Speaking Up.

Speaking Out: Advertisement for the Knigi publishing house, from the portrait of Lili Brik, by Alexandre Rodtchenko, 1924

THERE’S A STORY I HEARD about Nikita Khrushchev and his famous speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956. This was the speech in which he denounced Stalin’s crimes against the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its long-suffering peoples. At the conclusion of the speech, and after the obligatory standing ovation, one of the delegates shouted out: “Why didn’t you say all that when Stalin was alive!” “Who said that?” Khrushchev shouted back. A deathly silence fell over the congress. Khrushchev waited a full minute before smiling grimly and saying: “That’s why.”

I recalled that story when I read the Editorial in today’s (18/8/22) NZ Herald. Alluding to the Labour Caucus’ decision to suspend Dr Gaurav Sharma, the leader-writer opined:

“The unanimity of the decision to suspend Sharma is significant too, as the Labour Caucus is a broad church of 65 MPs. None it seems, felt he merited another chance.”

It is difficult to conceive of a statement more revealing of the political ignorance in which so many of those who presume to pass judgement on our nation’s politics are steeped. What Labour MP in their right mind would have dared to vote against the Leader’s clear preference to eject Sharma from Caucus?

Had a Cabinet Minister done so, it would have been interpreted as a direct thrust against the Prime Minister. Backbenchers, having witnessed the emotional violence visited upon Sharma over the preceding days, would have raised a hand only if, like the Member for Hamilton West, they were desperate to escape the parliamentary snake-pit.

It might not be political ignorance, however, which prompts such fatuous commentary. It might be the news media’s shameful complicity in the Labour Party’s nasty habit of disciplining and punishing anyone who dares draw voters’ attention to the naked realities of power. It is nothing short of astonishing that the newspaper which published Sharma’s original op-ed critique was prepared, just a few days later, to assert that the very same dissident-crushing strategies he had complained of, and which had been on full display from the moment it appeared, were no more than could reasonably have been expected.

None of us should be surprised at this “suck-up, punch-down” New Zealand character trait, it has been with us for most of our history. But, even though we know how New Zealanders in authority are going to react to even the slightest challenge, it still comes as a bitter disappointment to discover just how few friends dissidents have in this country.

The sneer and the put-down are everywhere. The same day as the NZ Herald opted to suggest that Sharma more-or-less had it coming, RNZ’s afternoon host, Jesse Mulligan, spent 10 minutes talking to Dr Grant Morris of Victoria University of Wellington about the history of “rogue” MPs in New Zealand. Though both participants in this discussion agreed that the expression “rogue” wasn’t very accurate, that did not prevent them from using the pejorative term throughout the broadcast segment.

Both men agreed that the common thread running through the stories of MPs who had spoken out against the leadership and/or the policies of their party was less about principle than it was about ego. In justification of this thesis, Morris advanced the example of Herbert (Bert) Kyle, the National Party Member for Riccarton. In 1942, Kyle had a falling out with the National leader, Sid Holland, resigned from the party (before he was expelled) and left Parliament altogether in 1943.

Because it has so much in common with Sharma’s complaints about Labour in 2022, Kyle’s reason for leaving bears repeating: “The National Party organization has built up a watertight compartment that makes one become a ‘yes man’ with expulsion as an alternative.”

What Morris neglected to say in his remarks about this little-known rebel, is that his charges against Holland were, almost certainly, true. The National Party’s second leader brought New Zealand as close as it has yet come to having a fascist in charge of a major party. Holland had been a prominent member of the New Zealand Legion – a proto-fascist organisation that grew to an impressive size in the aftermath of the unemployment riots of 1932. It was Holland who drafted the viciously authoritarian “Emergency Regulations” which effectively extinguished democracy in New Zealand for the duration of the 1951 Waterfront Dispute.

Far from being a egoist, the mild-mannered veterinarian-turned-politician, Bert Kyle, was a man of principle who recognised a dangerous bully when he saw one, and was unwilling to become a “yes-man” to a politician whose personal political ideology bore a disturbing resemblance to that of the Nazi warlord New Zealanders were then fighting and dying to defeat.

