Ice-Cream Dreams.

Sweet Surrender: The end-of-the-alphabet generations looked at the Baby-Boomers and felt not pity, but a contemptuous, envy-driven rage. It was as if the luckiest generation in human history had invited them into the wondrous ice-cream emporium it had inherited from its parents, only to tape their mouths shut at the door, and continue scoffing. 

HOW WILL the generations who came after the Baby Boomers be remembered? Every generation has a “signature”: a collection of ideas and aspirations that renders it instantly recognisable to the scholars and artists whose job it is to make sense of the past. Certainly, that is the case with the Baby Boom Generation. One has only to write a list of words and expressions: Beatnik, folk-singer, anti-war protester, New Leftist, civil-rights worker, feminist, acid rock, hippy, commune, Woodstock, New-Ager, environmentalist; and immediately, images, sounds, and a colourful cascade of defining historical moments conjure-up the generation born between 1946 and 1965 like a gaudy pantomime demon.

It is out of these vivid historical moments that the ideas and aspirations of Baby Boomers may be distilled. Like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle they fit together to form a complex generational portrait. The face we see bears the imprint of idealism and hedonism; rebelliousness and expediency; creativity and venality. The Baby Boomers may have set out to do good, but they settled for doing well. They may have been brave, but they weren’t stupid. They longed to be free, but drew the line at being poor.

Mick Jagger (who, like just about all of the cultural icons who enthralled and inspired the Baby Boom generation, is not a Boomer) happily adopted the persona of a street-fighting man, but fought the taxman harder. “Money, it’s a hit”, declared Pink Floyd, “don’t give me that do-goody-good bullshit.” Bob Dylan warned his young followers that “Up on Housing Project Hill/It’s either fortune or fame/You must pick one or the other/Though neither of them are to be what they claim.”

There has always been something disconcertingly sly about the Boomers. Sly, and a just a little bit cynical. The Who famously tipped their hat to ‘The Revolution’, only to bring their fans crashing back down to earth with that immortal sign-off: “Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss.” It was as if the Boomers, like the Russians, were saying: “Trust – but verify.”

So, what about the Generations that followed the Boomers? What about Generations X, Y and Z? What distinguishes these unfortunate souls, historically, is that, unlike the Boomers, they were not born into an age of plenty and limitless horizons, but into a world of reduced circumstances and abandoned dreams. The Boomers looked at their parents and felt mostly pity. A worldwide economic depression, followed by a world war, had created a generation whose over-riding desire was for security. Work hard, keep your nose clean, don’t rock the boat, and, most of all, be wary of people peddling big ideas – because that way lies trouble! They got their security, bless ‘em, but only at the price of enjoying it in a cramped and unadventurous society. Poor bastards!

The end-of-the-alphabet generations looked at the Boomers and felt not pity, but a contemptuous, envy-driven rage. It was as if the luckiest generation in human history had invited them into the wondrous ice-cream emporium it had inherited from the Greatest Generation, only to tape their mouths shut at the door, and continue scoffing. They were sorry, they said, observing the resentment in the younger generations’ eyes, but there just wasn’t enough for everybody. When you’re older, the Boomers promised, ice-cream dribbling down their double-chins, you will understand.

In the meantime, however, Generations X,Y, and Z have created a culture negatively defined by the cynical idealism and hedonistic excesses of the Boomers. If the civil-rights workers and the feminists wanted equality; if the New Left of the 1960s preached participatory democracy; and if the hippies worshipped freedom; then the inheritors of these big Boomer ideas would impose them without debate. When they got their hands on power, Gen-X, Y and Z were fiercely determined to actually do the things that the Boomers only talked, and sang, and marched about.

When it came to politics, arts and culture, bombastic White men would have to step back for people of colour, women and the rainbow community. It was their turn now to strut and fret upon the stages of the world. The prophets and peacocks, whose singular political and artistic voices defined the 1960s and 70s, were creatively superseded by the mad-cap kaleidoscope of social media, and the incessant buzzing of innumerable Spotified bees. So many masters, so few masterpieces.

