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.

Dissing The Farmers.

Neale vs The Revolting Farmers: One has to admire the way Capital Government Relations CEO, Neale Jones, covers-off all the bases of the current political zeitgeist. In a masterfully composed tweet, he lambasts the Groundswell protesters as sexists, racists and reactionaries, clinging for dear life to “a purely extractive economic model: pollute, emit, exploit, and let someone else bear the cost.” As if all capitalists don’t fit that description.

THERE’S NO DISPUTING that Neale Jones is very good at what he does. As a public relations practitioner working in Jacinda Ardern’s Wellington, he has an instinctive feel for the lines that will be remembered and re-tweeted enthusiastically by the Ardernian establishment. Jones’ tweet of this morning (22/11/21) offers an excellent example of the CEO of Capital Government Relations’ craft.

Responding to the self-styled “Mother of All Protests” organised by Groundswell, Jones tweeted:

“Aside from the casual racism and sexism, Groundswell represents a reactionary attempt to cling to a purely extractive economic model: pollute, emit, exploit, and let someone else bear the cost.”

One has to admire the way Jones covers-off all the bases of the current political zeitgeist. Right up front there is the reference to the opponent’s “casual” racism and sexism. The use of the word “casual” is instructive in this context.

That all men are sexists, and all White people racists, are core axioms of the Identity Politics that dominates all aspects of official life in the capital city. No Pakeha male operating in this environment would be so foolish (or career limiting) as to deny either his sexism or his racism. Were he to do so he would be denying the systemic character of these entrenched structures of privilege. Instead, he would offer his assurance that he was “working” on his sexism and racism. Not with any real expectation of becoming a better person, you understand, but in hopes of not becoming a worse one.

That’s why the word “casual” is so important. Jones’ charge is that the farmers behind the Groundswell protests are so antediluvian, so Neanderthalic, that they are either unaware of the gender and ethnic privileges they enjoy – enabling them to engage in sexist and racist behaviour quite unconsciously. Or, that the social milieu in which they operate is so saturated with misogyny, homophobia and racism, that they have grown accustomed to voicing their prejudices “casually” – without the slightest fear of reproof.

Having successfully consigned these moral ingrates to the ninth circle of Woke Hell (in an admirably economical seven words) Jones then moves on to the central charge of his tweet. Groundswell, he asserts, represents “a reactionary attempt to cling to a purely extractive economic model: pollute, emit, exploit, and let someone else bear the cost.”

Let’s unpick this statement forensically.

The first thing to note is that it is phrased in the language of classical socialism, as well as the rhetoric of classical environmentalism. The importance of this mix will become clear presently.

The first thing to note, however, is that the farmers organising the Groundswell protests aren’t just sexists and racists, they are “reactionaries”. The choice of epithet is important, because “reactionary” grounds the word’s user in the political landscape of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

According to Wikipedia, a Reactionary “is a person who holds political views that favour a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary society.” Synonyms for reactionary include: archconservative, die-hard, hidebound, traditional and unprogressive.

Historically-speaking, “reactionary” described the politics of the dynastic regimes which did all within their power to extirpate the ideas and institutions spawned by the French Revolution, and then spread across Europe by the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. In the first half of the twentieth century, however, “Reaction” became a catch-all term, applied to those who stood against the forces unleashed by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

So, it is a very heavy word to use in a political conversation. To be a “reactionary” is to set your face not only against the future, but also against the present – making you a very dangerous person (or group of people) indeed.

The danger is lessened, however, when Jones describes these farmer reactionaries as “clinging” to the expectations and practices of the past. Now, who “clings”? Frightened children – to their mother’s skirts. Mountain-climbers – for dear life on a vertiginous cliff-face. Lovers – desperate not to lose the object of their affections. All rather pathetic, all rather desperate. Anybody, or anything, that clings is not strong, or, at least, not in a strong position. In this instance the “cling-ee” is the “purely extractive economic model” which, because the “cling-ers” are reactionaries, must be a thing of the past.

And, just to make sure that Jones’ readers understand how very bad that past was, the elements of the “purely extractive economic model” are spat out like bullets to remind them: “pollute, emit, exploit, and let someone else bear the cost.”

