Potentially A Game Changer: Some Further Thoughts On The People’s Party.

A Candidate From Bollywood Central Casting: What if the small business-owners of Auckland’s immigrant communities passed the hat around enough times to fill a respectable war chest? What if they secured the services of someone who knows how to run an effective election campaign. Finally, what if they conjured-up a first-rate candidate? Someone with the good looks of a Bollywood movie star; the eloquence of a top-flight barrister; and the devil-may-care daring of a successful entrepreneur? What might happen then to Labour's grip on Mt Roskill?

 

IT’S A GOOD NAME – “The People’s Party” – could be Left, could be Right. It could be the party of every citizen – the whole people. Or, with a shift of the apostrophe, it could be the party of all the peoples who make up New Zealand: Europeans, Maori, Pasifika, Chinese, Indian. It’s clever and, potentially, a game-changer.

 

But only if it gets a whole lot more professional – and fast. Because, at the moment, the NZ People’s Party looks like something thrown together over a few beers by a bunch of very angry dairy and liquor-store owners. Entirely understandable if your wine shop has been robbed three times in as many weeks and your staff hospitalised. Entirely justifiable when a table leg or a hockey stick turns out to be more reliable than the Police.

 

Desperate times have called forth desperate measures. If the politicians won’t respond to the pleas of their immigrant communities, then perhaps they’ll react to some good old-fashioned competition.

 

But they need to get smart about it. Curwen Ares Rolinson is absolutely right when he says: “Every electoral cycle, a bold group of political newcomers gather the gumption to put their money and mana where their collective mouth is, and attempt to set up a successful political party in an attempt to break into Parliament. They rarely experience significant success, and almost inevitably flame-out shortly after their first General Election.”

 

The three principal reasons for the near universal lack of success experienced by newly-formed parties are: their wildly unrealistic expectations of success; insufficient resources; and their refusal to seek out and follow professional advice.

 

Joseph Kennedy (JFK’s millionaire father) is supposed to have told his sons that to become President of the United States they would need only three things. The first is money. The second is money. And the third is, money.

 

He was right – sort of. Money alone won’t win you an election, but all the advice and paraphernalia which money allows you to buy, will most certainly help. Not least because the very fact that you have money proves that you’re serious, and seriousness of intent is crucial to attracting the interest of credible candidates.

 

These are the questions that the People’s Party has to ask itself before it goes any further. First. “Can we lay our hands on enough money to purchase both the advice and the resources we need to make a political difference?” Second. “Can we find a candidate with the requisite strength to take that advice and deploy those resources to winning effect?” Third. “Does our party have the strength to withstand the shit-storm that any successful intervention into the political process inevitably attracts?”

 

Until it can give a confident “Yes!” to all three of those questions, the People’s Party ain’t going anywhere.

 

But let us, for the sake of argument, assume that the small business-owners of Auckland’s immigrant communities (whom Rolinson quite rightly classified as “petit bourgeois”) passed the hat around enough times to fill a respectable war chest. Let us further suppose that they were able to secure the services of someone who knows how to run an effective election campaign. Finally, let us allow them to conjure-up a first-rate candidate. Someone with the good looks of a Bollywood movie star; the eloquence of a top-flight barrister; and the devil-may-care daring of a successful entrepreneur. Someone raised by hard-working immigrant parents who worked tirelessly behind the counter of their small family business to make sure that their sons and daughters would grow up to be successful New Zealand citizens. Someone who even born-and-bred Kiwis could admire – and vote for.

 

Now put this candidate up against Labour’s Michael Wood and National’s Parmjeet Parmar in the forthcoming Mt Roskill by-election and instruct him to bring down a plague on both their houses. Let him exploit the fact that there is hardly a family in either the Chinese or Indian communities of the electorate who hasn’t experienced, or knows somebody who has experienced, an assault, a robbery or a break-in in the past year. Gently chide Mt Roskill’s European voters for putting up with politicians who care more about the rights of criminals than they do about the rights of their victims. Invite Kiwis to be guided by the values of cultures that still know how to deal with those who attack innocent people in their homes, and rob hard-working families of their property. Suggest that the time might be ripe to liberate the Police, and police the liberals.

 

And see what happens.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 1 September 2016.

Labour vs The People's Party: Mt Roskill Up For Grabs?