Close study of these so-called “rogue” MPs reveals that in a clear majority of cases it is a clutch of very similar concerns about the leadership, policies and administration of their respective parties that lies at the heart of their rebellions. As Jim Anderton (whose example of “roguishness” Morris omitted entirely) liked to say: “I didn’t leave the Labour Party, the Labour Party left me.”

Jacinda Ardern is fortunate that her own rebel MP is more aggrieved about his party’s handling of employment issues than he is about its policies. A left-wing politician worthy of the name, with a mind to rebel against the ideological positioning of Labour under its present leadership, could inflict enormous damage upon the Ardern Government.

Not that expressing concern at the behaviour Sharma calls “bullying” is in any way trivial. In a caucus where there is a disturbingly large number of MPs who subscribe to the political tactic of “NO Debate!”; and are eager to see “Hate Speech” legislation (which could see citizens sent to jail for three years for expressing unpopular opinions) passed at the earliest opportunity; and will brook no dissenting from Labour’s radical interpretation of te Tiriti o Waitangi; the ability to bully and intimidate doubters would seem to be a necessary part of the modern Labour politician’s skill-set.

Not that the organs of “official” opinion are at all interested in lending their support to those foolish enough, or brave enough, to speak out on such matters. Dissidents will be paid just enough attention to validate the claims of the Powers-That-Be that we live in a free society. What these “out-speakers” will never be given, however, are the resources needed to explain why we don’t.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 19 August 2022.

Paying For Our Pakeha "Guilt" And "Privilege".

Shouldn't That Be: "Wrong White Crowd"? Rather than apportion guilt, would it not have been wiser for the makers of Land Of The Long White Cloud to accept that the Pakeha of 2019 are not – and never will be – “Europeans”? Just as contemporary Maori are not – and can never be again – the Maori who inhabited these islands before Cook’s arrival. Is it not the case that both peoples are victims of historical forces too vast for blame, too permanent for guilt?

PERHAPS THE BEST WAY to assess the quality of the NZ Herald’s “Land of the Long White Cloud” is by studying Tom Clarke’s characterisation of James Cook. Clarke begins by making Cook a member of the British aristocracy. He gives him the accent of Hugh Laurie’s Bertie Wooster, along with most of his mannerisms. Clarke then proceeds to deliver a false description of Cook’s mission – complete with jokes about planting flags and claiming countries. All done with a smile, of course, in the interests of lightening what the series’ creators clearly believe to be a very serious matter. Even so, if you’re trying to dispel some of the myths surrounding New Zealand’s origins, then falsifying the historical record would seem to be a very peculiar way of going about it.

Because James Cook was not a member of the British aristocracy, he was a plain-speaking Yorkshireman of humble origin. Tom Clarke should, therefore, have based his accent more on the characters of Heartbeat and Last of the Summer Wine than on Jeeves & Wooster. Indeed, had Clarke bothered to read anything written by a reputable historian concerning Cook’s voyage of 1769 (Anne Salmond’s springs to mind) he would have encountered a clever, considered and compassionate man of (for his time) unusually enlightened opinions. Trouble is, satirising that sort of Englishmen would have required more of the actor than he was either able, or permitted, to give.

Clarke’s representation of Cook does, however, speak directly to the profound intellectual weakness at the heart of this so-called documentary about “white guilt”. The expression “begging the question” is often used erroneously to indicate a failure to raise the obvious and most important question/s about an issue. While LOTLWC certainly fits this description, it also conforms to the expression’s classical meaning. LOTLWC begs the question because the conclusion arrived at by the series’ makers – that “whites” are guilty – is derived entirely from their original premise – that “white guilt” exists.

It certainly explains why the makers selected the eight individuals whose opinions constitute the series’ content. Originally pitched to NZ On Air (the series’ principal funder) under the working title “After White Guilt”, the first of the six recorded episodes contains not the slightest hint that attaching the word “guilt” to New Zealanders of European origin might be in any way problematic.

LOTLWC simply assumes that the Pakeha settlement of New Zealand was a crime. (Why else use the word “guilt”?) Accordingly, New Zealand’s colonial history is presented as the work of murderers and plunderers. The descendants of these criminals – the Pakeha New Zealanders of 2019 – find themselves cast in the role of people living off the proceeds of crime: receivers of stolen goods. The suggestion, so far unspoken, but lurking just beneath the surface of the participants’ remarks, is that these crimes must be acknowledged and atoned for, and the stolen property returned to its rightful owners.

