Blood Brothers

In the beginning was the word: According to Professor James Belich, Edward Tregear's 1885 book, The Aryan Maori, by inducting the Maori into the same "Indo-European" racial family as the Pakeha: "arguably ranks with the Treaty of Waitangi as a key text of Maori-Pakeha relations."

IT ALL BEGAN with a seemingly innocuous question.

"How would Hone Harawira feel", NZ Herald journalist, Derek Cheng, inquired, "if one of his seven children came home with a Pakeha partner?"

It was a gift of a question really, and no doubt Mr Cheng expected Mr Harawira come back with a statement celebrating racial tolerance. But, he was in for a big surprise.

"I wouldn't feel comfortable", Mr Harawira replied. "Like all Pakehas would be happy with their daughters coming home with a Maori boy – and the answer is they wouldn't.

"That's just the reality of the world. Let’s not cry about it. Let’s just live with it and move on."

But the "reality of the world" is very far from being what the MP for Te Tai Tokerau believes it to be. As they have so often done since he entered Parliament in 2005, Mr Harawira’s pronouncements betray a deep misunderstanding of this country’s present, and a worrying lack of knowledge about its past.

One of the curiosities of New Zealand history is the degree to which Maori and Pakeha intermarried. Indeed the free-and-easy co-mingling of the races in this part of the world would have scandalised the Anglo-Saxon settlers of Australia and North America – especially in the last quarter of the 19th Century.

It was during this period – the Age of Imperialism – when the European powers were "scrambling" for colonial possessions in Africa and Asia, that the by no means unrelated ideology of "Scientific Racism" began colonising the European and American mind.

Fuelled by Charles Darwin’s ideas about "the survival of the fittest" a vast and spurious hierarchy of races was constructed by American and European "scientists" to both explain and justify the Aryan (or Caucasian) race’s position at the very top of the human evolutionary tree, and why the "lesser races" were restricted to its lower branches.

To maintain the "purity" of the Aryan race, they insisted that there be absolutely no "miscegenation" (literally, "race-mixing"). In the former slave-owning states of the American South, this prohibition was to be given the force of law.

Not that white Americans living in the South were always willing to let their own race-based laws take their course. Between 1882 and 1968 some 3,446 black Americans were lynched – most commonly on spurious charges of "defiling" white women.

The Americans were not, of course, alone in mandating racial segregation. Miscegenation was almost equally taboo throughout the British Empire.

What made New Zealand so different?

The answer, quite simply, is: a book.

According to the leading NZ historian, James Belich, The Aryan Maori, written by Edward Tregear, and published in 1885, "arguably ranks with the Treaty of Waitangi as a key text of Maori-Pakeha relations."

Tregear had the soul of a tortured romantic. He was simultaneously bewitched and repelled by the wildness and isolation of New Zealand and its indigenous people. Having spent many years living with the Maori, and learning their language, he yearned to integrate the rapidly growing colony’s competing cultures into a harmonious whole. But how could he? Weren’t his "Aryan" brothers and sisters forbidden from "mixing their blood" with the "natives"?

But what if he could prove that the Maori were Aryans too? If he could demonstrate that their "land of ultimate origin was probably in South-Central Asia, but it may have been in Lithuania, or by the shores of the Caspian Sea; wherever it ‘may have been’ it was, as I believe, in that locality wherein those branches of the Indo-European family now occupying North-western Europe had their birth".

Tregear’s thesis (long since discredited) found an astonishingly receptive audience among Pakeha New Zealanders and was swiftly incorporated into the "official" history of the young colony. The Maori’s heroic resistance to colonisation; their rapid adoption of European religion, culture and technology; all was explained.

Pakeha and Maori were now free to "co-mingle" with the Scientific Racists’ blessing. Though separated by vast reaches of time and space, the two peoples were fellow "Indo-Europeans" – blood brothers.

The strength of the bonds forged by Tregear’s Aryan Maori theory was demonstrated in the "Battle of Manners Street" of 1943. When White Americans from the Deep South objected to sharing the Allied Services Club with Maori soldiers, they and their Pakeha compatriots invited these "allies" outside. For four hours thousands of Yanks and Kiwis traded blows in the streets of the Capital – two Americans died.

