The People's Song

Every Man A King: Richard "King Dick" Seddon, New Zealand's longest serving prime-minister, set in place the notion that the will of the New Zealand people must trump all else. In this, the informal constitution of New Zealand, Parliament has always been the nation's highest court. For most Kiwis the power of the majority is supreme and indivisible: it answers to no one. 

IT’S ONE OF the most extraordinary sounds you’ll ever hear: the sound of the legal profession singing in unison. The Government’s urgent attempts to stuff the Supreme-Court-created hole in Police surveillance powers with legislative Polyfilla has got the legal fraternity on its hind legs, bellowing like a baited bear.

The principle at stake, cries that doyen of be-wigged boffins everywhere, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, is nothing less than “The Rule of Law” itself. Governments which – retrospectively –overturn the judgements of their highest courts, this former law professor and Prime Minister warned the select committee examining the legislation, are in danger of being mistaken for tyrants.

The judicial arm of the state must be capable of restraining the executive arm when it transgresses the boundaries set by the legislative arm – say the experts – or no citizen is safe.

Except that most of these citizens aren’t big fans of the classical liberal notion of the separation of powers. In the eyes of most New Zealanders, the State is ruled by only one body – “Parliament” (by which they mean the House of Representatives). The “executive arm” of the State (Cabinet) and the “judicial arm” (all courts up to and including the Supreme Court) are there to give effect to Parliament’s will.

In any legal arm-wrestling contest, nobody beats the people’s elected representatives. Parliament is New Zealand’s Supreme Court.

Of course, this is not the official view of New Zealand’s constitution, which cleaves loyally to the separation of powers doctrine. But, there is a very big difference in this country between constitutional theory and constitutional practice.

Uniquely, among the inheritor states of the British Empire, New Zealand possesses no written constitution; no entrenched Bill of Rights; no Supreme Court with powers to strike down “unconstitutional” legislation; and no “upper” house to scrutinise and/or delay the legislation of a “lower” house.

Kiwis aren’t very keen on terms like “upper” and “lower” – especially when “lower” is applied to the parliamentary chamber most beholden to the people. Nor are they attracted to the idea that a bunch of unelected lawyers, dressed in antiquated wigs and gowns, should be able to strike down or gainsay the intentions of the men and women chosen by the people to govern the country.

What the overwhelming majority of Kiwis do affirm, however, is the idea that “majority rules”. It’s a disarmingly simple constitutional principle: the person, or persons, in command of a majority of seats in the House of Representatives get to run the country.

Stated bluntly, “majority rules” means that the “executive arm” of the State is not a co-equal, but a sub-set, of the “legislative arm”, and remains effective only for so long as it enjoys the legislature’s confidence.

It’s the same with the judiciary. Being nominated and appointed by agents ultimately dependent on the confidence of the House of Representatives, judges should not consider themselves the co-equals of Members of Parliament  – but their servants.

Parliament’s reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Crown & Hamed provides an excellent demonstration of “majority rules” in action.

John Key is Prime Minister because the last general election gave his own (and a sufficient number of like-minded parties) a majority of seats in the House of Representatives. An important part of the mandate National and its allies received from the voters involved taking a hard-line on law and order issues. Mr Key’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision on Police surveillance powers was that it placed intolerable obstacles in the way of his government carrying out the people’s mandate. Accordingly, his Attorney-General introduced legislation effectively overturning the Supreme Court’s decision.

At the time of writing it’s unclear if Mr Key will be able to persuade a majority of the House of Representatives to vote for his legislation. If he fails, then the Supreme Court’s decision will stand.

But, let’s be very clear. It will stand because a majority of the people’s representatives could not be convinced that the Government’s bill accurately reflected its electoral mandate on law enforcement. Indeed, a victory for the “Noes” will indicate that, on the matter of the unrestricted video surveillance of suspects, the people’s representatives are asking both the Courts and the Police to take their fellow citizens’ right to be protected from “unreasonable search and seizure” a great deal more seriously.

Like any good legal counsel, the Supreme Court may then be said to have provided the people’s representatives with sound and useful advice on a matter important to the good governance of the nation, and they will have acted accordingly.

