The Long-Term Green Advantage of Uncommon Sense.

Thought For Food: Saving the planet and feeding all its people long ago ceased to be a practical proposition. The amount of cultivatable land will shrink – along with the quantity of water necessary to ensure adequate harvests. As the mean global temperature increase passes 2^oC, millions of human-beings will begin to starve. 

THE MAINSTREAM NEWS media’s constant and effusive praise for Green co-leader, James Shaw, draws into sharp focus the party’s fundamental contradiction. That the supra-political character of the present planetary crisis must doom to failure any attempt to present the Greens as just-another-political-party. Undaunted, Shaw exploits with considerable skill the urgent need of the status-quo’s defenders’ to keep “common-sense solutions” in play. Were in not so tragic, this acquiescence to the short-termism that defines both the intractability of climate change, and of modern politics, would be hugely and comically ironic.

If Shaw’s acquiescence could be offset by a co-leader determined to bear witness to the long-term challenges of responding to anthropogenic global warming, then the damage to the Green cause might be mitigated. Unfortunately, Marama Davidson seems to be as much a prisoner of the short-term as Shaw. In the passing circus parade that is day-to-day politics she has opted for the role of clown.

In fairness, playing the whole Green thing for laughs must be tempting when the challenges are so very, very great. How, for example, do you inform humanity that their sheer numbers preclude any sort of “soft landing” for the climate change crisis?

Saving the planet and feeding all its people long ago ceased to be a practical proposition. The amount of cultivatable land will shrink – along with the quantity of water necessary to ensure adequate harvests. As the mean global temperature increase passes 2^oC, millions of human-beings will begin to starve. What is the correct moral response to famine, disease and conflict on an unprecedented scale? When the boatloads of desperate climate-change refugees start appearing off New Zealand’s coast, what should a Green New Zealand government do?

This is a long way from green technological fixes and rehabilitating four-letter words.

So, too, is deciding what to do when the big container ships and the oil-tankers stop venturing this far south. When the sheer number of super-hurricanes renders voyages too far out into the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans uninsurable. How will a Green government keep the chronically-ill provided with their life-saving pharmaceuticals; and crucial machinery supplied with spare parts; when the flow of these vital imports ceases? How will it keep the lights on and the electric cars powered-up when the snow refuses to fall and the hydro lakes are empty?

Who in today’s Green caucus has the courage to tell New Zealanders that teaching young people the skills required to keep the post-industrial communities of the future functioning is now a matter of urgency. Because in 100 years’ time Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin will be only a fraction of their present size and most of the population will be living in the countryside – where the food is. Which of today’s Greens are working with Maori to preserve the indigenous medical and pharmacological knowledge built-up over the 600 years of non-European occupation of Aotearoa?

Who will dare to tell today’s captains of industry that in 50 years the Internet will be but a memory? That the genocidal global resource wars will kick off with the destruction of the undersea communication cables. That the revolutions, civil and religious wars that roll across the sweltering continents will leave the control hubs for satellite communication unmanned for a generation. That the rocket launching pads will become nesting places for such birds as still fly through Earth’s fetid air.

These are the challenges which Green parties should be preparing us for. The challenges arising out of the fundamental transformations anticipated and demanded in the latest IPCC report. Deluding voters into thinking that somehow the scientists will come up with a way of saving us all: a way which allows capitalism, consumerism and narcissistic individualism to continue unchecked and unmodified; is not something with which any responsible Green should be associated.

Green leadership should be about thinking the unthinkable and working through the changes required to live in the world which humanity’s unthinking folly is steadily bringing into being. It may even be about anticipating that world by encouraging the formation of communities capable of guiding the survivors of humankind’s addiction to fossil-fuels towards a very different way of living on – and with – the planet.

Like the medieval monasteries which kept literature, art and music alive when all around them the vestiges of civilised order were disintegrating, these Green communities may serve as bridges between the devastating collapse of our fossil-fuelled civilisation and the new, much smaller, more self-sufficient and ecologically humble human societies of the future.

Those who preach this Green gospel must anticipate scorn and ridicule from the majority of today’s voters. For a crucial minority, however, this Green version of the future will resonate loudly. And as, one after another, the predictions of the scientists come true, that minority will grow. Until the day eventually dawns when the Greens’ long-prepared and uncompromising policies strike the overwhelming majority of New Zealanders as the only “common-sense-solutions” on offer.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 30 October 2018.

Who Do The Greens Think They Are?

On Life Support: Most activists would assume that an ecological party of the Greens’ pedigree would be in the vanguard of the struggle against climate change: advocates for the most radical and uncompromising means of defending the biosphere. Most activists would, however, be wrong.

“WHAT WE THINK, we become”, observed Siddhartha Gautama, the Enlightened One. What then, have the Greens, particularly their parliamentary representatives, been thinking to become the confused collection of MPs we see today?

The easy answer would be to say that thinking is the one activity the Greens have not been engaging in since facilitating the formation of the Coalition Government. In part, the party’s shambolic unmindfulness is the consequence of sheer panic. The destruction of Metiria Turei caused considerable collateral damage. The party lost a lot of talent – much of which it has yet to successfully replace.

Even more serious than temporarily losing its collective head, however, was the Green Party’s loss of direction. Ever since the 2017 election, the Greens have been spinning around in their own aimless eddies. No longer caught up in the strong currents of ecological activism which had propelled them forward since entering Parliament in their own right in 1999, the Greens energies have been swallowed up in the constantly multiplying micro-conflicts of identity politics.

Such appears to be the fate of all left-wing and progressive organisations that lose the impetus supplied by a single, unifying cause. In the absence of the latter, all the essentially irresolvable conflicts of identity politics – Male vs Female; Black vs White; Cis vs Non-Cis; Trans vs TERF – rush in to fill the vacuum. Regaining the movement’s forward momentum is never easy in these circumstances, but without effective and inspiring leadership it is practically impossible. Tragically, this is precisely where the Aotearoan Greens have ended up: unmoved by a great cause and uninspired by ineffectual leaders.

On the face of it, the Greens predicament is absurd. Most activists would assume that an ecological party of the Greens’ pedigree would be in the vanguard of the struggle against climate change: advocates for the most radical and uncompromising means of defending the biosphere. Most activists would, however, be wrong. The Green Party of Aotearoa is not in the vanguard of the struggle against climate change: it’s best and its brightest are holding down ministerial jobs outside of the Cabinet; diligently toiling in the bureaucratic vineyards of mainstream politics.

In spite of the fact that the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls for massive sacrifices from the world’s wealthiest nations and a fundamental transformation of the global economy, the Aotearoan Greens have committed themselves to “the technological fix” that will, somehow, allow the planet to survive without its most dangerous species having to change very much of anything.

This is nothing short of tragic. Defeating anthropogenic global warming has always depended on humanity treating it as the moral equivalent of war. But, instead of green warriors urging their fellow citizens to fight and, if necessary, die for the planet, Aotearoa has been blessed with a party of conscientious objectors. To the question: “Is anybody standing up to the big corporates? The farmers? The road transport lobby?” James Shaw, Julie Anne Genter and Eugenie Sage reply that they are doing the best they can. That politics is the art of the possible. Moreover, there’s the Budget Responsibility Rules to consider – not to mention the wishes of Labour and NZ First. Not to worry, though, because Marama Davidson is rehabilitating the word “cunt” and sticking it to the misogynist “bros” on social media. Right-on, sister!

