomely complex state machine. Much better to leave matters to the “experts”. They will keep their Minister informed, and s/he will tell Parliament when it’s time to wield its rubber stamp.

“Experts.” Aye, there’s the rub. For at least a century, the notion of government by experts (also known as “technocracy”) has enjoyed a solid following among … well … experts. Indeed, in the years following the First World War, a whole new approach to “manufacturing” the consent of the masses was developed by an arcane combination of journalists, psychologists and political scientists. It was the most accomplished of these manipulators, Edward Bernays, who refined the process into what we today recognise as the profession of “public relations”.

From a democratic perspective, the only true experts are the people themselves. That MPs need their votes to enter the House of Representatives means that, in theory at least, they enter that august institution with a pretty good idea of what a substantial number of voters regard as important and unimportant. It is on the basis of this knowledge that they appropriate money and frame legislation. To further inform and refine their thinking, MPs invite the people to make submissions to parliamentary select committees. At this point in the process, the contributions of experts are welcomed.

Political parties, once again in theory, are supposed to amplify the expression of the people’s needs and wants by organising them into a coherent package of proposed reforms. This is referred to as the party’s “manifesto”. It represents a kind of political contract with the electors, and the parliamentary representatives of the party, or parties, commanding a majority in the House of Representatives are expected to honour their manifesto’s “mandate” by conscientiously fulfilling its promises. The funding of these promises, via the elected government’s annual Budget, is the people’s most effective guarantee for securing their wellbeing democratically.

The only legitimate role for public servants in this process is to advise the elected Government on how best to implement its manifesto promises. The Public Service is not there to substitute its own judgement for that of the people’s – as expressed through the electoral process. Nor is it the business of elected politicians to ask bureaucrats to do the job they were chosen to do. All the “working groups” and “expert committees” in the world cannot relieve the people’s representatives of their sacred duty to – represent the people.

If the wellbeing of the people can only be secured by “experts”, then democracy is a lie.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 31 May 2019.

The Second Coming Of National's Rough Beasts.

Its Hour Come Round At Last: Instead of being thankful that New Zealand’s democratic constitution transforms days of retribution into peaceful transitions of power from one combination of political parties to another, National's far-right seethes with frustration, and consoles itself with fantasies of imposing a day of retribution of its own. On that day, all those who have deprived them of their rightful power and status will get what’s coming to them.

WHAT ROUGH BEAST SLOUCHES towards Wellington to be born? What sort of National Party are the people who brought down Bill English trying to establish? And will there be enough reasonable men and women in National’s caucus on Tuesday, 27 February to stop them?

In the movie, Schindler’s List, the hero, Oskar Schindler (played by Liam Neeson) attempts to persuade the SS labour-camp commandant, Amon Goeth (played by Ralph Fiennes) to refrain from picking-off random prisoners with his hunting rifle. For a few days, Schindler’s appeal appears to be working. Eventually, however, the commandant’s murderous impulses get the better of him and he resumes his deadly sport.

For 12 years, Bill English has played the role of Oskar Schindler: cajoling, persuading and, on occasion, outmanoeuvring the far-right of the National Party into running with a moderate, liberal-conservative political agenda. It was by trading on the popular appeal of this agenda that John Key and Steven Joyce were able to give the National Party three general election victories in a row.

Not that English was some sort of bleeding-heart liberal in disguise. On the contrary, his Catholic faith mandated a deeply conservative stance on many of the social issues which Key supported as proof of National’s liberal bona fides. By the same token, however, it was English’s Catholic faith that caused him to reject the swingeing economic austerity measures imposed by right-wing finance ministers in the UK, Canada and Australia.

Not only was English convinced that austerity was economically ineffective, but he also recognized that it was politically counter-productive. Not that the economic and social policies of the Key-English era were entirely benign – far from it. The National Right had to be appeased with anti-worker and anti-beneficiary measures that were intended to – and did – inflict a great deal of unnecessary suffering on tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders. In the hands of a different finance minister, however, matters could have been a great deal worse.

This was the knowledge with which the National Right, like SS Commandant Goeth, found it so difficult to be reconciled. Why be just a little oppressive of the poor and marginalised when you possess the power to grind their faces in the dust? Why restrict oneself to fastening legal leg-irons on the trade unions when you can legislate the evil socialist bullies out of existence altogether?

For the far-right, political power only becomes real when it is used. To exercise restraint is to allow those within your power to set the limits of their own persecution. Far from being a manifestation of strength (as Schindler suggested to Goeth) the willingness to exercise restraint is a craven demonstration of weakness.