But, if the Government does manage to muster the majority it needs, Parliament will have reached an altogether different conclusion. That, in order to secure the conviction of serious wrong-doers, the powers of the Police must be strengthened.

Either way, the people’s song will have triumphed.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 4 October 2011.

Auslander!

Excluded: National has transformed Labour into exiles in their own land. Excluded from the ranks of "Real New Zealanders", the party has ceased to be included among "us" and been redefined as "them". Fighting back from the position of auslander (stranger, foreigner) is going to be very difficult - especially in eight weeks!

YOU STILL DON’T GET IT, do you Labour? You don’t understand, even now, what National’s done to you? Well, let me tell you. They have transformed you into auslander – foreigners, aliens, exiles in your own country. You’ve been excluded from the ranks of “the people”. You’ve been pushed outside the circle, beyond the Pale. You no longer belong among “us” – you belong with “them”.

And you’ve no one to blame but yourselves.

For decades you were happy to take the votes of working-class New Zealanders: presenting yourselves as the true representatives of their values; the genuine defenders of their interests.

“Give us your votes,” you said, “and we will guarantee workers a place at the very centre of the political stage. And from that position of strength we will make sure that you and your kids have jobs, and homes, and access to health care and education, and the opportunity to make something of your life – on your own terms.”

And, in a good election year, just short of 50 percent of the electorate supported you.

Then, along came Roger Douglas and his Treasury mates, and everything changed.

Working people were no longer wanted at the centre of the political stage. They weren’t even wanted in the wings. As far as the new breed of Labour politician was concerned, the working-class could wait outside the theatre, in the alley, until called for.

And most of them obeyed. Like poor old Boxer, in Orwell’s Animal Farm, their faith in the pigs who led them was so strong that they meekly surrendered everything they had won over 50 years of struggle and shuffled off the stage.

“If Labour is asking us to make all these sacrifices,” they told themselves, “then they must be necessary. Because, when all is said and done, Labour is flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone. Labour is on our side – and only wants what’s best for us.”

But they were wrong. The people who were running the Labour Party were no longer flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone. They were different. They subscribed to different values. They were managers and professionals – people in charge.

And they no longer regarded working people as the salt of the earth; or the beating heart of the nation; or the people who, in their collective bosom, kept safe the Holy Grail of socialism and a better future. Labour’s new masters looked at their electoral base and saw only rednecks, homophobes and child-beaters.

Families still mired in a working-class existence were, in the judgement of Labour’s new generation of leaders, dysfunctional failures. They were no longer members to be heeded, or even clients to be satisfied. In a bizarre and belittling transformation, they’d become Labour’s patients; suitable cases for treatment.

The English poet, C.K. Chesterton, had the measure of these new masters:

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,

Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.

They fight us by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;

And they look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,

Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

Who could possibly be surprised that the National Party, seeing the way Labour treated its most loyal supporters, started wondering whether, with the right pitch, it might be possible to lure them across the great political divide.

Thanks to the Employment Contracts Act, the working-class had ceased to be any sort of economic or political threat. And Labour clearly had no intention of re-building the trade union movement in any serious way. What’s more, Don Brash had already proved that even when the Right had reconstituted itself into a powerful, almost monolithic, electoral force it still lacked the numbers to govern. National needed Labour’s voters – and it possessed just the man to get them.

John Key preached a new message to the New Zealand working-class: a Kiwi variation of Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can”.

Key’s message was simple: “It doesn’t matter where you were born, or what you parents did: you can and should aspire to a better life. National has no intention of molly-coddling you. Unlike Labour, we don’t regard you as suitable cases for treatment – but as sovereign individuals. What does that mean? It means you must take responsibility for your failures, but, equally, you have the right to enjoy the full fruits of your successes. National isn’t offering to carry you – you’re not children. But, we are offering to clear away all unnecessary obstacles from your path. Labour needs you as weak and pathetic victims; desperate for, and dependent on, the state’s largesse. National says: ‘Stand up. Be strong. Make your own future!’”