The Green Party’s key strategic error, post-election, was to want anything to do with ministerial warrants – or coalition partners. They should have told Labour and NZ First that if push came to shove on the floor of the House, then they would always vote to keep them in office and the National Party in opposition, but, beyond that, all bets were off. They would wield the hammer of justice, ring the bell of freedom and sing the song of love between their brothers and their sisters exactly as they saw fit – while fighting for the planet with all their might.

In the end, the increasingly urgent need to keep Planet Earth liveable is going to burn off the denialists and the compromisers; the incrementalists and the technological fixers. And when that moment comes there needs to be one party that has steadfastly refused to buy into the dangerous optimism of the she’ll-be-righters and the let’s-hope-for-the-besters. A party ready to step forward with the hard answers where all other answers have failed. A party that is willing, after many, many years in the political wilderness, to offer a terrified electorate the same terse instruction that Kyle Reese gave to Sarah Connor in The Terminator: “Come with me if you want to live!”

If the Greens think anthropogenic global warming is real; if they think that only ecological-wisdom-in-arms can defeat it; then that is the sort of party they will become. Sorting out the bros can wait until the planet stops burning.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 26 October 2018.

Too Close For Comfort.

Hand In Hand: Is there not then a serious risk that their constant breathing-in of the aphrodisiacal perfumes of naked power will seduce the Parliamentary Press Gallery from their role of Democracy’s gamekeepers and transform them into poachers on the people’s estate? What is the electorate supposed to do if those entrusted with reporting the actions of the principal political players, themselves become important actors in the drama?

IN THE BACKWASH of the Jami-Lee Ross debacle, the National Party has announced an internal review of its organisational culture. The exercise will not be open to public scrutiny. National’s board will undoubtedly argue that a confidential review is more likely to encourage a “warts and all” representation of the party’s features. It won’t, of course. Before you could say “Copy” and “Send”, any honest estimation of National’s strengths and weaknesses would be leaked. Understanding this, the reviewers will produce a document as bland as it is unhelpful.

National’s proposed review does, however, serve as a useful pointer to our capital city’s flawed culture of power – as well as to its long-standing imperviousness to reform. There is simply too much power on offer in Wellington for anyone with the slightest chance of wielding it, limiting it.

Proximity lies at the heart of the capital’s power culture. The higher an ambitious person climbs, the closer they get to the people who exercise decisive political authority. This proximity works both vertically and horizontally. The higher one climbs, the more opportunities one finds to influence the course of events. This, in turn, encourages other ambitious souls to get as close as possible to the successful climber. Power in Wellington thus flows not only up and down the city’s many hierarchies, but also through them, spreading outwards in all directions.

In the centre of this three-dimensional web of power looms the parliamentary complex. The Beehive and the House of Representatives are the most obvious repositories of executive and legislative authority. Easily forgotten, however, when mapping the distribution of power, is the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Its members enjoy an enviable degree of access to the entire cast of Government and Opposition players. In the proximity-to-power stakes, few get as up-close-and-personal as political journalists.

The justification for allowing political journalists such easy access to Government and Opposition politicians is that it allows them to observe and interrogate the nation’s leaders and thereby hold them accountable for their actions. Ostensibly, this is done in the interests of the voters: without an unimpeded flow of political information, democracy cannot work.

Except that the above is not the real job description of a parliamentary press gallery journalist. The common-or-garden parliamentary journalist’s primary function is to preserve the best possible access to the movers and shakers of Government and Opposition. Their editors need to know that when a story breaks, or a major announcement is signalled, their reporters will have no difficulty getting into the media conference, and that every few weeks they will be in line for a “strictly-background, not-for-attribution” ministerial briefing.

The parliamentary journalist who made a habit of holding Cabinet Ministers to genuine account; or who successfully uncovered secrets she or he wasn’t supposed to expose; would not only be guilty of writing about matters that nobody else was writing about (a cardinal sin) but, even worse, would be provoking increasingly bitter complaints to their bosses from ministerial press secretaries (former parliamentary press gallery journalists for the most part) along the lines of: “What the hell does so-in-so think she’s doing? You tell her that unless she plans to stay on the salary she’s receiving forever, she needs to pull her bloody head in!”

It usually works.

But this poses a real problem for those who assume that the purpose of the “Fourth Estate” is to “keep the bastards honest”. If the true function of a parliamentary press gallery journalist is act as the glove into which power inserts its steely hand, then their formal democratic role is nothing but a sham.

It gets worse. If political journalists are positioned close to power, but warned against antagonising the powerful, then doesn’t it make more sense for them to befriend and enable the Government and Opposition players they are supposed to be observing and interrogating? Is there not then a serious risk that their constant breathing-in of the aphrodisiacal perfumes of naked power will seduce them from the role of Democracy’s gamekeepers and transform them into poachers on the people’s estate? What is the electorate supposed to do if those entrusted with reporting the actions of the principal players, themselves become important actors in the drama?

Was Jami-Lee’s downfall the result of him having too many enemies in National’s caucus – or too many friends in the Press Gallery?

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 October 2018.

Questions, Questions, Questions.

The Public Calls Simon Bridges To The Stand: For Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett the Jami-Lee Saga is far from over. A great many questions have accumulated over the course of Labour Weekend and it is clear that neither the Leader nor his deputy can answer them without the risk of re-igniting the political firestorm of the past ten days.

THE RIGHT’S RESPONSE to Jami-Lee Ross’s temporary detention at Middlemore Hospital has been interesting. The National Party’s defenders flatly reject the idea that its leadership has acted in any way improperly in relation to Ross. And yet, piecing together what little information has made its way into the public domain, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that at the point of crisis, early on Sunday morning (21/10/18) Ross was in the company of a National Party MP. Whether it was this MP, or someone else, who became so alarmed by Ross’ behaviour that they called the Police, remains unclear. What is certain is that Ross was conveyed to Middlemore because he represented a danger to himself, or others, and against his will.

That, barely 48 hours later, Middlemore was willing to release Ross strongly suggests that the circumstances which gave rise to his temporary detention no longer existed. Friends have provided a place of refuge for him out of Auckland where he is currently recuperating, taking stock, and considering his future.

For Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett, however, the Jami-Lee Saga is far from over. A great many questions have accumulated over the course of Labour Weekend and it is clear that neither the Leader nor his deputy can answer them without the risk of re-igniting the political firestorm of the past ten days.

If, for example, the blogger Cameron Slater’s claim that three of the four anonymous complainants who featured in the Newsroom exposé of Ross’ behaviour towards women are employed in either the Leader’s or the Deputy-Leader’s office is confirmed, then the public may feel that they have been short-changed when it comes to being given all the relevant details surrounding the charges levelled against the Botany MP. The public may also begin asking why these details are available from a blogger, but not from the journalists of the Parliamentary Press Gallery?

