Mana - Not A Serious Option

Limited Talent: The choice of the John Key and National Party admirer, Kereama Pene, as Mana candidate for Tamaki Makaurau is proof positive that not only is the party's talent pool woefully shallow – so, too, is its political judgement.

WELL, THAT’S IT. For a while there it looked as though the Mana Party just might turn into something worthwhile – a second chance for all those who were dismayed to see the Alliance crash and burn over Afghanistan back in 2001-2002.

But, no. Mana’s announcement that Kereama Pene, a minister of the Ratana Church, is to contest the Tamaki Makaurau seat has put an end to all that.

Mr Pene is a flamboyant character who has, at one time or another, been a supporter of the Mana Motuhake, Labour, Destiny and Maori parties. He is also on record as saying the Prime Minister, John Key, is “ a person who should be admired”.

Not content with singing the Prime Minister’s praises, Mr Pene has also publicly declared that: “National is actually the group that have done most of the great things for Maoridom over the past 20 years.” Identifying (erroneously) the Treaty Settlements Process, the Waitangi Tribunal and the Kohanga Reo Movement as National Party achievements, Mana’s Tamaki Makaurau candidate told the NZ Herald: “You’ve got to give praise where its due.”

These statements show Mr Pene to be, at best, a dangerously naive political novice, or, at worst, a ticking time-bomb, guaranteed to explode at the worst possible moment. His remarks have deeply compromised the Mana Party at a time when political journalists are already discussing its lack of momentum, and its failure to capitalise on Leader Hone Harawira’s success in retaining the Te Tai Tokerau seat.

The Tamaki Makaurau contest required a candidate of real ability and, well, mana: someone capable of being “retailed” to the Maori electorate. For a while it was assumed that the candidacy would go to the former Alliance MP, and highly successful Maori broadcaster, Willie Jackson. Wisely, Mr Jackson thought better of it – as did his Radio Live side-kick, the former Labour MP, John Tamihere.

The reluctance of these two veterans to risk their reputations (and salaries) in the race for Tamaki Makaurau spoke volumes about Mana’s readiness to engage in the high-octane environment of mainstream electoral politics.

The sort of person to break the grip of Maori Party co-leader, Pita Sharples, and bar the way to Labour’s Shane Jones, had to be able to connect with Tamaki Makaurau's energetic, secular and overwhelmingly youthful population. Someone out of Maori TV’s stable of young, talented and "tuned-in" presenters would have been ideal: a Julian Wilcox or Annabelle Lee Harris.

The choice of Mr Pene is grim evidence that, after Hone Harawira and Annette Sykes, Mana finds itself struggling to identify Maori candidates of genuine (and electable) political talent among its ranks.

It is difficult to see Mana’s erstwhile mover-and-shaker, Matt McCarten, allowing Mr Pene to carry the party’s colours into such an important and highly visible contest. Before being forced out of Mana’s day-to-day decision-making processes by illness, Mr McCarten had set up an extremely testing set of political and organisational hurdles that every prospective candidate was required to clear before their nomination could be accepted. The choice of Mr Pene for Tamaki Makaurau suggests that these pre-requisites are now being honoured more in the breach than in the execution.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that Mana would have been wiser to put the radical lawyer, Annette Sykes, into the Tamaki Makaurau seat. Waiariki may include Ms Sykes’ own Te Arawa iwi among its constituents, but that very fact carries with it a significant disadvantage. Te Arawa are among the least accommodating of Maori tribes when it comes to recognising the rights of women, and this may well count against Mana's candidate in the looming battle with the Maori Party’s Te Ururoa Flavell. Tamaki Makaurau is an almost entirely urban seat, containing Maori from all over Aotearoa. Pitted against Mr Sharples and Mr Jones, Ms Sykes would have attracted considerable support – across many iwi affiliations.

Too late now. Mr Pene’s selection is proof positive that not only is Mana’s talent pool woefully shallow – so, too, is its political judgement.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Occupy Queen Street? Not Yet.