It was a potent message. Because Key was offering working-class Kiwis nothing less than the opportunity to stand alongside National’s rich and powerful supporters and be counted among the “real” New Zealanders. These are the New Zealanders who don’t rely on other people’s taxes to pay their bills. The New Zealanders who try, fail, try again – and succeed. The New Zealanders who believe that with guts and determination they, and just about anybody, can and will – “make it”

If you believed in these things, then you could stand among John’s people. If you didn’t – you couldn’t.

If you rejected the values of rugged individualism. If you placed your faith in the largesse of the state. If you looked upon the labour and laughter of ordinary people with “cold dead alien eyes”, and regarded them as “suitable cases for treatment”, then you weren't one of "us", you were one of “them”. Something odd. Something foreign. Something unconnected. Something incapable of attracting more than 30 percent of the popular vote. Something from somewhere else.

Auslander.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Resurrecting Student Activism

The Words Of The Prophets: Arrogant, ideologically-driven and potentially self-defeating, the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Act will almost certainly put an end to most of New Zealand's students associations. But why? Over the past decade these institutions have become politically inert and absolutely no threat to the staus-quo. Voluntary student membership, conceived by the Right as a cure for the student activism of the 1990s may, paradoxically, end up resurrecting the very radicalism it set out to destroy.

FOR THE New Zealand student movement to be resurrected, it first had to be killed. And that’s exactly what the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Act 2011 did. Voluntary student membership killed the student unions stone dead. Within a couple of years they’d been wound up. Student leaders graduated, student assets were sold. It was over.

But the needs, which student unions had been set up to meet, survived. And, since the student unions were no longer there to meet them, the universities were forced to do the job. And, naturally, it was all user-pays. Services which had once been paid for and provided out of student union dues, were now supplied directly (and much more expensively) by the universities themselves.

To make sure that these services were being provided as effectively and efficiently as possible, the universities needed feedback from the student body. Academic staff were, accordingly, instructed to identify one student representative from each of their classes. Some were perfectly happy to shoulder-tap these class reps, but most agreed that true representation could only be guaranteed by election.

The universities soon had hundreds of class reps to call on for feedback and advice. To make consultation easier they decided to group them by faculty – Arts, Commerce, Science, Medicine, Law.

Inevitably, these faculty groups acquired Facebook pages, blogs and websites, and before long a lively dialogue developed. Discussion ranged over every aspect of student life, and pretty soon the class reps were making all kinds of demands on the university authorities. Unable or unwilling to meet the demands of the faculty groups, the universities decided to acquire student feedback by other means. The class reps were informed that their services were no longer required.

Bad move.

The genie of student democracy was not so easily squeezed back into its bottle. Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere erupted with messages and postings of protest. Flyers began appearing all over the nation’s campuses calling upon the sacked class reps to come together in a nationwide series of mass meetings. An excited student of French revolutionary history called them the “student constituent assemblies”. The name stuck.

Realising that the seven SCAs were too unwieldy to act with any real decisiveness, it was decided that the faculty groups should elect delegates to Student Representative Councils. The deliberations of the SRCs were beamed out, live, to every New Zealand student with a lap-top.

When one panicky university foolishly decided to deny its SRC the use of the meeting space it had commandeered, its delegates barred the doors and called upon the student body to defend them. Thousands of students responded. The Police were called. Students were batoned, tasered and arrested. But, the defensive ring held. The SRC presidents, meeting by video conference, called for a nationwide student strike.

University students throughout New Zealand responded in their tens of thousands. When the universities shut their gates, the students poured onto the streets. Their banners proclaimed: “Democracy or Revolution? Your Move.”

An alarmed government called the university vice-chancellors and the SRC presidents to a meeting in the Beehive. The student leaders demanded that the negotiations be broadcast live. Maori Television immediately offered its services. Reluctantly, the government agreed.

Its decision was soon regretted. The student demands placed before the government were escalating well beyond the right to represent themselves when dealing with the university. The repressive conduct of the authorities had raised the consciousness of students to the point where the legitimacy of New Zealand’s entire tertiary education system was under open challenge.

The call, now, was for the restoration of free university tuition, the payment of a living student allowance, and for the governing bodies of universities to be made up of one third students, one third academic staff, and one third representatives from the community.

As a good-will gesture, the Prime Minister offered to restore the former system of student representation.

“No thanks, Prime Minister”, laughed the SRC presidents, “ this new one’s much better.”