This is the classic formula of old-school environmentalism. Of the Values Party – forerunner of the Greens. Of the many activist conservation movements of the 1970s and 80s, which condemned the “rip-in, rip-out, rip-off” mentality of miners, loggers, fishing companies and, yes, farmers. You’ve got to hand it to Jones, this is a truly masterful evocation. These sexist, racist, cockies aren’t just the backward-looking enemies of social progress, they are, Jones implies, the foes of Mother Earth herself.

If you were commissioned to lay the groundwork for a full-scale assault upon the New Zealand farming sector, launched in the name of Aotearoa “meeting its responsibilities” in the global effort against Climate Change, you could hardly have made a better start. Small wonder that the people organising the Groundswell protests are driving Federated Farmers and Dairy NZ to distraction. With “friends” like these blokes, the farming industry doesn’t really need enemies!

The genuinely inspired quality of Jones’ tweet is, of course, the way it appears to banish the “purely extractive economic model” to the dark recesses of history. Like the Divine Right of Kings, the ideas of these “reactionary” farmers are relics of a bygone era. The forces of social and economic progress are moving onwards and upwards. Those who refuse to join them in their heroic ascent towards the light, must resign themselves to living in the shadows.

Except, of course, it is all misdirection and disinformation. The “purely extractive economic model”, far from being a relic of the past, is still the driving force behind the entire capitalist system. “[P]ollute, emit, exploit, and let someone else bear the cost.” That isn’t just the disgraceful formula of colonial-era farmers who clear-felled the forests and drained the wetlands, it is the purest contemporary essence of actually existing capitalism the world over.

New Zealand’s farmers are not reactionary throwbacks, yearning for a world that has gone forever, they are stressed-out twenty-first century capitalists, some of whom came to town last Sunday (21/11/21) to remind the very capitalist government of this very capitalist country, that if it intends to go on monetizing her golden eggs, then it should remove its choking regulatory fingers from around the neck of the Golden Rural Goose.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 23 November 2021.

Democratic Socialism From The Ground Up? Not In Neale’s Backyard.

Of The State, By The State, For The State: CEO of Capital Government Relations, Neale Jones, appears to have updated Abraham Lincoln's famous definition of Democracy. If a movement of people acting by and for themselves shows signs of winning, then Neale's answer is for central government "to simply force" its preferred solutions upon them.

IF YOU WANT to understand what’s rotting the Labour Party’s political soul, read Neale Jones’ latest posting on The Spinoff. A really good novelist would struggle to create a more self-characterising narrator than Neale. With refreshing candour, he pours scorn on all the elements of participatory democracy and heaps praise upon the crushing power of the centralised state.

As Chief-of-Staff to both Andrew Little and Jacinda Ardern, we can only assume that Neale ticked all the boxes of the contemporary Labour Party apparatchik. As the current CEO of the PR/Lobbying firm, Capital Government Relations, it is equally safe to presume that he knows his way around the capital city’s power grid. In short, Jones is the very model of a modern Labour mover-and-shaker.

Which is why we should all be very worried.

Neale’s posting is all about the Wellington City Council’s spatial plan and to what degree it will clear the path for wealthy property developers to bulldoze the capital city’s architectural heritage into a pile of rubble. Not that he puts his case quite that bluntly. Rather than present himself as the friend of soulless high-rise property development, he has cast himself in the role of the poor and downtroddens’ fearless champion. The homeless must have homes, and Neale is adamant that the same beneficent state that gave us Kiwibuild, is going to provide them with shelter from the storm.

And who, do you suppose, is the villain in this local government morality play? That’s right! It is none other than our old friend “Nimby”. Those ageing, selfish, well-heeled, owners of Wellington’s architectural history, whose lovingly maintained homes make Wellington the finely-cut cultural gem New Zealanders so admire. It is these, the not-in-my-backyard Baby Boomer bastards, who have dared to object to the idea of replacing the city’s rich housing heritage with buildings that look like the boxes the buildings that should have been constructed came in.

Worst of all – from Neale’s perspective – Nimby is winning! All these devilish defenders of antique weatherboard and roofing iron; red-brick, stained-glass and ceramic tiles; are defeating the forces of concrete and steel by arming themselves with – of all things! – the instruments and processes of democracy. And, boy! does that make Neale mad.