The Message Is Spreading: The political virus implanted by the "Occupy Wall Street" protesters has become highly contagious, with similar "occupations" speading rapidly across the United States. But are Aucklanders ready to "Occupy Queen Street"? The answer, almost certainly, is: "Not yet."

LAST NIGHT I sat in a roomful of people inspired by the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. Some were young, brim-full of idealism. Others, older, wore the scars of numerous victories and defeats. Uniting them all was the belief that “a better world is possible”.

I have long been wary of the New Zealand Left’s propensity for jumping on to other people’s bandwagons. What’s happening in the United States and Europe, and what has already happened along the Mediterranean Coast of North Africa – the so-called “Arab Spring” – are products of those particular countries’ recent (and not-so-recent) histories. I am very doubtful that events occurring there can be replicated here quickly, easily and without significant modification.

The kids who moved in on Wall Street over a month ago may have been anarchists, but I strongly suspect that a great deal of organisation followed their decision to set the fires of rebellion in the very belly of the global capitalist beast. My roomful of people had come to organise an occupation of Queen Street, but they’d given themselves just eight days to do it.

Several months ago Spain’s anti-austerity movement, the so-called “Indignants”, designated October 15 as a day of international action against global finance’s determination to make 99 percent of the planet’s people pay for the economic crisis precipitated by its wealthiest 1 percent. Auckland’s radical leftists are determined to do their bit on that day.

Frankly, I don’t believe 8 days is anything like long enough to get something like this organised. But, even if the “Occupy Queen Street” organisers had given themselves six months to plan a full-scale occupation of Auckland’s main street, I doubt if they could pull it off.

The brutal truth of the matter is that, in comparison to the Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans, Syrians, Bahrainis and Yemenis, New Zealanders live in a blessed realm. And even if we limit our comparison to the peoples of Europe and the USA, the hard fact remains that New Zealanders have had what might be called an “easy” recession.

Our rate of unemployment is comparatively low, and our government has shied away from the sorts of ruthless austerity measures implemented in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Greece and in many of the individual states of the USA. Our economy’s powerful linkages with the booming economies of Australia and China have spared us the worst effects of the Global Financial Crisis and the deep recession which it spawned. Our great trials (Pike River, the Christchurch earthquakes) have been of the sort that bring people together, not the sort that drives them apart.

The other thing that brings New Zealanders together is, of course, Rugby. One more reason, perhaps, for allowing the Spanish-set “International Day of Action” to go unmarked in Godzone. It is difficult to think of a worse time to ask ordinary Kiwis to focus on the building of a better world than in the week its All Black heroes are closing in on their first Rugby World Cup victory in 24 years. For these folk, a RWC win represents the best of all possible worlds!

The RWC offers another quite serious impediment to any form of prolonged protest action – especially action planned for the main street of the biggest host city.

One of the main reasons Peter Marshall was appointed Commissioner of Police is, I imagine, because of his long experience in providing police protection for large international events. I first encountered him in 1995, when he was placed in charge of policing the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Auckland. Recalling the firmness with which he dealt with protesters on that occasion, I can only assume that Commissioner Marshall will respond to any group attempting to engage in prolonged protest action (on or around streets potentially overflowing with RWC revellers) with considerable force.

Indeed, I would be very surprised if any attempt to block streets or set up camp anywhere in the CBD lasts any longer than a few minutes. Nor would I be astonished if the number of constables on hand in Queen Elizabeth Square at 3:00pm on Saturday, 15 October, is greater than the turnout of protesters. In strategic terms, the Police will want to be able to re-deploy their forces in plenty of time for the RWC semi-final match scheduled to take place at Eden Park that evening. The Police Commissioner simply cannot afford to keep a large cordon of police officers on watch over a protest on Downtown Auckland’s main thoroughfare.

Quite apart from anything else, the Police will be worried about the likely outcome of a very large number of pumped-up Rugby supporters, many of them intoxicated, coming into contact with a small number of protesters. The social mores and political attitudes of the former are almost certain to clash with those of the latter. Things could get very ugly, very quickly.