One must assume that the participants in and the creators of LOTLWC really are as naïve and innocent of political reality as they appear. To assume otherwise casts them in the role of conscious and deliberate inciters of hatred and division between Pakeha and Maori – to the point of risking full-scale civil war. Nothing in the history of the human species suggests that people can be persuaded to part with their property, or their autonomy, without a fight. Nor does the historical record attest that such wholesale dispossession can be accomplished except in the aftermath of their complete and unalterable defeat.

“But that is exactly what we are saying!”, one can imagine LOTLWC participants expostulating. “That is what our ancestors are guilty of – and we are the beneficiaries of their crimes!”

Except, when viewed in its entirety, the history of human occupation in these islands suggests that what happened between Maori and Pakeha in the middle of the nineteenth century was far from exceptional. For the best part of 500 years, the killing of human-beings and the appropriation of the survivors’ property and autonomy, had been the norm. All the Europeans brought to the game were more effective weapons and superior tools – both of which the Maori acquired and mastered in a very short space of time.

Indeed, what distinguished the 70 years between the arrival of Cook in 1769 and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, was an astonishing escalation in warfare, killing, dispossession and dislocation – not at the hands of the Europeans, but by the indigenous people. When Cook arrived, New Zealand boasted approximately 100,000 inhabitants. By the end of the Musket Wars, in the mid-1830s, between 20,000 to 30,000 Maori had disappeared. The Europeans were impressed, but not surprised, they’d been doing the same things to one another for the best part of 3,000 years!

When the Pakeha settlers finally launched their own war of conquest in the Waikato in 1863, not only could they rely upon the 12,000 soldiers sent from Britain to support the colonial government, but also on the military support of Maori tribes unwilling to turn the clock back to the time before Cook’s arrival. They wagered on their people being strong enough to survive te riri Pakeha, the white man’s anger, and his greed, and they were right. Two-hundred-and-fifty years after Cook’s arrival, the Maori population of New Zealand is five times what it was in 1769. That is not a claim which many of the planet’s indigenous peoples can make – especially those inhabiting its temperate zones.

The brute facts of New Zealand history suggest that if it’s blame Maori and Pakeha are looking for, then there’s plenty to go around. Rather than apportion guilt, would it not be wiser to accept that the Pakeha of 2019 are not – and never will be – “Europeans”? Just as contemporary Maori are not – and can never be again – the Maori who inhabited these islands before Cook’s arrival. Would it not, therefore, be wiser to accept, finally, that both peoples are victims of historical forces too vast for blame, too permanent for guilt?

Which immediately raises another interesting question: Why NZ On Air felt moved to promise the makers of LOTLWC (aka “After White Guilt”) close to $140,000 of public funding? As already noted, the series is not an exploration of the way in which Pakeha have responded to a dramatic expansion in the range and depth of historical understanding in New Zealand – that would have been a very useful exercise to have supported. It is, instead, the result of taxpayers coughing-up a lot of cash for eight individuals, all subscribing to an extreme and highly tendentious interpretation of New Zealand history, to lecture them on what awful people their ancestors were, and what they should be doing to assuage their “guilt” and off-load their “privilege”.

That $140,000 question deserves an answer, especially given the fact that LOTLWC’s sponsoring institution, the New Zealand Herald, was founded in December 1863, five months after after the invasion of the Waikato, for the express purpose of ensuring that the colonial government (also based in Auckland) did everything possible to extinguish the “native rebellion” and seize the “rebels’” lands. In the light of that little snippet of New Zealand history, would it not have been more appropriate for NZME to assuage its “Pakeha Guilt” out of its own pocket?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 22 October 2019.

John Key Bound For The IMF. Real News Or Fake News?

Whaddya Reckon? With everything that's going on in politics at the moment, you might think that the NZ Herald's deputy-political editor would be extremely cautious about rushing into print with a year-old story, based on nothing more than speculation, posted on an obscure Napier website, that turned out to be completely wrong. No such luck.

 

IS JOHN KEY really in the running for Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? Well, yes, according to the NZ Herald’s Deputy-Political Editor, Claire Trevett, he is. Upon closer examination, however, Trevett’s story looks a lot more like fake news than real news.