This is how he describes the way the Wellington City Council’s planning process used to work:

It’s fair to say that until recently Wellington City Council planning processes had not been a subject of fierce public debate. The council would put out consultation documents, residents’ associations and a few local government anoraks would respond and nothing would ever change. Property values rose regularly, home owners’ views and amenity were protected. Capital gains were leveraged and property portfolios built. From the perspective of home owners, the system appeared to be working well.

Those “home owners” – just in case you were wondering – comprise the overwhelming majority of Wellington’s ratepayers. So, yeah, the system was working exactly the way democratic theory says it should work.

And, just in case you missed it, note the use of the word “anoraks”. Clearly, any citizen who takes an interest in the life of their city is some sort of sad obsessive; someone urgently in need of getting a life. Isn’t it great to know how Labour’s movers-and-shakers view the active citizen? Apparently, only the CEOs of PR/Lobbying firms are allowed to influence the outcomes of official decision-making processes. CEOs and Big Government. Because Neale was just getting warmed-up with his snide reference to anoraks.

Try this on for size:

The evidence around the world shows that local government is structurally unable to stand up to nimbyism. Low voter turnout heavily favours existing property owners, leaving councillors too exposed politically. Public consultations are dominated by vested interests: those who suffer the most from housing shortages are the most transient, the least engaged. The answer is for central government to simply force councils to allow more housing.

Hooo-weee! Ain’t that a doozy? The answer is for central government to simply force councils to allow more housing. Neale wants the full force of the state to be brought to bear against anyone – Nimbies, anoraks and city-councils alike – who dares to get in the way of “the most transient” and “the least engaged”. (Although, if you think about that for a minute, you’d have to question how, in the absence of full-on political organisation, the transient and the least engaged could ever get themselves in a position where anybody needed to get in their way.)

Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking. Shouldn’t all good socialists be cheering Neale on at this point? Isn’t Labour supposed to be the party that brings the power of the state to the aid of the poor and needy? Well, yes, it surely is. Unfortunately, this Labour Government does not contain the modern day equivalent of John A. Lee, or Mickey Savage, or Peter Fraser. All we’ve got is Phil Twyford, “Jacinda” and Grant Robertson – which isn’t quite the same thing!

No. Neale’s solution has very little to do with the democratic socialism of the 1930s and 40s. The Labour Party of the Twenty-First century isn’t about organising the poor and the marginalised into a mass political movement capable of taking over city councils and winning majorities in Parliament. It’s about clearing the way for private enterprise to make its profits. And if that means clean-bowling people’s homes to make way for high-rise apartments: dwellings in which you may be very sure the “transient” and “least engaged” will never set foot; then so be it.

I’ll tell you what, though. I could be persuaded to change my mind. If Neale was to give up his CEO’s job at Capital Government Relations, and become a community organiser dedicated to seating the transient and the least engaged at those City Council planning hearings. If he could rope-in the country’s best and most progressive architects to work with the poor and downtrodden in designing the sort of housing they would like to live in. And, if those same poor and downtrodden – now with something to vote for – could be persuaded to cast their ballots for candidates pledged to building those houses. Well, then I would know that Labour’s soul has not rotted away, and that its movers-and-shakers are moving and shaking for somebody other than the rich and powerful.

Otherwise …..

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 25 June 2021.

Radio Waves.

Waving Us In - Or Away? Increasingly reliant on pollsters and PR people, Nine to Noon has quite consciously narrowed the range of political discussion down to the weekly wins and losses of the major parliamentary players. Only very occasionally does its “Political Panel” venture out into the broader realm of ideas. The sort of discussion and debate listeners might have heard if the programme’s producers had reached out to academics and political iconoclasts was not something that RNZ seemed eager to promote.

LAST MONDAY (10/5/21) Neale Jones and Ben Thomas were Kathryn Ryan’s guests on RNZ’s Nine To Noon programme. Ryan’s “Political Panel” is one of the programme’s most listened-to segments – it’s influential. Listening to Jones and Thomas last Monday, however, I was left wondering “influential with whom?”