Of course, vivid images of police brutality are wonderful recruiters for any sort of protest movement. On Wall Street, it was the images of a New York cop pepper-spraying a defenceless and non-violent protester in the face that lifted the occupation from a minor piece of street theatre to a genuine political event. The same thing could happen here.

But, I am doubtful. In my opinion both the timing and the venue are all wrong. October 15 is too soon, and Queen Street is simply too critical to the smooth movement of traffic (and revellers) through Central Auckland, for a successful occupation on that date to be successful.

If anything can be read from the overseas experience it is this. Successful occupations take place in the context of major and genuine affronts to the public’s values and welfare; and their venues typically resonate with symbolic power. Egypt’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square, for example, was the site of revolutionary uprisings in both 1919 and 1952. Wall Street is, of course, synonymous with the power of global finance capital. The policies of President Hosni Mubarak’s government had imposed extreme hardship on the Egyptian people. Wall Street’s looting of “Main Street” has placed millions of Americans under intense economic pressure.

Auckland’s Queen Street possesses its own symbolic power. It was the site of the largest and most destructive of the unemployment riots of 1932. But these occurred in the depths of the Great Depression when close to a quarter of the New Zealand workforce were unemployed and thousands of families quite literally starving. The “Queen Street Riot” was an explosion of rage and despair from working people at the very end of their tether.

Have we reached that point again? Are enough of us that angry with our government and the economic system it oversees?

Something in me says: “Not yet.”

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

The Not-So-Happy Prince (A Guest Posting by Dr Charles Pigden)

The Prince Who Refused To 'Get Real': People who talk of adapting to reality are in effect suggesting that we should put up with a social reality created by other people rather than trying to remake it in accordance with what we think is right. By doing so, they reinforce that very reality. And by refusing to be actors in history they become the accomplices - perhaps ultimately the victims - of the processes of which they profess to disapprove.

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a Prince. The Prince was very rich and very happy and enjoyed the favor of his master the Emperor. He liked to attend court functions in his fine clothes. He loved dancing and parties and enjoyed fulfilling the not very onerous tasks demanded of a nobleman of his rank and station. He knew that the Emperor was far from perfect but he did not see fit to question his actions. After a while the old Emperor abdicated and left the realm to his son, the King of S.

The King of S did not like the Prince very much but he thought he was a fine gentleman, ideal to be sent as the ornamental ambassador to the King of F. The real business was to be left to the Prince's deputy. But the King of F did not know about this and made the mistake of discussing the real business with the ornamental ambassador. Apparently the two Kings were planning to roast thousands of people who disagreed with them on matters of religion. The Prince was upset about this as he disapproved of roasting people even when they disagreed with him on religious topics.

Soon after this the King of S left for his southern dominions leaving the realm to his half-sister the Duchess who was to act as regent. The Prince tried to persuade the Duchess not to roast people. There were many who thought he was doing the wrong thing. (Let us call them his feeble counsellors.)

'Look', they said, 'the reality is that thousands of people are going to be roasted. You must adapt to that reality. If you don't like it perhaps you can persuade the Duchess to have people roasted in a more orderly and less cruel way.'

But the Prince thought that roasting people was wrong and he would not listen to their advice. But the Duchess (obedient to the orders of her brother the King) was not persuaded. Then the Prince got together a group of other fine gentlemen who disapproved of roasting people to help him persuade the Duchess.

Again, the Prince's feeble counsellors spoke up. 'Look', they said, 'the reality is that thousands of people are going to be roasted.  You must adapt to that reality. You have tried once and failed. Give it up and enjoy your position at court.

But the Prince thought that roasting people was wrong and he would not listen to their advice. Nevertheless the Duchess (obedient to the orders of her brother the King) was not persuaded by the Prince and his fine gentlemen friends. Indeed, she had some of them arrested and the Prince declared an outlaw.