Isn’t it, therefore, richly ironic that, more than a century after the publication of The Aryan Maori, it is Mr Harawira, who finds himself discomforted by long-discredited 19th Century ideas concerning race-mixing?

And Edward Tregear? While wrong about the specifics of the Maori people’s origins, he was, in a larger sense, quite right. Maori and Pakeha are kin: not because we’re fellow Aryans; but simply because we’re fellow human-beings.

This essay was originally published in The Press on Tuesday, 17 August 2010.

Scrooge's Ghosts

"Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" The heartless cry of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol was intended to expose the moral vacuum at the heart of laissez-faire capitalism. The same "airless quality" is present in the first report of the Welfare Working Group. The Painting is Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward by Luke Fildes, 1874. Food and shelter in the "Casual Ward" of the parish workhouse were made available to all comers - but only for a single night.

GORDON CAMPBELL described the report as having a "peculiarly airless quality". It’s authors, hermetically sealed in their ideological cocoon, could have been writing "at any time over the past four decades".

The veteran journalist is right. The report of the Government’s Welfare Working Group (WWG) makes not the slightest attempt to interrogate the flesh and blood world of contemporary unemployment, sole parenting, chronic illness and invalidism. But, then, why would it – when it already knows all the answers?

In the WWG’s own words:

"We have come to the view that the scale and consequences of long-term benefit receipt are deeply concerning and that the system is not achieving what New Zealanders could reasonably expect. It is not sustainable, it does not provide equal and fair opportunities for those people on different benefit types and it is associated with poor social outcomes."

Let’s unpack that extraordinarily dangerous statement.

To begin with, who are the people identified by the WWG Chair, economist Paula Rebstock, as being in "long-term benefit receipt". Overwhelmingly, they are those on sickness, invalids, and domestic purposes benefits: people who can’t work; people whose physical or mental disability makes ordinary paid work impossible; and people engaged in the raising of babies and small children.

What on earth is so "deeply concerning" about providing long-term support to such people? If you’re suffering from a temporary or chronic affliction; if you lack the resources required to look after a young family; then to whom should you appeal for assistance – if not your fellow citizens?

What would be "deeply concerning" is a society which defined sickness, invalidism and sole parenthood as self-inflicted conditions – sins which can only be expiated through the pain of social humiliation and the self-redeeming qualities of unrelenting toil.

The grim workhouses of Victorian England were erected on the flint-hard foundation of these vicious bourgeois prejudices. Deliberately constructed to terrify the poor into righteousness, they were known colloquially as "Bastilles" – after the grim Parisian fortress. So harsh were the regimes within these institutions that many risked death, rather than enter their prison-like gates.

In his celebrated 1843 novella A Christmas Carol, Dickens parodies the harshness of laissez-faire capitalism in the character of Ebenezer Scrooge. Listen to the exchange which a request for a donation to assist the poor provokes:

‘Are there no prisons?’ asked Scrooge.
‘Plenty of prisons,’ said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
‘And the Union workhouses.’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are they still in operation?’
‘They are. Still,’ returned the gentleman, ‘I wish I could say they were not.’
‘The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?’ said Scrooge.
‘Both very busy, sir.’
‘Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,’ said Scrooge. ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’

When pressed, Scrooge’s parsimony turns deadly:

‘I wish to be left alone,’ said Scrooge. ‘Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned – they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.’
‘Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.’
‘If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’

There it is again, that airless quality, which Dickens’s storytelling makes explicit by enveloping Scrooge’s counting house in a dismal and noxious fog.

In the 167 years since A Christmas Carol’s first appearance, the world appears to have turned full circle. By the 1970s the Welfare State, which Mickey Savage described as "applied Christianity," had consigned the workhouse and the treadmill to history’s dustbin. But in the ensuing four decades, as Mr Campbell rightly observes, the noxious fog of laissez-faire capitalism has returned – along with the prejudices of epochs past.

And who will melt the hearts of these modern-day Scrooges?

For all their squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching and covetousness, the Victorians still knew themselves to be sinners, and were thus receptive to Dickens’s marvellous parable of Christian redemption.