Political commentary on RNZ has evolved in a very strange way over the past few years. The original intent seemed pretty clear: to secure independent commentary from competent representatives of right-wing and left-wing opinion about the deeds of government, opposition, and other sundry political actors across the week just passed. There can be little doubt that the Political Panel’s most popular right-wing commentator was the volatile – but never boring – Matthew Hooton. The Left, too, put up some formidable champions: Peter Harris from the CTU; the former Alliance MP, Laila Harré.

Critical to the success of these commentators was their willingness to tackle what were often highly sensitive and contentious issues without feeling the need to look over their shoulders. They were as ready – when it was warranted – to put the boot into their own “side” as they were to criticise their more traditional ideological foes.

For the programme’s listeners, this independence of mind constituted a vital ingredient in the Political Panel’s success. The moment commentary becomes predictable it begins to take on the character of spin. Heterodoxy has another important advantage over orthodoxy: its ability to surprise and provoke; a capacity to make those who encounter it think differently about an issue. In other words, it makes for both a better democracy and great radio.

Why, then, has RNZ abandoned this winning formula in favour of a Political Panel comprised, more-or-less exclusively these days, of pollsters and public relations mavens? Now, to be fair to RNZ, it was their star turn, Hooton, who started this particular ball rolling by establishing his own PR company, Exeltium. Not wanting to lose Hooton’s prodigious talent, Nine to Noon decided to offer its listeners a fulsome disclaimer – and hope for the best.

Gradually, however, the nature of RNZ’s political commentary changed. More and more, it became a forum for major players from inside the Wellington beltway. The official pollsters for National and Labour started turning up, followed closely by former ministerial press secretaries and chiefs-of-staff turned PR specialists.

On its face, this seemed like a great idea. After all, if pollsters and well-placed insiders didn’t know what was going on, then who did?

The problem, of course, is that well-placed insiders and party pollsters don’t remain well-placed insiders or party pollsters by blabbing everything they know about the moving and shaking of the movers and shakers to RNZ’s listeners. For the Nine to Noon audience, these keepers of secrets could not be expected (and, presumably, were not expected) to provide anything other than a carefully framed picture of New Zealand politics.

Carefully framed and ideologically neutered. By relying on pollsters and PR people, Nine to Noon was quite consciously narrowing the range of political discussion down to the weekly wins and losses of the major parliamentary players. Only very occasionally does the Political Panel venture out into the broader realm of ideas. The sort of discussion and debate listeners might have heard if the programme’s producers had reached out to academics and political iconoclasts was not something that RNZ seemed eager to promote.

Which brings us back to last Monday’s discussion between Ryan, Jones and Thomas. Unsurprisingly, one of the topics up for discussion was the Leader of the Opposition’s, Judith Collins’, ongoing effort to get the Labour Government to offer up any sort of coherent response to the He Puapua Report.

If ever there was an issue that called out for a broader discussion, it is the He Puapua Report. Under review is nothing less than the future shape of the New Zealand constitution and a radically reconfigured relationship between Maori and Pakeha New Zealanders.

Rather than venture forth into these stormy waters, however, Ryan attempted to re-frame the discussion as a shrewd Opposition manoeuvre to drive a wedge between the Prime Minister and her Maori caucus. Having thus constricted tightly the parameters of the discussion, Ryan passed the speaking-stick to Thomas. It was at this point that things took a decidedly weird turn.

Riffing off his co-commentator, Jones’s, sneering characterisation of National’s interest in He Puapua as some kind of “conspiracy theory”, Thomas upped the ante by claiming that the report’s critics were treating He Puapua as something akin to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This charge represents a major step-up in the effort of what might best be described as the New Zealand “political class” to stifle all further debate on the issues covered in the report.

What Thomas (PR consultant) had done was to move beyond Jones’s (Managing Director of PR firm Capital Government Relations) strategy of marginalising the Government’s critics as tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists, into the much darker realm of virulent anti-Semitism and far-Right mythology.

For those who don’t know, the Protocols were published by fanatical Russian anti-Semites in 1903 as a means of inciting murderous pogroms against the Tsar’s Jewish subjects. They concern a supposedly secret Jewish plot to take over the world. Brought out of Russia in the aftermath of World War One and the Bolshevik Revolution, the Protocols served to inflame Adolf Hitler’s already passionate hatred of the Jews. Copies of this ur-conspiracy theory are still on sale in bookshops all over the Middle East.