In his fascinating Newsroom essay on Bill English’s political career, Bernard Hickey describes the occasion upon which his subject was so moved by the recollection of his own and his wife Mary’s family histories that he wept:

“He talked of his admiration for his father-in-law’s family ethos and hard work in raising a big family in Wellington, despite the struggles of arriving with little from Samoa in an unfamiliar city. He also talked about a quiet chat he had with a kaumatua on a marae about the problems of Maori youth, and the need for strong communities with their own resources. His point was that he admired the self-reliance and quiet conservatism of family and community life. He saw his role as helping those communities and pulling Government out of the way to let them get on with it. It wasn’t an ugly or dry form of libertarian scorched-earth politics. It was a deeply humane and thoughtful approach where Government was supposed to treat people with empathy and dignity and as individuals, rather than as just another beneficiary locked into welfare for life. His views on helping to lift people out of poverty were a precursor to his championing of the social investment approach, which he was only just starting to roll out through the Government as Labour returned to power in late October.”

It was during this part of his talk that English was obliged to pause for a few moments:

“The tears rolled down his nose and splashed onto the lectern. You could hear a pin drop. The audience was with him though. English's story was utterly authentic and thoughtful and showed a depth of humility and humanity that struck a chord that night. He got a standing ovation when he finished.”

English’s moderate conservatism, Hickey seems to be saying, is born out of a love for ordinary people. By contrast, the vicious conservatism of the far-right is born out of the gnawing fear that ordinary people might one day decide to exact retribution from those who have found it expedient to grind their faces in the dust. That fear begets hate which, in turn, is translated into institutional and physical violence. The great paradox of far-right aggression, however, is that by oppressing the poor, the marginalised and the dispossessed it only brings the terrifying day of retribution closer.

Instead of being thankful that New Zealand’s democratic constitution transforms these days of retribution into peaceful transitions of power from one combination of political parties to another, however, the far-right seethes with frustration, and consoles itself with fantasies of imposing a day of retribution of its own. On that day, all those who have deprived them of their rightful power and status will get what’s coming to them.

That’s where we are now. English’s moderation is deemed, by his colleagues, to have failed the National Party. New, and much more aggressive leadership is required. Those panderers to, and enablers of, the poor and marginalised – Labour and the Greens – must be driven from the Treasury Benches as quickly as possible. And Winston Peters, that conservative turncoat and traitor, must be cast into the ninth circle of political hell – and his worthless party with him.

William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet, saw it all happening nearly a century ago, in the fretful aftermath of the First World War. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity”, he wrote in his most famous poem, The Second Coming.

The final lines of that poem can still send a chill down the spine:

… but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

This essay was jointly posted on Bowalley Road and The Daily Blog of  Thursday, 15 February 2018.

Bonny Prince Billy.

Leader In Waiting? If this government falters, then the Opposition Leader will be perfectly placed to become the nation’s “Jacobite” leader-in-exile: the only legitimate inheritor of the 2017 General Election; the King-Over-The-Water; Bonny Prince Billy.

Will ye no come back again?

Will ye no come back again?

Better lo’ed ye canna be;

Will ye no come back again?

– Jacobite Lament

THAT, FIVE MONTHS AFTER the 2017 election, 44.5 percent of New Zealanders remain loyal to the National Party is astonishing. Political defeat almost always foreshadows political desertion – usually on a large scale. Finding oneself on the losing side of any conflict is never a happy experience. The temptation to treat harshly the people who put you there can be very strong.

And yet National’s support remains precisely where it stood on election night. Conservative New Zealand is yet to be convinced that the government of Jacinda Ardern is worthy of so much as a second glance – let alone a second thought.

The reason for the Right’s steadfast opposition to the new regime is very simple: they do not believe it to be a legitimate government. No matter how many times the constitutional lawyers and political scientists insist that the present arrangement is perfectly legitimate: that a ‘coalition of the losers’ has always been one of the potential outcomes of any MMP election; the Right refuses to accept their arguments.

As adherents to New Zealand’s informal constitution, they cannot reconcile National’s stunning election-night plurality with its subsequent exclusion from government. How is it possible that a political party securing 44.5 percent of the popular vote – 7.6 percentage points ahead of its nearest rival – is denied power? How can it be ethical for a party receiving fewer than 7 percent of the votes cast, to set aside the clear preference of nearly half the electorate?

In the eyes of a worryingly large number of voters, the politicians currently seated on the Treasury Benches cannot be considered a legitimate government; and their leader, Jacinda Ardern, cannot be considered a legitimate prime minister.

The corollary to this denial is equally troubling. If Jacinda Ardern, the leader of the party which won the second-highest tally of votes, is not the legitimate prime minister; then the proper bearer of that title can only be the leader of the party which received the most votes: Bill English.

It is possible that Bill English’s colleagues are unaware of the power of this sentiment. As Members of Parliament, they know that the only votes that count in the formation of a government are the votes cast on the floor of the House of Representatives; and that the brutal truth of the present situation is – National doesn’t have enough.