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times, The Greymouth Star and The Waikato Times of Friday, 30 September 2011.

Trivial Pursuits

Bovver Boy: Why has Labour made its chief head-kicker its chief election strategist? Trevor Mallard's recent attack on University of Otago political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards, had about it the unpleasant whiff of Muldoonism, and stands in sharp contrast to the friendly, easy-going style of National's campaign.

THEY WEREN’T the most important events of the past week. In fact, in a world racked by economic crisis and intractable conflict, they weren’t important at all. But, as is so often the case with small, seemingly trivial events, they were highly instructive. They told us why John Key’s National Party will have to work so very hard to lose the forthcoming election, and why – barring a miracle – Labour hasn’t the slightest chance of winning it.

The first event involved a visit by the Prime Minister to the University of Canterbury. Nothing so remarkable in that: the limousine pulls up; people shake hands; people make speeches; PM opens the university’s new super-computer; people shakes hands again; limousine departs. Not much to see here.

Except for the sign that 4^th Year Mechanical Engineering students had stuck to the “Mech Suite” window overlooking the PM’s arrival-point.

“John, mate”, read the sign, “come up for a yarn with your country’s future engineers.”

The Prime Minister spotted the sign and, yep, you guessed it, to the whoops and hollers of the (mostly male) students … he came up.

But wait, there’s more. Not only did the PM come up, but he also agreed to match one of his larger and more terrifying DPS bodyguards against the students’ massive arm-wrestling champion, “Maddog”.

“Just for the record,” quipped the Prime Minister having caught sight of Maddog, “I do have some really huge bodyguards. If I’d had a bit of advance warning…”

The two champions squared-off and, of course, Maddog won.

“If the New Year’s honour’s list was still open,” said the PM, over the cheers of the students, “I’d give you a knighthood.”

A story for the students’ grandchildren? Well, a few years ago that would have been the case. In 2011, however, the whole event was captured on video and uploaded to You-Tube.

Now, the cynics will say: “Aw, I bet the whole thing was staged.” And, who knows, it may well have been. But, staged or genuine, isn’t really the point. What matters is that a) John Key was up for it, and carried it off with considerable aplomb. And, b) The whole event is now available to the electorate via the Internet. Just three days after it was first posted, more than 13,000 people had already watched the You-Tube clip.

It had gone “viral”.

THE OTHER event also involved the Internet. Indeed, that’s where it happened – on the Labour Party blogsite, “Red Alert”. In a posting headed “Bill English Funds Bryce Edwards”, the Labour caucus’s chief election strategist, Trevor Mallard, launched a vicious attack on the young University of Otago academic, Dr Bryce Edwards, for his, at times, highly critical assessments of the Labour Opposition’s performance.

The Bill English reference stemmed from Mr Mallard’s contention that, since Dr Edwards’ “NZ Politics Daily” (a compilation of political stories carried that day in the New Zealand media) is partly sponsored by the National Party’s polling agency, Curia Market Research, it is indirectly subsidised by the state (via Parliamentary Services) and, therefore, by the Minister of Finance, Bill English.

The gob-smacking absurdity of this claim (another sponsor of Dr Edward’s compilation is the PSA union!) was only matched by the Labour MP’s accompanying insults. According to Mr Mallard, Dr Edwards is “one of the few remaining supporters of the Alliance”, who is being “bank-rolled” to provide “political commentary which mainly attacks Labour and the Greens from the looney left.”

Rounding off his attack, Mr Mallard declared: “The guy makes Margaret Mutu look like a well-balanced academic.”

It is difficult to know where to begin with this outburst.

That it was made by the caucus’s chief strategist raises a whole host of questions about the nature of the election campaign Labour is intending to run.

Does Phil Goff sanction this stuff? We can only hope that he does not endorse the sort of crude ad hominem arguments featured in Mr Mallard’s posting. We must hope, too, that Labour’s appeal to the electorate is fuelled by emotions considerably less disreputable than the petty spitefulness and partisan hostility which it displays.

Needless to say, Mr Mallard’s outburst did not go unnoticed by Labour’s opponents – or its friends. The blogosphere was soon buzzing with negative commentary and, like the You-Tube clip from the “Mech Suite”, the posting’s audience began to expand. Within days, the number of people in receipt of Mr Mallard’s “wisdom” had grown exponentially.