By invoking the Protocols, Thomas – wittingly or unwittingly – was associating National’s Judith Collins with the worst excesses of the Nazis and their admirers. And, it appears to have worked. In her keynote speech to the Southern Regional Conference of the National Party in Queenstown (16/5/21) the name He Puapua does not appear.

Listening to last Monday’s Political Panel, the similarity between the attitudes struck by Ryan, Jones and Thomas over He Puapua, and those struck by the British political class in relation to the UK-wide debate over Brexit is … well … striking. There is that same lofty tone of condescension; that same propensity to belittle those who refuse to endorse the “official” policy-line; the same impression that those opposing them are ignorant and powerless peasants who may be safely waved away and ignored.

The Political Panel’s airy dismissal of their fellow citizens’ concerns was bad enough in itself, but what made it worse was the fact that it was being broadcast on a network supposedly owned by, and committed to serving, the people of New Zealand – all the people of New Zealand. A state broadcaster rigorously excluding any and all voices dissenting from the official line, is something most New Zealanders would expect to encounter in Moscow or Beijing – not in Wellington.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 17 May 2021.

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.

“Lord, give us Democratic Socialism – but not yet!”

Not Now, Not Ever, Never! The problem with Labour's leading activists is that there is never a good time for democratic socialism. Never. They are like Saint Augustine who prayed to the Almighty: “Lord, give me chastity and self-control – but not yet.” In the case of Labour's "junior officers", however, the prayer is a little different: “Lord, let the Labour Party give New Zealand democratic socialism – but not yet.”

IT PAINS ME to ignore the Prime Minister’s advice, but it’s time to kick some Labour Party butt. As the saying goes: “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.” And, no, I’m not talking about putting another boot into the tragic posterior of the Minister of Health. My beef is with the junior officers of Labour’s army. These are the folk who should be the most aggressive in the fight for social justice. The ones willing to take the risks necessary for victory. The ones with their eyes firmly fixed on the democratic-socialist prize. Unfortunately – and frustratingly – this is not what we’ve got.

On display is the sort of military prowess that saw a gaggle of chinless, baggy-panted British toffs hand over Singapore to a near-exhausted, numerically inferior and utterly astonished Japanese army in February 1942. Rather than delighting Labour’s allies and supporters with bold and imaginative contributions to the debate on how best to wrestle down the looming Covid-19 recession, Labour’s junior officers are offering nothing but orthodoxy and caution. Even worse, they are expending what little energy they can summon-up on upending buckets of cold water on every radical idea that comes forward.

Why do they always do this? How did dreary pragmatism become Labour’s default-setting? A full explanation would require a book-length answer. Suffice to say that once a party embraces the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism, anything other than orthodox and cautious policy responses will be treated as the political equivalent of upending a can of petrol over your head and striking a match. To be considered a credible contender for bigger things (an electorate seat or a high position on the Party List) requires constant proof that one’s hands are nothing if not “safe”.

Hence the following snippy little comment from lawyer, Greg Presland (The Standard’s “Mickey Savage”) responding to my criticism of his casual dismissal of the suggestion that Kris Faafoi should’ve rescued the best of New Zealand’s magazines by accepting Bauer Media’s offer to sell its entire stable to the Crown for $1.00:

“Gee Chris. In the middle of a pandemic when the country’s collective health and economy are under major threat and possibly a third of businesses are going to the wall do you really think the Government should be sweating about saving the Listener?”

Yeah, Greg, I do. I really do. Because even Blind Freddie (and The Spinoff’s Duncan Grieve) can see that Bauer’s ruthless cutting of its losses is about to be replicated across the entire media industry, and that only the Crown has the resources (not to mention the responsibility) to keep our news media alive and kicking against the pricks. Unless, of course, Greg’s desired outcome is actually the more-or-less complete collapse of this country’s independent media – with an all-powerful state media monopoly the last man standing. That there is absolutely nothing “social” or “democratic” about such a “solution” should surprise no one.

