The Death Of Kiwi “Spiritedness”.

Free Spirits? There was a time when that Kiwi urge to match and, if possible, to exceed the achievements of other, larger societies, extended well beyond the confines of sport. What other word but “spirited” could describe the exploits of the Anzacs at Gallipoli; the struggle of the wharfies and their trade union allies in 1951; or the 56 days of protest that greeted the 1981 Springbok Tour? What was New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance if not thymos in action?

 

PLATO, the Ancient Greek philosopher, likened the human psyche to a chariot in full flight. Propelling the chariot forward were two powerful horses. The first, Eros, symbolised the human pursuit of physical well-being and pleasure. The second, Thymos, symbolised the human quest for recognition and renown. Controlling these unruly steeds, in Plato’s scheme, was the charioteer, Logos, symbolising the power of reason to reconcile and balance the driving passions of humankind.

 

The Ancient Greeks assumed that what was true for the individual must also be true for human societies as a whole. If the masses, like individuals, are driven by a combination of the desire for comfort and pleasure and the need to be thought well of and admired, then it behoves their rulers, like any good charioteer, to strike the best balance between the masses’ psychic drivers. The trick lay in ensuring that neither Eros nor Thymos became too strong. In no other context was the Ancient Greek maxim: “moderation in all things” more highly prized than politics.

 

It is important to note here that thymos has a meaning over and above the quest for recognition and renown. It also describes the quality of “spiritedness” – as in a spirited stallion, or a spirited debate. It’s a quality most of us have little difficulty in recognising, but frequently struggle to define.

 

A person, or a society, in which the quality of thymos was lacking would have no desire to seek recognition or renown. They would be preoccupied with securing creature comforts and pursuing strictly personal and private gratifications. Making money and amassing possessions would count for much more than making a name for themselves or amassing the good opinions of their fellow citizens. Such people might best be described as the inhabitants of an “erotic” society.

 

Has New Zealand society become “eroticised” in this way? Has Logos, our charioteer, given Eros his head, while reining Thymos in? Are we being driven in circles?

 

Not on the sporting field we’re not. In fact, it is difficult to imagine an environment more expressive of thymos than the world of New Zealand sport. When the All Blacks perform the haka they become the living embodiment of thymotic power.

 

And yet, there is something about the professionalization and commercialisation of sport that smacks more than a little of the erotic. The days of amateur Rugby players: of the men who competed for nothing more than recognition and renown among their countrymen; are long gone. Today, we are invited to consume the performances of our sporting heroes in ways that are barely distinguishable from the ways we are encouraged to consume the products of their sponsors.

 

The fate of New Zealand sport echoes the fate of New Zealand society generally. There was a time when that Kiwi urge to match and, if possible, to exceed the achievements of other, larger societies, extended well beyond the confines of sport. What other word but “spirited” could describe the exploits of the Anzacs at Gallipoli; the struggle of the wharfies and their trade union allies in 1951; or the 56 days of protest that greeted the 1981 Springbok Tour? What was New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance if not thymos in action?

 

That so many New Zealanders no longer feel driven to “punch above their weight” should prompt us to question just how rationally and reasonably our charioteers have acted over the past 30 years.

 

Clearly “spiritedness” was not a quality they felt comfortable encouraging. But, equally clearly, they were more than happy to encourage Kiwis to consume as much as they could afford – and more. Somehow, the reasonable charioteers, who had understood the need to keep the erotic and thymotic urges evenly balanced in New Zealand society, had been usurped.

 

Those currently in charge of New Zealand no longer argue for a political settlement that recognises the needs of body and spirit. The propensity of thymos to challenge the lassitude and moral cowardice of erotic societies renders it subversive in the eyes of our new charioteers. Reason, rationality, wisdom: the key attributes of Plato’s logos; have become synonymous with the unconstrained transactions of the marketplace. Spirited citizens have been replaced by docile consumers.

 

Nothing captures New Zealand’s psychic subversion like the selfie. There was a time when thymotic Kiwis made the world photograph them. Now erotic Kiwis photograph themselves.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 22 April 2016.

The Wolf Within: Some Thoughts On The "Dangerous Dogs" Controversy.

Man's Best Friends: They were not our pets but our co-workers – valued members of the human packs into which they had been inducted. The lives these wolf-like creatures led with their human companions weren’t, in truth, all that different from the lives they’d led as wild creatures. They still ranged far and wide in search of prey: padding softly through vast forests; loping tirelessly across endless grasslands. The wolf within was never very far away. Neither was humankind.

 

NO ONE KNOWS exactly how it happened. Some say it was the starved remnant of a hunting pack drawn to a human encampment by the smell of roasting meat. A single individual, most likely female, probably ready to whelp, willing to risk anything, even the wrath of these hairless apes, for the sake of her unborn pups.
 

No one knows who did it. A mother, perhaps, looking out into the darkness at the edge of the firelight and seeing its reflection in the eyes of the wretched, desperate and importunate she-wolf looking back at her.
 

No one knows why she did it. When the hunters asked, astonished, she just tightened her hold on the shivering animal’s neck and shook her head.
 

The men would have killed the starving creature there and then, but the tribal shaman stayed their hand. The call had been made. The call had been answered. The she-wolf was theirs now, the tribes’, and so were her offspring – for all time.
 

What they had feared would now be feared by others. The Tribe had a new hunter, a new lookout, a new protector. Henceforth they would call themselves, and be known as, the People of the Wolf.
 

Sixteen-thousand years later, it’s easy to forget the context out of which the human species acquired its oldest and most steadfast animal companion.
 

Long before we learned to cultivate the grasses of the hillside, or to domesticate the animals that grazed upon them, the canine carnivores that would, in time, become “dogs” hunted and gathered at our side.
 

They were not our pets but our co-workers – valued members of the human packs into which they had been inducted. The lives these wolf-like creatures led with their human companions weren’t, in truth, all that different from the lives they’d led as wild creatures. They still ranged far and wide in search of prey: padding softly through vast forests; loping tirelessly across endless grasslands. The wolf within was never very far away. Neither was humankind.
 

To gain some insight into the sort of expectations our distant ancestors had of dogs, one has only to visit a farm, or join a pig-hunting expedition. In both contexts, the hunting instincts of dogs’ wolfish ancestors have been honed to a nicety. To witness a well-trained sheep-dog turning a herd of ewes, or a trio of pig-dogs launching themselves upon a tusker at bay, is to understand what a very beneficial bargain was struck all those millennia ago between the barkers and the talkers.
 

Had they remained our co-workers – valued partners in the enterprise of survival – dogs and humans could have remained the truest of friends. Unfortunately, however, the clever brains of the hairless apes, and the almost infinitely malleable genes of the canine species ruined the relationship.
 

In the words of Slate magazine columnist, William Saletan: “Dogs are the world’s longest self-serving, ecologically reckless genetic experiment, perpetrated by the world’s first genetically engineering species: us.” He’s right: we have been breeding dogs for centuries; re-purposing them in lock-step with human civilisation’s own ever-increasing reliance on specialisation.
 