ALL ELECTIONS have a “tone”: a mode of address to the voting public which (largely unconsciously) “cues” their response to the competing parties.

If we compare and contrast the tone of the You-Tube clip of the PM’s visit to the “Mech Suite”, with the tone of Mr Mallard’s “Red Alert” posting, picking the election result becomes a cinch.

Sometimes, little things generate big consequences.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 27 September 2011.

Failed Experiment (A Short Story)

Unity Is Strength: Unionism doesn't work with some in and some out. If one worker deserves the protection of trade union membership, then all workers do. After twenty years of voluntary membership and the collapse of effective workplace representation, surely it is time to acknowledge that the experiment has failed - and bring back compulsory unionism? 

 “WHAT YOU GOT there, Blue?”, said Harry, as his oldest friend eased himself into the chair by the window.

“This, my friend, is called an Old Speckled Hen - and it’s bloody delicious. Have a sip.”

Harry took the pint glass and sipped. “Hmmm,” he said smacking his lips, “that’s not bad.”

“About the only good thing you can say for Rogernomics”, said Blue, reclaiming his glass. “The choice of beer has improved out of sight.”

“Yep. It’s been a while since there was only DB and Lion.”

“They weren’t all bad though, were they?”, mused Blue, setting down his glass. "Those days before Labour went troppo and started out-Natting the Nats?”

“Nope. Not by a long chalk. I was talking to my grandson the other day. He’s just started his first job - a barista, of all things.”

“A what?”

“Makes coffee.”

“Oh. I thought he was at varsity?”

“He is. But my daughter and her husband can’t afford to pay his fees, so he has to work and study.

“Anyway, I was telling him about my first job. It was way back in the 1930s - just before Labour was elected for its second term. I told him about compulsory unionism: about how everyone - even the office girls - were getting organised. I recalled the pride in our union delegate’s eyes as he handed us a copy of our Award.

“‘No individual contracts back then, my boy‘, I said. ‘Didn’t matter where you worked, or who you worked for. If you did the job, you were paid the rate. You could be paid more if the Boss was willing but, by God, you couldn’t be paid less.’”

“What did he say to that?”

“Well, he wasn’t too sure about compulsion.

“‘Shouldn’t joining a union be a matter of choice, Gramps?’, he says.

“That’s when Len, my son-in-law, joins the conversation. He’s a good union man - member of the Service Workers.

“‘Unionism doesn’t work with some people in and some out, son,’ he says. ‘All that does is let the employers divide and rule - and it encourages people to free-ride on the guts and sacrifice of others. I’ve always argued that if it’s alright for the bosses to be protected by limited liability, it’s alright for workers to be protected by compulsory union membership.”

“Too bloody true!”, said Blue, taking another sip of his Old Speckled Hen.

“And you should have seen his face when Len rattled off what bar-staff were entitled to under the award negotiated by the old Hotel, Hospital and Restaurant Workers Union. Travel allowances, clothing allowances, penal rates, time-and-a-half, double-time, triple-time.

“‘In real terms, son,’ he said, ‘you’re earning less than I was back in 1973.’”

“What did he say to that?” Blue inquired, gazing through the window at the windswept gaggle of university students hurrying over the pedestrian crossing.

Harry laughed. “He said, if compulsory union membership and national awards were so good for workers, why isn’t the Labour Party promising to bring them back?”

“Bloody good question!” snorted Blue, distributing a fine spray of Old Speckled Hen across the table.

“I heard that Darien Fenton woman talking on the radio the other day - Labour’s industrial relations spokesperson. You know what she says?”

“What did she say?”

“She says: ‘Nobody on the Left is calling for the reintroduction of compulsory unionism and national wards.’”

“Never asked us”, said Harry.

“No, she bloody didn’t”, muttered Blue. “But I know what I’d like to ask Darien Fenton. I’d like to ask her how much longer Labour’s going to let this wretched experiment in voluntary union membership go on before declaring it a failure?