And lest any reader feel tempted to nod in agreement with Greg’s heartfelt concern for “possibly a third of businesses” poised to go “to the wall”: please, just stop and think it through. Is he suggesting that while the Government cannot afford to “sweat” about saving this country’s magazine publishing industry, it can afford to – and fully intends to – save all the others? Can the nation’s small and medium-sized enterprises now breathe a huge sigh of relief, secure in the knowledge that the same ministers who refused to lift a finger to shore-up the foundations of our democracy will nevertheless work like Trojans to rescue their little businesses?

Isn’t it more likely that the only New Zealand businesses with any reasonable hope of being bailed-out by the Crown will be the ones which are, in that memorable phrase from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09, “too big to fail”. Remember that Newsweek cover proclaiming “We are all socialists now”? Published the same week Barack Obama nationalised the auto industry.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Obama was right to take over General Motors. Nationalisation is what you do in a crisis – especially when the industry your saving is vital to the future of your country. And that’s the amazing thing, Greg. That you still don’t get that. But don’t feel too bad, because no one in a position to make a difference in the Labour Party has had an intelligent thought about the New Zealand media since the government of Norman Kirk!

So, if the Government is not going to be in a position to rescue every small business in New Zealand, and if up to a third of those small businesses could “go to the wall”, in Greg’s none-too-felicitous phrase, then wouldn’t this be the very best time to introduce a Universal Basic Income? Especially when the ability of the MSD to process and monitor tens-of-thousands of additional beneficiaries promptly, efficiently and sympathetically is just a teeny bit questionable?

Nope. Wrong again. According to Andrew Little’s former Chief-of-Staff, Neale Jones:

“I cannot think of a worse time to implement a UBI than in the middle of this economic crisis. Some of us are doing fine. Others need unprecedented government support just to stay afloat. UBI would spread that support thinner, or quickly spend 10s of billions we may need later.”

Meaning Neale has no grasp at all of Keynesian economics. No understanding of the crucial importance of keeping up the level of aggregate demand. No historical grasp of the crucial role spending plays in lifting a nation out of an economic slump. Nor does he understand the practical and moral efficiency of universal, as opposed to means-tested, state support. The massively positive effect of telling every Kiwi: ‘You are important in your own right, not because you’re in need of charity but because you are a citizen of New Zealand.’ Everyone keeps telling us that “we’re all in this together” – a UBI would prove it.

But, no. Neale says that being in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis is actually the worst time to consider a payment to every citizen to keep them and the economy afloat. The worst time.

The problem is, Neale, there is never a best time for you guys. Never. You and Greg remind me of Saint Augustine who prayed to the Almighty: “Lord, give me chastity and self-control – but not yet.” In the case of you two junior Labour officers, however, the prayer is a little different:

“Lord, let the Labour Party give New Zealand democratic socialism – but not yet.”

Not yet.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 9 April 2020.

“A Giant Beast Called The Government”

Leviathan: “The Labour Party is not the government. The government is the government. I don’t go and try to lobby the Labour Party. The party does have its democratic structures and its policy platforms and manifesto and that is something that the government — the Labour government, the Labour Party-in-government — the government tries to advance. But ultimately there is a giant beast called the government and it’s the public service, it’s MPs, ministers, ministers from various parties.” - Neale Jones, Lobbyist.

SOMETIMES the mask of politics-as-it-is-officially-presented slips and the true face of the political class is revealed. A particularly serious slippage occurred quite recently in a Spinoff feature about “partisan lobbyists”. Neale Jones, a senior backroom operative in the dreary days of Andrew Little’s leadership of the Labour Party, but now the go-to lobbyist for people and businesses in need of some face-time with Labour cabinet ministers (or the public servants advising them) did something no member of the political class should ever do – he told us exactly what it thinks of our democracy.

It is a fundamental mistake, he told the feature’s author, Asher Emanuel, to assume that the Labour Party has anything to do with the day-to-day decision-making of cabinet ministers and public servants. Never mind that Labour spin-doctors rattle-on about New Zealand having a “Labour-led Government”, the actual, this-is-really-going-to-affect-you, business of government takes place in an almost entirely non-partisan environment.

“The Labour Party is not the government” says Jones. “The government is the government. I don’t go and try to lobby the Labour Party. The party does have its democratic structures and its policy platforms and manifesto and that is something that the government — the Labour government, the Labour Party-in-government — the government tries to advance. But ultimately there is a giant beast called the government and it’s the public service, it’s MPs, ministers, ministers from various parties.”