Unlike so many of those who voted for them, they are moving on. The big question exercising their minds: Who should replace Bill – and when?

In this regard, they are, arguably, a little premature.

Jacinda’s stardust continues to dazzle us – her performance at Waitangi being just the latest demonstration of its brilliance – but, beneath the sparkling surface of this coalition government, powerful contradictions are at work. The Labour-NZF-Green government is determined to lift New Zealanders into paradise, but it lacks the funds required to pay for their new accommodation. Even worse, it is refusing to do what’s necessary to raise them.

By Budget Day – 17 May – it will have become demoralizingly clear to Jacinda’s Cabinet that her Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, is about to make liars of them all. By then, he’ll have made it clear that their generous promises of redress and renewal simply cannot be adequately funded. That’s when the deepening fissures in this ramshackle political construction will suddenly and dramatically widen; and the government’s most loosely-fastened adornments will begin falling-off.

That will be National’s Jacobite Moment.

For those who know their Scottish history, the Jacobites were the followers of the descendants of the deposed Stuart king, James II, whom they hailed as the only legitimate rulers of Great Britain.

If this government falters, then the Opposition Leader will be perfectly placed to become the nation’s “Jacobite” leader-in-exile: the only legitimate inheritor of the 2017 General Election; the King-Over-The-Water; Bonny Prince Billy.

The National Party’s best strategy is, therefore, to make no move against Bill English until it becomes clear whether or not Jacinda Ardern possesses the political skill to both deliver on Labour’s promises and adhere to her Government’s self-imposed “Budget Responsibility Rules”

If she doesn’t, then the 44.5 percent can start serenading their Bonny Prince Billy:

“Will ye no come back again?”

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 9 February 2018.

Long Live The Sun Queen!

Sunny Ways: I have participated in, and written about, politics for close to 40 years, but in all that time I can honestly say I have never witnessed anything like Jacinda Ardern’s first media conference as Labour Leader.

WHEN 2017 BEGAN, I wasn’t feeling all that hopeful about how it would end. Shortly after New Year’s Day, I wrote:

“The political consensus, at the beginning of 2017 – election year – is that the National-led Government will hold on to power. Not in its own right, as might have happened had John Key led them into battle, but with sufficient parliamentary support to govern comfortably. The identity and character of National’s support will likely prove the most intriguing electoral story of the year. The most significant political event of 2017, however, could well be the collapse of the Labour Party and the emergence of the Greens as New Zealand’s leading party of the centre-left.”

And if Andrew Little, alarmed at the sudden surge in support for the Greens, had not stepped aside in favour of Jacinda Ardern, then my gloomy prediction might very well have come true. Because, as we all know, that Green surge had come at Labour’s expense, driving the party’s poll numbers down towards politically unsustainable levels.

It is, therefore, arguable that the Labour-NZF-Green Government presiding over New Zealand as 2017 draws to a close owes its existence to the moral courage and simple decency of Andrew Little. Certainly, the Labour Party owes him a huge debt of gratitude. He was willing to do – unbidden – what, left to their own devices, his indefatigably self-interested caucus colleagues would never have had the gumption to force upon him.

There’s no disguising the fact, however, that Little’s decision to step down in favour of Ardern was a huge gamble. Neither he, nor his colleagues, nor the news media, were at all sure whether the MP for Mt Albert had what it took to reanimate Labour’s 2017 campaign.

Until, that is, she strode out of the Labour Caucus and into her first media conference – and opened her mouth.

I have participated in, and written about, politics for close to 40 years, but in all that time I can honestly say I have never witnessed anything like Jacinda Ardern’s first media conference as Labour Leader.

When words fail you, the best place to look for someone else’s is often in the works of William Shakespeare. Watching Ardern’s extraordinary political talent blaze forth so unexpectedly, I was reminded of the lines spoken by Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part One, where he explains his reasons for keeping his true nature hidden until exactly the right moment:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold

The unyoked humor of your idleness.

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

To smother up his beauty from the world,

That, when he please again to be himself,

Being wanted, he may be more wondered at

By breaking through the foul and ugly mist

Of vapors that did seem to strangle him.

No one can dispute that Ardern’s sunny ways dispelled the “foul and ugly mist” in which Labour had been slowly expiring. Beneath the television lights, those “base contagious clouds” which, in the persons of Phil Goff, David Shearer, David Cunliffe and Andrew Little had been smothering Labour’s hopes, were dispelled by the glorious summer of this daughter of Morrinsville. “Jacindamania” was upon us.

