“Keep Cutting, Jacinda!”

You Gotta Serve Somebody: Is it more accurate to describe MPs as employees of their party? Certainly, the master-servant characterisation works much better in this context than in any other. Without a party, becoming an MP is virtually impossible. Moreover, to become a parliamentary candidate, individuals are not only expected to sacrifice their judgement to the opinion of their party – they are required to.

JACINDA JUST FROZE her colleagues’ income for at least a year. Politicians, she reckons, don’t need any more money. With the average backbench MP’s salary topping $160,000 per annum, most of us would agree. Vehemently.

I say salary, but that’s just for convenience. The truth is, I don’t know what to call the income we taxpayers settle on our political representatives. The word “salary” implies some sort of master-servant relationship. That is certainly the talkback hosts’ assumption when they refer to the members of the House of Representatives as: “our employees in Wellington”.

Except they’re not our employees, they’re our representatives – and being an elected representative of the people is very far from being an employee of the people, let alone their servant!

The English philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is often quoted on what the voters might reasonably expect from their Member of Parliament. In his famous “Speech to the Electors of Bristol” (1780) he wrote: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

Less frequently quoted, but even more apposite, is Burkes’ contention that: “Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.”

If only! In the 238 years since Burke delivered his famous speech, the British parliament (and our own) has ceased to be a collection of individual representatives dedicated to the “general good” (if such a disinterested body of politicians ever actually existed!) and has indeed become a “congress”. Not of ambassadors, to be sure, but of political parties. These institutions are, indeed, representatives of “different and hostile interests”; “agents and advocates” for every kind of purpose and prejudice; and for all manner of causes.

Is it more accurate, then, to describe your MP as an employee of his or her party? Certainly, the master-servant characterisation works much better in this context than in any other. Without a party, becoming an MP is virtually impossible. Moreover, to become a parliamentary candidate, individuals are not only expected to sacrifice their judgement to the opinion of their party – they are required to.

This raises all manner of problems, however, because, as the American novelist, Upton Sinclair (1878-1968) shrewdly observed: “It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”

If the only way to become – and remain – a parliamentarian is by the grace and favour of one’s political party; and if the financial reward for being an MP is in excess of $160,000; then our political parties are particularly well set up to make “their” MPs understand only what the party leaders want them to understand – on pain of becoming instantly, and in most cases, considerably, poorer.

It is probably pertinent to observe at this point that an income of $160,000 per annum places its recipient in the top 5 percent of New Zealand’s income earners. At more than three times the medium income, it is difficult to see how any person in receipt of such a handsome living could long retain any sort of fellow-feeling with those required to live in more straightened financial circumstances. When one is earning such a large sum of money it is difficult to resist the whispered conclusion of one’s fattened ego that it is entirely proper and well-deserved. It is then but a small step to the conviction that the misery of others is similarly appropriate and well-deserved.

The legends live on in the Labour Party of its founding fathers living no better than their working-class supporters, and how prone they were to share with the most destitute of their constituents what little remained of their meagre parliamentary stipends. Such tales would certainly explain why socialism remained for the First Labour Government something much more than a mere rhetorical flourish; and why their ability to understand things was so refreshingly unimpaired.

So, keep cutting Jacinda! The less our MPs take, then, assuredly, the more likely they are to give.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 24 August 2018.

A Matter of Time: Reflections Of A Waning Republican

Time Lords: The historical transition of the Monarchy: from that which rules, to those who reign, was a remarkable constitutional innovation. Neither a true monarchy, nor yet a full republic, Britain’s constitutional monarchy offered its subjects something unique. "[A] constitution made by what is ten thousand times better than choice, it is made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time.”
 

I’M A REPUBLICAN. At least, I used to be. Now, I’m not so sure. And, yes, this reassessment is, indeed, the result of the just completed visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George.

 

So, what has changed? What’s become of that young university debater who, way back in 1981, when the royalist team called for “Three cheers for Her Majesty, the Queen!” leapt to his feet and called for “Three cheers for Oliver Cromwell!”?

 

The answer, I’m afraid, is “Time”.