“In the course of engineering dogs to look, feel, and act as we wanted,” says Saletan, “we ruined millions of them. We gave them legs so short they couldn’t run, noses so flat they couldn’t breathe, tempers so hostile they couldn’t function in society.”
 

Signs warning passers-by to “Cave Canis” – Beware of the Dog – abounded in Ancient Rome. As well they might have, given the Romans proclivity for breeding large, black and thoroughly vicious guard dogs to protect their property. Not that these squat canine sentinels were anywhere near as intimidating as the terrifying dogs-of-war that accompanied Rome’s legions into battle. These brutes could crush a man’s skull like an eggshell.
 

It is only relatively recently that anyone other than the very rich could aspire to keep dogs as pets. Up until the twentieth century, dogs, like plough-horses and house-cats, were expected to earn their keep. An aristocratic lady might carry a little dog in her lap – but not a peasant girl.
 

How things have changed. Dogs are big business in today’s world, their upkeep alone representing billions in corporate profit.
 

Popular culture paints the dog as a fun-loving member of the suburban family – as harmless as it is companionable. It is considered neither helpful nor polite to remind these folk that they are sharing their lives with animals boasting inch-long incisors and bone-crushing jaws.
 

True, the aforementioned genetic engineering has eliminated much that is dangerous from a large number of dog breeds – many of which are too small to pose a serious risk to human life and limb. In some dogs, however, the purposes for which they were bred: hunting and fighting; sit uncomfortably with suburban family fun.
 

The wolf within is never far away. Neither is humankind.
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 26 April 2016.

Only Anger: Thoughts On Anzac Day 2016.

The First World War: A crime so colossal that it simply overpowered the imaginations of those who lived through it and after it.

 

IF YOU WERE ASKED”: What emotion is appropriate for Anzac Day? How would you answer?  Pride? Respect? Gratitude? My answer has always been, and continues to be, Anger. Bitter, searing, righteous anger at the waste of so many young lives, and at the lies told to justify a crime so colossal that it simply overpowered the imaginations of those who lived through it and after it.

 

For more than a hundred years those lies have transformed the terrible losses of the First World War into a perverse source of pride, respect and gratitude. Not only have they kept the truth about the war’s origins and objectives hidden, but they have also made it practically impossible to challenge the official version of events. This is no small achievement when the consequences of those events are still shaping our lives.

 

At the heart of the darkness that sent millions of young men to their deaths was Great Britain’s determination to destroy the thriving German economy and seize the strategic resources of the decrepit Ottoman Empire.

 

Unchecked, the German economy would have dominated the whole of Europe by the second or third decade of the twentieth century (much as it dominates Europe today). Even more worryingly, the German Empire’s increasingly close economic, diplomatic and military relationship with the Ottoman Empire would have ensured its privileged access to the strategic super-fuel of the twentieth century – oil. From the early years of the century, therefore, the reduction of Germany became the idée fixe of British foreign-policy.

 

Great Britain’s natural ally in this policy was France. Decisively defeated by the Germans in 1871, France was acutely aware that its influence in Europe was steadily being eroded by Germany’s dramatic economic growth. It’s only hope of remaining a major player in world affairs was, therefore, to strike its neighbour a crushing blow.

 

France’s key strategic problem, however, was that it could not deliver such a blow on its own – it needed allies. The first of these, the Russian Empire, was made available by the German Emperor, Wilhelm II’s, failure to renew his country’s crucial Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. The French were only too happy to fill the diplomatic vacuum created by the German Emperor’s strategic blunder.

 

This new Franco-Russian “understanding” suited British interests extremely well. Not only was Germany now faced with a war on two fronts, but, by drawing the Russians towards Europe, the French were relieving Russian pressure on the borders of the “jewel” in Britain’s imperial crown – India.

 

All that Britain required to unleash a devastating conflict upon its most dangerous economic rival was a plausible pretext. This it acquired by allowing the French and the Russians a free hand in the Balkans.

 

Europe’s flashpoint, the Balkans were the point of intersection of multiple imperial interests: Austro-Hungarian; Russian; Ottoman; and Serbian. Any move by the Austro-Hungarian Empire against its ultra-nationalist neighbour, Serbia, was bound to draw in the latter’s Russian protectors. A Russian thrust against Germany’s ally, Austria-Hungary, would, likewise, draw Germany into the conflict. German involvement would activate the Franco-Russian alliance – immediately plunging Germany into a strategically perilous two-front war.

 

Britain knew that if Germany was to avoid being caught between the French hammer and the Russian anvil, it would have to deliver a knockout blow to the French before the full weight of Russia’s vast army could be brought to bear on its eastern front. The only effective means of delivering such a blow was to direct Germany’s army through neutral Belgium and come at Paris from the north-west.

 

In other words, to enter the war with “clean hands”, Britain had only to give France its head in the Balkans. It was pretty sure that the French, with Russian connivance, would find a way to set Austria-Hungary at Serbia’s throat – thereby initiating a general European war. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in the little Bosnian town of Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by Serbian terrorists proved to be an admirably serviceable trigger.

 

Once the Germans detected the preparations for a Russian mobilisation against not only their Austro-Hungarian ally, but also themselves, the die was cast. Germany mobilised pre-emptively, her armies smashed their way through neutral Belgium, and Britain was supplied with the morally unassailable excuse for doing what she had been planning to do for the best part of a decade – unleashing war on Germany.

 

It was in pursuit of these blunt imperial objectives that more than 12,000 young New Zealanders were sent to their deaths. Not for democracy: our allies, the Russians, were governed by an absolute monarch; and our enemies, the Germans, boasted a more inclusive franchise that Britain’s. And certainly not for freedom: imperialism and liberty do not mix. As for the “values” New Zealanders were supposedly defending on the slopes of Gallipoli. I’d like to think that these: extreme racism, unthinking obedience to those in authority; and the extension of British power across the globe; would be rejected out-of-hand by the vast majority of modern New Zealanders.

 

As I note in, No Left Turn:

 

A patriotic painting from the depths of the war says it all. Entitled “The Casualty List”, it depicts a grief-stricken mother, her head bowed before the framed photograph of her soldier son on the mantelpiece, a copy of The New Zealand Herald dangling limply from her hand. In the top left-hand corner of the painting we see the moment of his death – the young hero’s body reeling backwards as his comrades press on towards the foe. It is a sombre work, and skilfully rendered, but it does not tell the truth about the war. Captured instead is the sense of loss; the awful ache that clawed at the hearts of practically every New Zealand family in the aftermath of the carnage. That much – but no more – was all the nation was permitted to feel. Questions about what it had all been for were met with the palliative care of capitalised nouns: Justice, Honour, Liberty, Country, Democracy. The unbearable reality – that they had died to preserve the prosperity of those who stayed behind – had to be, and was, suppressed.

 

It is still being suppressed. And if none of the arguments advanced above are sufficient to rouse your indignation, then the ongoing and deliberate suppression of the truth about the origins and objectives of the First World War should make you very angry indeed.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 25 April 2016.