“Ninety-one out of a hundred, Harry. Ninety-bloody-one! That how many private sector workers lack union protection. Hundreds-of-thousands of ordinary Kiwis stripped of the ability to negotiate with their employers on equal terms. To look the boss in the eye and say ‘no deal’, without being sent down the road.

“Mate, you’ve known me for fifty years. You know I used to rave on about wanting union members by conviction - not compulsion. But after 20 years it’s painfully clear that your son-in-law’s absolutely right: unions don’t work with some in and some out.”

“You’ll get no argument from me”, said Harry, picking up Blue’s empty glass.

“Same again?”

This short story was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times, The Greymouth Star and The Waikato Times of Friday, 23 September 2011.

All Of Us - Together

Tatou,Tatou. All Of Us - Together: The Otago University Students Association's Clubs & Societies Building was built using resources contributed by thousands of students over many decades. It will likely be just one of many student assets lost to the political vandalism and ideological spite of voluntary student membership.

LONGER AGO THAN I care to compute, I made the decision to “go to varsity” and become a student. It meant becoming part of a large, complex, exciting and intensely stimulating community. There was nothing “compulsory” about the process, I could exit the university at any time. The problem was, if you weren‘t part of the university, you couldn’t be a student.

In this sense “voluntary student membership” is an oxymoron. One can no more be a “voluntary” member of the student body than one can be a “voluntary” member of the human race. You either is or you ain’t - and if you ain’t you’ve no cause for complaint.

Very soon, however, it will be possible to pretend that you both is and ain’t a member of the student body. When the Education (Freedom of Association) Amendment Act, making membership of students associations voluntary, takes effect in 2012, straightforward self-interest will dictate that every New Zealand university student becomes a “free rider”. If they are able to enjoy all the amenities provided and paid for by preceding generations of students, without any obligation to contribute to the general welfare of either their own or future generations - why would they do anything else?

In a surprisingly short period of time, New Zealand’s student associations will start to wither and die. For a year or two some will survive by using-up their cash reserves and selling-off their assets. But, when these resources are finally exhausted, so too will be the tradition of independent student representation in New Zealand.

Which is not to say that student representation, itself, will come to an end. Universities must have some means of managing the relationship between their administrative apparatus and the student body. One way or another, the means will be have to be found for preserving the indispensable dialogue between those who teach and those who learn.

In other words: If students associations cease to exist, it will be necessary for the university (with parliamentary assistance) to re-invent them.

Why, then, have the Act and National Parties passed the voluntary student membership legislation? If some sort of student representative structure is indispensable, and its re-constitution inevitable - why dismantle the structures already in existence?

What has led Act and National to such wanton political vandalism?

The answer to this question casts a dark shadow over the moral probity of both parties.

National understands, as perhaps the general public does not, that the nation’s students associations constitute what is undoubtedly the Labour Party’s most reliable source of talented recruits. Far more so than the trade unions, the churches or the NGOs, the students associations have developed and delivered the political talent Labour so desperately needs to remain competitive with the parties of the Right.

Grant Robertson, The Labour MP for Wellington Central, and tipped by many political commentators as a future leader of his party, won his spurs in student politics. And he’s by no means the only member of Labour’s caucus to have done so.

National knows that if the students associations are allowed to disintegrate, it will be decades before the student movement recovers sufficiently to provide Labour with the rejuvenation it so urgently needs.

Acts motivation, by contrast, is a mixture of genuine grievance and ideological rigor.

As student numbers have grown, and the financial burdens of tertiary study increased, the effectiveness and accountability of student associations has declined. Student branches of the Act Party have exposed a number of egregious lapses in both the administration of student funds, and the quality of student governance. In this respect the students associations have been their own worst enemies.

But, even if all the students associations had been irreproachable models of democratic participation and accountability, Act would still have plotted their demise. The extreme libertarian ideology of so many young Act-ivists vehemently rejects the concepts of mutuality and continuity which the student association embodies.

They are infuriated by the thought that, as human-beings, they cannot escape the realities of collectivism. That the moment they decide to “go to varsity” they enter a living community. The roots of that community extend far back into the past, even as it pushes them towards the future. Act’s ideologues refuse to accept the fact they can’t contract out of their obligations to their fellow students without damaging and devaluing the very qualities and experiences they joined the university to acquire.

