Jones Won: Ryan & Morten Nil.

The Man In The Middle: Neale Jones was not “smacked down” by Kathryn Ryan and Brigitte Morten. He was, however, interrupted, talked over, and made extremely difficult to hear. In spite of all these hindrances, he kept on fighting the good fight for close to half-an-hour with admirable clarity and forbearance. Unlike the other two participants in Monday’s RNZ Political Panel, Jones kept his focus on the dangerous realities of the protest taking place in and around Parliament Grounds.

NEALE JONES is to be congratulated. No, no – it’s alright – I haven’t hit my head. It is just that I have always believed in giving credit where credit is due – and Jones deserves a lot of credit. Had I been on the receiving end of Kathryn Ryan’s and Brigitte Morten’s right-wing tag team, as Jones was on RNZ’s Monday-morning Political Panel, I’m damn sure I wouldn’t have kept my cool as impressively as he did.

Ryan is usually a lot more circumspect in revealing her personal opinions than she was on Monday (14/2/22). That’s as it should be. Her role on the Panel is that of moderator – at least, one hopes that’s still her role! She is there to put the questions to the panellists and prevent them from interrupting, talking over one another, and generally attempting to dominate the discussion.

That is not what happened on Monday. Ryan threw herself, boots and all, into the debate over the protest blockade of Parliament. She interrupted, talked over, and – not to put too fine a point upon it – hectored Jones, to a degree that bordered on the unprofessional.

Unsurprisingly, Morten was quick to follow Ryan’s lead. She, too, interrupted and talked over Jones – seemingly with Ryan’s blessing.

Jones, however, remained unfazed by this blatant breech of the Political Panel’s rules of engagement. He stayed resolutely on-message, stoically refusing to let Ryan and Morten rattle him. He didn’t turn nasty. He didn’t lose his temper. He just kept on talking sense.

It would have helped the listeners immensely if his levels had been set to match those of the two women – then we wouldn’t have had to strain our ears to hear him. But on Monday morning everything seemed to be set against him.

The most intriguing aspect of the whole encounter was the political line taken by Ryan and Morten. Both women consistently refused to accept Jones’s argument that the protest was inspired by individuals and groups in the grip of outlandish conspiracy theories imported from the United States. Nor were they willing to accept the well-established Far Right provenance of these conspiracy theories. Throughout the half-hour Ryan and Morten attempted to paint the protest as the anguished cry of stressed-out Kiwi battlers determined to resist Government over-reach.

The fact that the so-called “Freedom Convoy” was always intended to establish a laager of motor vehicles within which a protest encampment in Parliament Grounds could be established and, more importantly, protected, in no way slowed Ryan and Morten down. They simply didn’t appear to be interested in exploring the strategic purpose of the Convoy’s organisers, or what lay behind their radical departure from the norms of New Zealand political protest.

Even more disturbing was the way they seemed to brush aside the unprecedented displays of aggression directed at New Zealand’s Members of Parliament and the Press Gallery. Wellington has witnessed many angry demonstrations in its history, but very few in which the rhetoric of at least some of the participants was explicitly homicidal. What was it that made Ryan and Morten so determined to re-focus the debate away from this deeply disturbing reality?

I couldn’t help being reminded of the Peter Ellis Case, where the most bizarre, outlandish, and obviously impossible accusations of the children interviewed were simply set to one side so as not to “prejudice” the jury. It simply didn’t suit whatever it was that Ryan and Morten were trying to do to have listeners reminded of the murderous fury directed by the protesters against politicians and journalists.

The least damaging explanation of Ryan’s behaviour is that she was overcompensating for what critics from the Far Right and the Far Left described as the Fourth Estate’s sneering, middle-class dismissal of the smelly protesters cluttering up its stately work environment. On-the-spot reports from intrepid Far Right and Far Left observers, reassuring New Zealanders that the overwhelming majority of the protesters were just ordinary Kiwis exercising their right to protest, have, as intended, shamed a number of mainstream journalists into revising their original stance. It’s possible Ryan is one of them.

