Getting The Message

Loud and Clear: The Mana By-Election result not only shows the importance of getting people to vote, but of giving them something to vote for.

SOMETIMES all it takes to set off a landslide is the sudden dislodgement of a couple of pebbles.

Today, the "green" political brand is so potent that no major party can afford to issue a manifesto without at least paying lip-service to its core principle of "sustainability".

It was not always so. In the early 1970s New Zealand was still the sort of country where drowning lakes and rivers in the name of cheaper power was considered good politics by both the Right and the Left.

That was before the "Save Manapouri Campaign" – a mass political movement which for the first time successfully challenged, on a national scale, the view of "progress" which attributed no intrinsic value to New Zealand’s wild and beautiful places.

That was the first pebble.

The second pebble was the Values Party. Launched just a few months out from the 1972 General Election by a young journalist named Tony Brunt, Values was the world’s first "green" political movement to wage a nationwide electoral campaign.

Though Labour ran away with the 1972 election, the Values Party exerted an extraordinary influence on the campaign. Its superb advertising (produced virtually free-of-charge by a couple of sympathetic cinematographers at the National Film Unit) gave focus to the widespread longing, especially among the young, for a political vision that encompassed something more than the endless accumulation of material wealth. Though it only secured a minuscule 2 percent of the popular vote, the Values Party opened a door for Labour: a door upon which was written: "Another world is possible".

Much of this has been forgotten. The landslide upon which most political historians focus their attention is the landslide that swept Robert Muldoon’s National Party to victory in 1975. Viewed from the perspective of 35 years, however, it is clear that the dramatic shift in people’s perceptions of the environment – the shift represented by Values' best-selling manifesto, Beyond Tomorrow – has proved to be the more enduring.

Analysing last weekend’s Mana by-election results, I’m wondering if we may be witnessing another seminal political moment. Like the 1972 General Election, it’s possible that the closely fought Mana contest holds some crucially important lessons for the major parties.

At the most superficial level, the result was a clear moral triumph for the Government and its very effective candidate, Hekia Parata. In a country only slowly emerging from recession; in an Opposition-held electorate perfectly positioned to send the Government "a message"; it almost beggars belief that the by-election campaign ended with a 14 percent swing towards the governing party.

Indeed, without radical left-wing trade unionist, Matt McCarten’s, last minute entry to the by-election race it's possible Ms Parata could've won the seat.

Mr McCarten saw the Mana by-election as an opportunity to send his own message. Not to the National Government of John Key, but to Phil Goff’s Labour Party.

Like the Values Party in 1972, he was determined to make Labour understand that "another world is possible". A world in which it is possible to campaign (and, ultimately, to govern) "as if you were free".

His challenge to Labour was to give on-the-ground, practical expression to the progressive policy initiatives announced at its Annual Conference by campaigning – as he did – on the issues of low wages, inadequate housing and the urgent need for job creation.

Labour’s candidate, the woefully inexperienced TV journalist, Kris Fa’afoi, wasn’t equal to meeting this last-minute challenge, and Mr McCarten’s dramatic intervention prompted the by now thoroughly alarmed Labour hierarchy into pouring everything it had into the Mana campaign.

It was this massive intervention which ensured Mr Fa’afoi’s victory – albeit with a sharply reduced share of the popular vote.

To the cynical observer, Mr McCarten’s 3.6 percent share of the Mana vote may seem derisory. But then, so did the 2 percent share won by Values in 1972. Besides, there are moments in politics when, as Prime Minister Key told Ms Parata’s jubilant supporters on Saturday night: "losing is winning."

Hopefully Labour’s "got the message" Mr McCarten was sending it throughout the campaign. That, if it is to successfully counter Mr Key’s (obviously still effective) appeal to "aspirational" Kiwis, it has to maintain the sort of "on the street" presence for which Mr McCarten and his radical Unite union are justifiably famous, and which, ultimately, is all that rescued Mr Fa’afoi from catastrophic defeat.

But, even more important than getting Labour out on the street, Mr McCarten’s candidacy – like Values' campaign in 1972 – should remind Labour that getting people to vote is only half the battle: the other half is giving them something to vote for.

In 1972, that was the environment. In 2011 it should be for the two million hard-working New Zealanders whose greatest aspiration is simply to make ends meet.

Get that message, Labour – or lose.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 23 November 2010.