Raging Against The Dying American Light

E Pluribus Unum: Out of the four leading contenders for the Presidency, the American electorate and/or the Republican and Democratic Party "grandees" must contrive to winnow down the choice to just two (or three, if they fail) and then to just one. Not since the 1850s has the American Republic been confronted with an electorate less disposed to swing in behind the last man - or woman - standing.

 

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL election campaign is entering a critical stage. The results of the forthcoming primary elections in the big, delegate-rich, north-eastern states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania will go a long way towards determining which of the Republican and Democratic candidates square-off against each other in November.

 

For the Democratic challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, it’s make-or-break time. If he cannot inflict a series of decisive defeats upon front-runner Hillary Clinton in these three great Democratic Party redoubts, then his candidacy will be dead in the water and the Democratic Party Convention in late July will be the Clinton coronation her supporters have always predicted.

 

On the Republican Party side, the race could get a whole lot more complicated. A failure by Trump to come storming back in his home state, New York, may well end his hopes of winning the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the Republican nomination. If neither Trump, nor his principal rival, Texas senator Ted Cruz, has the numbers to win on the first ballot, then the world will be treated to a spectacle unwitnessed in twenty-first century American politics – a brokered convention.

 

Will the assembled Republican delegates, no longer pledged to dance with the candidate they came with, install Trump or Cruz anyway? Or, will they swing their support behind the allegedly “moderate” Governor of Ohio, John Kasich? The possibility that the candidate may turn out to be someone entirely unlooked for: someone “drafted” by the convention delegates themselves; cannot be discounted.

 

What is it that has produced these high levels of political volatility and uncertainty in American society? How has the usually elite-driven process of selecting a presidential candidate been transformed into this rowdy festival of unguided democracy?

 

Before answering that question, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the implications of the previous sentence.

 

Because whatever its critics may say about the American system, this year’s presidential race is proof that the great republic is still very much the creature of “We, the People of the United States.” Trump is selling populism; Cruz conservatism; Sanders idealism; and Clinton is retailing pragmatism. “Step right up!” their respective barkers shout: “You’ve paid your money – now make your choice!” And, in the lengthy and complex process of choosing, millions of Americans are demonstrating not only their ideological diversity, but also their unifying faith in the ongoing utility of the ballot-box.

 

Whether that ballot-box can any longer deliver a President equal to the challenge of representing the burgeoning diversity of the American electorate is the core question being posed by the 2016 campaign. Somehow, the populism, conservatism, idealism and pragmatism which have whipped the contest into its present state of inchoate frothiness must be settled and distilled: firstly into two candidates; and then, on 8 November, into a single individual.

 

The number of times this seemingly impossible task has actually been accomplished by the American electorate is impressive. Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt managed to keep all four balls in the air, and so did Dwight Eisenhower. Lyndon Johnson did it in 1964, as did Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980, and then again, even more emphatically, in 1984.

 

For all their eloquence and glamour, neither John F. Kennedy nor Barack Obama succeeded in triggering the sort of landslides granted to Johnson and Reagan. Bringing together the clamouring tribes of the American polity proved to be beyond both presidents. Although Kennedy’s assassination did engender a kind of unity – if only of shock and grief.

 

The current roilings of American politics: its vicious and uncompromising partisanship; the disquieting thought that many of the issues at stake may not be susceptible to resolution by simple majorities; have recalled for US historians the deadly politics of the decade immediately preceding the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861.

 

The historic outcome of the presidential election of 1860, which saw Abraham Lincoln elected with just 39.8 percent of the popular vote, was made possible by a fatal split in the ranks of the Democratic Party. That such a split – this time in the ranks of the Republican Party – is being openly canvassed only adds to the sense of historical déjà vu. Should Trump’s clear plurality of the Republican primary vote be discounted by the machinations of party grandees, his supporters may not go quietly into that good night of political impotence.

 

A third party challenge by Trump could throw the 2016 Presidential Election to the Democratic Party in circumstances that call into question the legitimacy of its mandate. As in 1860, it will be race and the threat it poses to the status of White Americans, that threatens not only the coherence, but also the very survival of the American republic.

 

Tomorrow’s New York Primary is worth keeping an eye on.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 19 April 2016.

The New Black Is Blue: National’s Grip On The Electorate Remains A Strong As Ever.

The Winner: Like Dorian Gray’s, National’s sins have left not the slightest blemish upon its public face. No doubt, in some upper room, safe from prying eyes, a cursed canvass portrays it’s true hideousness. So long as it stays there, securely hidden, National’s supporters simply do not care.

 

THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT’S unprecedented run in the polls rolls on. Eight years in office and still the level of support for John Key’s ministry in the New Zealand electorate continues to fluctuate between an unassailable 45 and 55 percent.

 

These would be outstanding numbers even under the old First-Past-The-Post electoral regime. Under a proportional, multi-party system they are extraordinary. In fact, given all the things Key and his colleagues have done, or failed to do, they should be impossible.

 

And yet, like Dorian Gray’s, National’s sins have left not the slightest blemish upon its public face. No doubt, in some upper room, safe from prying eyes, a cursed canvass portrays its true hideousness. So long as it stays there, securely hidden, National’s supporters simply do not care.

 

This state of not caring – evinced by close to half the population – is something new and disturbing in New Zealand politics. It speaks of hardened attitudes and even harder hearts; of an electoral bloc that has simply shut its eyes and ears to the plight of less fortunate and hard-pressed citizens. That they have remained faithful to the Key Government for eight years is because in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways it has told them that they are right not to care. Not caring is the new black: National’s new blue.

 

It’s important to grasp the fact that this ingrained lack of compassion is in no way reflective of simple bigotry or ignorance. The new National supporter is not the sort of know-nothing backwoodsman from the provinces who hated queers and backed Springbok Tours. Confronted by the Left for their apparent lack of compassion, these new National supporters will round on their accusers and charge them with constructing a soft and dependent society critically lacking in grit and resilience. Their refusal to mollycoddle the poor and work-shy may look like cruelty, they will say, but in the long term it will be revealed for what it is – the most socially productive manifestation of true kindness.

 

That this hard-nosed approach entrenches inequality and widens the social divide is fine by them. People have always needed incentives. Big sticks for the poor. Juicy carrots for the rich. “You don’t make a poor man rich”, they insist, “by making a rich man poor.” A healthy society is one in which the poor person’s burning desire to escape his or her poverty is only equalled by the well-off person’s fear of falling into it. Those who make it into the winners’ circle need to know how hard it is to get there – and stay there.

 

This is the gospel according to John Key’s new National Party, and its capacity to attract and hold close to half the electorate is unprecedented. The professional middle-class, hitherto susceptible to the Left’s appeals for them to join it in the struggle for equality and social justice, must now be counted among the new National Party gospel’s most enthusiastic converts. The better angels to which Labour once appealed have long since been made redundant and let go.

 

Those poll numbers ain’t going to change anytime soon.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Saturday, 16 April 2016.

Let Sleeping Fish Lie.

