Protecting The TPP.

Democracy In Action: Anti-TPPA protester, Josie Butler, is prevented from presenting her "Dick of the Year" award to New Zealand's Chief TPPA Negotiator, MFAT's David Walker. It seems highly likely that the security personnel, seen here moving in on Ms Butler, were employees of the high-end security firm October Protection. According to the firm's website: "Many of our staff come from military, police, corrections and close protection backgrounds". What sort of “trade deal” have we signed-up to, when its explanatory roadshow requires the protection of former soldiers and policemen?

 

THE HEAVILY GUARDED Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) travelling roadshow came to Christchurch last week. The word “heavily” is used advisedly. According to the reportage of Josie Butler (who staged a peaceful protest at the event and was escorted from the auditorium) the roadshow was not only protected by upwards of 30 police officers, but also by 40 members of the New Zealand Defence Force. Ms Butler’s reportage further alleges that the roadshow had at least one other protector – its government appointed chairman, broadcaster Sean Plunket.

 

If Ms Butler’s description of the proceedings is accurate, then it is fair to say that Mr Plunket has opted for an alarmingly heavy-handed approach to chairing these gatherings. Participants are restricted to asking questions of the presenters and will be interrupted aggressively if they so much as attempt to contextualise their queries. Hecklers are summarily ejected.

 

What was presented to New Zealanders as an opportunity to participate in a free and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the TPP, is being experienced by those attendees not already convinced of the agreement’s benefits as little more than a crude propaganda exercise. Even worse, these meetings are alleged to have been conducted in a fashion that treats dissent as a hostile and potentially criminal act.

 

Given the strong public feeling which the TPP has aroused, the manner in which the  roadshow is conducted is very important. Negotiated in secret, and signed by the National Party-led Government without prior endorsement by the House of Representatives, the TPP has been presented to the people of New Zealand as a fait accompli. The most appropriate stance of the person chosen to chair the TPP roadshow is, therefore, one of democratic scepticism.

 

The case in favour of the TPP needs to be made in full acknowledgement of its inherently adversarial nature. After all, the roadshow is the first official occasion for the public’s direct participation in the TPP debate. Critics of the deal should, therefore, be encouraged by the Chair to make their case, and the government’s spokespeople required to answer their criticisms as well as their questions. If it is true that Mr Plunket’s formidable interrogative skills are not being used to probe and challenge the statements of the government’s representatives, but are, instead, being deployed against the TPP’s critics, then the democratic legitimacy of the roadshow is forfeit.

Certainly, Ms Butler’s description of the Christchurch roadshow makes a strong prima facie case for concern. In her report of the event she states that: “I went to the first security check point which was at the front driveway to the [Rydges] hotel. The guards asked for my ID, and whilst I was getting it out I noticed one of the guys had an army badge pinned to his lapel, I asked him if he was military and he confirmed that all security present today were army personnel.”

Constitutionally-speaking, this claim is particularly alarming. The only circumstances in which it is justifiable for the Civil Power to call upon the assistance of the Military Power are those in which there is a demonstrable threat to life and property. Historically, the involvement of the Military has been confined to helping out during natural disasters and, extremely rarely, to the quelling of widespread public disorder – like that following the 1932 Queen Street Riot. Nothing even remotely resembling such circumstances were present last Friday in Christchurch.

 

Urgent efforts must be made to confirm the accuracy of Ms Butler’s claim. And if it is confirmed that the NZDF was involved in providing security for the roadshow, then questions need to be asked. First, of the Defence Minister, and second, of the Police Minister. Did Gerry Brownlee know that the Military Power had been called upon to assist the Civil Power in Christchurch? If so, at whose instigation? Does Judith Collins know why the local Police were deemed unequal to the task of preventing disorder at Rydges Hotel?

 

Frankly, it would be a whole lot better for New Zealand if Ms Butler’s record of the Christchurch TPP roadshow turns out to be inaccurate. That Mr Plunket was, in fact, the soul of politeness and a stalwart facilitator of free speech and open debate. And that whoever Ms Butler spoke to about his military lapel badge turns out to have been pulling her leg about the  composition of the security detail. Because, if her version of events is proved correct, then New Zealand is in a world of trouble.

 

What sort of “trade deal” have we signed-up to, if its explanatory roadshow requires the protection of the armed forces? How good can it be, if those who attempt to criticise its content are cut off in mid-sentence?

 

Could it be that those who condemned the TPP as a threat to democracy were right all along?

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 15 March 2016.

 

UPDATE:

 

On Tuesday, 15 March the author received a call from Nick Bryant, Gerry Brownlee's media officer. He informed him that, having checked with both the NZDF and MFAT, the Minister was able to assure him that no serving military personnel were involved with providing security at the Christchurch TPPA roadshow event.