Morten, however, is more than savvy enough to realise the damaging impact which the bad behaviour of the protesters, and the baffling failure of the Police to move them on, is having on the Government’s reputation. The longer the protest continues, and the longer the Government and the Police are seen to be standing by ineffectually, the better it is for the Opposition parties. Just because it would not be wise for Christopher Luxon to be seen taking the side of the occupiers, doesn’t mean that it is unwise for Morten to do everything she can to make it more difficult – from a PR perspective – for Labour and the Police to resolve the crisis.

The Jones boy, every bit as savvy as the Morten gal, knows this. Hence his dogged determination to keep his listeners’ minds focused on the true character of these latter-day “Freedom Riders”.

They are not honest toilers, they are people hell-bent on getting rid of the protections Labour has mandated to keep the real honest toilers safe. They do not have legitimate grievances – unless you reckon thwarting the sociopathic impulses of unvaccinated extremists constitutes a legitimate grievance. They are, however, people acting under the influence of individuals and groups with Far Right affiliations and aims. Scratch them, and you’ll bleed.

In summary, Neale Jones was not “smacked down” by Kathryn Ryan and Brigitte Morten. He was, however, interrupted, talked over, and made extremely difficult to hear. In spite of all these hindrances, he kept on fighting the good fight for close to half-an-hour with admirable clarity and forbearance. Unlike the other two participants in Monday’s Political Panel, Jones kept his focus on the dangerous realities of the protest taking place in and around Parliament Grounds.

For that he deserves our cheers – not our jeers.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 18 February 2022.

Shaken and Stirred: The Left Reacts To Judith Collins’ Race-Based Politicking.

Extremely Moderate: That was the “problem” with Judith Collins’ address to the National Party’s Northern Regional Conference on 1 May 2021: its totally unexpected moderation. This was no bilious outpouring of racial hate – quite the reverse. With a degree of political subtlety and tactical agility that did both Collins and her speechwriter, Michael Forbes, credit, the speech left Labour with nothing but questions to answer. 

THE REACTION to Judith Collins’ speech to National’s Northern Regional Conference (1/5/21) was always going to be instructive. It would signal just how seriously National’s opponents took both Collins and her race-based politicking. A flat line on the political seismograph would indicate complete indifference: proof that the National Party leader’s strategy was out of time, and that she, as Leader, was running out of luck. Were the seismograph’s needle to flutter, however, National would know that it was on to something.

And flutter it did. Not wildly, admittedly, but enough to register something large and dangerous shifting deep underground. To give the Prime Minister credit, she was careful to let Collins’ speech pass without comment. While undoubtedly registering the seismic shock, her instincts told her to pretend that she hadn’t. Prime Ministers have surrogates to do that for them. Dutiful as ever, Kelvin Davis let loose the necessary slings and arrows – as did Jacinda’s Pavlovian poodles in the Press Gallery. Given the quality of Collins’ speech, they really had no choice.

Because that was the “problem” with Collins’ address: its totally unexpected moderation. This was no bilious outpouring of racial hate – quite the reverse. With a degree of political subtlety and tactical agility that did both Collins and her speechwriter, Michael Forbes, credit, the speech left Labour with nothing but questions to answer. Difficult questions about the contents of He Puapua, the report of the secretive, Cabinet-appointed working group established to develop a plan for bringing New Zealand’s state institutions into conformity with both te Tiriti o Waitangi and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“The Prime Minister needs to explain why Labour has been busy implementing He Puapua’s recommendations one by one”, Collins stated in a follow-up media release, “without sharing this wider plan with New Zealanders.”

This is clever politics. We live in an age of mistrust. Fewer and fewer citizens have much faith in their country’s political institutions anymore. Fewer still have faith in the reliability of the nation’s news media – as a study released last week by AUT’s Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy makes clear. Plant a seed of doubt in the voters’ minds about the Labour Government’s secretive “wider plan” for New Zealanders and watch it grow into a thornbush of paranoia.