 

Let’s take a look at her source – a speculative opinion piece posted on the Manufacturers Success Connection (MSC) website under the dateline Monday, 21 December 2015 08:38. That’s right – 2015 – just short of one year ago.

 

A year ago the Managing Director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, was embroiled in yet another of the financial-cum-political scandals that have wracked the French Republic over recent years.

 

The anonymous author of the MSC NewsWire story is clearly of the view that since Lagarde had just been told by the French courts that she must stand trial for her role in the so-called “Tapie Affair”, she will soon be standing down from her job at the IMF.

 

The writer further speculates that since there is a “move to place a non-European official at the helm of the IMF”, a “door of opportunity has unexpectedly opened to enable New Zealand prime minister, John Key, to maintain his upward trajectory in the form of becoming managing director of the International Monetary Fund.”

 

Except that the “door of opportunity” was closed, and has remained firmly shut.

 

Christine Lagarde is still the Managing Director of the IMF. Her Board of Directors were in no mood to lose the services of their high-flying employee. Citing the legal doctrine of the presumption of innocence, they were happy to keep Madame Lagarde exactly where she was.

 

The other problem with the MSC NewsWire story is that if there ever was a “move” to place a non-European in the Managing Director’s chair, then it did not get very far. Nor was such a “move” remotely likely to succeed. Ever since the appointment of the first IMF Managing Director, the Belgian Camille Gutt, in 1946, the position has been filled exclusively by Europeans. There has been one each from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain; two from Sweden; and five from France. The chances of John Key sashaying his way down the that particular catwalk are pretty close to nil.

 

The more important question, however, is how did Claire Trevett ever come into possession of a speculative news release issued by a very obscure website – Manufacturers Success Connection – just shy of one year ago? The MSC NewsWire was set up by Napier entrepreneur, Max Farndale, in 2012, and while it’s a lively and a perfectly respectable website, it is not really on a par with Reuters or Associated Press!

 

It would only be speculation, of course, but, in the current political environment, isn’t it highly likely that the dissemination of a story such as this, to a person occupying a critical media post (such as deputy-political editor of the country’s largest newspaper) is going to be the work of the out-going prime minister’s political opponents?

 

All the more reason, you would think, to be extremely cautious about rushing into print with a year-old story, based on nothing more than speculation, posted on an obscure Napier website, that turned out to be completely wrong.

 

The sort of fake news item that you might expect to find on Breitbart News? Certainly. But on the NZ Herald website?

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 7 December 2016.

Why David Cunliffe Must Not Resign

Under Pressure: Eleven year old letters and rogue polls notwithstanding, David Cunliffe must soldier on through this well co-ordinated attempt to thwart the will of his party and throw the 2014 General Election to National.

 

DAVID CUNLIFFE MUST NOT RESIGN. A trap has been sprung upon the Leader of the Opposition but no matter how painful the pressure he must not give in. He must wait until the jaws of the trap can be forced apart – in this case by reiterating the simple truth – and only when he is free should he find out who set it.

 

Before investigating that matter, however, let us reiterate the simple truth.

 

Eleven years ago, in 2003, when David Cunliffe was a very junior minister in Helen Clark’s government, his electorate office was contacted by a constituent interested in speeding up his immigration application. A letter was drafted detailing the case of Mr Donghua Liu and seeking information on the progress of his paperwork. It was passed on to Mr Cunliffe who signed it, along with scores of similar letters, and then forgot all about it.

 

This was not a letter designed to do anything more than respond to the request of a constituent. It contains no special pleading. It is addressed to no minister. And it was not followed up by private meetings, or dinners, or any other form of lobbying.

 

That is the simple truth.

 

Now, let us return to who set the trap.

 

The most obvious person to have done so is the journalist who broke the story, Jared Savage. Except there’s a problem. Savage’s newspaper, the NZ Herald, has been running stories about Liu’s associations with the Labour Party since Monday (16 June) but according to Savage the “incriminating” documentation sought under the Official Information Act (OIA) was only released to him today (Wednesday 18 June).

 

What I’d like to know is whether or not the earlier stories involving former Labour cabinet minister, Rick Barker’s relationship with Liu, were similarly the product of OIA responses, or whether they were derived from other sources. It would also be useful to know if Savage was advised by those “other sources” to seek out Cunliffe’s letter specifically, or whether the latter just turned up as a result of Savage requesting every official document relating to Donghua Liu. And, if it was the latter, how swiftly did Immigration NZ respond to Savage’s OIA request?