Prominent Maori Fire A Shot Across The Crown's Bow: Objections to the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, though couched in terms of the sanctity of contract, are much more likely to be motivated by the political and constitutional implications of the Government’s unilateral action. If the Crown is permitted to arrogate unto itself the power to decide when it is obligated to negotiate with the Maori elites, and when it is not, then the growing economic and political influence of those elites will stand exposed as, at best, conditional; and, at worst, reversible.

 

WHAT HAS a Nineteenth Century Waikato village called Rangiaowhia got to do with the price of fish? As an example of Maori and Pakeha talking past one another – quite a lot. As the current impasse over the Government’s creation of a Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, and Maori fishery rights, attests, the scope for misunderstanding, even conflict, between Maori and Pakeha remains ominously latent in New Zealand’s constitution.

 

These latent difficulties are often made worse by the well-intentioned interventions of  Pakeha New Zealanders. Historians, in particular, seem especially keen to atone for the sins of their nation’s colonial past. All too often this manifests itself in professional historians affixing an academic seal of approval to what can only be described as outlandish and historically unjustifiable claims.

 

At Rangiaowhia, for example, Maori and Pakeha clashed in a confused military encounter that ended with the deaths of ten Maori civilians and three Pakeha soldiers. Even advantaged with the far more exacting standards of the Twenty-First Century, the lawyers of today would struggle to convince a court that what happened on the morning of Saturday, 20 February 1864 was a war-crime.

 

The New Zealand History website of the Ministry of Heritage and Culture cites the judgement of historian, David Green, who rejects the notion that what happened at Rangiaowhia was ‘a premeditated massacre’, arguing instead that it was the result of ‘a breakdown of discipline among troops who had psyched themselves up to face much stronger resistance.’”

 

The Military Engagement At Rangiaowhia, Saturday, 20 February 1864

 

If “premeditated massacre” can be ruled out, then using the word "genocide" to describe the tragic loss of life at Rangiaowhia – as a senior New Zealand historian, Jock Phillips, did on the 2 April broadcast of TV3’s The Nation – is simply insupportable.

 

The nationwide furore which engulfed the former Maori Party co-leader, Tariana Turia, when she used the word “genocide” to describe the fate of Taranaki Maori – especially those forcibly evicted from the settlement of Parihaka on 5 November 1881 – should have deterred any further use of such historical hyperbole. The only recorded case of genocide in New Zealand history occurred in the Chatham Islands in 1835. Pakeha were not responsible.

 

It is, however, entirely understandable that Maori continue to avail themselves of every opportunity to paint their dispossession in the most lurid of historical hues. To recover even a small fraction of the resources seized by New Zealand’s Settler State, the tactic of inducing the maximum possible degree of Pakeha guilt and remorse is indisputably necessary – and has proved astonishingly successful.

 

Such recovery as has been made, however, could not have been accomplished without the collusion of Pakeha elites. The price of their cooperation? That the transfer of Crown resources to Maori can only be from one collection of elites to another. The result, Neo-Tribal Capitalism, has shielded the Crown from the much more radical Pan-Maori Nationalism with which it was briefly threatened in the 1980s and 90s. The Iwi Leaders Group is a much more congenial partner for the Crown than a revolutionary Maori parliament – or army.

 

Even so, the increasingly close relationship between the Crown and the corporate entities arising out of Treaty of Waitangi-based settlements, is beginning to encroach upon the freedom-of-action of elected governments. The National-led Government’s announcement of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, which has elicited furious protests from Te Ohu Kaimoana (the Maori Fisheries Commission) is a case in point.

 

The Commission’s objections, though couched in terms of the sanctity of contract, are much more likely to be motivated by the political and constitutional implications of the Government’s unilateral action. If the Crown is permitted to arrogate unto itself the power to decide when it is obligated to negotiate with the Maori elites, and when it is not, then the growing economic and political influence of those elites will stand exposed as, at best, conditional; and, at worst, reversible.

 

At Rangiaowhia, the contingency of the Maori people’s freedom-of-action was demonstrated with deadly force. The Kingitanga’s (Maori King Movement’s) assertion of its people’s economic and political autonomy, under the formula of two flags and one treaty, was met with the unanswerable rejoinder of fire and steel. If contemporary Maori leaders do not wish to see their hard-won partnership of elites similarly dissolved, then it might be wiser for them to acquiesce in the matter of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary – and let sleeping fish lie.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 April 2016.

Refusing Sanctuary: The Dangers Of Reflexive Left Syndrome.

Something Fishy Going On: The furore surrounding the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary offers a powerful example of the political difficulties into which Reflexive Left Syndrome can lead a progressive political party. Almost overnight, the significant benefits to the global environment represented by the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary have been put at risk for no better reason than that a determinedly commercial entity like Te Ohu Kaimoana wishes to reserve the right to harvest the Kermadec fishery.

 

THE LABOUR PARTY is at serious risk of, once again, succumbing to Reflexive Left Syndrome (RLS). Simply put, RLS causes progressives to respond predictably (and all-too-often counter-productively) to every issue affecting the Left. Those suffering from RLS do not wait for the facts; nor do they pause to consider whether their support for one part of the Left might put them at serious odds with another. Positions are fixed with precipitate haste, and room for subsequent manoeuvre and compromise is severely restricted. RLS nails its victims to the political spot: positions they frequently cannot abandon without incurring serious damage and/or ridicule.

 

The latest example of Labour succumbing to RLS involves the party’s position on the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary.

 

At the First Reading of the legislation establishing the sanctuary, the vote in favour of this internationally acclaimed measure of marine conservation was unanimous. So far, so good. But, all it took for Labour to announce that it was “reassessing” its support for the legislation was a claim that it contravened the Maori fisheries settlement.

 

Te Ohu Kaimoana, the Maori Fisheries Trust, had announced that it was challenging the Crown’s actions in the High Court. Labour’s six Maori MPs, feeling obligated to defend their constituents’ rights under the Treaty of Waitangi (Fisheries Claims) Act of 1992, immediately began applying pressure to their Pakeha colleagues. References were made to the Seabed and Foreshore Act of 2004. With the party registering just 28 percent in the latest One News/Colmar brunton poll, Labour’s Maori Caucus wanted to know if it was intending to alienate their people’s electoral support all over again?

 

With typical haste, Labour succumbed to RLS. On 12 April, David Parker, Labour’s Environment spokesperson, and Kelvin Davis, its spokesperson for Maori Development, jointly issued a press statement declaring: “The lessons of foreshore and seabed must not be forgotten and the Crown should not by legislation run rough-shod over Māori interests.”

 

Exactly which Maori interests were being run roughshod over was not specified by Parker and Davis. That a number of “prominent Maori” (including Sir Tipene O’Regan and Dame Tariana Turia) had spoken out against the sanctuary was all that was needed for RLS to kick-in.

 

But, Parker and Davis were not the only people to issue a media release on this issue. The former leader of Mana Motuhake, and Alliance Cabinet Minister, Sandra Lee, had some very different thoughts to offer on Te Ohu Kaimoana’s attempt to prevent the establishment of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary.