And yet, for all her “relentless positivity”, Ardern’s dramatic emergence foreshadowed only negative consequences for the Green Co-Leader, Metiria Turei, and her party. While Little’s grey presence cast a pall over Labour’s campaign prospects, Turei’s reckless challenge to the status quo – “I committed welfare fraud to feed my baby!” – had set progressive hearts a-flutter. Before Jacinda’s blazing sunshine overwhelmed it entirely, Turei’s defiant policy candle had sent out rays of hope into the neoliberal gloom. So transfixed were progressives by the bells and whistles of the passing “Jacinda” juggernaut, however, that only a few took note of the number of radical Green policies left crushed and broken beneath its wheels.

And, it wasn’t only the progressive Left that found itself transfixed by the Jacinda spectacle. For most of the year NZ First had been struggling to come up with a plan to moderate the policies of its most likely coalition partner – the National Party. Suddenly, Labour was back in the game. Was it possible that Jacinda also knew “The Hallelujah Song” of political transformation and economic emancipation? Would she be willing to sing it with him? Peters didn’t know, but for the first time in a long time, it made sense to listen.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Thanks to her fairy NZ First godmother, Jacinderella did get to go to the ball. And, much to the fury of the National Party’s ugly sisters, it was onto her foot that Prince Winston slid the glass slipper of power.

So, can we say that, in spite of all those New Year forebodings, 2017 has had a happy ending? New Zealand has a progressive government, of sorts, and its young prime minister has already set about enchanting the world. What’s not to be hopeful about?

Strangely, I keep coming back to that Shakespearian quote: the one about Prince Hal imitating the sun. Because, of course, Prince Hal eventually becomes King Henry V. It is then that, as promised, he emerges from the “base contagious clouds” of his disreputable friends and hangers-on to claim his birthright – the Crown of England.

Aye, and there’s the rub. Power is transformative – it changes all who wield it. Henry V – Prince Hal as was – ruthlessly dismisses his former companions: breaking all former bonds, and forgetting all previous promises. With a kingdom to govern, his need is now for new friends, new advisors, new policies.

What that means, in terms of the true nature of the Labour-NZF-Green Government and its leader is, alas, only now becoming clear. New Zealanders may revel in the warm glow of their Sun Queen, but, having placed her on the throne, they must now content themselves with the role of mere spectators of her royal progress.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 19 December 2017.

Bringing Down Labour’s Warrior Queen.

Magnificent Loser: Boudica may have raised the Ancient British tribes against their Roman rulers, but she proved to be no match for the discipline and experience of Suetonius's XIV Legion. If Jacinda Ardern is to successfully overthrow the Neoliberal political and economic consensus and establish a genuinely "transformational" government, then she will have to weld her disputatious political tribes into a fighting machine every bit as formidable as Bill English's disciplined and experienced National Opposition.

ANYONE WHO VISITS the British Houses of Parliament cannot fail to notice her. Upright in her war-chariot, the Ancient Britons’ warrior queen, Boadicea, and her daughters, burst out of history like a trio of avenging angels. The bronze statuary does not, however, celebrate a victory. In the bloody revolt against Roman rule of 60AD, Boadicea (or Boudica, as she is properly called) was the loser. It was Suetonius, commander of Rome’s XIV Legion, who won.

Jacinda Ardern’s sudden emergence as New Zealand’s warrior queen, though nowhere near as bloody as Boudica’s, certainly bears comparison in terms of its sheer drama. Like Boudica, Jacinda was able to draw together all the political tribes determined to end the incumbent government’s rule. Also like Boudica, she has enjoyed considerable initial success.

What lies ahead of Jacinda, however, is an enemy who, though outmanoeuvred, has yet to be decisively defeated. Like Suetonius’s XIV legion, the National Party is well-equipped, highly-experienced, and, most importantly, formidably-disciplined. Jacinda’s ragged tribes may outnumber them – but can they outfight them?

The Colmar-Brunton opinion poll, released by TVNZ’s Q+A show on Sunday, brings that latter question into sharp focus. National’s level of support, measured at 46 percent, has not only held up, it has actually improved slightly over the 44.4 percent it won at the General Election.

For the governing parties, the news is not so good. When translated into seats in the House, the Government’s numbers (Labour: 39 percent; Greens: 7 percent; NZ First: 5 percent) deliver no advance on its current tally of sixty-three. If Jacinda was anticipating a “post-election bounce” in the polls, then she and her colleagues will find it hard to avoid feeling ever-so-slightly jumpy.

It’s not only the fact that National continues to enjoy a substantial lead over Labour that must be vexing the Government, but also the sheer size of its opponent’s electoral base. Unlike the Centre-Left, the Centre-Right in New Zealand is not required to continually marshal political parties as diverse as they are disputatious. Instead, they can range themselves against the Left’s warrior queen as a formidable unitary force commanded by a single leader. If Jacinda is Boudica, then Bill English is Suetonius. And if the Government represents the fractious war-horde of the revolting British tribes, then the National Opposition represents the XIV Legion.