 

Occam’s Razor would suggest that the story unfolded “naturally”. One piece of information leading to the next. One OIA request prompting another and then another until Mr Cunliffe’s name entered the frame.

 

But there is an alternative, much more worrying, explanation for the appearance of this 11-year-old letter.

 

What if someone, somewhere, was in a position to gather every piece of official information on Donghua Liu, and out of that pile of files and electronic data was able to extract information damaging to both Barker and Cunliffe? What if that person then leaked this information to the NZ Herald in such a way that in the course of the news media’s subsequent questioning of Cunliffe about Barker a number of unequivocal statements were made which the 2003 letter could be construed as contradicting? Wouldn’t that leave Mr Cunliffe in a very embarrassing – not to say vulnerable – position?

 

One does not have to be as avid a fan of the TV series House of Cards as I am to know that there are all sorts of ways sensitive political information can make its way into the public domain and that it arrives there for all sorts of reasons – some of them good, some of them decidedly not good.

 

So, if Jared Savage is playing the role of Zoe Barnes, who is playing the role of Francis Underwood?

 

The most obvious candidate would seem to be someone on the Government side of the House. Someone with access (illegal but deniable) to Donghua Liu’s file and the records of Rick Barker’s movements in China. That would make this a standard National Party “black op” designed to inflict maximum possible damage upon Labour generally and upon Cunliffe in particular. The Herald might like to think through the ethics of co-operating with this sort of deliberate political destabilisation so close to a general election. But, then again, it might just say: “Ethics-schmethics – a story is a story!”

 

Or, maybe, the Francis Underwood character at the bottom of this whole incident isn’t in the National Party at all. Maybe the whole story about Barker, Liu’s donations, the 1,800 mile side-trip to Chongqing, was fed to Jared Savage with only one purpose in mind – to catch David Cunliffe out in a lie and force him to resign.

 

And what good would that do? The last thing Labour needs this close to an election is another leadership contest. Ah, but this is where it gets really, really interesting in a decidedly House of Cards kind of way. If a vacancy occurs in the leadership of the Labour Party within three months of a General Election, the choice of a new leader is left to the Labour Caucus – and only the Labour caucus.

 

Here’s the exact wording of the rule:

 

B12 Should a vacancy in the leadership occur in the 3 months prior to the announced date of a general election (where known) or in the absence of an announced date the statutory date (calculated according to the date on which the election is triggered or, in the case of a caucus vote, a meeting or special meeting is requested), a new Leader will be elected by Caucus majority vote. The new Leader will then be subject to confirmation within three months after the election, pursuant to the Party constitution (i.e. they would need to be endorsed by 60%+1 of the new Caucus, or a full leadership contest would be triggered).

 

And why did I go to the trouble of tracking down this obscure rule? Because the Herald’s Claire Trevett made reference to it last week (12 June) in her regular Thursday column. Under the headline NZ Game of Thrones – Does Cunliffe Dare To Play? Trevett’s piece raises the possibility of a leadership challenge that only the Caucus can play:

 

“But Cunliffe can't afford to ignore [ … ] his caucus. He is about to head into his own danger zone. From June 20, Labour's caucus has a three-month window to change the leader without having to go through the party's new primary-style process giving its membership a vote.”

 

This is, of course, an entirely mistaken reading of Rule B12, whose first 20 words “Should a vacancy in the leadership occur in the 3 months prior to the announced date of a general election” condition the subsequent provisions relating to election by Caucus majority. Even so, it was the fact that Trevett was even aware of the Rule that furrowed my brow. Only someone with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Labour Party’s administrative machinery could have alerted her to B12’s existence. Who? and Why?

 

We don’t know – yet – but today’s events do make an awful kind of sense when viewed in the baleful light of Rule B12. If Cunliffe could be forced to step down – thereby creating a vacancy – then the Anybody But Cunliffe faction of the Caucus would find themselves ideally positioned to extract an unholy and extraordinarily destructive vengeance.

 

Which is why I say again: David Cunliffe must not resign.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 19 June 2014.