Questions are also being asked about whether or not, over the course of the past month, the National leader and/or his deputy were in contact with Ross’ medical adviser/s? And, if so, whether those advisers had warned Bridges and/or Bennett that it would be unwise to do or say anything likely to jeopardise Ross’ already compromised mental state? If the public were to discover that the National Party leadership had been explicitly cautioned against naming Ross as the probable leaker of Bridges’ travel expenses – but went ahead and did it anyway – then they might form the opinion that Ross’ manic night-time ride from Auckland to Wellington, and his epic media stand-up the following morning, were entirely avoidable events.

Such speculation cannot possibly be helpful to Bridges and Bennett – raising as it does the thought that Ross may have been used as the unwitting instrument for rallying the National Party caucus behind a leader whom the voters showed little sign of warming to or respecting. The idea of making a mentally unwell MP the means of achieving such a disreputable objective is not likely to inspire very much in the way of trust or confidence in the putative perpetrators. Quite the reverse, in fact.

The problem with this sort of speculation is that much of the known conduct of the National Party leadership appears to reinforce it. If someone was intending to push a mentally fragile person over the edge, then threatening him with the anonymous testimony of four aggrieved female complainants, might recommend itself as a highly effective way of doing so. If that someone then publicly suggested that the person in question had been behaving in ways incompatible with his status as a married man, well then, it’s easy to see how the notion that he was being pushed to the limit might take a firmer grip on the public mind.

To the truly cynical, the sudden appearance, in the very midst of Ross’ jihad against his former National colleagues, of a sensational exposé detailing the Botany MP’s abusive and manipulative relationships with three parliamentary staffers and an unnamed National MP would elicit only the most sardonic of grins. If one was writing the script for such a political melodrama, the line given to Bridges would have to be: “Whew! That was lucky!”

Just how lucky was revealed by TVNZ’s political editor, Jessica Mutch Mackay, on Tuesday evening (23/10/18) when she described how National’s numbers, in the Colmar-Brunton poll being conducted coincident with Jami-Lee’s jihad, were plummeting right up until the moment, mid-week, when the story detailing Ross’ improprieties began to dominate the headlines. The word “fortuitous” hardly seems to cover it!

Questions, questions, questions: there is still so much that we don’t know about the extraordinary events of the past ten days. And perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the whole saga is how unwilling all but a handful of journalists have been to dig too deeply for the facts the public is so anxious to learn.

Fortunately, for the historical record, there is one person who knows a great deal about all of the events touched on in this post. Resting quietly, in an undisclosed but secure location, the MP for Botany, Jami-Lee Ross, waits patiently for all of these many questions to be put to him. How should we expect a man who has nothing left to lose to answer – except with the truth?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 25 October 2018.

Missing.

Where's Jami? Jami-Lee Ross has promised to expose what he alleges to be the corruption and moral failings of at least some of this country’s leading parliamentarians. When a person promising revelations of this kind is suddenly uplifted and immured in a secure mental health facility, the public has a right to know on whose authority it was done; how it was accomplished – and to what purpose?

LOCKING DISSIDENTS AWAY in mental institutions was arguably a more humane sanction than sending them off to the gulag. Even so, many of the stories that have emerged from the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 80s are just as chilling as Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s description of the camps. “Patients” subjected to chemical lobotomisation wandered the corridors of state asylums like ghosts. By no means all of the citizens detained were released, and those who made it out were much changed. For a start, they were no longer dissidents.

Learning that a New Zealand Member of Parliament had been detained under the Mental Health Act, it was hard not to think of those Soviet era victims. After all, the MP for Botany, Jami-Lee Ross must be counted among the most destructive malcontents ever to occupy a seat in the NZ House of Representatives. His determination to punish the National Party and its leadership for (as he saw it) abandoning him, was threatening to dissolve all the protections so painstakingly erected by MPs to keep themselves safe from each other’s spite. Prior to Ross’s detention, the party was looking at weeks, perhaps months, of drip-fed excoriation. Who knew how much undiluted political acid Jamie-Lee had in his possession?

Who has that acid now? Who is in possession of Ross’ property? His family? The unnamed mental health facility detaining him? The Police? The National Party? What, if any, obligation are those holding Ross’s phone, his laptop, his hard-copy files, under to keep them safe from prying eyes? What, if anything, has been happening at Ross’s home and/or his parliamentary and electorate offices in the time that has elapsed since he was taken into state custody? Has anyone come calling? If so, who was it – and what were they after?

The public has a right to know the answers to these questions. That would not be the case if Ross was just another citizen, but he is much more than that. Ross is someone who has promised to expose what he alleges to be the corruption and moral failings of at least some of this country’s leading parliamentarians. When a person promising revelations of this kind is suddenly uplifted and immured in a secure mental health facility, the public has a right to know on whose authority it was done; how it was accomplished – and to what purpose?

In particular, the public has a right to know what part, if any, the most obvious beneficiary of Ross’s extraction from the political environment, the NZ National Party, played in his detention.

There has been some comment to the effect that National has a duty of care to Ross. Such a claim presupposes that, in its dealings with Ross, National stands in a relationship akin to that of an employer. Such a presupposition is hard to reconcile with the fact that all political parties are voluntary organisations, whose members are free to remain with them, or leave, as they see fit. Having announced his resignation from the National Party on Tuesday, 16 October, Ross had clearly exercised his right to exit the organisation. Whatever relationship existed between Ross and National ended then. So, why, five days later, was the National Party giving out the very strong impression that it had, in some way, been involved in his detention under the Mental Health Act?

Moreover, if some nebulous duty of care towards Ross remained on National’s part, then why was the party so aggressive in its response to his actions. If its MPs were convinced that their former colleague was mentally unwell (something which the National Opposition’s spokespeople had strongly insinuated in a number of public statements) then why did they feel it necessary to so dramatically increase the stress he was under?

On his Whaleoil blog, Cameron Slater states that it fell to him and at least one other person to inform Ross’s wife of her husband’s fate. This information is deeply disturbing: suggesting, as it does, that at least one of Ross’ next-of-kin was not told of his situation, or even his whereabouts, by the authorities responsible for his detention. If confirmed, it raises serious questions about the legality of the entire process.

This is why the public deserves a full explanation of the Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? of Jami-Lee Ross’s detention. There may be a completely acceptable reason for the MP for Botany being taken into custody; and those responsible may have been acting in strict accordance with the provisions of the Mental Health Act; but given the extraordinary circumstances in which Ross and his antagonists were enmeshed, and the very high stakes for which they were playing, the people of New Zealand need to hear it – all of it.

The old Soviet joke had it that the Russians must enjoy the best mental health in the world, because only an insane citizen would complain about living under Communist rule – and so few did. It’s the sort of black humour that dictatorships have long been famous for. Let’s hope that New Zealanders never learn to laugh, however sardonically, at their own loss of freedom.

This essay was posted simultaneously on Bowalley Road and The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 23 October 2018.

A Quick Update. (Satire)

Well, all I know, REDACTED, is that you scare the hell out of me!