The Prince decided that since persuasion did not work, he would have to try force and raised a rebellion against the King of S's government. There were many who thought he was doing the wrong thing.

'Look', they said, 'the reality is that thousands of people are going to be roasted. You must adapt to that reality. You have tried twice and failed. Give it up and if you say you are sorry, perhaps you can recover your position at court.'

But the Prince still thought that roasting people was wrong and he would not listen to their advice. Now the Prince was not a very good soldier and he was utterly defeated by the Duke of A (The King of S had replaced the Duchess as regent because he did not think she was sufficiently keen on roasting people. The Duke of A was much more fierce and could be relied on to carry on the roasting project with much more vigour.) The Prince lost his money, his estates and his eldest son, who was kidnapped and carried off to be a prisoner at the King of S's court. (The Prince never saw him again.) He was forced to flee to the castle of his brother the Count of D.

Just to show that he was serious, the Duke of A had some of the Prince's fine gentleman friends executed. Many people (the feeble counsellors) thought that the Prince would at last have learnt his lesson. 'Look', they said, 'the reality is that thousands of people are going to be roasted.  You must adapt to that reality. You have tried three times and failed. Give it up and if you say you are very sorry, and if you lie low for a few years, perhaps the King will allow you to recover some of your estates.'

But the Prince still thought that  - reality or no reality - roasting people was wrong. And in addition he disliked the fact that his country was ruled by someone as fierce as the Duke of A. So despite the good advice, after several years of plotting, he scraped together an army and rebelled again.

Well, to cut a long story short, the Prince's second rebellion was but a partial success. He was still not a very good soldier and was only able to establish control over part of the country (where to be sure, roasting and other such cruelties were forbidden). His armies were often defeated and his brother was killed. Most of his money and his estates remained forfeit.  Instead of parties and jousts his life was devoted to planning and committees. He was tired all the time and sometimes ill. In the end, the King of S put a price on his head and had him murdered. So perhaps he would have done better to listen to his feeble counselors and respect the 'realities' after all.

BUT THEN AGAIN, perhaps not. This Prince was William the Silent, Prince of Orange, founder of the Dutch nation, which remained in the hundred years after his death, the true home of liberty and enlightenment in Europe. His actions helped to create a new and rather better 'reality' than the one that would have existed had he tamely acquiesced in the King of Spain's commands. Even today - even here - we enjoy the benefits of his courage and resolution.

Now, what is the point of this story?

What I want to suggest is this. Though physical reality is not made up by us, social reality is in part a human creation since it is the product of human actions and decisions. What is made by human actions and decisions can often be un-made by other human actions and other human decisions. People who talk of adapting to reality (like the Prince's feeble counsellors in my story) are in effect suggesting that we should put up with a social reality created by other people rather than trying to remake it in accordance with what we think is right. By doing so, they reinforce that very reality. And by refusing to be actors in history they become the accomplices - perhaps ultimately the victims - of the processes of which they profess to disapprove.

Of course, there are some fights you cannot win. But there are also a good many that can be won if people are prepared to make the necessary effort. 'Realism' is too often the excuse offered by those too cowardly or too lazy to make that effort. And when advanced by those in power it is too often a fig-leaf designed to conceal the fact that there are no good arguments for the policies suggested. I would like to say (following Dr Johnson) that 'realism' is the last refuge of the scoundrel. But that would not be accurate. Often it is his first resort.

Dr Charles Pigden is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Otago. This is his first Guest Posting on the Bowalley Road blogsite (but, hopefully, not his last).

Man Of Constant Sorrow

With A Lot To Feel Sorrowful About: The question so few commentators have seriously tried to answer since Labour's defeat in 2008: Why Phil Goff? Why did Helen Clark offer, and what made Goff agree to receive, a chalice so full of poison?

HE IS A MAN of constant sorrow, and calling his party soggy-bottomed risks considerable understatement. It’s why my heart goes out to Phil Goff.

What must he be thinking? Standing there upon the threshold of a campaign he seems certain to lose?