In 2010, when only the spirits of Gain and Greed are admitted to Society’s feast, who will risk the WWG’s censure by insisting that we can afford to – and should – "make idle people merry"?

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 13 August 2010.

I am NOT a "Trotterite"!

The Joys of Caricature: I am not now - nor have I ever been - a "Trotterite". Drawing by Murray Webb.

IT’S ALWAYS PUZZLED ME that a man of "Idiot Savant’s" dogmatic certitude should be such a wuss.

With the Comments function of his No Right Turn blog safely switched off, Mr Savant hurls down rhetorical thunderbolts upon the heads of his enemies without the slightest fear of contradiction.

Those of us with a little more respect for the rules of open debate leave our Comments function switched on and are thus required to defend our postings mano a mano.

Clearly, being held accountable for his own words is not something Mr Savant relishes – and that’s a pity, because it forces the people he attacks to come back at him directly (and very publicly) on their own blogs.

Right, now that I've got that off my chest, the first thing I’m going to say about this recent, highly tendentious posting by Mr Savant is that, in the fine tradition of Karl Marx disclaiming the title Marxist: "I am NOT a Trotterite!"

By "Trotterite" Mr Savant appears to mean any person who opposes "social engineering" – which he defines as "any moves to ensure equality for anyone who isn’t a white male".

This is, of course, very far from the more usual definition of social engineering as: "The practical application of sociological principles to particular social problems." Or, less benignly: "The manipulation of the social position and function of individuals in order to manage change in a society." (The Free Online Dictionary).

The other defining characteristic of the Trotterite, according to Mr Savant, is that he or she is passionately of the view that the NZ Labour Party should "throw women, Maori, children and gays under a bus in a quest for the votes of its traditional base" which he supposes to be "racist, sexist and bigoted" working-class males.

Obviously, we would be very foolish to take Mr Savant’s definition literally. No one I know (or have ever known) in the Labour Party has ever advocated the murder of women, Maori, children or gays. And I suspect any Labour politician who bowled up to a canteen-full of working-class males and told them how glad he was to meet so many racist, sexist, bigots, would very soon be departing in an ambulance!

So, what is it about the ideas of these so-called Trotterites that Mr Savant really finds so objectionable? Essentially, it is their refusal to regard identity politics as an unequivocally progressive and unproblematic phenomenon.

For Mr Savant the goals of identity politics are indistinguishable from those of classical liberalism.

In his own words: "[W]hen you get down to it, the core idea running through the heart of the left … is a demand for equality for all. That equality has never just been economic, but also political and social … to be who we are, not what some stuck-up ‘lord’ wants us to be … Either you stand for the equality of all, or you’re supporting lords and peasants again. There is no middle ground on fundamental rights."

The first and most obvious riposte I would offer to this curiously naïve statement is that Mr Savant fundamentally misunderstands what the Left is all about.

For the Left, the quest for equality is not an end in itself but the means to achieving its ultimate objective – a just distribution of social and economic power.

Since Mr Savant mentions the Peasants Revolt of 1381 in his posting, let's take a look at its celebrated slogan: "When Adam delved and Eve span – who was then the gentleman?" In this revolutionary challenge to the social relations of the English countryside the rebel priest, John Ball, is asking (in the language of the Bible): How did we get from a world in which men and women worked for themselves, to a world in which they work for a master?

Why is the question revolutionary? Because it implicitly calls for the creation of a new social order in England. Not a social order in which the serf is equal to the lord, but an order in which there are no lords – or peasants.

This is what Mr Savant doesn’t "get" about the Left. That it is not simply about "the equality of all", but about transforming society to the point where power and wealth are so justly distributed that the word "equality" merely describes the way human-beings interact with one another.

What Mr Savant is doing is what the Marxists (whom he also profoundly misunderstands) call "fetishising" equality. It’s why he reacts so vituperatively when the claims of his beloved identity politicians are challenged.

He simply cannot see that it matters not one whit whether the person sacking you is male, female, Maori or gay: what matters is that they are wielding power over you – power which the social and economic system has vested in them in spite of not because of their gender, ethnicity or sexuality.