 

When contacted, Josie Butler strongly reiterated her claim that the security personnel hailed from the military. 

An appeal for assistance was issued over social media which quickly produced a link to a private security firm called  October Protection.

 

According to its website: 

October Protection is a Christchurch based security and protection company with branches in Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown, Dunedin and associates throughout New Zealand. We provide industry-leading hospitality security, along with VIP transport, helicopter services, secure event, travel and accommodation packages New Zealand wide ….. Many of our staff come from military, police, corrections and close protection backgrounds and their experience is diverse and extensive, providing October Protection with a vast array of specialist skills.

 

It would seem that both Josie Butler and the Minister were telling the truth.

 

This Update is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

Blurred Vision: The Interview.

 

CHRIS TROTTER follows-up on many of the issues canvassed in the previous posting in this interview with Paul Henry, broadcast on Thursday, 17 March 2016.

This posting exclusive to Bowalley Road.

Blurred Vision: Why Labour Isn’t Trusted To Govern New Zealand.

Impaired Vision: Veteran Rogernome, Phil Goff, is leading his nearest rival for the Auckland mayoralty by an astonishing 33 percentage points in the latest UMR survey. That's 3 points more than Labour's total support! Clearly, Auckland voters have no difficulty in determining what Goff stands for. Unfortunately, New Zealanders are finding it much harder to determine Labour's ideological outline. This is highly problematic, because the electorate's trust and confidence will only be given to a political party whose features are easy to read.

 

STEPHEN MILLS, from Labour’s pollsters, UMR Research, today (7/3/16) confirmed that Labour’s support has slipped back to just 30 percent. He also informed RNZ’s listeners that Phil Goff is leading his nearest rival for the Auckland Mayoralty, Victoria Crone, by 33 percentage points. This is, of course, the same Phil Goff who, as Labour’s leader, failed to squeeze more than 27 percent of the Party Vote out of the New Zealand electorate.

 

It’s a grim parade of statistics for those of us hoping for a change of government at next year’s general election. And what it’s telling us is this: Labour isn’t trusted to govern. Phil Goff may be trusted to lead the country’s largest city – overwhelmingly trusted. But, Andrew Little is not trusted to lead the country.

 

This lack of trust is crippling. If it’s not addressed, and soon, it will produce yet another electoral defeat. Whether Labour can sustain a fourth rejection by the electorate – especially if it turns out to be worse than the 25 percent 2014 result – is highly debateable. A century-old party can only go on losing for so long before it simply fades away.

 

It is the privilege of historians to pinpoint the causes of an institution’s malaise, even when they have little to offer by way of immediate solutions.

 

In Labour’s case, the origins of its malady are easily discerned. The embrace of what were then called “free-market policies”, in the late-1980s, destroyed Labour as a mass party. Splits, first to the Left, and then to the Right, further weakened the organisation. That Labour survived at all as a viable electoral force was due, almost entirely, to the iron will of Helen Clark. All that has happened to the party since her departure in 2008 only confirms her pivotal role in delaying Labour’s disintegration.

 

What Clark was unable, or unwilling, to do, however, was the one thing that might have breathed new life into the Labour Party. To rebuild Labour as a trusted and decisive political force, it was necessary for someone to stand up and publicly repudiate Rogernomics.

 

This needed to be more than simply a half-hearted owning up to “mistakes”. It had to be a root-and-branch condemnation of the entire exercise – accompanied by a process of “rejuvenation” that completely denuded the parliamentary caucus of all its Rogernomes.

 

This latter exercise is crucial. Indeed, the repudiation of Rogernomics can only proceed successfully when the Rogernomes themselves are gone Any attempt to reassert democratic-socialist values and policies while convinced neoliberal MPs remained in caucus can only result in the most vicious kind of public political blood-letting – with all the inevitable electoral damage that such disunity entails.

 

What, then, do people see when they look at the Labour Party in 2016? The answer, sadly, is a blur. In the absence of a clear repudiation of its Rogernomics past, Labour can only present itself as an indistinct, ill-defined political notion. This is especially true of Labour’s parliamentary caucus where – believe it or not – there may still be found remnants of the David Lange-led, but Roger Douglas-controlled, Labour Government of 1984-1990!

 

With these veteran politicians, and their younger allies, still in place, even David Cunliffe’s relatively mild attempt (when compared to Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders!) to dislodge the party from its neoliberal past provoked the most extraordinary backlash. Andrew Little, has striven mightily to avoid his predecessor’s fate, but only at the cost of ideological prevarication and policy confusion. Labour’s stance on the TPPA, for example, gyrates wildly between opposition and grudging support. Meanwhile, Phil Goff (the most senior remaining Rogernome in caucus) gets a free pass to vote against his own party.