One recalls those gallant young second-lieutenants of the First World War, waiting in the trenches, scout-whistles clenched firmly between their teeth, watching the slow sweep of the second-hands around the faces of their pocket-watches. All-too-aware that, from the moment the signal is given to go “over the top” they will be the German snipers’ prime targets.

But isn’t that analogy false? Isn’t Phil really in the position of the red-faced General far behind the front lines? The man whose lack of imagination and utter indifference to the pain and suffering it’s causing, marks him down as the slayer – not the victim?

If Phil was actually in charge of his party, that would be true. But Phil is not in charge of his party. Phil has never been in charge of his party. And that, right there, is the source of all Labour’s troubles.

Far too few people have asked the one, big, bleedingly-bloody-obvious question about the Labour Party of the last three years: “Why Phil Goff?”

What on earth led Helen Clark to the conclusion that the best way to re-build Labour after its resounding 2008 defeat was to nominate and secure the leadership for the man most closely associated with the right-wing remnants of the Rogernomics era? A man who was awkward and fundamentally out-of-sympathy with far too many of the men and women in the dominant factions of caucus? A man who, from Day One, could rely firmly upon only a small minority of his ostensible “followers”?

Helen Clark was no fool. She must have known, even as she placed the crown upon Phil’s head, that the men and women she had slowly and carefully manoeuvred into Parliament over the fifteen years of her leadership would never pay him true fealty. Phil Goff had been a Rogernome. Phil Goff had joined the plot to roll her in 2006. Phil Goff would always be the Right’s first pick. Why make him leader?

There are only two plausible answers.

1) Realising that her Caucus’s enthusiasm for socially liberal policies had cost Labour the 2008 election, Helen Clark nominated the only man capable of credibly repositioning the party closer to the socially conservative values of its electoral base.

Or.

2) Helen Clark only ever saw Phil Goff as a stop-gap leader of the party: someone to demonstrate the Labour Right’s political incapacity; someone to take the blame for the party’s post-election irrelevance; someone to make his inevitable successor from Labour’s Left look good.

What choice did Phil have – except to proceed on the assumption that he had been chosen to reposition his party closer to its electoral base? And, with the help of his savvy policy adviser, John Pagani (who, as a former sidekick to Jim Anderton knew a great deal about promoting social conservatism) that’s exactly what he set out to do.

Except his caucus wouldn’t let him. When Phil tried to undercut working-class support for the Maori Party by harshly criticising the political and economic influence of the Iwi Leadership Group his caucus revolted. He was accused of playing the race card and compared to Don Brash. Upbraided by his own back-bench and up-staged by his own Party President, Phil did the one thing no publicly challenged leader should ever do: he backed off.

That Phil Goff was Labour’s leader in name only was now as clear as day. Much murkier, however, was the identity of those calling the shots in the Labour caucus. As the months went by, and Labour’s troubles multiplied, the awful answer appeared to be: “No one.”

Not content with publicly demonstrating their leader’s political impotence, Phil’s enemies then decided to demonstrate their own by refusing to depose him.

Those familiar with the recent history of the Australian Labor Party will have no difficulty in predicting the NZLP’s future.

The leadership will become a revolving-door through which will pass a succession of political hopefuls, each one worse than the last, until, finally, the public discovers a face that fits.

Meanwhile, our Man of Constant Sorrow, stoically readies himself to go over the top.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times, The Greymouth Star and The Waikato Times of Friday, 7 October 2011.

The Angel Of History

A Storm Called Progress: Paul Klee's Angelus Novus. The Angel of History is blown backwards into the future by the gales of historical change. Labour's critics challenge it to confront directly the accumulation of its past decisions - and their consequences. How else can the Labour Party, and the people who vote Labour, hope to change them?