Mr Savant wrongly believes "identity" to be an entirely unproblematic concept and that anyone who attempts to clarify its relationships with the distribution of social and economic power is some sort of feudal throwback.

What he’s forgetting, of course, is that the over-riding importance assigned to one’s identity - whether you were a "lord" or a "peasant" - pretty much defined the medieval mindset.

Identity and Equality – far from being indistinguishable – are antithetical.

What the Left seeks is justice.

The Leader Labour Needs To Win?

Future Tense: Articulate, good-humoured, open to new ideas and smart enough to turn them into credible policy, Cunliffe looks every inch the leader Labour needs to win.

IS IT POSSIBLE that Chris Carter is right? Would Labour have a better chance of winning the next election under a new leader? Is Phil Goff really the best, or even, as most political commentators emphatically insist, the only option available? And if, as those same commentators contend, Labour cannot win under Mr Goff’s leadership, does that mean Labour cannot win – full stop?

A few days ago I would have conceded (albeit reluctantly) that those commentators were more likely to be proved right than wrong. And I use the word "reluctant" advisedly, because I count myself among Mr Goff’s long-time supporters.

As far back as February 2008 I was urging the Labour caucus to persuade Helen Clark to step aside in favour of her Defence Minister. It was clear to me then that the ties binding the Labour-led Government to its core supporters were becoming dangerously frayed, and that only by installing a new leader more in tune with the values and attitudes of traditional Labour voters could the election be won.

But, Labour did then what it shows every sign of doing now: it dug in and hoped for the best. And, as so many of the Government’s supporters feared, their "best" was nowhere near good enough. That Ms Clark relinquished the party leadership on election night, and then organised Mr Goff’s effective coronation as her successor, can only be read as a tacit admission that the "out-of-tune with Labour’s core supporters" argument was correct.

Swift and efficient though it undoubtedly was, Mr Goff’s unchallenged accession to Labour’s leadership did the party very little good. Centre-Left political organisations don’t generally opt to transfer power in the fashion of a feudal monarchy. "The Queen is dead. Long live the King!" is a curious approach for a party whose constitution still proudly upholds to the principles of "Democratic Socialism".

In an ideal world, Ms Clark would have remained in place for the six months following her election defeat and used the time to muse very publicly about the love Labour lost. She’d have offered apologies to all and sundry and generally encouraged the broader labour movement to engage in a wide-ranging debate on the party’s future direction. Only then would she have signalled her departure, and invited Labour’s most talented parliamentarians to slug it out.

At least that way the voting public would have been able to tell which of Labour’s long-dormant factions "had the numbers". Would it be Clark’s social-liberal faction? Or would the defection (and abstention) of so many of Labour’s traditional voters persuade the Caucus to throw its weight behind a more socially conservative candidate?

Waging this fight out in the open may have been embarrassing for the Party, but, when it was over one faction, after a long and very lively debate, would have emerged victorious with a clear mandate. More importantly, the new leader would’ve been free to strike out in a new direction without having to worry about being white-anted by the losing side.

As it is, the factional in-fighting continues to seethe – just not where the voting public can see it. At best, we have caught brief glimpses of the main dividing-lines.

When Mr Goff attempted to harness growing public concern over the National-led Government’s handling of Maori-Pakeha relations, for example, the social-liberals in his caucus very publicly over-ruled him. And when he indicated that he wasn’t all that fussed about workers voluntarily trading away the fourth week of their annual leave, the former trade unionists in his caucus laid about his head with great force.

Everything we have seen since the 2008 election points to a deadlocked Labour caucus in which no one faction possesses the numbers – or leadership – to give either the party, or the country, the clear new direction it so desperately needs.

There are only two ways that Labour’s factions can resolve this impasse: the first is to wage a long and bitter war of attrition (as the Australian Labor factions did between 1996 and 2006) and be left with whoever is the last man (or woman) standing; or, to swallow their pride and, ignoring faction, elect the person best equipped both intellectually and presentationally to lead them to victory in 2008.

Last Saturday morning, on TV3’s The Nation, David Cunliffe demonstrated conclusively that he is that person. Articulate, good-humoured, open to new ideas and smart enough to turn them into credible policy, Cunliffe looked every inch the leader Labour needs to win.