 

“Te Ohu Kaimoana have a poor conservation record”, said Lee. “They openly supported illegal Japanese whale hunting in the United Nations Southern Ocean sanctuary when I was Minister [of Conservation] and probably still do. Perhaps they could focus their energy on helping our own unemployed rangatahi  [young people] to get on the water fishing their own quota instead.”

 

Certainly, Sir Tipene O’Regan’s response to Pakeha concerns about the fate of what he labelled “charismatic megafauna” [whales] could hardly be described as supportive.

 

The furore surrounding the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary offers a powerful example of the political difficulties into which RLS can lead a progressive political party. Almost overnight, the significant benefits to the global environment represented by the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary have been put at risk for no better reason than that a determinedly commercial entity like Te Ohu Kaimoana wishes to reserve the right to harvest the Kermadec fishery.

 

The Neo-Tribal Capitalist character of the forces pushing for the scrapping of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary has not been lost on Sandra Lee. Nor has the need for all the peoples of the Earth to challenge the right of commercial interests to plunder the planet’s living resources without let or hindrance. But Labour, rather than balancing carefully the respective claims of a vulnerable ocean eco-system, and a commercial Maori entity, has allowed its response to be dictated by RLS. They have rushed in like fools – and not in the defence of angels.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 14 April 2016.

Other People's Secrets: How Important Are The Panama Papers To New Zealand?

Sunny Hideaways For Shady People: Tax Havens are a very big news right now, but how big a deal are they for New Zealand? Much has been made of the 60,000 references to this country in the Panama Papers. That sounds like a lot. But in a dump of 11.5 million documents, 60,000 references is actually a very small number indeed. Assuming there is only one reference to New Zealand per document (which hardly seems likely) our country’s name is to be found in just 0.005 percent of the documents leaked.

 

THE PANAMA PAPERS are a big deal. No sensible person would attempt to argue otherwise. Thanks to the leaking of upwards of 11.5 million electronic documents the world is now in possession of incontrovertible proof of the global elite’s perfidious allergy to paying tax. What had been the stuff of thrillers by John Le Carré and John Grisham, has become the substance of nightly news bulletins.

 

But how big a deal are the Panama Papers in New Zealand? Much has been made of the 60,000 references to this country in the leaked documents. That sounds like a lot. But in a dump of 11.5 million documents, 60,000 references is actually a very small number indeed. Assuming there is only one reference to New Zealand per document (which hardly seems likely) our country’s name is to be found in just 0.5 percent of the documents leaked.

 

I would hazard a fair amount on there being a considerably larger number of references to the Cayman Islands, the Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Cook Islands in the Panama Papers than there are to the islands of New Zealand.

 

It is also important to note that the warnings that have been issued to the New Zealand Government by an assortment of both public and private bodies have tended heavily towards the contingent. If the powers-that-be do not act quickly, there is a risk that New Zealand’s reputation as one of the world’s least corrupt and most transparent countries might be damaged. Which suggests we’ve still got quite a way to go before we get to count ourselves among the Caymans, the Virgins and the Turks and Caicosses.

 

Which is not to say that the 12,000 overseas trusts currently availing themselves of this country’s less-than-robust disclosure regime are all squeaky clean. On the contrary, there’s a better than even chance that a newsworthy number of shady characters have been using these instruments to hide a whole lot of even shadier goings-on.

 

As the International Consortium of Investigate Journalists and their colleagues in the global news media pore over the Panama Papers, we are bound to discover a disappointing number of New Zealand individuals, businesses and organisations in the frame.

 

Will our own Prime Minister be among them? Is John Key about to suffer the same fate as the erstwhile Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmunder Gunnlaugsson, or the present, increasingly beleaguered, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron?

 

Well, John Key is a very wealthy man, and if the Panama Papers have shown us anything it is the extraordinary lengths to which very rich people will go to protect their financial affairs from the scrutiny and criticism of those who are not very rich. For years, rumours have circulated that Key is worth considerably more than the $NZ55 million he publicly acknowledges. If the rumours are true, then the rest of his fortune may well have been salted away where the sun shines and the trade-winds blow. But by whom? Mossack Fonseca isn’t the only law firm that specialises in keeping prying eyes away from very rich people’s financial information. And you can bet that the others are working day-and-night to beef-up their security.

 

Personally-speaking, I’d be surprised if our Prime Minister goes the way of Gunnlaugsson or Cameron. Key has spent his whole life working towards the position he now holds, and all along the way he has been extraordinarily careful to avoid doing anything that might come back to bite him when he was Prime Minister. While the other London currency traders were winging their way across the Atlantic for a weekend of drug-fuelled debauchery in Las Vegas, John Key was heading home for a quiet weekend with Bronagh and the kids. Would he put everything he’s worked for so carefully at risk by squirrelling away millions in some Caribbean tax haven? I can’t see it, myself.

 

Then again, who among the very rich could have foreseen the acute danger into which this age of digitalised information storage, retrieval and communication was leading them? John Key? Many New Zealanders have wondered at their Prime Minister’s interest (some would say obsession) with cyber-security, and noted his extreme hostility towards individuals and groups accused of abusing and/or violating the supposedly secure zones of cyber-space. Exactly what was driving Key’s inflated disquiet about the security of secret information has never been very clear.

 

As the tens-of-thousands of secrets contained in the Panama Papers are revealed to the world, however, there will be more than a few Kiwis who will insist on ending the above paragraph with the words – until now.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 12 April 2016.

Fostering Maori Success

Shaking-Up CYF: Minister of Social Development, Anne Tolley, must balance the urgent need to "modernise" the delivery of New Zealand's child and family support services against the equally pressing need to improve the delivery of such services to Maori. Achieving both objectives without alienating large sections of the Maori community will not be easy.

 

FAR-REACHING CHANGES LOOM if the ideas of the Expert Panel set up to “modernise” Child Youth and Family (CYF) are implemented. Their just released report: “Investing in New Zealand’s Children and their Families” envisages both a new approach to child welfare, and a new set of structures to give their re-ordered priorities practical effect. At the same time, however, the Expert Panel was also asked to address the disproportionate number of Maori children requiring the intervention of child welfare professionals. Achieving both objectives without alienating large sections of the Maori community will not be easy. The Minister, Anne Tolley, does not want an embarrassing cultural stand-off.

 

At the core of most explanations for the appalling social statistics in which New Zealand’s indigenous people are enmeshed is the continuing impact of colonialism on the lives of Maori people. For one-and-a-half centuries, the loss of land, and the economic consequences of that loss, has not only impoverished Maori, but has also led to the tragic manifestations of that enforced poverty being used to justify the dominant Settler Society’s racist assumption of cultural superiority.

 

The problem with this argument is that, if it is true, then all the tragic manifestations of Maoridom’s enforced poverty: domestic violence, child abuse, drug and alcohol addiction, criminal offending, chronic illness, homelessness and educational under-achievement; must also be true. That being the case, the most obvious solutions which present themselves to the dominant Settler Society, will all tend to involve extracting Maori from the negative consequences of colonialism, and replanting them in environments which reflect its more positive features.