“OPERATION HOTSPUR”

EXEC-COM TELE-CONFERENCE REDACTED TRANSCRIPT

( ON THE CALL: REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED )

REDACTED: Are we all here? Good. I thought it would be useful to arrange a quick update on the progress to date of Operation Hotspur.

REDACTED: Before you do, REDACTED, Why Hotspur?

REDACTED: Oh, well, JLR reminds me so much of Harry Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One – the headstrong knight who refuses to be humiliated by the King and rises in rebellion against him.

REDACTED: Oh, right, very good. Sorry – go on.

REDACTED: Well, as REDACTED predicted, SB’s refusal to grant JLR everything he asked for back in February sent him into a black fury and made him extremely receptive to the idea of getting his own back. It really was very clever of you, REDACTED, to identify JLR’s acute sensitivity to even the slightest of slights. I’ve seldom encountered anyone more willing to allow their passion to over-rule their reason.

REDACTED: Yes, he really has proved to be the perfect patsy, hasn’t he?

REDACTED: However did you persuade him to tape his conversations with SB?

REDACTED: I simply told him it was necessary to prevent SB reneging on any more promises made to caucus colleagues and party members.

REDACTED: Your assessment of the recordings’ worth?

REDACTED: Oh, they’re dynamite. Not only in relation to SB, but to the whole party. If JLR is able to release even a handful of them before the by-election, then National’s going to be left looking pretty tawdry.

REDACTED: And, therefore, in even more need of a new, no-nonsense leader. Someone with the experience and the toughness to restore a sense of purpose – and discipline – to the Opposition.

REDACTED: Precisely, REDACTED. And exactly what Operation Hotspur was set up to achieve.

REDACTED: To expose and discredit the milksops and dunderheads who will never understand that “extremism in defence of liberty is no vice”.

REDACTED: Or that “moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue”.

REDACTED: Back to JLR’s recordings for a minute. What’s next?

REDACTED: The next conversation will really set the newshounds off. They’ll all be replaying All The President’s Men in their heads. All determined to “follow the money”.

REDACTED: Good. Good. It always pays to let the journos think they’ve uncovered the story all by themselves.

REDACTED: Like JLR’s victims. I don’t imagine Newsroom found them without a little help from their “friends”.

REDACTED: Quite a lot of help actually.

REDACTED: Remind me again why that was necessary. Their story left JLR looking like a complete arsehole.

REDACTED: My dear REDACTED, that was the whole point! After all, we don’t want him to win Botany, do we? His primary use to us is as a dirt-thrower: against SB; against the front bench; the caucus; the whole poisoned party. We want the public to be in the market for a very stiff new broom. Someone determined to sweep every last trace of muck out of the cowshed.

REDACTED: May I inquire as to what happens when JLR finally twigs to the fact that he’s been set up? That he’s been acting as REDACTED’s stalking-horse all along? If he lost it over SB’s “treachery” – how do you suppose he’ll react to ours?

REDACTED: Something tells me that by the time JLR realises what has happened to him he’ll be so discredited that no one will believe a word he says.

REDACTED: Dear God, REDACTED, that’s cold. Are you really willing to see the man disintegrate completely?

REDACTED: Yes, who knows what he might be driven to?

REDACTED: Honestly, who on this call would be all that upset if JLR did do something foolish?

REDACTED: Jesus! This is all getting a little too “House of Cards” for my liking. It’s REDACTED’s leadership we’re promoting here – not Frank Underwoods!

REDACTED: That’s enough! Of course we’ll look after JLR. No one who stands with me now – even unwittingly – will go unrewarded. This party is going to be lifted – by the scruff of its neck if necessary – out of the mire into which that mincing currency trader led it. If you only knew how much I hated all that “Labour-Lite” poison we were forced to swallow. National’s not here to be the executor of Labour’s will. It’s here to draw out the best, the brightest and the strongest from New Zealand society. You don’t achieve that by being soft – by being weak. You do that by being strong. By not surrendering to the nay-sayers and the nimbys and the bleeding hearts! What was it Machiavelli said: “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

REDACTED: He also said: “Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.”

REDACTED: Well, all I know, REDACTED, is that you scare the hell out of me!

This satire was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 19 October 2018.

How Much Damage Has Jami-Lee Ross Really Done?

A Disturbance In The Force? The politics of countries like New Zealand are extremely difficult to derange. A politician like Jamie Lee Ross may give the political gyroscope the most almighty shove – causing it to wobble alarmingly – but in a surprisingly short period of time it will regain its equilibrium.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING inside the National Party Caucus? Are we witnessing a genuine intra-party meltdown or merely the political and personal disintegration of a single individual? When all the dust has settled, will very much have changed?

In the bluntest terms, what we are witnessing is the fullest measure of a single Member of Parliament’s power to disrupt New Zealand’s political life. It is rare to see this power deployed so comprehensively, but the damage inflicted will, ultimately, be relatively light.

There will be costs, of course. Taxpayers will pick up the cost of the by-election which Jami-Lee Ross’ resignation has forced. The National Party – and all other parties choosing to participate in the Botany by-election – will have the costs of campaigning to shoulder. Ross, himself, if he follows through on his promise to stand for re-election, faces an especially heavy burden. The party organisation which formerly met his election expenses is now ranged against him. Everything: from pamphlets to bill boards; radio spots to social media; must now be paid for out of his own pocket.

To what end? The result of the by-election is a near certainty. National’s candidate will be elected by a huge margin, and Ross will lose the contest in the most humiliating fashion. At National’s victory party, the winning candidate will be applauded – but nowhere near as enthusiastically as the Leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges, who will be cheered to the echo. He will seize the opportunity of Ross’ humiliation to reassert his leadership of the New Zealand Right. The conservative media will amplify his words across all platforms. In all likelihood his popularity will spike upwards.

Jami-Lee’s full-throated attempt to kill Bridges politically will only have made him stronger.

Unless.

If Ross’ “evidence” – the recorded telephone conversation presented to the Police this very afternoon (17/10/18) – turns out to be damning, then National’s caucus will be faced with the necessity of removing Bridges as leader. He may not be the only person to go. Paula Bennett’s decision to make reference to Ross’ private life: her insinuation that he is guilty of marital infidelity; may be regarded by her caucus colleagues as having crossed a line long-considered inviolable by all Parliamentarians. To reassure the members of all the other parties represented in Parliament that their private lives remain “off limits”, National may opt to lose its deputy-leader as well.

Such an outcome would provide Ross with some measure of satisfaction. The two politicians he holds most responsible for his “persecution” will have been brought down with him. Like Captain Ahab, in Moby Dick, he will have exacted his vengeance upon the Great White Whale – even at the cost of being dragged to his death by the dying monster.

The National Party itself, however, might not be all that upset to lose a leader that the country’s conservative voters had declined to take to their collective heart. Among the persons most likely to be dismayed by Ross’ extraordinary behaviour, therefore, are the members of the Labour-NZ First-Green coalition government. The strategists of all three governing parties undoubtedly regarded Bridges as a gift from the electoral gods. Up against the relentlessly positive sunshine of Jacinda, Bridge’s surly temperament was an electoral non-starter. The last thing Labour, NZ First and the Greens want to confront in 2020 is a National leader with oomph!