 

Auckland’s voters have rewarded Goff’s undeviating ideological clarity by making him their runaway favourite for the Mayoralty. And why not? When it comes to leading a monstrous neoliberal artefact like the Auckland Supercity, it’s difficult to think of anybody better qualified for the job.

 

But, for those of us who not only want to get rid of the National Party-led Government, but also the dangerously unequal neoliberal system that it supports, Labour’s blurred outlines and indistinct values inspire only disappointment and mistrust.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 7 March 2016.

Vita Continuat.

MY SINCERE THANKS to all the visitors to Bowalley Road who, upon learning of my father's death, so kindly and so graciously conveyed their condolences. Your words have been a great support at this sad time.

As a strong supporter of this site, however, Dad would, I am sure, have wished me to lose as little time as possible in re-starting our political conversation.

That is what I now propose to do.

In the language of the Romans - with whom we seem to have more and more in common these days: Vita continuat.

Life goes on.

Chris Trotter.
18 March 2016

This posting is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

For Dad (A Poem)

Wheeling gulls enfold the tractor

like feathered confetti.

My father, head half-turned,

To keep the furrow straight,

Is dwarfed by the immensity

Of the paddock he has ploughed.

To my child’s eye,

The birds’ raucous accolade

Is well-deserved:    

My dad did that.

Sweat and blood and dust

Concoct a powerful remedy

For the dislocation

Of abandoned pastures:

The apprehension of new fields.

Lodged deep beneath the skin,

Close to the heart,

The quickened earth will find

A new way to speak.

My dad did that.

Discovering a grimy sack

Of be-mudded spuds.

Depression-era currency,

Deposited without ceremony,

At a country doctor’s back door.

Feeding my father’s early respect

For the raw honesty of the poor.

Heirlooms of a nation’s history,

These stories, passed down.

 

My dad did that.

 

The ravelling and

Unravelling of family.

A cast replenished –

Even as its heroes leave the stage.

The father’s trick,

To so play his part that,

In his children’s eyes,

He seems to grow larger

With every backward glance.

 

My dad’s done that. 

Chris Trotter

11 March 2016.

This poem is exclusive to Bowalley Road. 

Anthony Alexander Sinclair (Tony) Trotter: 1924 - 2016

 

Anthony Alexander Sinclair (Tony) Trotter

1924 - 2016

TONY TROTTER – “Mr Country Calendar” – died today (Wednesday, 9 March 2016) aged 91, from natural causes.

 

As the television broadcaster who chose its distinctive theme music, and moved the programme out of the studio and “into the field”, Tony shaped Country Calendar into the nation’s most beloved television series. The iconic programme, celebrating every aspect of rural life, is still being produced, and this year celebrated its own fiftieth anniversary.

Tony’s later work included the ground-breaking Natural World of the Maori, with Tipene O’Reagan, and the quirky A Dog’s Show – which turned the obscure country sport of sheep-dog trialling into a popular television show. Tony ended his broadcasting career in 1989 as the Executive Producer of Television New Zealand’s award-winning Natural History Unit in Dunedin.

 

The son of a country doctor, Tony was raised in Herbert, North Otago, during the Great Depression. He was educated at Otepopo School and Waitaki Boys High School. In 1943, aged 18, Tony joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force. He trained in Canada, and ended the Second World War as a Pilot Officer. Returning to New Zealand, he spent the next 20 years of his life as a farmer. His property, “Beaulieu”, was situated 5 miles east of Herbert. In 1951 he married school-teacher Margaret (Peggy) Marshall, also of Herbert. They had four children: Peter, Ruth, Christopher and Jane.

 

In 1965, Tony sold his farm (which was too small to remain profitable) and began an entirely new career as a broadcaster for the NZBC. After a short stint as a radio announcer in Timaru, Tony’s farming experience took him south to Invercargill and rural broadcasting. Two years as Southland’s rural broadcaster was rewarded with a promotion to Wellington, where he was soon involved in a fledgling television programme covering rural affairs called Country Calendar.

 

A well-respected and highly creative television producer, Tony also possessed a mischievous sense of humour. His Country Calendar “spoofs” – like the celebrated “playing the fence” sequence, in which “tuned” fencing wire was plucked to produce a deep, harp-like music – delighted the programme’s eager audience.

 

In retirement, Tony was an active member of Dunedin’s Pakeke Lions Club. He was also a tireless campaigner for Jim Anderton’s Alliance, and the principal backer of the left-leaning magazine, New Zealand Political Review.