During my time at university the students association erected a handsome building to house the many student clubs and societies. Beneath the plaque commemorating its opening were carved the Maori words tatou, tatou - All of us, together. The fund which paid for the building was contributed by tens of thousands of students over many decades.

It will not take that long for them to lose it.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 20 September 2011.

Party Like It's 1949

The Auckland That Never Was: The visionary 1940s urban design of Ernst Plischke would have given birth to an Auckland with a decidedly European feel. Held together by its ultra-modern light-rail system and high-density state-housing, the city would have become the Stockholm of the South Seas. The defeat of the First Labour Government in 1949 put an end to the Ministry of Work's grand plan, and, under successive National Government's, Auckland was transformed into the car-dependent, South Seas version of  Los Angeles we have today.

THE DEBACLE that was Auckland’s public transport system last Friday night was more than sixty years in the making. That’s how long it’s been since a group of brilliant urban planners, based in the Ministry of Works, sent their blueprint for post-war Auckland to Parliament. Had the Labour Party won just 50,000 more votes in the 1949 general election, that blueprint would have become reality, and Auckland would now be a very different city.

But, Labour lost the ’49 election, and the National Party government which replaced the planning-friendly administration of Peter Fraser was not impressed by the MoW’s version of Auckland’s future.

As far as the National Party was concerned, Auckland’s post-war growth was the business of the private sector – not the state. Housing construction, and the infrastructure required to service the new suburbs of the 1950s, would, as far as possible, be the preserve of commercial builders and contractors.

National’s belief in individualism and self-reliance similarly militated against the MoW’s plans for an Auckland woven together by an extensive network of electric railway units on the Hutt Valley model. The government of Sid Holland was convinced that the future belonged to the private automobile. In the nostrils of the Nats, trains always carried the whiff of socialism.

They still do – as anyone who has listened to Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s paeans of praise to the virtues of the motor car can attest.

To be fair, however, the failure to create a modern public transportation network in Auckland is not the National Party’s alone.

One of the largest and most important elements in the import substitution plans drawn up by the Second Labour Government, were the car assembly plants. Not only were these factories intended to save overseas funds, but they were also excellent devices for manufacturing loyal Labour voters. The MoW’s plans for an Auckland that ran on rails continued to gather dust.

It would be another 12 years before Labour was again in office. By the 1970s, the party needed little convincing of the shortcomings of Auckland’s congested car culture. Finally, Labour was ready to back (but not to fund) the plans for a light-rail network that Auckland’s indomitable Mayor, Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, had been advocating for more than a decade.

They had not reckoned on Sir Robert Muldoon.

The monstrous hydra of motorways continued to grow, along with the number of cars crawling along it’s sinuous necks.

Labour’s neoliberal conversion in the 1980s saw the railways ruthlessly downsized and readied for privatisation. Free marketeers drove cars: public transport (especially trains) were for state-subsidised losers.

Not even the election of a Labour-Alliance government in 1999 was enough to halt the madness. And when Prime Minister Helen Clark backed and won New Zealand’s bid for the Rugby World Cup 2011, there was scant understanding of what that would require of Auckland’s public transportation system, and even less enthusiasm for making it happen.

Labour’s finance minister, Dr Michael Cullen, could have left Auckland with a modern, electrified, light-rail network. Egged on by his Treasury advisers, he chose instead to prevaricate and delay. His successor, Bill English, at least had the excuse of a global financial crisis – not to mention the disadvantage of a Transport Minister who never saw motorway plans he didn’t fall in love with at first sight.

And so, when we most needed it to succeed, Auckland’s rail network simply collapsed under the sort of numbers most modern cities move about every day of the week.

Visitors here for the World Cup from Western Europe and North America must have wondered what they’d struck. Gazing incredulously at last Friday’s hopeless snarl of decades-old, diesel-belching locomotives, and SRO carriages lacking effective air-conditioning, a working PA system, and the professional assistance of trained railway-guards; they must have asked themselves if they really were in a first-world city, in the 21^st Century.

Nope – on both counts. In Auckland, if you’re looking for efficient public transport by rail, it’s always 1949.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times, The Greymouth Star and The Waikato Times of Friday, 16 September 2011.