Perhaps it was this thought that drove Ross to “go nuclear” against is boss. Perhaps, somewhere beneath Jami-Lee’s fevered brow, the notion had taken root that only by the selfless sacrifice of his own career could the National Party be saved from the depredations of Bridges and Bennett. Though they would never admit it to themselves, Ross’ actions will thus have provided National’s Caucus with the opportunity to undo the damage it had collectively inflicted upon itself.

Perhaps not.

The politics of countries like New Zealand are extremely difficult to derange. A politician may give the political gyroscope the most almighty shove – causing it to wobble alarmingly – but in a surprisingly short period of time it will regain its equilibrium.

By the start of the New Year Jami-Lee Ross will, almost certainly, have been reduced to a political footnote. Simon Bridges, if he is able to disprove all the charges leveled against him, will have emerged from the whole sorry business stronger and with a firmer grip on his party. If he fails to do so, National will begin 2019 with a new leader. Whatever happens, Labour, NZ First and the Greens will remain in government. New Zealanders will have been forced to endure a great deal of sound and fury – signifying bugger-all.

Of Jami-Lee Ross, however, people will say, in the spirit of the old Maori proverb: “He died like a shark, not a flounder.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 18 October 2018.

Jami-Lee Ross Lets It All Hang Out. Simon Bridges Stonewalls.

Making Him Deny It: Dramatic allegations, of the sort leveled against Simon Bridges by Jamie Lee Ross, are intended to force the targeted person onto the defensive. Requiring one’s opponents to deny the accusations leveled against them, all-too-often produces the paradoxical effect of rendering those accusations more – not less – believable.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, on 17 November 1973, declared to a gathering of newspaper editors: “I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.” This infelicitous sentence would, of course, come back to haunt Nixon as the Watergate scandal that brought down his presidency ground remorselessly on.

Hearing Simon Bridges solemnly reassure the Parliamentary Press Gallery: “I have done nothing wrong”, couldn’t help but remind me of Nixon’s exculpatory performance. Not, I hasten to add, because I believe the Leader of the Opposition to be guilty of the charges leveled against him by his former colleague, Jami-Lee Ross, but because it’s in the nature of such allegations to force the targeted person onto the defensive. Requiring one’s opponents to deny the accusations leveled against them, all-too-often produces the paradoxical effect of rendering those accusations more – not less – believable.

In terms of political theatre, the initial performances of Jami-Lee Ross and Simon Bridges offered some telling contrasts.

As befitted a man with very little left to lose, Ross spoke clearly and compellingly and answered the assembled journalists’ questions with impressive composure and a minimum of prevarication. To borrow once again from the Watergate lexicon, he opted for the “let it all hang-out” approach – openly divulging information which, in the normal course of political events, is kept under wraps.

Bridges’ performance was nowhere near as open, or impressive, as Ross’. Over and over again he declared his former colleague’s accusations to be “baseless”. Over and over again, he referred to Ross as a “liar”, a “leaker” and a “lone wolf” guilty of “appalling behaviour”. What he refused to do, however, was respond in detail to the charges of corrupt electoral practice and political blackmail which Ross had leveled against him.

During Watergate, a refusal to respond expansively to journalists’ direct questions was termed “stonewalling”. It is not a good look. I was disappointed that the Leader of the Opposition did not opt to match Ross’ earlier demonstration of candour. Laying to rest “baseless” charges surely requires nothing more than a frank description of what happened and why. In the United Kingdom, persons charged with an offense are cautioned that “it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court.” These are wise words, which politicians facing judgement in the Court of Public Opinion would do well to remember.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Simon Bridges and his caucus will be able to “draw a line under Jami-Lee Ross” and “move on”. I suspect the future of the National Party and its leader will turn upon the quality of the “evidence” (a recorded telephone conversation) which Ross promised on Tuesday to place in the hands of the Police. Much, too, will hinge on whether Ross’ allegation that he was threatened with false accusations of sexual harassment (a threat which, he claims, caused him to experience a mental breakdown) can be verified.

If fire is detected among all this smoke, then National faces a grim future. Having voted unanimously to expel Ross from their caucus, National’s 55 remaining MPs have voluntarily roped themselves to their precariously positioned leader. If he falls, they are all at grave risk of falling with him.

Reverting, once again, to the language of Watergate: if Ross is in possession of a “smoking gun” capable of bringing down Bridges; and if his caucus refuses to cut through the rope binding them to his fate; then the possibility opens up for Ross to run for re-election in Botany not as an independent (his current intention) but as the harbinger of a new and uncorrupted conservative movement.

Paradoxically, such an eventuality might ultimately rebound to the National Party’s electoral advantage. A new conservative party, located to National’s right on the political spectrum, would be ideally positioned to supply New Zealand’s dominant right-wing party with what it so sorely lacks at the present moment: a natural coalition partner.

The problem, to date, has been how to set up such a party without the voters dismissing it as a mere National Party contrivance. Well, problem solved. Whatever else may be said about the enmity between Bridges and Ross – it certainly isn’t contrived.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 October 2018.

No Country For Dishonourable Men.

Violating The Code: In an army, honour and courage cannot be separated. An honourable officer follows the code of military conduct – even if, in doing so, he or she may incur a senior officer’s displeasure. An honourable officer will refuse to abandon that code, even when his country’s allies ask him, just this once, to look the other way.

NICKY HAGER’S latest revelations concerning the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) could not be more timely. In the year of #MeToo, he has exposed a culture of toxic masculinity extending from the top to the bottom of New Zealand’s armed forces.

Although it is clear that Hager’s North & South article merely scrapes the surface of the NZDF’s moral turpitude, the crimes he has brought to the public’s attention: breaches of the Geneva Convention, dishonesty and cover-ups, sexual assault and torture; are more than enough to force the Coalition Government’s hand. Anything less than a full Royal Commission of Inquiry into the institutional integrity of the NZDF will be seen, quite rightly, as a failure to grasp the full seriousness of his exposé.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry must, moreover, be explicitly empowered to set aside any attempt by NZDF to sweep its actions under the highly embroidered carpet of “national security”. This is precisely what has been happening in relation to the official investigation ordered by the Coalition Government into the allegations contained in Hit & Run – the book co-authored by John Stephenson and Nicky Hager, published in March 2017.

No more than the law firm Russell McVeagh, should the NZDF be permitted to position itself above and beyond the reach of either its victims or the New Zealand public generally. In fairness, it is important to note that Russell McVeagh was willing to subject itself to the inquisitor’s scrutiny. What Hager’s article makes very clear, however, is that penetrating the veil of secrecy in which the NZDF has swathed itself will not be so straightforward. Great care will have to be taken to prevent the NZDF from doing what it has done so often in the past: offer the public fine words and phrases – which change nothing.