The conventionally wise insist that he lacks sufficient allies to mount a successful challenge. But, from the perspective of Labour’s deadlocked caucus, Mr Cunliffe’s absence of factional baggage may yet prove to be his most telling political advantage.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 10 August 2010.　

Blood Sacrifice

Theatre of War: Lake Waikaremoana, in the territory of the Tuhoe people, where the terrorist/freedom-fighter, Te Kooti, based his forces in the early months of 1869. The Crown's pursuit of the warrior-prophet, following the Mohaka Massacre of 10 April 1869, extracted a heavy price from his Tuhoe protectors.

AN ARMED BAND of about 150 terrorists enters an isolated village in a country torn by civil war.

The men defending the village, accepting the terrorist leader’s assurances that they will not be harmed, surrender their weapons. One man refuses, telling the terrorist leader: "If I hand over my gun you will kill me." Shots are exchanged, the man falls.

The terrorists then start slaughtering the defenceless villagers – mostly women and children. Forty are killed – many hacked to death with bayonets and axes. Meanwhile, outside the village, local farming families are also being attacked and killed. About a dozen men, women and children are murdered: some bayoneted; some shot in the back as they fled. Their homesteads are looted and set alight.

Having completed their grisly raid, the terrorists take refuge in the nearby mountains.

What would be your best guess as to what happens next? If you said a small army made up of professional soldiers and local volunteers headed into the mountains in pursuit of the terrorists, you would, of course, be correct.

And if the commanders of that small army discovered that the local inhabitants of the mountainous region into which the terrorists had fled were providing them with food, shelter, ammunition and new recruits? What would your best guess be as to their next move? If you said they’d probably "unleash hell" on the local inhabitants, then, once again, you’d be quite right.

Now, when and where did this terrorist raid take place? Last week in the mountainous border region separating Afghanistan from Pakistan? Not even close.

The incidents I’ve just described took place in and around what is now the Urewera National Park in April 1869. The "terrorists" were Te Kooti’s "Hau Haus". The village was Mohaka. The local tribe which gave Te Kooti and his men shelter was Tuhoe.

The Waitangi Tribunal has so far released over a thousand pages of historical research into the Tuhoe people’s claim to Te Urewera. But you’ll not find anything on those thousand pages remotely resembling the Mohaka Massacre as I have described it.

There is a peculiar reticence on the part of the Tribunal’s historians to acknowledge that the war which spilled over into the Tuhoe people’s territory in the 1860s and 70s was a civil war. Few New Zealanders understand that more Maori died at the hands of other Maori during the so-called Land Wars than at the hands of Pakeha. At Mohaka, for example, two-thirds of the victims were Maori women and children.

Instead, we get statements like this, from the AUT History Professor, Paul Moon, speaking to Radio New Zealand - National’s "Morning Report" host, Geoff Robinson, on Tuesday:

"Well the parts of the Waitangi Tribunal Report that have been released in the last few days show that Tuhoe suffered in a very different way from other tribes. Other tribes were involved in wars and had their lands confiscated, but in parts of Tuhoe the Crown enacted almost a scorched earth policy. They burnt crops, shot people, shot children. They burnt houses, destroyed livestock. They shifted entire communities off their land. So the scale of the suffering and the effect it’s had on the community has been different from just about any other tribe in the country."

And, of course, Professor Moon is right, the Crown did all of those things. What he (and the Waitangi Tribunal historians) neglect to do, of course, is set those dreadful deeds in the context of the equally dreadful deeds that preceded them.

Tuhoe picked the wrong side in the war to decide what sort of country New Zealand would become: a modern, technologically sophisticated, socially progressive and politically democratic state.

So modern and democratic, in fact, that in order to bind up the wounds of the losers, its liberal elite is willing to traduce the historical record and besmirch the reputations of the courageous men and women – Maori and Pakeha – whose blood sacrifice made New Zealand possible.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 6 August 2010.

The Price

Blood on Our Hands: Is the price of New Zealand’s re-admission to the Anglo-Saxon club now to be measured in the blood of her children?

IT’S THE OVERPRESSURE WAVE that poses the most immediate threat.