 

In the words of the Expert Panel’s Final Report:

 

“There has been considerable debate in the past three decades on the place of children in Māori society and on the place of whānau. Much has been said in order to emphasise the differences in Māori society from others and this is not always accurate or true. Some interpretations have confused the issue. The safety of Māori children is paramount and any work we do must be child-centred. A well-functioning whānau provides a sound basis to help solve the problems that face these children at particular times in their lives, but a badly functioning whānau can be dangerous. We must never compromise the safety, security, and sense of belonging of any child in their care arrangements.”

 

Decoded, this paragraph signals the abandonment of the policy that the best interests  of vulnerable and/or abused Maori children will always be best served by keeping them in the care of their extended family group. The policy itself arose out of the grim experiences of both Maori and other indigenous people (most particularly Aboriginal Australians) at the hands of Settler Societies whose official child welfare policy held that it was in the afflicted child’s best interest to be raised in strict isolation from its parents’ culture.

 

This was the policy approach that led to such eugenicist tragedies as the so-called “Stolen Generation” of Aboriginal children. Maori nationalists were determined that such pernicious examples of Settler Society racism would never be repeated. CYF’s “Whanau First” approach, first implemented in the late 1980s, was intended to ensure that young Maori were not cut loose from their cultural moorings and transformed into Brown Pakeha.

 

In practical terms, however, CYF’s Whanau First approach all-too-often saw abused Maori children thrown out of the frying-pan and into the fire. With the toxic legacies of colonialism still at work across broad swathes of Maori society – how could it be otherwise?

 

How can Anne Tolley, and the new organisation she intends to erect in CYF’s place, square this vexing circle? At least part of the answer lies in that interestingly euphemistic phrase, “a well-functioning whanau”.

 

Logic would suggest that the chances of serious abuse occurring in a well-functioning whanau are reasonably slim. In all societies there are virtuous as well as vicious familial cycles. Could Ms Tolley be wondering: “If success breeds success, perhaps it can also foster it?”

 

As anyone who’s read Charles Dickens’ novels will attest, that is certainly how the Victorians viewed the problem. What better fate could there be for a helpless waif raised in an Orphanage than to end up as the adopted son of a well-to-do middle-class gentleman?

 

Is this how Ms Tolley and her Neo-Victorian colleagues propose to rescue the neglected and abused children of Maoridom? Not by replicating the racist horrors of the Stolen Generation, but by taking full advantage of the fact that the Maori Renaissance of the 1980s and 90s has given birth to a rapidly expanding Maori Middle-Class. Is she hoping to see them doing well by doing good? First, as the providers of the sort of “early intervention” and “wrap-around services” envisaged by National’s “social investment” strategy; or, if that fails, by offering Maoridom’s battered babies a well-functioning foster whanau?

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 12 April 2016.

Call The Vet! Protecting The State From The Virus Of Dissent.

Vetter-in-Chief: Rebecca Kitteridge has a legitimate role in identifying potentially dangerous vulnerabilities, such as drug and alcohol addiction, in candidates for senior roles in the civil service. Where the SIS veers away from legitimate "vetting", however, is in its role as the state's ideological gatekeeper. When it comes to senior civil service positions, it is still very much a case of "anti-capitalists need not apply".

 

THAT THE SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE (SIS) has failed to protect the privacy of the people it has “vetted” is no surprise. Information is power, and what is the SIS if not the official gatherer of the information needed to keep the core institutions of the state secure? It will take more than criticism from the Inspector-General of Intelligence to persuade the SIS to give up its role of keeping potential security threats as far away from the Government’s doors as possible.

 

Ideally, the whole notion of security vetting would be insupportable in a nation whose laws prohibit discrimination on the grounds of political belief. The persistence of the practice offers proof that Capitalism is still ready, willing and able to defend itself.

 

If you’re one of those who find it difficult to accept that our civil service is dedicated to the preservation of the capitalist status quo, then try this thought experiment.

 

A left-wing coalition government is elected on a platform of enacting root-and-branch reform of New Zealand’s economic system. The new government’s overall goal is the eradication of social inequality through radical changes to the prevailing fiscal and workplace regimes. The government announces that a major purge of the civil service will be necessary for its reforms to succeed. Accordingly, all present and prospective members of the senior echelons of the civil service are required to submit themselves to a comprehensive vetting process.

 

Senior bureaucrats found to have strong neoliberal sympathies are dismissed from their positions immediately. Neoliberals seeking employment in the reformed civil service are weeded out as real, or potential, threats to New Zealand’s national security. By the end of the purge, scores of civil servants have been advised that, having failed the SIS’s vetting procedure, their services are no longer required.

 

Now imagine the outrage that such an exercise would precipitate. Newspaper editors would thunder their disapproval. Leading law firms would announce their intention of challenging the purge in court. Civil rights advocates would prepare to stage protest demonstrations against the Government’s “Blue Scare” tactics. All of the defence mechanisms of capitalist society would be mobilised to ensure that the system’s ideological guardians remained in place.

 

Clearly, it would be next to impossible to purge a capitalist society like ours of its official defenders without being accused of abandoning democracy itself. And yet, we tell ourselves that democracy remains unimpaired in a country which actively discriminates against those who threaten to bring anti-capitalist ideas into the upper-echelons of the state bureaucracy. Why do so many of us simply accept that the SIS, having subjected such individuals to the most rigorous vetting, is justified in recommending they not be appointed to senior civil service posts?

 

That question was much easier to answer during the Cold War. (1946-1991) Back then it was entirely possible that state servants harbouring strong sympathies for the cause of International Communism and/or the Soviet Union might feel moved to pass on sensitive political and economic information to their ideological soul-mates. The national security implications of appointing such persons to sensitive positions could not (and were not) ignored.

 

National security concerns were also raised in regard to civil servants’ sexual orientation. While homosexuality remained legally, morally and socially unacceptable, gay civil servants were acutely vulnerable to blackmail.

 

In the twenty-first century, addictions to prohibited substances and/or alcohol can make state employees similarly biddable. It is, therefore, difficult to argue against some effort being made to uncover such vulnerabilities prior to appointing someone to a position where nationally important and highly confidential information is regularly circulated and discussed.

 

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the decriminalisation of homosexuality has, however, removed the most obvious justifications for SIS vetting. The background checks undertaken by today’s security personnel should, accordingly, be restricted to identifying drug and alcohol abuse. Discrimination based upon a civil service job candidate’s political beliefs is, surely, be a thing of the past?

 

Don’t you believe it.

 

Today’s civil service, and most of our society generally, functions in an environment of aggressively enforced ideological orthodoxy. Neoliberalism is, without doubt, the most pervasive and effectively defended ideology in human history. Not to be a neoliberal in the early twenty-first century, especially in the upper echelons of the dominant public and private bureaucracies, is to risk career death. To openly espouse ideas hostile to neoliberalism is to make that career death certain.