 

Two years on from that fiery debate in the Otago University Union, the Prince and Princess of Wales were seated on the lawn at Old Government House and their little son, William, was hot in pursuit of a Buzzy Bee.

 

And now, impossibly, that little boy has a little boy of his own. Through all the happy and farcical, inspiring and tragic events that have shaped both his life and my own over the  intervening 30 years, a connection – something more than mere sentiment – has grown. It was not there in my republican youth, but it has sprouted as my youth faded: watered by the storms of experience; growing stronger with each circuit of the sun.

 

And now, impossibly, that little boy has a little boy of his own.
 

I understand now what I could only smile at in my youth – my late mother’s undying affection for the Queen. I realise now that she, too, had memories to measure her own life by. Of a serious little girl staring warily at the newsreel cameras in the last years of peace before the outbreak of the Second World War. Of that little girl, grown now into a young woman, on the arm of her new husband. Of that same young woman, now a mother, proudly displaying her first-born son to the world.

 

That connection again: through war and marriage and motherhood; always there, always growing and subtly binding this super-family – half German, half Scot – to that vast commonwealth of families who, growing older, had learned to recognise the signposts of their own maturity in the unfolding history of this strange and exalted reflection of themselves.

 

The Royal Family - a strange and exalted reflection of our own.

 

Time has also taught me to recognise the true identity of the forces I railed against in my youth. In opposing monarchy I was, in fact, opposing the exercise of unelected and unaccountable authority: the arbitrary and violent intervention of state power into the lives of the powerless and the innocent.

 

But if that is the measure, then the government of Oliver Cromwell does not merit even one cheer. He and his “plain, russet-coated troopers” were nothing less than Christian mujahedeen. England during the Interregnum became a ruthless military theocracy. Cromwell’s New Model Army, for a brief moment the crucible of democratic debate, would emerge, finally, as the Taliban in breastplates.

 

And was the Monarchy really so politically unaccountable? When the Cromwellian regime collapsed, and the Stuart dynasty was restored in 1660, the executed King Charles I’s son landed at Dover. And all the way to London, a distance of 75 miles, the road was lined with his cheering subjects. Had it been put to a vote, Charles II would have been elected in a landslide.

 

What Cromwell did do, however, was prove that monarchs could not rule, indefinitely, without the people’s consent. This radical notion was reconfirmed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Henceforth kings and queens would reign – but they would not rule. Our monarchs thus ceased to be creatures of politics and became creatures of time. For what else is a “reign” but the temporal measure of the monarch’s tenure on the throne?

 

This historical transition of the Monarchy: from that which rules, to those who reign, was a remarkable constitutional innovation. Neither a true monarchy, nor yet a full republic, Britain’s constitutional monarchy offered its subjects something unique. In the words of the man who understood the innovation best, Edmund Burke:

 

“[I]t is a constitution made by what is ten thousand times better than choice, it is made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people, which disclose themselves only in a long space of time.”

 

And this, of course, is the great distinction, between a royal family and an individual head-of-state elected for a short term of office. A family embodies a relationship with time that is quite distinct from that of the individual. The hereditary principle itself is meaningless without the reality of those who have come before – and those who will come after.

 

And that is what we see when William and Kate and George step off the plane. Not just themselves, but all who have come before them, and all who shall succeed them. It is an image embodying not just the Royal Family, but our own.

 

And that is something we shall never be able to elect.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 15 April 2014.

Are you being served?

Edmund Burke: His "Address to the Electors of Bristol", delivered on 3 November 1774, still stands as one of the greatest statements of the Member of Parliament's civic, and moral, responsibilities.

BILL ENGLISH may have decided to pay back the extra $12,000 he arranged for himself to be paid since becoming the Minister of Finance, but who, in all honesty, can blame him for extracting every possible advantage from the arcane system of calculating ministerial allowances? He is still a relatively young man, has a large family, and is in a volatile and uncertain occupation. An opportunity presented itself. He took it. Wouldn’t we all?

And doesn’t the same apply – mutatis mutandis – to every other Member of Parliament?