Collins knows that Jacinda’s only hope of preventing that seed from sprouting is to dismiss He Puapua as just another of Labour’s many, many working party reports; and to reassure New Zealanders that any changes to New Zealand’s core constitutional structures will only ever be undertaken after they’ve been endorsed by a binding referendum. Except, even these undertakings offer Labour only the most fragile of defences. It was, after all, Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson who abolished appeals to the Privy Council and established the Supreme Court of New Zealand without holding a referendum. Moreover, it was precisely because referenda kept quashing attempts to set up Maori wards, that Jacinda’s government rushed through legislation denying local voters that option. On these matters, the public has every right to be sceptical.

Collins also knows, or, at the very least, suspects, that throwing He Puapua over the side of Labour’s waka might prove to be a great deal harder than it sounds. If Labour’s Maori Caucus’s “Plan A” was a full-scale assault on the homelessness, joblessness, ill-health, incarceration-rates and general despair of so many of their people, then it has failed. Both Jacinda and her right-hand man, Finance Minister Grant Robertson, made it clear, very early on, that the rapid “transformational” effort required to move the dial on Maori deprivation was a fiscal bridge too far for them to contemplate. That made the slower, but much deeper, transformations set out in He Puapua, the Maori caucus’ “Plan B”. If Jacinda, bowing to pressure from National and Act, tosses He Puapua overboard, then Te Paati Maori will invite the Maori electorate to, once again, draw their own conclusions about the wisdom of expecting a Pakeha party to prioritise Maori concerns.

The truth is that Labour, just like Saint Peter, does not wish to be caught denying the messianic He Puapua, just as David Seymour and Judith Collins commence crowing.

If anybody knows this, then it’s Jacinda’s former Chief-of-Staff, and the current Director of the lobbying firm Capital Government Relations, Neale Jones. Sitting alongside his fellow Wellington insider, Brigette Morten, on this morning’s (3/5/21) Nine-to-Noon “Political Panel”, it was Neale who finally indicated exactly where on the Richter Scale, Collins’ political earthquake registered. And it was high. High enough, in fact, to thoroughly rattle Mr Jones who, unlike the identically named hero of Bob Dylan’s Ballad of a Thin Man, knows exactly what’s going on here.

Which is why, presumably, from the moment host Kathryn Ryan asked him for his take on Collins’s speech, Neale started throwing bombs. The Leader of the Opposition, he insisted, was guilty of “racist fearmongering”; engaging in a “toxic form of politics”; and had concocted her very own “conspiracy theory”. This is not the sort of language your average capital city insider generally uses to describe a political event of no impact or importance. On this occasion, I think it’s fair to say that the man licenced to kill Labour’s foes (at least rhetorically) was both shaken and stirred.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of Neale’s critique was his characterisation of any attempt to critique the rangatiratanga agenda of He Puapua and its ilk as illegitimate and sinister. It was difficult to avoid the conclusion that if Neale had his way this kind of “toxic” politics would be impermissible: a form of “hate speech”. As a line of argument, it is chilling: conveying the impression that some kinds of politics – most particularly the politics of Maori-Pakeha relations – should be considered “out-of-bounds” and strictly controlled.

Listening to this morning’s “Political Panel”, I found it impossible not to imagine Brigette Morten sitting in the RNZ studio with a grin as wide as a Cheshire Cat’s. Seeing, as we, the listeners, were hearing, Neale’s discomfort, Morten must have recognised just what a winner Collins has picked.

The National Party leader’s May Day address, unlike Brash’s Orewa Speech, will not be a sky-rocket – hauling National’s poll numbers up into the electoral stratosphere. No, He Puapua and all it stands for will be a slow-burner, spreading underground like a peat fire until, finally, it surfaces in clouds of acrid, choking smoke.

In the immortal words of Rachel Hunter: “It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 4 May 2021.