Labour's Kodachrome Moment

The Nice Bright Colours: Eastman-Kodak has been forced to close its doors because it failed to grasp that the business it was in was the business of preserving people's memories - not making colour film. The Labour Party makes a similar mistake. It thinks it's in the vote-gathering business when, in reality, it's in the business of selling a more secure today and a more exciting tomorrow.

KODACHROME’s gifts, according to Paul Simon’s 1973 hit single, were the “nice bright colours”, the “greens of summer” and a magical ability to make all the world “a sunny day”. The Eastman-Kodak corporation’s eponymous product, for which Simon’s snappy little ditty acted as a world-wide advertisement, was indisputably one of the hottest technological properties of its day.

Sad to learn, then, that in January 2012, America’s colour-film colossus is finally closing its doors. The nice bright colours and the greens of summer no longer require a Nikon camera loaded with 36 of Eastman-Kodak’s exposures. Unlike the songwriter, the world’s great pioneer of popular photography failed to read “the writing on the wall”. It wasn’t Mamma, but the instant images of the new digital technology that took Rhymin’ Simon’s Kodachrome away.

My friend, the photographer and artist, Barry Thomas, reckons the manufacturers of Kodachrome and the New Zealand Labour Party have a lot in common. Both were once at the cutting edge. Both had something to sell which masses of people were happy to buy. And both, by failing to keep pace with a rapidly changing world, have seen the power of their “brand” dwindle and fade.

Eastman-Kodak believed it was in the business of manufacturing photographic film, when it was actually in the business of preserving ordinary people’s memories. When film was no longer required to capture those special moments, the makers of Kodachrome should have been there with the digital technology that was fast replacing the photographic process. Nikon, Nokia, Samsung and Apple made the transition. Eastman-Kodak didn’t.

The Labour Party believes that it’s in the business of attracting electoral support. But the vote a person casts for a political party is only the last in a long series of decisions and commitments he or she has already made to its “brand”.

When Paul Simon considered Kodachrome what was in his mind? A tube of tightly-rolled, unexposed film in a chrome yellow box? No. What he saw were the “nice bright colours” and the “greens of summer”. When a voter thinks about Labour his or her mind should be flooded with similar positive images.

It was once. Mention Labour to the voters of the 1930s and 40s and the image of Bob Semple driving a bulldozer over the picks and shovels of the hated work schemes would spring to mind. Or a row of brand new state houses gleaming in the summer sun. Or smiling children clutching their bottles of state-provided milk. They’d recall pictures of hydro-electric dams, and the friendly faces of Labour’s leaders opening yet another school, hospital or factory.

Reassurance, Security, Optimism: When people thought of Labour in the 1930s and 40s it was an image like this, of Mickey Savage carrying furniture into the first State House, which sprang to mind. What is the image of Labour in 2012?

Back then Labour understood that its core business was offering New Zealanders reassurance, security and an optimistic vision of the future. Once people were persuaded that these were the things Labour stood for, collecting their votes became a mere formality.

But speak the word Labour to a voter in 2012 and what – if any – images spring to mind? Architectural drawings of the new housing estates Labour is committed to building? No. The Labour leader arguing about how best to put an end to inequality with Occupy protesters? Hardly. Standing in solidarity with the Maritime Unions? Perish the thought! Unveiling a graph indicating how quickly Labour’s new tax policy will reduce the share of New Zealand’s income currently claimed by its wealthiest one percent. Never. Announcing Labour’s “Grow New Zealand” scheme for putting unemployed Kiwis to work. Nope.

Mention Labour in 2012 and most New Zealanders will struggle to conjure-up any images at all, apart from a succession of vaguely recognisable faces and a sorry string of embarrassing headlines.

The Labour Party Opposition should be in the business of displaying courage, thinking the unthinkable, searching for the root causes of the nation’s problems and coming up with solutions that require the voters to discard their prejudices, step away from past failures, and take the risk of committing themselves to something new.

A successful Opposition doesn’t waste time attacking the Government, it devotes itself to enlisting the electorate in a great adventure.

If a vote for Labour is anything less than a decision to join that great adventure then the party will share the fate of Eastman-Kodak. It neglected its core business: preserving people’s memories. Labour’s core business, in 2012, must be stimulating New Zealanders’ imagination.

Using digital, colour, and, if necessary, black-and-white.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 January 2012.