 

The SIS stands as the last line of defence against the occasional incompetence of those specialist recruiting agencies entrusted with delivering short-lists of acceptable candidates for senior positions in the civil service. Personality tests, CV checks and exhaustive interviews with referees can usually be relied upon to filter out all the ideologically inappropriate applicants. Should the commercial gate-keepers prove derelict in their duties, however, Rebecca Kitteridge and her team of “vets” stand ready to protect the key institutions of the capitalist state from the deadly virus of dissent.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Saturday, 9 April 2016.

"Different From You And Me": Some Thoughts On The Panama Papers.

Sinking In A Sea Of Scandal: If the world has been left open-mouthed by the Panama Papers, it is largely on account of the sudden transition of fiction to fact. No matter how painstakingly John Le Carré or John Grisham construct their plots; no matter how realistically they draw their characters; their readers have, until now, been able to console themselves with the thought that, in the end, it’s only a story. Well, not anymore!

 

THEY’RE CALLING THEM “The Panama Papers”. A vast haul of electronic documents, said to be several orders of magnitude bigger than the infamous Wikileaks “dump” of 2010, which is leaving the world open-mouthed. Stolen from the secretive Panamanian-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, the Panama Papers have exposed the dodgy financial dealings of the global elites for all to see. Or, at least, read about.

 

But how shocked are we, really? For decades now, novelists and screenwriters have been entertaining us with dark tales of criminal law firms and offshore tax havens. We’ve been told, in detail, how arms dealers and drug traffickers launder their ill-gotten gains through the international financial system. We know all about front organisations, dummy companies and blind trusts. In the world of fiction, none of this is new.

 

This coming Sunday, for example, tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders will watch the final episode of the BBC’s superb thriller, The Night Manager, hoping against hope that the devilish arms dealer, Richard Roper (played to perfection by Hugh Laurie) will get what’s coming to him.

 

But, we will not be surprised (because John Le Carré has taught us not to be) if the villain somehow manages to slip through the hero’s fingers. Happy endings aren’t what they used to be. If the global financial crisis proved that some banks are “too big to fail”, is it really that big a stretch to believe that some people are too big to catch? And, if we’re honest, don’t we find the unrepentant arrogance of the 1 Percenters just a teeny bit thrilling?

 

If the world has been left open-mouthed by the Panama Papers, isn’t it more likely on account of the sudden transition of fiction to fact? No matter how painstakingly Le Carré or John Grisham construct their plots; no matter how realistically they draw their characters; their readers have, until now, been able to console themselves with the thought that, in the end, it’s only a story. They think about the hum-drum nature of their own lives, and, reluctantly file the whole the notion of swashbuckling villainy, enacted on a global scale, under “I” – for implausible.

 

Well, not anymore!

 

It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote: “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”

 

It’s not something those of us who are not very rich care to admit, but the Panama Papers prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Fitzgerald was right. The very rich are very different from us.

 

It’s not that they’re immoral, more that they are absolutely certain that the morality that constrains the rest of humanity simply doesn’t apply to them. As Fitzgerald put it: “They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are.”

 

That’s why they need law firms like Mossack Fonseca: to hide their dealings from the eyes of all those silly people who subscribe to the utterly ridiculous notion that we are all equal. People like that, ordinary people, just don’t understand – will never understand – the needs of the very rich.

 

Not that the very rich think about ordinary people very often – why would they? What does get their attention, however, is the frightening news that ordinary people are thinking about them. Nothing turns a genial Bertie Wooster into a ferocious Richard Roper faster than the unwarranted scrutiny of the lower orders. Popular envy the very rich can tolerate, even enjoy: but popular interference; that is another matter altogether.

 

John Key’s reaction to the global release of the Panama Papers has been interesting. Where the Opposition parties have greeted the news that their country’s less-than-robust tax laws are being exploited by the likes of Mossack Fonseca with demands for official inquiries and swift legislative action, New Zealand’s Prime Minister has evinced a lofty nonchalance.

 

There were many, perfectly legitimate, reasons that a foreign investor might set up in New Zealand, Mr Key told journalists. It was quite wrong, he insisted, to call his country a “tax haven”.

 

A very different response from the one people like you and me might expect. But, then, Mr Key is very rich.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 8 April 2016.

Shrugging-Off The Panama Papers.

"... What? ...": John Key, when asked which secret trusts were being used for tax dodging, hiding stolen assets and/or laundering money, responded with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.

 

THE PANAMA PAPERS have elicited a remarkably low key response from the Prime Minister. The Labour Leader, Andrew Little, has described how John Key, when asked which secret trusts were being used for tax dodging, hiding stolen assets and/or laundering money, responded with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. The day before, when challenged about the potential damage to New Zealand’s reputation – now that we’ve been fingered as a simply dandy spot for masking the millions of Mossack Fonseca’s clients – John Key told journalists that there were many, perfectly legitimate, reasons why a foreign investor might park his money in New Zealand, adding that it was quite wrong to call his country a “tax haven”.

 

Key’s “ … what? …” reaction to the colossal data leak which has already claimed the scalp of one prime minister and put the careers of many other world leaders at risk is rather perplexing. Is he not able to predict the impact the Panama Papers are bound to have on the privileged privacy of the global elites? How the 11 million-plus documents are going to be used to prise open the lid of one of the biggest cans of plutocratic worms the world has ever seen. Why doesn’t he get it?

 

There are 55 million answers to that question. For a long time now John Key’s fortune has dulled his otherwise acute political judgement. Six years ago, in May 2010, Key’s government came under heavy criticism for tax cuts conferring huge windfalls of cash upon the wealthiest New Zealanders. Not yet two years into the job, he struggled to grasp the motivation for his critics’ outrage.

 

“We can be envious about these things”, purred the Prime Minister, “but without those people in our economy all the rest of us will either have less people paying tax or fundamentally less services that they provide.”

 

Seldom has so much of the mythology of the very rich been packed into a single sentence.

 

First comes the notion that his fellow citizens’ reaction to his government’s massive transfer of wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest members of their society is motivated not by their keen sense of its manifest injustice, but by simple, old-fashioned envy.

 

Then comes the argument that without such regular transfusions of cold hard cash, the very rich will simply up-stakes and leave for a more congenial jurisdiction. Somewhere that makes them feel welcome – not like lepers.

 

Finally, Key goes for the clincher. The notion that it is the energy and drive, the wisdom and skill, and the hard-earned cash of wealthy entrepreneurs that provides the rest of us “parasites” with the goods and services that we are simply too stupid and/or lazy to provide for ourselves.

 

Ayn Rand couldn’t have put it better.

 

In the light of this earlier demonstration of Key’s deep belief in the superiority of the very rich; and in the very different measures that must be taken of their needs and deeds; should we really be surprised when he struggles to understand exactly what the persons exposed by the Panama Papers have done wrong?

 

If you believed as strongly as John Key does that the very rich are better than you and me; and subject to a very different set of rules; then you would probably shrug-off the Panama Papers too.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 7 April 2016.

John Key's Colonial Daze.

"No, no, Mr Key, you are our New Zealand subject, not our British subject."

 

“WE ARE AT THE CORE … a British colony and I thought there was an argument that New Zealanders could be treated in a way which reflected that.”
 