It’s the same with policy. Jones is scornful of the whole notion of public policy being, at its core, a democratic process.

“A Labour Party member sitting in a dusty hall in Temuka is not writing the government’s policy”, Jones says. “Eventually there’s an impact. But you’re not dealing with that person in the democratic process. You’re dealing with the government.”

At least Jones was decent enough to throw that “eventually there’s an impact” life-line to all those benighted souls raised on the notion that ordinary citizens, sitting in dusty halls, might be able to change the way their society is run. Although, he makes it pretty darn clear that those party members will find it very hard to recognise their ideas in what finally emerges from the “giant beast called the government”.

As Emanuel observes, there is no way of escaping the need for expertise when it comes to influencing the formation of public policy. An organisation wanting to change things, says Jones, is unlikely to succeed without “a decent communications and government relations capacity.”

And, as Emanuel quips: “it helps to be of the political world.”

“If you’re not in that world,” says Jones, “you don’t know, necessarily, how to engage with legislation and regulation. You don’t know who the people are, you don’t know them personally. You don’t know what makes them tick.”

In other words: “Ordinary citizens wishing to change the world should not attempt to do so without a $200-per-hour guide. Citizens requiring guides should proceed to the nearest lobby.”

Emanuel is gloomily philosophical about the world Jones inhabits.

“A certain kind of realism insists that this is simply the shape modern democracy must take. From this vantage, these trends are an inevitability, principle must yield to practicability, and moral conviction is mere aesthetics.”

Jones, of course, agrees: “I got into politics for economic justice issues and I believe in social justice. But also, I’m a pragmatist and a realist and I focus on how to get things done. The measure of what we do is what we get done, or what we achieve.”

These, then, are the opinions of what passes for a “progressive” member of the political class.

But is Jones right? Do pragmatism and realism require the quest for economic and social justice to remain seated in the waiting-room of history until the political class – those professional servants of the “great beast called government” – are ready to receive them?

The history of social and economic change in New Zealand strongly suggests that Jones is very far from being right.

New Zealand’s social welfare system which, in its essentials, came into existence on 1 April 1939, wasn’t written in a dusty hall in Temuka. It was, however, written 80 miles down the road, in the tiny rural settlement of Kurow.

Its authors were Gervan Macmillan, the local GP; Arnold Nordmeyer, the local Presbyterian minister; and Andrew Davidson, the local schoolteacher. On the doctor’s dining-room table, these three – whose jobs had brought them face-to-face with the worst privations of the Great Depression – mapped out the contours of a system which would, eventually, take care of their fellow citizens “from the cradle to the grave”.

Nordmeyer and Macmillan took the plan to the 1934 Labour Party Conference, where it was enthusiastically endorsed and included in the party’s 1935 manifesto. By 1938 it was the law of the land.

Not bad for three ordinary citizens, gathered around a dining-room table in Kurow, North Otago.

And not a lobbyist in sight.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 2 March 2018.

With A Little Help From His Friends: Who Is Andrew Little Listening To?

Say What? How ironic it would be if, just as Jeremy Corbyn is showing us how Labour politics can be made to work, Andrew Little threw in his lot with those who have, to date, only shown us how to make them fail.

 

WHO politicians turn to for advice tells the world a great deal about what sort of people they are. Do they go straight for the professionals? Or, do they rely on friends and family? Most importantly, do they seek guidance from people who simply reinforce their prejudices, or are they guided by those who are willing to openly challenge their deepest assumptions?

 

The Labour Party leader, Andrew Little, is a cautious man, and, by and large, he has opted to surround himself with cautious people. Professionally trained, himself, he expects a high degree of professionalism from his staff. As a lawyer, he has a natural  inclination towards following the rules of whatever game he is playing.

 

Persuading Little to take a risk is hard work – but not impossible. His decision to keep on David Cunliffe’s Chief-of-Staff, Matt McCarten, is a case in point. McCarten’s radical reputation would likely have proven too much for Little’s rivals, but his own background in the trade union movement made Little much less prone to an attack of the vapours. McCarten may talk like a revolutionary, but, as the leader of the Unite Union, he always knew when it was time to tie up the attack dogs and seal the deal.