Historical metaphors aside, the disposition of political forces revealed in the latest Colmar-Brunton Poll reflects a dangerously divided society. National’s voters clearly remain unconvinced by the new government’s arguments for change. Certainly, this poll has registered nothing like the decisive 10 percentage-point shift in voter allegiance that followed the election of Helen Clark in 1999, and John Key in 2008. Branded by its enemies as a “coalition of the losers”, the Labour-NZ First-Green Government is beset by legitimacy issues entirely absent from previous MMP configurations.

These legitimacy issues are unlikely to be ameliorated by the Government’s apparent determination to keep its spending within the narrow bounds of its “Budget Responsibility Rules”.

The strategic thinking behind this self-imposed restraint is unclear – to say the least! For parties and candidates pitching themselves against the status-quo, boosting electoral turnout is everything. Donald Trump and the Brexiteers did not win by offering their angry constituencies careful and measured policies! For Labour’s share of the popular vote to overtake National’s, its leaders need to roll-out policies of sufficient boldness to mobilise the tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders who have, hitherto, seen little or no point in voting. Proud reiterations of your government’s “fiscal and economic responsibility” will likely strike many of these potential voters as a pretty odd way to bid for their support. Very much a case of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

National’s strategy, by contrast, is clear and simple: take confidence in our strength; remain united and disciplined; and seize every opportunity to inflict maximum damage upon the Government. The Centre-Right seldom requires special policy carrots to lure its voters to the polling-booths. Conservatives know who their friends are.

When Suetonius set the XIV Legion across Watling Street and waited for Boudica to come at him, he was supremely confident that, providing his men remembered their training and followed their orders, the Britons would be unable to translate their numerical advantage into victory. On the contrary, he anticipated that the massive casualties inflicted by his legionaries would soon break the British tribesmen’s fighting spirit and send them into headlong retreat.

If Bill English and his National Opposition are similarly able to hold the line, and drive back every government advance, then he, too, will be rewarded with a loss of confidence in his enemies’ ranks. Moreover, if he takes advantage of Labour’s ridiculous determination to limit the Coalition Government’s room for fiscal and economic manoeuvre, then Bill English, like Suetonius, will bring down his warrior queen.

This essay was originally published in The Press and The Dominion Post of Tuesday, 12 December 2017.

Winston Peters Has Options - Jacinda Ardern Does Not.

Clowns To The Left Of Me, Jokers To The Right: Winston Peters with his crucial nine NZ First seats can make or break the fortunes of both major parties. Jacinda Ardern, on the other hand, cannot lose Winston's support without losing office. It would, therefore, be prudent for Labour to honour the promises that secured them the Treasury Benches.

JACINDA ARDERN needs to get a whole lot smarter – and quickly. Or Bill English might stop behaving like the dimmer half of Dumb and Dumber and start thinking strategically. The object of all this clever, strategic thinking? Winston Peters.

The Prime Minister’s frantic attempts to keep the “annex” to the Labour-NZ First coalition agreement secret, suggests strongly that the rumours about the post-election negotiations are true. Labour, it is said, could not believe the radicalism of the changes Winston Peters and his fellow negotiators were seeking. Unwilling to jeopardise their chances of ultimate victory, Labour’s negotiating team were, accordingly, careful to shunt NZ First’s most radical policy propositions into the now notorious annex.

Describing these as mere “notes”, the Prime Minister is flatly refusing to acknowledge the annex as official information. The moment NZ First’s nice-to-haves become official government policy, she reassures us, they will be made public. Until then, however, the sheer scale of NZ First’s policy ambitions will remain under wraps.

What must Peters be making of all this fancy prime-ministerial footwork?

It’s hard to see him being anything other than aggrieved and alarmed. Is this how Capitalism is to be given a human face? By falling back on the secrecy and manipulation of the Clark years? God knows, there are enough of Helen’s old comrades cluttering-up the Beehive lift-wells as it is! Do they really expect him to abandon his stated preference for “change” over “a modified status quo” before he’s even had time to hang up so much as a single Christmas stocking?

Peters is by no means the first political observer to note just how completely the “Jacinda-Train” has been stripped of its radical political signage. What had looked to many like a replica of Trotsky’s legendary armoured train; a vehicle for carrying the revolution forward against all enemies; has taken on the appearance of a drab KiwiRail locomotive in the process of being rotated 180 degrees on the Wellington turn-table.

This is not what Peters and his party threw in their lot with Labour and the Greens to achieve. Clarks “glacial incrementalism” is not the stuff of which political legacies are made. As he stood beside the young prime minister in the Beehive Theatrette on Monday afternoon, is it possible that Peters was beginning to feel, ever-so-slightly, foolish? Was he wondering whether, somehow, the old grand-master of the political chess-game was being checked?