A very heavy burden thus falls upon the shoulders of the Minister of Defence, the Hon. Ron Mark. The inclusion of the honorific is deliberate. Because nothing comes closer to the heart of the matters exposed in Hager’s article than the concept of honour. Hager understands this well. It’s why he and his co-author made Hit & Run’s subtitle: “The New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan and the meaning of honour”. As a former soldier, Mark needs no instruction in the meaning of honour. Nor does he need to be told that what Hager’s North & South article has exposed is an NZDF which has deliberately, repeatedly, and as a matter of conscious policy, dishonoured itself.

Enormous pressure will be brought to bear on Mark by the officer corps of the NZDF. He will be urged to protect the reputation and integrity of the armed services. He will be told that Hager is the sworn enemy of the brave men and women who stand ready to give their all – including their lives – for their country. That he cannot, therefore, be allowed to win. More darkly, the NZDF’s friends and allies in the “Intelligence Community” will warn Mark and his Cabinet colleague, Andrew Little, that New Zealand’s allies will look askance at any inquiry which threatens to breach the security undertakings given to and received from New Zealand as a member of the “Five Eyes Club”.

But, is it honourable to lie? To deliberately cover-up the truth? Would a man of honour, upon receiving complaints of sexual assault, repeatedly refuse to take the appropriate action? If there was the slightest possibility that a young, gay enlisted man was being subjected to unrelenting bullying and abuse, would not immediate remedial action be the only honourable course to take? And if a failure to take such action contributed in any way to that young man’s brutal torture and eventual suicide, what honourable officer, overcome with guilt and shame, would not step forward to acknowledge his part in the tragedy?

Because, in an army, honour and courage cannot be separated. An honourable officer follows the code of military conduct – even if, in doing so, he or she may incur a senior officer’s displeasure. An honourable officer will refuse to abandon that code, even when his country’s allies ask him, just this once, to look the other way. A medic does not join in the fight: lest, when his non-combatant status is most in need of respect, the recollection of two 12-13 year-old boys shot dead in defence of their village, causes our enemies to set aside their obligations under the Geneva Convention – just as we did.

Doing the honourable thing requires bravery. Any coward can behave dishonourably.

We know from the sheer number of serving and former military personnel who have found the courage to speak to journalists like Hager and Stephenson that our armed services are not without brave and honourable men and women. The great tragedy, of course, is that the very people who possess the courage to do the honourable thing are the very people whose careers in the NZDF are the most likely to be ruined. Worse still, it is clear that in the NZDF dishonourable scum rises. That, instead of a stronghold for brave and honourable soldiers, the NZDF is rapidly becoming a fiercely defended sanctuary for dishonourable cowards.

Our Minister of Defence cannot allow that situation to continue. Our soldiers, sailors and aviators are supported by the taxpayers to defend their nation from harm. That mission cannot be accomplished by people who lack the courage to conduct themselves ethically. Nor can it be fulfilled by people who are afraid to speak their minds; to take unpopular positions; to warn against the inadvisability (or, more importantly, the immorality) of a proposed course of military action. An army that is not composed of brave, upright and honourable personnel not only offers its nation’s citizens inadequate protection, it also constitutes a deadly threat to their rights and freedoms.

Dishonourable men do dishonourable things. Which is why New Zealand’s armed forces must be purged of them – immediately.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 16 October 2018.

Donald Trump And The Art Of Populist Grotesque.

Empowered By His Contradictions: Trump is a populist demagogue, and like all such demagogues he is empowered by his contradictions. This very special kind of leader is required to dance not only with the people, but also with those individuals and institutions he has promised to protect the people from.

JANE KELSEY, in a recent post, identifies some of the more important challenges posed for the Left by Donald Trump. His peculiar mix of worker-friendly policies and corporate concessions. His willingness to advance protectionism – along with a host of other ideas long-declared “verboten” by neoliberal ideologues. His brazen rejection of globalism. His reaffirmation of the citizen’s indissoluble duty of loyalty to the nation state – and vice versa.

These contradictions are impossible to reconcile with either old-school socialism, or its “Third Way” bastard offspring. They are, however, entirely consistent with the logic of  populism. Trump is a populist demagogue, and like all such demagogues he is empowered by his contradictions. This very special kind of leader is required to dance not only with the people, but also with those individuals and institutions he has promised to protect the people from.

These populist politicians typically arise in circumstances of socio-political deadlock: reconciling in their own persons the irreconcilable differences of contending social forces – and classes. What these vast conglomerations of conflicting interests cannot achieve – having lost all opportunity for strategic and/or tactical manoeuvre – is achieved in the populist’s personality. A volatile mixture of ignorance and vanity which permits the demagogue to believe in, as Lewis Carrol so memorably put it, “five impossible things before breakfast” – and then tweet about them.

To rational men and women, the demagogic personality is a standing affront to the complex art of politics. What they fail to understand is that, under the conditions which give rise to populism, rationality has very little political utility. In the populist moment: which is itself the product of antagonistic social and political forces’ inability to compromise; it is irrationality that makes the “politically impossible” possible.

Because the average man or woman finds it relatively easy to hold two contradictory notions in their heads, believing in both, they are not in the least perturbed by a leader who is constantly demonstrating his ability to do the same. Indeed, they are likely to feel more comfortable living under such a leader than they are under someone who is constantly requiring them to choose one or the other.

This celebration of ignorance, along with the constant and wilful distortion of the truth, goes hand-in-hand with the demagogue’s acceptance and promotion of irreconcilable ideas. And, once again, he or she is rewarded for doing so by the endorsement of a significant minority of the electorate. Politicians who make voters aware of their intellectual shortcomings are seldom thanked for the experience. The demagogic ignoramus, on the other hand; the master of that new school of performance art “populist grotesque”; by demonstrating his or her solidarity with the average punter’s lack of knowledge, is rewarded with their undying loyalty and affection.

None of this should strike an old Marxist like Jane Kelsey as in any way surprising. In what is indisputably his greatest piece of political journalism, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Karl Marx explains in riveting detail the way in which Napoleon’s nephew – a politician with more than a little in common with Donald Trump – set about seizing control of the French state:

“Historical tradition gave rise to the French peasants’ belief in the miracle that a man named Napoleon would bring all glory back to them. And there turned up an individual who claims to be that man because he bears the name Napoleon, in consequence of the Code Napoleon, which decrees: ‘inquiry into paternity is forbidden’ After a twenty-year vagabondage and a series of grotesque adventures the legend is consummated, and the man becomes Emperor of the French. The fixed idea of the nephew was realized because it coincided with the fixed idea of the most numerous class of the French people.”

Americans are not all that comfortable with historical tradition, but they are particularly admiring of the extremely wealthy and entertainers – both of whom they imbue with almost supernatural powers. In Donald Trump they were confronted with a wealthy entertainer who wanted to be President of the United States. In this “The Donald” went one better than “The Gipper”. Ronald Reagan was only a B-grade movie star, Trump is a billionaire. In his person the broken white American working-class glimpsed the possibility of recovery. Not simply because they judged his promise to run America the way he ran his business empire as unlikely to produce a worse result than the nightmare in which they were currently enmeshed, but because Trump held out the additional promise of telling their supposed “friends” in the Democratic Party, the despised liberal elites: “You’re fired!”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 12 October 2018.