Throughout this furore over parliamentary and ministerial allowances, haven’t we all been looking in the wrong place, at the wrong things? Instead of encouraging us to focus on MPs with their "snouts in the trough", why wasn’t the news media demanding to know: "Is being a Member of Parliament a ‘job’ (with all the benefits and allowances associated with a modern employment "package") or is it, a ‘civic vocation’ – undertaken not for the money, but for the people.

If politics is a vocation, then the expression "political career" should only be used in retrospect – after a politician has retired. On the other hand, if a "political career" is something ambitious citizens can aspire to; prepare for; and, having acquired the requisite skills, join as a fully-qualified practitioner, then being an MP is just a job – no different from medicine, law or accountancy.

But, if that’s true, then we should simply shut-up about the rights and wrongs of the various allowances available to parliamentarians. They are no more our business than the allowances and per diems employers pay other workers for out-of-town work.

And, before you object that "we" are the politicians’ employers, I’d advise you to think again. Because the venerable notion that an MP is beholden to his or her constituents is one which belongs alongside the equally old-fashioned idea that representing one’s fellow citizens is a not "just a job"– but a civic vocation.

The idea of representation being an honourable calling dates back to the time when the purpose of a parliament, or, as the French wrote it, parlement – a place where people talk – was to convey the thoughts (and usually the money) of the people to the King. When it pleased His Majesty to consult his subjects, the cities and towns of the realm elected an accomplished and articulate citizen to speak on their behalf. (Under no circumstances should these representatives of the "commons" be confused with the King’s "peers", his fellow aristocrats, who, much like our own Business Roundtable, enjoyed more direct access to the King’s ear.)

Representing one’s fellow citizens was a solemn civic responsibility – not to be undertaken lightly. In his justly celebrated "Address to the Electors of Bristol", the 18th Century English political philosopher and parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, set forth the duties of a parliamentary representative with considerable eloquence:

"Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

What resemblance (if any) does the contemporary New Zealand MP bear to this splendid Georgian character?

The most obvious similarity is their equal eagerness to give reassurance that the electors’ interests are in a safe pair of hands. The most obvious difference goes directly to the heart of the current controversy. Burke, unlike his Kiwi equivalent, clearly conceives of himself as a free agent – one whose "unbiassed opinion", "mature judgement" and "enlightened conscience" will never be sacrificed to that all-powerful "set of men" – the political party.

It is the political party – that restless "spirit of faction" so derided by the political thinkers of the 18th Century – that has insinuated itself between the contemporary New Zealand MP and his constituents. And it is to the political party – the body which selects him as its candidate, positions him on its List, and at whose "pleasure" he rises or falls – that the New Zealand MP gives his true allegiance. The party’s interests, "above all, ever, and in all cases", will be preferred to his own, and except on those rare occasions when a "conscience vote" is permitted, his judgement will be sacrificed unhesitatingly to his party’s opinion.

The original justification for the formation of political parties: the need to advance, roll back, or protect some great and fundamental revision of society’s rules; no longer strictly applies to the dominant parties of the 21st Century English-speaking world.

The original party stand-off: Whigs versus Tories, traced its origins to the political divisions thrown up during the English Revolution of the 17th Century.

In the 19th and 20th Centuries the stand-off between the promoters of socialism and the defenders of capitalism laid the foundations of (in our case) the Labour and National parties.

But, in the 21st Century, at Francis Fukuyama’s "end of history", our party system has been reduced to facilitating, in the rather deflating words of Wellington political scientist, Jon Johansson: "the peaceful circulation of elites".

In other words: "just a job".

Sir Geoffrey Palmer set the scene for this transformation back in the 1980s when, as Justice Minister, he transformed the tradition-encrusted Member of Parliament into a thoroughly up-to-date and hard-working "legislator". MPs were provided with state-funded electorate-offices and secretarial staff. The sitting times of Parliament were regularised. Party Whips became the Chamber’s effective and efficient "middle managers".

Not only had the job of "legislator" become a viable career choice, it was now an increasingly well-remunerated one.

The big question to be asked of today’s democratic polity, therefore, is not: "What do our representatives get?" but "Who do they serve?"

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 13 August 2009.