Had he and his colleagues not been so busy forwarding thousands of written parliamentary questions to the Clerk’s Office, Bill English might have registered just how taut the hawsers holding the Labour and NZ First ships together have become. He might have asked himself what the Prime Minister’s refusal to come clean about all the policy concessions NZ First had demanded, and Labour had nodded through, portended for the Coalition’s long-term prospects. He might have concluded that “a [barely] modified status quo” is the very best NZ First can hope for. He might have thought to himself: “But, National can offer that!”

Indeed, it can. Which is why the Prime Minister needs to rein-in all those lofty Labour condescenders who have plonked themselves down at the coalition table and started explaining the facts of political life to their NZ First and Green Party allies. Most of all, she needs to ban absolutely any further references to Steve Maharey’s infamous quote dismissing political promises as “the sort of thing you say in Opposition, and then forget about in Government”.

Winston Peters had every reason to give the National Party a wide berth in the aftermath of the 2017 general election. Even so, he would never have joined forces with Labour had he not been assured of the policy space necessary to construct an enduring political legacy.

If English senses that Labour is denying the NZ First leader his promised policies of change, then what’s to stop him offering Peters an alternative legacy? By setting-up NZ First as its sister-party in provincial New Zealand, National could avoid becoming “Johnny-No-Mates”: New Zealand’s largest party, but never able to win enough seats to form a government. If English can convince him to become National’s provincial partner, then Peters will be able to bestow upon his beloved NZ First Party the precious legacy of permanence.

Time to smarten-up Jacinda! Give Winston the policies he was promised.

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 1 December 2017.

Chris Hipkins' Mistake.

First Rule Of Parliamentary Politics - Learn To Count! Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins (Centre) confers with Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, and Prime Minister Ardern. Hipkins' mistake - trusting the word of the National Party - is one he will be determined to avoid repeating.

IT WAS A MISTAKE: a serious mistake; a mistake born out of Labour’s naïve readiness to trust the National Opposition. It was, after all, the first sitting of the newly elected House of Representatives. Normally, an occasion for a little bit of pomp and circumstance, when Members of Parliament swear allegiance to the Sovereign, assume their seats, and elect one of their number Speaker of the House. Historically, a day of bi-partisan goodwill; a day for tradition; a day of calm before the House settles into its normal, adversarial, storms.

Not this day.

Clearly, when the Leader of the Opposition, Bill English, told a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery that “it’s not our job to make this place run for an incoming Government”, Labour’s new Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins, refused to take him seriously. Not even English’s parting shot: “we have no obligation to smooth [Labour’s] path. None whatsoever”, was explicit enough for Labour to take precautions against an Opposition ambush.

Not on the first day.

Not even when Simon Bridges, National’s “Shadow” Leader of the House, accused Labour of attempting to perpetrate an “unprecedented” erosion of the Opposition’s democratic rights, did Hipkins smell a rat. Why should he, when all he was proposing to do was implement a number of unanimously agreed changes to the rules governing the conduct and membership of Parliament’s select committees?

After all, these same amendments to Parliament’s “Standing Orders” – one of which limited the number of Select Committee members to 96 – had been recommended to the previous House of Representatives by no less a person than the man now proclaiming them to be a democratic outrage – Simon Bridges!

Obviously, this was all about the Opposition giving voice to their frustration. Opposition is never easy and the temptation to rhetorical over-statement is always very strong. English was simply talking tough – that is his job now. And Bridges? Well! Taking his cue from Bill, he was simply pumping-up the rhetoric to bursting point. Hell! Hipkins had done it himself often enough when seated on the Opposition Benches! All this fire and brimstone was being laid on for the benefit of National’s aggrieved voters, still smarting over the election outcome. There was no need for him, or anyone else on the Government’s side of the House, to get excited.

Except, there was.

With the Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Peters, and the Trade Minister, David Parker, both out of the country, and three more Government members absent from the Chamber, Hipkins was three votes shy of a majority on the Floor of the House. No matter, the only important business of the day was the election of Trevor Mallard as Speaker of the House, with National’s Anne Tolley as his deputy. All parties had been consulted, and all parties were agreed. The vote was a mere formality.

Until Bridges turned it into something else.

They say that the first and most important skill a politician is obliged to master is how to count. Bridges tallied-up the Government numbers and realised that the National Party had command of the Floor. Without a moment’s hesitation he pounced. If Labour wanted Mallard to be Speaker, then they would have to yield to the Opposition on the number of Select Committee members. Instead of 96, Bridges demanded 108. If Hipkins refused, then National would use its temporary command of the House to deny Mallard his heart’s desire – the Speaker’s Chair!

It was a scene of extraordinary drama. Bridges, his face contorted in a rictus of anthropoid belligerence, confronted the beseeching countenances of Hipkins and Finance Minister, Grant Robertson. The image will do him no harm – not among his caucus colleagues, anyway. With a single, ruthless stroke of parliamentary gamesmanship, Bridges has seized for himself the priceless mantle of National’s warrior knight.