The detonation of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) compresses the surrounding air and blows it outward in a deadly shockwave. The speed at which this shockwave travels is measured in milliseconds and the resulting high-energy pulse can cause serious damage to the human body’s "hollow organ systems" – that’s your ears, lungs and abdominal cavity.

An overpressure pulse of just 4 psi is powerful enough to kill any human-beings located in the immediate vicinity of the blast. At 10 psi human bodies simply disintegrate.

The shockwave is followed by the fragmentation effect. The enormous heat and pressure generated by the explosion disintegrates all but the most solid adjacent objects - sending superheated fragments flying outwards at supersonic speed.

Following the detonation of an IED, the metal container in which the explosive mixture is packed is instantly transformed into hundreds of lethal shards called "shrapnel". Depending on the sophistication of the bomb, the shrapnel may simply disperse in all directions, or be "shaped" to discharge in a single direction, like a shotgun blast.

The effect of a sudden large explosion is extremely disorientating. The flash, the overpressure pulse, the fragmentation effect and the deafening noise simply overwhelm the senses and render the individual acutely vulnerable for at least several seconds.

This is why the detonation of IEDs is such an effective military tactic. Deployed in conjunction with carefully positioned machine-guns and rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, they give the attacking force a deadly window of opportunity to pour fire into an enemy who is, at least momentarily, incapable of fighting back.

That the twelve person unit of New Zealand infantry ambushed this morning (4/8/10) in Afghanistan’s Bamyan Province, by a so-far unidentified insurgent unit utilising a combination of IED and small-arms fire, emerged from the engagement with only one fatality is remarkable. It speaks volumes about the superb training of the New Zealand foot-soldier.

As the independent NZ war correspondent, Jon Stephenson, observed on Radio New Zealand – National’s "Nine to Noon" show, if an ambush is properly organised there should be no one left to walk away. And yet we are informed that the Kiwis were able to return fire, and in spite of the misty conditions (which prevented effective air-support and the swift evacuation of the wounded) held off the insurgents until the arrival of a relief force.

Even so, the casualty rate of this engagement was a sobering 25 percent (not counting the Afghan interpreter who was one of the three persons wounded in the attack). New Zealanders should, therefore, take the opportunity provided by this deadly encounter to consider the wisdom of their country’s continuing participation in the Afghanistan conflict.

Our participation in the Bamyan Provincial Reconstruction Team had been blessedly casualty-free up until today. Bamyan, we were told, was a "safe" and "friendly" province where the winning of hearts and minds by the Kiwis was proceeding apace. Clearly this is no longer the case.

Though the local Hazara population may be the historical enemies of the largely Pashtun Taliban militiamen, this has not prevented the insurgent forces from repeatedly infiltrating the province. Today’s attack suggests that those forces are now moving backwards and forwards across the mountainous terrain with increased freedom and enhanced military effectiveness. If New Zealand’s soldiers remain in Bamyan more casualties are unavoidable.

The Prime Minister, John Key, has declared that, in spite of this morning’s fatal attack, it is not New Zealand’s intention to "cut and run". Viewing the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, however, "cutting and running" seems like an eminently sensible suggestion.

If Bamyan is no longer safe (and the failure of locals to pass on their usual warnings to the Kiwi patrol is as worrying as it is significant) then nowhere in the whole war-torn country is safe.

More and more of the participants in the ISAF are declaring the battle for the Afghans’ hearts and minds to be lost, and that the US counter-insurgency strategy has failed. The government in Kabul is simply too venal, too corrupt, too ineffectual and too compromised by its relationship with the occupying NATO forces to command the loyalty of the Afghan people. They simply will not send their sons to die for Hamid Karzai and his drug-running mates.

And if the Afghan people themselves are not willing to die for the discredited and dysfunctional Afghan State – a regime installed, funded and protected by the armies of the West – then why should young New Zealand soldiers?

Is the price of New Zealand’s re-admission to the Anglo-Saxon club now to be measured in the blood of her children? If so, then the price is too high. We must not allow the bravery of our soldiers to be harnessed to the folly of our politicians.

It’s time to go.　