The IPCC Report: All Of A Sudden - Nothing Happened.

Limited Vision: As a species, human-beings are superb at dealing with immediate dangers and short-to-medium term problems. Storing up food for the coming winter, setting aside enough grain for next year’s crops: thinking this way produced extraordinary human advancements. So many that, as a species, we never really saw the need, or acquired the knack, of thinking ten, twenty, a hundred years ahead.

ON TUESDAY MORNING the world should have awoken to financial chaos.* Stockmarkets around the planet should have been plummeting to levels not seen for a decade – or more.

For the markets to be in freefall, however, something truly shocking must have happened. Had the Saudi monarchy been overthrown? Had the President of the United States been assassinated?

The answer, of course, is: “No.” and “No.”

What had happened was that, on Monday afternoon, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had released its latest emissions report.

This sombre document speaks bluntly about the huge response required from the whole of humanity if the emissions targets set at Paris in 2015 are to be met. Massive and disruptive economic and social challenges loom ahead for the global community. The future of the human species (not to mention the survival of the millions of other species with which humanity shares the earth) now depends on those challenges being confronted and met.

But, as everyone reading this knows perfectly well, the world’s stockmarkets did not go into freefall on Tuesday. There were some jitters over the deepening rift between the United States and China – but these weren’t serious. Certainly, nothing approaching the financial Gotterdammerung of 2008-09 had unfolded – anywhere.

And that should tell us something about the problem of Climate Change.

Clearly, the “Masters of the Universe” – those expert buyers and sellers of financial derivatives, pork-belly futures and Apple shares – weren’t worried. The men (and they mostly are men) who drive the world’s markets up and down – had placed not the slightest weight on the IPCC’s pronouncements. They weren’t in the least bit bothered that the world’s leading climate scientists were telling them that by the 2050s (and maybe sooner) capitalism, as they understood it, would cease to be a viable system.

It’s not as if these economic movers and shakers are all Climate Change Denialists (although some of them undoubtedly are) or that they don’t believe in science. They do. In fact, market traders have a great deal in common with the climate scientists. Both groups spend their time developing models about the way the world works, and then using them to anticipate and shape future events. The big difference between the two, however, is that market traders base their predictions on the behaviour of human-beings, and climate scientists on the behaviour of the earth’s atmosphere.

The market traders know to a near certainty that nobody – or at least nobody that matters – is going to do a damn thing about the IPCC report. World leaders certainly aren’t about to hurl their respective peoples into a maelstrom of economic and social pain. The producers of coal, oil and natural gas are not going to stop sending their product to market – not while upwards of 90 percent of the world economy still runs on it. Those with money and status will continue to fly around the world to admire the scenery and soak up the cultures of faraway lands – regardless of the damage inflicted by their enormous carbon footprints.

“The American way of life is non-negotiable”, warned the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney, in 2001. Seventeen years later, the rest of the world’s newly enriched citizens feel exactly the same way about the rising living standards to which they are rapidly becoming accustomed.

“But what about the rising seas!”, laments Greenpeace. “What about the extreme weather events? The floods? The forest fires? The hurricanes?”

To the world’s environmentalists, their fellow human-beings’ blank indifference to the looming catastrophe is both baffling and infuriating. As good ecologists, however, they should not be surprised.

As a species, human-beings are superb at dealing with immediate dangers and short-to-medium term problems. Storing up food for the coming winter, setting aside enough grain for next year’s crops: thinking this way produced extraordinary human advancements. So many that, as a species, we never really saw the need, or acquired the knack, of thinking ten, twenty, a hundred years ahead.

For the past ten-thousand years, humanity’s ability to master the planet’s creatures and plunder her natural resources has brought nothing but a longer and more bounteous life. In the desiccated remnants of that legacy, future generations will curse us for taking so long to identify our species’ suicidal trajectory, and wonder why we refused to get off it – until it was too late.

* In a wonderful example of Murphy's Law, two days after I filed this column the world's markets were in turmoil. Not, I hasten to add, in response to the IPCC's report, but still. - C.T.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 12 October 2018.

A Change Of Plan.

“I’m over democracy”, she said quietly, her eyes fixed on the flames. “It’s failed. It will kill us all – if we let it.”

IT WAS LATE and the fire was dying. The wine bottle was definitely not half full. In the far corner a couple of vapers appeared to smoke. But up this end, nearest the fire, I was alone. Until she turned up.

I HAD MET HER a few months before. She’d arrived with a whole crowd of others. People from the university. Trade unionists. Journalists. Students. She didn’t look like any of them. Not much for talking. Or, at least, unwilling to break into the conversation of so many “brilliant” minds. When I asked her what she did, she tilted her head to one side, like a cat who had expected more.

“I paint.”

“You’re an artist?”

“A painter.”

“And what do you paint?”

“What I see.”

AND HERE SHE was again, bearing a dangerously full bottle of wine.

“Why don’t you build up that fire?”

“I wasn’t planning to be here much longer.” I waggled the nearly empty bottle in the firelight.

“Plans have a habit of changing”, she said, waggling hers.

I searched in the shadows for the management’s stack of firewood and returned with an armload of logs which I positioned carefully over the feathering embers.

My companion stared at the fireplace for a few minutes, watching the flames curl themselves hungrily around the dry timber. The shadows began to dance.

“I’m over democracy”, she said quietly, her eyes fixed on the flames. “It’s failed. It will kill us all – if we let it.”

“How’s that?”

“There are decisions that have to be made that won’t be made if majorities composed of selfish and ignorant people continue to dictate policy.”

“Such as?”

“Don’t you come over all Socratic with me, I’m not in the mood. You know full well what sort of decisions need to be made if the planet’s to survive. I read your stuff. You get it.”

“You’re talking about climate change.”

“Of course. But not just climate change. You and I both know that without a single global government, backed by sufficient armed force to quell any and all dissent, the human species, and most of the other species inhabiting this planet, are doomed. You also understand that such a government cannot possibly be democratic. Which is why I began this conversation by saying that I’m over democracy. Because, if it isn’t over, we are.”

I took a long sip of wine and set my glass down softly on the table.

“You realise that the only nation state with sufficient military power to overawe all the other nation-states on the planet is the United States of America. So, what you’re actually calling for is a Pax Americana.”

“Doesn’t have to be America. What if the Chinese wiped out the West with a deadly virus genetically-engineered to kill only kwailo – round eyes?”

“Leaving the planet to Asians and Africans?”

“Poetic justice – wouldn’t you say?”

“Maybe. But what happens when those Asians and Africans begin to assert their right to participate in this new planetary government? What do the masters of China’s new global empire do then?”

“What the Americans should have done at the end of World War II, when they alone possessed the atomic bomb. They simply inform the rest of the world that unless it submits entirely to their benign guidance, then their super-weapon will be deployed in a manner guaranteed to secure compliance. Chinese rule. Or, a virus genetically engineered just for you is released. That will be the choice.”

I stared into the bright conflagration filling the fireplace. The heat beat against both our faces. The wine was tepid on my tongue.