But at what cost?

Hipkins made the mistake of believing that National would not stoop to turning the opening of Parliament into an ugly display of aggressive partisanship. It’s a mistake he will do everything in his power to avoid repeating.

Bridges, meanwhile, has signalled that National is ready to employ the tactics of the US Republican Party: obstruction without reason; obstruction without purpose; obstruction without end.

In the memorable words of Bette Davis in All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 10 November 2017.

WHAT IF? Some Random Thoughts About The Next Three Weeks.

The Ultimate Dirty Deal: When Hitler and Stalin - mortal ideological enemies - concluded their mutual non-aggression pact in 1939, the world stood aghast. Why did no one see it coming? Fundamentally, it came down to a lack of imagination. Being able to think the unthinkable is a rare talent in politics - but an extremely valuable one. Something to keep in mind over the next three weeks.

WHAT IF, three weeks from today, National decides that an acceptable deal with NZ First just isn’t on “the cards that count”? What if the easy assumptions of Election Night: that Winston Peters will recognise the futility of attempting to build a coalition with anyone other than National; have long since proved vain? What if it only takes a few days for National’s negotiators to realise that, in the 21 years since 1996, NZ First had matured into a political party with a mind of its own?

What if it turns out that Peters’ views, although taken extremely seriously by his party colleagues, no longer enjoy the status of Holy Writ? What if National’s negotiators discover that NZ First’s policies are actually a great deal more than mere rhetorical flourishes? What if NZ First’s manifesto is expected to be treated as a serious proposition by both National and Labour? What if, when English’s negotiating team are caught rolling their eyes and smothering guffaws, the atmosphere drops rapidly from cool to effing freezing? What if the prospects of a deal with NZ First – a deal which National’s caucus, members and supporters, the markets, and New Zealand’s major trading partners, can all live with – dwindle?

What if, three weeks from today, NZ First’s parallel negotiations with Labour are going gang-busters? What if the Wellington beltway’s confident prediction that Peters and Jacinda Ardern would not hit it off proves to be wildly inaccurate? What if a shared liking for single malt whiskey breaks the ice between the two leaders and the talk flows freely? What if Ardern’s rural upbringing has equipped her with a set of core values remarkably congruent with Peters’ own? What if both leaders evince a strong sense of patriotic duty which, in turn, imbues their respective negotiating teams with the feeling that they are but two halves of a single mission?

What if the broad policy over-lap of NZ First and Labour only makes matters easier? What if, on immigration there is particularly strong agreement? What if, in the midst of their discussions on this subject, both negotiating teams come face-to-face with their strong negative feelings – bordering on complete aversion – to the Greens and their policies? What if, reported back to their respective leaders, these reservations progress quickly to a top-level conversation that edges, inexorably, towards the conclusion that if an agreement is to be concluded between NZ First and Labour, then the only role for the Greens will be to supply the votes necessary to carry confidence and supply motions?

WHAT IF, three weeks from today, a transcript of this conversation between Peters and Ardern is placed in the hands of the Caretaker Prime Minister by an employee of the Security Intelligence Service? What if English, reassured that the information had been collected in accordance with the “activities which impact adversely on New Zealand’s international well-being or economic well-being” clause of the SIS Act, calls the Greens’ leader, James Shaw, to a clandestine meeting where he invites him to listen to the relevant fragments of the secretly recorded conversation between Ardern and Peters?

What if, putting to one side the morality and legality of the recording, Shaw demands to know from English why he is being allowed to listen to it? What if English then briefs him on the difficulties his own party is having negotiating with NZ First, and on the sheer size of the dead rats NZ First is expecting National to swallow in order to secure the right to govern. What if, being asked again by Shaw to explain why he is being told all this, English takes a deep breath and invites the Green Party leader to set forth the conditions under which he would be willing to ask his party to vote on whether or not to enter into a formal coalition agreement with the National Party?

What if Shaw laughs out loud, declaring that the very notion of such an arrangement would send the farmers into paroxysms of rage and split the National Party asunder? What if English agrees that a split would be inevitable, but then asks Shaw to consider whether that would be such a bad thing? What if English suggests that a “country party” would not only provide National with a permanent coalition partner, but would also draw support away from NZ First? What if English went on to suggest that, with the Greens anchoring a much more moderate National Party in the centre of the political spectrum, the ecological policies so dear to his heart would have a much better chance of being enacted? What if he then pointed out that, if the Greens came to feel that National was insufficiently attentive to the needs of the planet, they could always turn to Labour?

What if Shaw objected that the very idea of negotiating with National would almost certainly cost him his job, and that the Green Party would never let him do it. What if English responded by asking Shaw if his party would still feel so adamant about keeping National at arm’s length if its members were made aware of what their supposed friends in the Labour Party and NZ First really thought of them? What if he asked Shaw to weigh-up whether or not the Greens really would walk away from a genuine Government offer to get serious about Climate Change, poverty and swimmable rivers?