 

He is survived by three of his children: Peter, Christopher and Jane. Three grandchildren: Margaret, Michael and Aelinor. A great-grandson: Lachlan. Daughters-in-Law: Cathie and Francesca. And Son-in-Law, Shane.

 

This posting is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

An Alibi For Absence.

The Men Behind Country Calendar:  From Left: Martin Didsbury, Frank Torley, Bill Knight and Tony Trotter photographed out "in the field" at some point during the 1970s. Absent from the iconic series, however, was any hint that prior to the arrival of the farming families Country Calendar regularly featured was half-a-millennium of Maori occupation and agriculture.

 

IT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO, last week, that Country Calendar first appeared on New Zealanders’ television screens. The programme has gone on to earn for itself that most coveted of descriptions – iconic. Kiwis loved Country Calendar almost from the first broadcast. It expressed in a very special way the psychic link that binds even the most urbanised New Zealanders to the open spaces and rural enterprises that made their country possible.

 

I have more reason than most to honour Country Calendar because it was my father, Tony Trotter, who played a critical role in refining the programme’s compass and developing its unique production style. My teenage years were spent watching my dad as he sat at the kitchen table finalising, with the aid of a stop-watch, the script for that week’s episode. (That I have spent the best part of my life slaving away over a hot keyboard is no accident!)

 

It was only years later that a highly critical blog-post by a young Auckland writer, Tim Selwyn, gave me cause to think about Country Calendar in a very different way. Selwyn’s criticism was based on the undeniable fact that the programme was a celebration of the achievements of the generations of Pakeha settlers who built this country’s primary industries. Country Calendar inevitably dated the history of the particular farm or district they were covering from the time it was settled by Europeans. That these places had half-a-millennium of human history prior to European settlement remained both unspoken and unexamined.

 

In Selwyn’s scathing description, the typical farming family featured “will mention they lease a neighbouring Maori block but not think to mention the circumstances of how their farm became so. ‘The station’s history goes back over a hundred years…’ is the usual broad brush that covers over the confiscation, or seizure, or dirty deal typically behind a title that rests on little more than the white man’s naked land-grabbing. History only goes back to where the current owner wants it to go back on Country Calendar.”

 

Maori appeared in Country Calendar – as shearers and shepherds, fishermen and farmers – but almost never as the original occupiers, exploiters and owners of the land that has always been the real hero of the programme. It was an absence that I had simply failed to notice until Selwyn’s posting drew it to my attention.

 

Do I blame the original presenter of Country Calendar, the pipe-smoking Fred Barnes, for this crucial absence? No, of course not. Neither do I blame my father, nor his worthy successor, the programme’s long-time producer, Frank Torley. Because this absence has been a feature of New Zealand cultural life since, at least, the end of the land wars that effectively put an end to the thriving agricultural communities that Maori had constructed in the twenty years between the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the invasion of the Waikato by the Crown.

 

After the forcible subjugation of the Maori, what could Settler New Zealand possibly say about the actual origins of all the thriving farms and rural towns that sprang up in its wake? By any fair judgement, Settler New Zealand’s title to the land upon which, and out of which, its nationhood has been constructed remains, if not actually suspect, then, to put it very mildly, challengeable. (How challengeable is made clear in just about every judgement of the Waitangi Tribunal.) Unsurprisingly, the historical consensus, unspoken for the most part, was that if there was nothing good to say about the provenance of Pakeha rural property, then by far the best course of action was to say nothing at all.

 

In this respect, Country Calendar is guilty of nothing more than conforming to the cultural imperatives of its time. The temptation, as the son of the programme’s pivotal producer, is to say, rather warily: “Ah, but that was then and this is now. New Zealand has changed hugely since 1966.” (As part of the production team behind Mana Whenua - Natural World of the Maori, presented by Sir Tipene O’Reagan, my father was part of that change.)

 

But has it really? In the last fortnight, the head of Te Whakaruruhau, the Maori broadcasters’ association, Willie Jackson, has fronted a full-scale assault on what he alleges is Radio New Zealand’s dearth of Maori content and coverage. Is the cultural absence that Selwyn exposed in his 2013 posting about Country Calendar also a feature of the last real exemplar of public broadcasting in New Zealand? More critically, what would happen to RNZ’s audience if that absence was made good?

 

Even more subversively, has the advent of Maori radio stations and Maori Television, by separating (ghettoising?) the cultural expression of New Zealand’s original agriculturalists, provided the prime conveyors of Pakeha iconography – like Country Calendar and RNZ – with an alibi for absence?

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 1 March 2016.