The Pitch

Right[s] on the Button! The campaign of the Australian Council of Trade Unions against John Howard's WorkChoice Australia attack on workers' rights was crucial to his government's 2007 defeat.

THE GRUEN TRANSFER, is a fine example of what a real state broadcaster, dedicated to genuine public interest television, can achieve. Produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) this half-hour television show takes a light-hearted weekly swipe at the global advertising industry.

One of the most enjoyable segments of the show is called "The Pitch" – in which "Creatives" from competing agencies are given an outrageous/impossible brief (in a recent episode they were asked sell ice to Eskimos) and told to come up with a 30-second TV spot.

Perhaps the most famous of these briefs involved making the case for an Australian invasion of New Zealand. "100% Pure NZ", runs the opening line of the winning entry. "0 air force", it continues. "100 percent there for the taking", gloats the penultimate caption as Aussie jet fighters streak across New Zealand’s undefended skies firing missiles on the helpless inhabitants below. The triumphant ending: "100% Ours".

Pondering the enormous difficulties currently confronting the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) as it attempts to mobilise public opinion against the National Party’s employment law "reforms", it struck me that "Create a favourable public perception of the New Zealand trade union movement.", would definitely qualify as a future brief for "The Pitch".

And before you shake your head and tell me "it can’t be done", let me tell you about a programme I recall from the days when New Zealand, too, had a "real state broadcaster dedicated to producing genuine public interest television".

It was called the Dean/Edwards Show (after its eponymous hosts Michael Dean and Brian Edwards) and was broadcast in front of a live audience from the Avalon television complex in the Hutt Valley. Dean/Edwards came under the rubric of Television One’s News and Current Affairs and was, to put it mildly, politically challenging.

The programme in question had taken advertising as its theme and its producers had approached a local agency to demonstrate the awesome powers of the industry. They were to come up with a positive ad’ for the most loathed trade unionists in the country at that time – the infamous Cooks & Stewards Union. These were the workers responsible for looking after passengers on the Cook Straight ferries, and they were notorious for timing their industrial disputes to coincide with public holidays.

The 60-second ad the agency produced featured the theatrical skills of the actor Ian Mune, and more than met the Dean/Edwards Show’s producers’ expectations. It was, quite simply, a little masterpiece. In just one minute the villainous Cooks & Stewards were transformed into no-nonsense working-class heroes.

So, you see, it can be done.

And if you need any further convincing, just take a look at the series of ads the Aussie unions ran in 2007 against the Liberal Party’s detested "WorkChoice" legislation. According to most Australian political commentators, these ads played a crucial role in defeating John Howard’s government.

There’s no doubting our own CTU has the resources to fund such a campaign, but do they have access to the sort of skills that turned the Cooks and Stewards into heroes? And, even if they secured the services of a top-flight agency, would the major networks agree to air their product?

When it comes to getting controversial ads broadcast, New Zealand unions have had some very bad experiences. For some reason the Advertising Standards Authority has found it extraordinarily difficult to affix its seal of approval to union-produced television advertisements. Somehow they’re always deemed to be in breach of the Authority’s strict rules.

Even so, were I in CTU President, Helen Kelly’s, shoes I’d be thinking long and hard about commissioning a series of ads designed to change the public’s perception of what unions – and unionists – are about. And I wouldn’t just be looking to the big ad agencies for ideas. In this age of the Internet and cheap computer software, I’d be appealing to every young digital designer, every student-flat Fellini, to send me their ideas as well. And if the ASA stood in the way, well, there’s always You-Tube.

As Forest & Bird and Greenpeace know only too well, there’s a whole new arsenal of weapons available to political activists in the 21st Century that simply weren’t available to the trade unionists of 1890, 1913 and 1951. Policemen can shut down and confiscate a printing-press, but they can’t seize every PC or shut-down the Internet – not unless they want a real fight on their hands.

What Helen Kelly and the CTU needs is the equivalent of Greenpeace’s "Sexy Coal" video clip – and the power of celebrities like Robyn Malcolm and Lucy Lawless to sell it. Below the radar of the despised "MSM", that one clip did more to put 40,000 anti-mining marchers on the street than any other piece of propaganda.

The Pitch is "Union Power". Any takers?

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 August 2010.