WHAT IF, three weeks from today, Bill English asks James Shaw if he has ever heard of the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact? 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 26 September 2017.

Bill To Winston: "Let's Do This!"

An Emphatic Plurality: Bill English is on course to lead National into a fourth term with a greater share of the popular vote than “Kiwi Keith” Holyoake. Bearing in mind that, 50 years ago, New Zealand elected its governments according to the rules of First-Past-The-Post, that is nothing short of astonishing.

HERE’S A TRULY SOBERING FACT to take away from Saturday’s general election. Nine years after taking office, the National Party is more popular in 2017 than it was in 2008. John Key became New Zealand’s prime minister after securing 44.93 percent of the Party Vote for the National Party. Our caretaker prime minister, Bill English, will enter into negotiations with NZ First’s Winston Peters having secured 46 percent of the Party Vote for National on election night. For the first time since 1969, a New Zealand government looks set for a fourth term.

And get this: Bill English is on course for that fourth term with a greater share of the popular vote than “Kiwi Keith” Holyoake. Bearing in mind that, 50 years ago, New Zealand elected its governments according to the rules of First-Past-The-Post, that is nothing short of astonishing.

The Labour Party, by contrast, is celebrating “a remarkable comeback” with 35.8 percent of the Party Vote. But is it all that remarkable? When the First Labour Government lost power in 1949, it was with 47.2 percent of the popular vote. The Second fell in 1960, with 43.4 percent. When the hapless Bill Rowling was turfed out of office by Rob Muldoon in 1975, Labour’s share of the popular vote had fallen from 48.4 to 39.6 percent. In 1990, Labour racked-up just 35.14 percent as National’s Jim Bolger rolled over Battling Mike Moore to victory. And, when Helen Clark surrendered to John Key in 2008, Labour’s share of the Party Vote was just shy of 34 percent.

In other words, Labour is claiming a remarkable comeback on the strength of a popular vote share which, in past elections, has betokened decisive defeat.

Then again, Jacinda Ardern’s 35.8 percent (on Election Night) is just 2.94 percentage points less than the 38.74 percent of the Party Vote which carried Ms Clark to victory in 1999.

Except that, in 1999, Labour could count on the support of Jim Anderton’s Alliance (7.74 percent) and the Greens (5.16 percent) to assemble a centre-left Party Vote combo representing 51.64 percent of the electorate.

If we perform the same calculation on the basis of Saturday’s provisional results, the Opposition parties’ numbers add up to a tantalising 49.2 percent – and that number may cross the magic 50 percent threshold when Special Votes are counted. The question we are, thus, left to decide, is whether or not it is politically reasonable to assign the role played by the Alliance Party in 1999 to the NZ First Party of 2017.

The only reasonable answer is – No.

Winston Peters’ rhetorical flourishes against “the neoliberal experiment” notwithstanding, NZ First is not the unequivocally left-wing party that the Alliance was. Nor does Mr Peters have the luxury of looking at a National Party whose share of the Party Vote is less than Labour’s. In 1999, Jenny Shipley’s National Government attracted just 30.5 percent of the Party Vote. In marked contrast to Mr English’s position in 2017, there was simply no path to a parliamentary majority for Ms Shipley’s National Party.

What is it, then, that Mr Peters is confronting? First and foremost, he’s faced with a National Party undiminished in terms of popular support; controlling close to half the seats in the House of Representatives; and with the near unanimous endorsement of the most powerful institutions of New Zealand society. The people backing Bill English are the people who own things; the people who run things; the people accustomed to having the things they say becoming the things that people do – and pretty damn quickly. What on earth could Mr Peters possibly say to the 46 percent of New Zealanders who voted for the National Party that would in the slightest way reconcile them to being ignored?

He certainly cannot point to a record turnout of registered voters. That figure will be lucky to top 80 percent – a far cry from the 93.7 percent of electors who turned out to get rid of Rob Muldoon’s National Government in 1984. Nor can he point to a mass movement of the angry poor gathered behind a radical manifesto demanding fundamental changes to the way their country is run.

No, when Mr Peters turns to face the alternative to a National-NZ First coalition government, what does he see? A Labour Party which appears to believe that revolutions are delivered by working groups; and a Green Party which, having somehow survived the near write-off of its political vehicle, struggles to believe it’s still alive. Putting an end to “the neoliberal experiment” will, almost certainly, require a tougher team than this!

So, Mr Peters will play “the cards that count” with all the skill he indisputably possesses. And Mr English, if he is wise, will clasp his newfound ally by the hand and say: “Let’s do this!”

This essay was originally published in The Press of Monday, 25 September 2017.