ROBERT WINTER is a fan of Jerome K. Jerome, a fact which immediately distinguishes him as a man of taste and discernment. His blog Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow offers some of the pithiest political commentary to be found anywhere in the New Zealand blogosphere. Most of the time I agree with Robert, and he with me. Over recent weeks, however, we have not agreed. And since my every attempt to leave  a comment on his own blog has failed (Blogger has never really recovered from its meltdown of a few months ago) I am responding to his critiques here, on Bowalley Road.

ONE OF THE most common criticisms of Labour’s left-wing critics is that they are mired in the past. According to the party’s (dwindling) number of supporters and defenders, the watches of those who criticise Labour have all stopped. Some at 19:84, some at 19:91, others at 20:02. These critics are both fixed in and fixated by words and deeds that long ago passed into history. This, says Labour, is as destructive as it is unhelpful. The eyes of the Left, according to Labour and its followers, should be fixed upon the future: let the dead bury their dead.

At the same time (and somewhat paradoxically) Labour’s defenders also use history as a means of discrediting its left-wing opponents alternative narratives and policy-options.

“As I've suggested before,” writes Robert, “the world of social democracy a la 1935 is no more. We no longer have the same labour force, the same unions, the same systems and organisation of production, the same social mores, the same communities, or the same ability to operate within the protection of a nation-state. Above all, and this is underestimated as a factor by most, the hopes attached to alternative systems have, for now, been dashed - the Bolshevik model, from the Soviet Union to Cuba, has failed and we are now seeking new alternatives. That takes time. We may not like this, but it is a reality. Meanwhile, Capitalism, driven by its own imperatives, has moved on politically and economically, particularly on two fronts - the global impact and power of finance capital and the organisation of global production in value chains.”

This is the standard Blairite explanation – adopted by Labour and social-democratic parties from Australasia to Scandinavia. It is not, however, an analysis: it’s a description – and an excuse. It’s the right-wing social-democrats’ way of saying: “Capitalism’s become too big to tackle. All we can hope to do is smooth-off some of its sharper edges. There really is no alternative to the free market.”

But, as the former British Labour MP, Bryan Gould, explained more than two years ago:

“A government supposedly of the Left that feels unable to challenge market outcomes can have nothing to say – however it is dressed up, whatever cosmetics are applied – to those who look to it for social justice and a more integrated society.”

If social-democracy is not about challenging market outcomes (and the social inequality and injustice they generate) then what is it about? Sure, the shape and power of capitalism changes: but, so what? Capitalism was once about coal and steam-engines and machine looms. Then it was about oil, and electricity and the internal combustion engine. Its records were once produced by Bob Cratchits with pens. Then it was flappers with typewriters. As far back as 1848, Karl Marx and Fred Engels recognised capitalism as the most dynamic force on the planet.

Their celebrated description of capitalism: “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty, and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air”; could have been written yesterday.

Stubbornly refusing to “melt into air”, however, are the relationships peculiar to capitalism. These are as solid as they ever were. And it is this, the edifice of domination, subordination and exploitation which holds capitalist society in place, that social-democracy seeks to challenge, shrink, modify and, ultimately, dismantle.

That’s what the First, Second and Third Labour Governments did here. Even the Fourth challenged, shrank, modified and dismantled, although not for any progressive purpose. But the Fifth (leaving aside the brief period it was goaded forward by its genuinely social-democratic coalition partner, the Alliance) was largely content to leave the capitalist edifice unchallenged. From the labour market to broadcasting, welfare to global warming, the ‘reforms” of the Clark-led government were tentative, half-hearted and almost totally ineffectual.

Of course we can’t go back to 1935 – or 1972. But we can decide to follow the same social-democratic principles, and pursue the same objectives, as Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk. We can declare that any society which denies ordinary working people a meaningful role in shaping their collective future is not a democratic society. We can also say that any party which refuses to respond to working-class exclusion by “putting people first and money second” is not – and never can be – a Labour Party.

In 1940, on the run from the Nazis, the German-Jewish philosopher and social critic, Walter Benjamin, recalled the impact of a work of art by Paul Klee:

"A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."

We are driven forward only by what lies behind us. 

This post is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

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.