That was John Key’s pitch to the British prime minister, David Cameron, in a pull-aside at last week’s nuclear summit in Washington DC. The New Zealand prime minister was attempting to soften the treatment being meted out to Kiwis under the UK’s harsh new immigration regime.
 

Now, we all know our Prime Minister is notoriously loose with the language he uses, so our first impulse is to dismiss Key’s constitutionally and historically nonsensical “We are at the core … a British colony” as just another (particularly bad) example of his verbal and conceptual imprecision.
 

We would simply assume that he was attempting to play the “How can Mother England treat New Zealanders so badly after everything we’ve done for her?” card. Riffing on that favourite teenage riposte: “I didn’t ask to be born!” Something along the lines of: “Hey! It was your lot who colonised New Zealand in the first place! Remember?”
 

But if those were our assumptions, then we got it badly wrong. Because this morning (4/4/16) on Paul Henry’s show, with David Cameron nowhere in sight, John Key said it again. Twice.
 

“We are a British colony.”
 

Somehow, New Zealand’s Prime Minister has convinced himself that, constitutionally, his country remains a colonial appendage of the United Kingdom. That the granting of Self-Governing Dominion status in 1907 never happened. That the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which the First Labour Government adopted in 1947, thereby signalling this country’s emergence into full and independent nationhood, is but a figment of our historians’ imaginations. That the independent “Realm of New Zealand” – of which Queen Elizabeth II is “Sovereign in Right” – has no legal existence.
 

Can Key really be so ignorant? Can the man who has led this country for eight years truly possess so tenuous a grasp on its political and constitutional realities? Surely not. Because if it’s true; if our 176 year journey as a people towards nationhood and independence means precisely nothing to him; then we are all in much more trouble than we thought.
 

It must mean that all the Prime Minister’s recent talk about changing the New Zealand flag to “better reflect who we are” was utterly insincere. What would a country that is still “at the core … a British colony” want with a flag that did not proudly display, in its top left-hand corner, the Mother Country’s Union Jack?
 

Even more puzzling is what the Prime Minister believes himself to be doing all day. Because colonies are not governed by Parliaments and Prime Ministers, they’re ruled by Governors. And these Governors are in no way accountable to the people they rule, but to an imperial government far, far, away.
 

If New Zealand is “at the core … a British colony”, then it is neither independent, nor a democracy.
 

It couldn’t be, because, historically speaking, a colony is a place where imperialism rips-in, rips-out and rips-off. A place where the indigenous people are duped, dispossessed and exploited.
 

Oh, heck, wait a minute …
 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 5 April 2016.

Was Class The Decisive Factor In Determining The Flag Referendum's Outcome?

Class Warrior? At the core of Labour MP Sue Moroney’s controversial "Just Because You Own" tweet was the unmistakeable whiff of class warfare. Her generous parliamentary salary notwithstanding, she clearly reacted with visceral working-class fury to the visual cues of the Silver Fern Flag and a “flash beach house”. In a peculiar, largely unacknowledged way, voting to retain the flag became, for many Kiwis, a small but satisfying gesture of class defiance.

 

FOR THE BEST PART OF A WEEK, the Labour MP, Sue Moroney, has been on the receiving end of a vicious media caning. Her crime? Tweeting a photograph of a handsome Waihi Beach property flying the Silver Fern Flag, accompanied by the incendiary caption: “Just because you own a flash beach house doesn’t mean you get to decide our flag.”

 

Was this an intelligent political gesture? Not really. A moment’s thought on Ms Moroney’s part would have warned her of the inevitability of a swingeing social media backlash, followed inexorably by the heavy artillery fire of the mainstream news outlets. A tweet of such provocative content was never going to pass unnoticed. Better, therefore, not to send it.

 

Ms Moroney should also have paused to consider the feelings of the people who actually owned the beach house over which Kyle Lockwood’s creation was fluttering. Their motivation for displaying the flag was something Ms Moroney could only guess at, and when you’re a Member of Parliament guessing isn’t good enough. The owners of the property had every right to complain, and Ms Moroney had no option but to remove the offending tweet.

 

Exactly what Labour’s Leader, Andrew Little, said to his errant colleague, as the controversy she’d created started spawning the most trenchant journalistic criticism, we have no way of knowing. It is, however, very likely to have included a great deal of admonition and very little approbation.

 

And yet, as the week progressed, and the journalistic vitriol increased in strength, I couldn’t help wondering whether, in this case, the media clobbering machine was protesting too much. Such exaggerated offence, and such ferocious criticism, strongly suggested that Ms Moroney had touched a very raw nerve. What could it be?

 

When the irrepressible Paul Henry says something provocative, his defenders frequently respond with the observation that he is only expressing what a whole lot of people are thinking. Did Ms Moroney’s inflammatory tweet fall into this category? Had she put into words what a great many New Zealanders were feeling about the social forces pushing for a change of flag?

 

It is difficult to argue against the proposition that the entire flag-changing exercise was driven from the top down. Certainly a review of the polling data offers scant evidence for there being a popular groundswell in favour of replacing our present flag. On the contrary, in the eyes of a large number of New Zealanders, the whole initiative originated from, and was associated with, the Prime Minister, John Key.

 

Are the following associative mental leaps similar to the ones Ms Moroney made when she saw the Silver Fern flying above that Waihi Beach property?

 

Look, there’s a swanky beach house flying that damned flag! — John Key has a swanky beach house. — I bet his is flying an even bigger Silver Fern Flag. — Why does he even want to change our flag? — Just to show us that he can! — I’ve always felt this whole referendum thing is nothing more than the Prime Minister and his rich mates telling us what to do. — It must be why the National Party, the news media, and the rest of the political establishment is backing him so strongly. — Because, when a National Party Prime Minister wants something, it’s important that he gets it. — Well bugger them! — Where’s my cell phone!

 

If that was the general direction of Ms Moroney’s thoughts, and if she was by no means alone in thinking about the referendum in such terms, then what New Zealand has just passed through may be a lot more significant than the political pundits are prepared to acknowledge.

 

At the core of Ms Moroney’s tweet is the unmistakeable whiff of class warfare. Her generous parliamentary salary notwithstanding, she clearly reacted with visceral working-class fury to the visual cues of the Silver Fern Flag and a “flash beach house”. Something in her personality (and in the personalities of tens-of-thousands of her fellow New Zealanders) linked together wealth, power, the proposal to change the flag, and the Prime Minister, in a causal chain of extraordinary emotive strength. In a peculiar, largely unacknowledged way, voting to retain the flag became, for many Kiwis, a small but satisfying gesture of class defiance.

 

Perhaps this explains why Ms Moroney’s tweet has elicited such an angry response from those who, in one way or another, contrived to carry the Prime Minister’s flag. Her bitter caption clearly stung them in ways many found difficult to explain. It implied that at least some members of the punditocracy had behaved discreditably; lined up with the wrong people; backed the wrong cause.

 

At the very least, Ms Moroney’s “class warfare” tweet has cast the indisputable class divide separating those who voted for the present flag from those who voted against it, in a new and disquieting light.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 5 April 2016.