 

Little was also aware of just how much he owed McCarten for his wafer-thin victory over Grant Robertson. It was, after all, McCarten who, like the Praetorian Guards of Imperial Rome, understood the supreme importance of timing in the “transition” from one Caesar to the next. It’s never enough, simply to know when the moment has come to strike down the Emperor who has failed, one must also know around whose shoulders to drape the blood-stained purple toga, and upon whose head to place the golden diadem. McCarten chose Little’s head – and Little knows it.

 

Little also knows that the best service McCarten can offer his leadership is to embrace fully his role as the Emperor’s Praetorian enforcer. This was, after all, the role at which he excelled when he was with the Alliance. In Jim Anderton’s fractious coalition, McCarten was the man who kept the noisy ones quiet, and the quiet ones under surveillance. Little has put McCarten’s head-kicking skills to work in the Labour Party where, by all accounts, he has picked up from where Helen Clark’s fearsome enforcer, Heather Simpson, left off seven years ago. Given the extraordinary lack of discipline in Labour’s ranks since 2008, one is tempted to observe: and not a moment too soon!

 

McCarten, however, will always be an ally of Little’s – not a mate. That title belongs to the man he has appointed his Political Director, Neale Jones. The two men both hail from the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) where Jones served alongside Little, before haring off to the UK and contracting himself to a number of progressive and campaigning NGOs. If London can be said to have a “beltway”, Jones clearly knew his way around it.

 

And therein lies a potentially very large problem. Unlike McCarten, who brings with him the whiff of cordite and a kit-bag full of class-war stories, Jones is very much the political technocrat. In this respect, he is very like his boss: dogged, well-briefed, sensitive to the rules of the game, and thoroughly unimpressed by political passion. Hence Jones’ aversion to rushing Labour into anything. After the disasters of Goff, Shearer and Cunliffe, he believes Labour priorities should, for the moment, be strictly remedial. Not until the public’s lost love for Labour has been restored will Jones be happy to let the party, its leader, and its long-suffering rank-and-file, let fly with a little live ammunition.

 

How, then, to explain Labour’s curious foray into the treacherous territory of ethnicity and foreign investment? Who was it who thought singling-out Chinese investors in a city where Chinese residents make up nearly 10 percent of the population was a good idea?

 

The man responsible for manipulating the leaked Auckland housing statistics into something Labour’s housing spokesperson, Phil Twyford, could use was Rob Salmond. Anyone looking for proof of what can happen to a political party when it allows itself to be persuaded that politics is not an art – but a science – need look no further than the relationship between Labour and Salmond.

 

After a few years teaching at an American university, Salmond returned to New Zealand certain he could adapt the techniques he saw employed by the Obama Campaign to New Zealand conditions. This is the “science” of politics that sends out postcards detailing the voting habits of people’s neighbours, in an attempt to psychologically dispose them towards doing the same. Somehow, Salmond persuaded the Labour Party to unleash these sorts of highly manipulative tactics on the long-suffering New Zealand voter. Sadly, as we all know, his political “science” failed to fire, and Labour’s share of the popular vote declined to its lowest point since 1922.

 

Salmond has recently posted a couple of articles on the Public Address Blog in which he wields his ideological agnosticism like a club against anyone who dares to argue that political parties should “stand for something”. All that matters, according to Salmond, is winning over “the middle” – a political designation, apparently, determined not by geometry, but by opinion polling! How one accomplishes this feat, without sacrificing a political party’s ideological (and hence electoral) coherence, he does not elucidate.

 

Salmond’s overall influence within the Leader of the Opposition’s Office is difficult to judge, but Little should think hard before again taking him into Labour’s confidence. His insistence that there is a road to electoral victory that allows a political party to bypass the ideological commitments inseparable from political conviction; that elections can be won by some sort of tricky “scientific” fix; if accepted by Little and his team, can only place New Zealand Labour in the same sorry position as the British Labour Party under Ed Miliband.

 

How ironic it would be if, just as Jeremy Corbyn is showing us how Labour politics can be made to work, Little threw in his lot with those who have, to date, only shown us how to make them fail.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Saturday, 29 August 2015.