The Successor: The man the Labour Party has chosen to replace Goff is young, intelligent, hard-working, and has already proved his ability to attract the votes of his neighbours by being twice elected to his local community board. As Goff’s electorate chair, he worked tirelessly to keep the Mt Roskill seat in his party’s hands. But, this otherwise ideal candidate does have one important factor working against him – his ethnicity. Michael Wood is a Pakeha New Zealander.

 

LESS THAN TWO-MINUTES’ WALK from my front doorstep is a wine shop. On Saturday, 13 August, it was robbed by four masked teenagers wielding clubs. The two retail workers on duty were beaten badly enough to require treatment in hospital. It was not an isolated incident. The same business had been robbed three times in as many weeks. The retailer and his staff are Chinese New Zealanders. The wine shop is located in the Mt Roskill electorate.

 

Barring something politically cataclysmic overwhelming his campaign, the current Member of Parliament for Mt Roskill, Phil Goff, will be Auckland City’s next mayor. A by-election will, therefore, be needed to fill the vacancy created by Goff’s departure for the Town Hall.

 

The man the Labour Party has chosen to replace Goff is young, intelligent, hard-working, and has already proved his ability to attract the votes of his neighbours by being twice elected to his local community board. As Goff’s electorate chair, he worked tirelessly to keep the Mt Roskill seat in his party’s hands. But, this otherwise ideal candidate does have one important factor working against him – his ethnicity. Michael Wood is a Pakeha New Zealander.

 

“So is Phil Goff”, you rightfully object, “but it didn’t prevent him from taking 56 percent of the Electorate Vote in the 2014 General Election.” No, it didn’t, but then Goff has held the seat for all but three of the last 35 years. Incumbency and name recognition confer enormous advantages upon a candidate, and Goff has made the most of them in ten out of the last twelve general elections.

 

Unfortunately for Michael Wood, while Goff has been winning, Mt Roskill has been changing. As the local political fiefdom of the long-time Deputy-Mayor of Auckland, Keith Hay, Mt Roskill was a notorious bastion of evangelical Christian social-conservatism. Some Labour wags even referred to it as the “Bible Belt”.  Not anymore. Today, Mt Roskill’s 25,000 Christians share their electorate with more than 3,000 Muslims and nearly 6,000 Hindus. This religious diversity reflects the fact that “Asians” comprise nearly 40 percent of the electorate. More than 45 percent of today’s Mt Roskillites were born overseas.

 

Michael Wood has always known he would face a tough race to secure this new Mt Roskill for Labour. Boundary changes have shaved an uncomfortably large slice off Goff’s winning margin, and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, in 2014 National’s Party Vote tally exceeded Labour’s by more than 2,000 votes. In other words, Mt Roskill should no longer be classed as a safe Labour seat.

 

Even so, by securing his selection early and setting in motion an impressive canvassing effort, Wood has made himself the one to beat.

 

On Monday night, however, the formation of the New Zealand People’s Party changed everything. Aimed squarely at winning the votes of Mt Roskill’s large immigrant community, the People’s Party has the potential to draw enough votes away from Labour to deny Wood the seat. (By-elections are fought under the rules of First-Past-The-Post.) Indeed, if National decided not to field a candidate, and steered its voters towards the People’s Party, the seat might even change hands.

 

Much will depend on the quantum of money and expertise the people behind the People’s Party are willing to invest in contesting the by-election – and what cause they choose to make their own.

 

Which takes us back neatly to the wine shop and the multiple attacks it has sustained. For far too many immigrant families such victimisation has become almost routine. Their anger at the apparent impotence of the authorities grows daily, even as their patience wears thin. A charismatic candidate, chosen from either the Indian or Chinese communities, running on an uncompromising promise to restore law and order to the Streets of Mt Roskill could easily attract thousands of immigrant votes. Add to them the votes cast strategically by National supporters raring to deny Labour the seat, and the race could get very close indeed.

 

Fortunately, that veteran of closely-fought by-election contests, Matt McCarten, has just announced his imminent return to Auckland. Andrew Little’s erstwhile chief-of-staff knows that if Labour doesn’t win Auckland, then it doesn’t win at all. Mt Roskill looks set to provide McCarten with his first organisational test. One can only assume that, for Michael Wood’s campaign team, the Wellington cavalry cannot arrive too soon.

 

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, 2 September 2016.