“You’re happy to have the Chinese in charge of the global conservation of wildlife?”

“Not entirely. No. But the USA had its chance to rule the planet; to become its enlightened global despot; and it let the moment pass. All the peoples it could have freed from hunger and superstition. All the corrupt feudal despots and obscurantist priests it could have deposed. All of the pent-up creative energy it could have released.

“A world of workers and teachers, artists and scientists. A world in which women were free and equal. A world in which skin colour was irrelevant.

“That was the only sort of world that could possibly have made the loss of 75 million human-beings in World War II meaningful. The only outcome that could have atoned for all that human smoke. But, was that the sort of world the Americans made? Like hell it was! All the Americans were interested in making was money!”

“So, you’d prefer to see the planet governed the way the Baathists governed Iraq? Free health care. Free and secular education – especially for women. Homes and jobs for everyone. But woe betide the brave soul who criticises the government. Or, even worse, Saddam!”

“Ah, yes, Iraq. Where everyone is so much better off for being able to stuff a piece of paper in a ballot-box. The free health care and education are gone. The housing projects are all burnt to the ground or blown to smithereens. Unemployment is rife. Women are second-class citizens. Gays are murdered. But, oh my goodness, who cares about the loss of all of those inconsequential things when you have been given the right to vote!”

She took an heroic gulp of wine and refilled both our glasses.

“To the death of democracy!”, she cried, raising her glass.

“Or, to more of it.”, I answered softly, raising my own glass reluctantly to hers.

We both drank deeply.

The blazing logs collapsed in on themselves with a shower of sparks. The stars shone fitfully through the woodsmoke billowing out of the squat concrete chimney. It reminded me of something, but I’m damned if I can remember what it was.

This short story was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 11 October 2018.

Petrol Pump Politics.

Unaffordable?  Labour supporters should brace themselves for a National Party-driven social media campaign built around the slogan: “At $2.40 a litre, we can’t afford Jacinda.” Re-cycled though this catch-phrase may be, for Kiwis on low incomes paying far too much for gas it’s likely to have a catchy ring to it. (And anyone on the Labour team thinking about telling these folk to “go electric” should, perhaps, recall the effect on the breadless masses of the thoughtless suggestion that they should consider eating cake!)

“AT A DOLLAR a gallon we can’t afford Rowling.” Given his latest media release (8/10/18)  “Government Pricing Kiwis Out Of Their Cars”, someone’s obviously been schooling up young Simon Bridges on the way Rob Muldoon smashed Labour in 1975.

[Bill Rowling, for all you millennials out there, was the Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand from September 1974 until December 1975, and a gallon (4.5 litres) was the unit of measure at the petrol pump. So, yes, you’re right, the motorists of 1975 paid roughly a tenth of what we pay today to fill up our tanks! – C.T.]

But even back when petrol was only a dollar a gallon, Kiwi motorists were hurting. Ever since the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, during which Egypt and Syria came within an ace of destroying the State of Israel, the price of oil had soared. Saudi Arabia and the other Arab oil-exporters had imposed an embargo on the USA and its allies for resupplying the Israelis with arms and ammunition. The resulting price-hikes delivered a stunning blow to the Western economy. The so-called “Oil Shocks” of 1973-79 marked the end of the Great Post-War Boom. Almost overnight, New Zealanders – along with just about everyone else in the Western World – lost confidence in the future. Even worse, they began casting about for someone to blame.

Hence, the National Party’s propaganda blaming soaring oil prices on Bill Rowling. Of course, anybody who had been following current affairs over the previous two years knew perfectly well that National was peddling what today we would call “fake news”. But, those weren’t the people Muldoon was after. The voters he was seeking to enlist alongside National’s habitual supporters were the disoriented, frustrated and just flat-out angry working-class Kiwis who were struggling to work out what had all-of-a-sudden gone wrong with their world.

Like the former Democratic Party supporters backing Trump in 2016, these bewildered Labour voters found it increasingly difficult to identify with “their” party. Labour was supposed to stand for “the working man” and his values, but now, following the tragic death of that quintessential working-class battler, “Big Norm” Kirk in August 1974, the party was led by a training-college lecturer. What’s more, he and his colleagues were advancing policies which seemed to have more in common with the demands of the long-haired hippies and protesters in the streets than they did with the “ordinary Kiwi joker” and his concerns. Not the least of these being the soaring price of petrol.

Muldoon and his campaign advisers were only too aware of the culture war that was brewing in the Labour Party and they couldn’t wait to exploit it.

Over the course of the 1960s and 70s, Labour’s membership had dwindled. The party branches were peopled predominantly by people who may have been young and radical in the 1930s and 40s but who were now very settled in their ways – and views – which tended towards the socially conservative. Many Labour stalwarts were Roman Catholics, Baptists and Salvation Army members. They bitterly resented the small but active groups of liberals and radicals who had begun drifting into Labour from 1969 onwards. They were seen as middle-class carpet-baggers without the slightest idea of what it meant to be a working-class Kiwi.

These were the people for whom National’s election slogan, “New Zealand the way YOU want it”, was created. The people who had begun to feel neglected, misunderstood and even a little bit despised by the people at the top of the Labour Party – and their intellectual friends. Some of the more prominent of these had banded together in the group called “Citizens for Rowling”. In the ears of a great many Kiwis, that sounded a lot more like “Citizens Against Muldoon”.

It was a huge strategic error on the part of Labour’s hifalutin supporters. Instead of turning people against the pugnacious National leader, it drew them towards him. Just as liberal America’s hatred of Trump only served to entrench his support among aggrieved Americans without college degrees or six-figure salaries, Labour’s near-obsession with Rob Muldoon proved to be one of the key factors in the growth of “Rob’s Mob”. This was the peculiar assemblage of “ordinary blokes and blokesses” for whom Muldoon felt more like a Labour leader than the thoroughly decent but doggedly uninspiring Rowling.

Forty years on, Labour supporters should brace themselves for a National Party-driven social media campaign built around the slogan: “At $2.40 a litre, we can’t afford Jacinda.” Second-hand though it may be, it’s bound to acquire some measure of political purchase. How could it not when, for Kiwis on low incomes, $2.40 a litre for gas is just one more burden for them to bear. (And anyone on the Labour team thinking about telling these folk to “go electric” should, perhaps, recall the effect on the breadless masses of the thoughtless suggestion that they should consider eating cake!)

National’s big problem is that Simon Bridges is not Rob Muldoon. Bridges simply does not possess Muldoon’s ability to inspire both confidence and hope, fear and dread. Nor is Jacinda Ardern even remotely like Bill Rowling. The latter always came across as the person for whom the saying “nice guys finish last” was invented. And although stardust was intermittently available to politicians back in 1975, the historical record makes it very clear that nobody ever got so much as a speck of it to Bill.

About the only thing Bridges has got going for him is that, unlike the 1973-79 oil shocks, the steady rise in the price of petrol over the period 2018-2021 cannot be sheeted home to greedy Arab oil magnates. This time, a large measure of it is Labour’s own work.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 9 October 2018.