But what about the ice-cream? Who got the ice-cream? It is in relation to economic and social policy that the awful legacy of the Baby Boomers is most plainly in evidence. Because Generations X, Y and Z are not socialists – not even in their dreams. The neoliberals (who, like most of the Boomers’ cultural icons, were not Boomers themselves) may have seduced the Baby Boom Generation (Boomers are easily seduced!) but they convinced the generations that followed them. Ice-cream is for the best – not the rest. Work hard, keep your nose clean, don’t challenge the ideological powers-that-be, and you, too, will be invited to dine at the big emporium – and this time your mouth will not be taped shut.

This then will be the signature of the generations that followed the Boomers. Idealistic authoritarians. Obedient revolutionaries. Incorruptible puritans. Unflinching meritocrats. They will be remembered as the generations who, more than anything, wanted to have the Boomers’ ice-cream – and eat it too.

May God forgive us.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 31 August 2021.

Discordant Realities.

When Reality Goes West: New Zealanders unrepresented by the Mayor of Westland, Bruce Smith, might struggle to accept the proposition that their fellow citizens are kept alive by businesspeople rather than health professionals.

THERE ARE MOMENTS when the existence of many New Zealands, as opposed to just one, becomes undeniable. The presence of these many, often discordant communities, all claiming to represent the “real” New Zealand has seldom been made plainer than during Saturday morning’s (28/8/21) riveting interview between Newshub Nation’s, Simon Shepherd, and the Mayor of Westland, Bruce Smith.

“Discordant” is an altogether inadequate adjective to describe the forthrightly delivered views of the Westland Mayor. What the viewers heard was a description of a world radically at odds with the one inhabited by New Zealanders living in the major urban centres. Reality, as understood by these city-dwellers, was given short shrift by Bruce Smith. His world, the world of the West Coast, is “real” in a way he clearly believes the big cities are not. It was the Mayor’s certainty, and the confidence it imparted to his pronouncements, that made the interview so compelling.

And what pronouncements they were:

“It’s a bit frustrating you know, to have Wellington, with say 14 active cases, and the South Island with none, and for us all to be at the same level doesn’t make a lot of sense to me”, Smith told Shepherd. Adding for good measure: “I have to say my thoughts last night were with the business community. We see lots on TV and it’s always health professionals – we don’t see our business community that keeps us alive. My thoughts are with them.”

The inference here is that unless official guidance makes sense to the Mayor of Westland and, presumably, to the no-nonsense people who elected him, then a very good prima facie case exists for rejecting it.

A politician less immersed in his own narrative would probably have left it at that. After all, the Government makes no secret of the fact that it is guided by “the science”. It’s a pretty big call for a lay person – even one referred to as “Your Worship” – to dismiss expert scientific advice as not making a lot of sense.

But the Mayor pressed on, declaring that his thoughts were with “our business community”. How much better it would be, he inferred, if instead of health professionals clogging up the airwaves, New Zealanders were allowed to hear the views of businesspeople – the group that “keeps us alive”. Those same New Zealanders, or, at least, a good portion of them, might have a little difficulty accepting the proposition that their fellow citizens are kept alive by businesspeople rather than health professionals. What exactly was he saying?

Well, Mayor Smith was almost certainly expressing sentiments not dissimilar to those printed on placards during last month’s “Groundswell” protests. “No Farmers, No Food” declared the cockies who paraded their tractors into the provincial towns and major cities of New Zealand. This rather brutal example of rural reductionism was intended to remind the sort of townie who thinks milk comes from the supermarket, that, ultimately, everything that keeps humanity alive is derived from the land – and the people who bring forth its bounty. The sub-text being: piss-off the nation’s farmers at your peril!

Whether Mayor Smith’s claim that the “business community” enjoys a life-sustaining status comparable to the people who grow our food isn’t quite so incontestable. After all, agriculture preceded capitalism by several millennia. What’s more, the specialisation that gave rise to artisanal production and trade – “business” if you like – was inconceivable without the food surpluses produced by farmers. Never forgetting that makers need users, and sellers buyers, a fact that confirms the indisputably social character of commerce.

So, if it is true that the “business community” keeps “us” alive, then, equally, it is true that without “us”: the people who work in the factories, offices and shops; the people who drive the trucks and trains; the people who operate the warehouses and stand for hours at the supermarket checkouts; the users, buyers and consumers of the nation’s production; the business community would perish.

Hence the wage subsidy offered by the Government. Hence all the other measures to keep the workforce safe and reduce to a minimum the length of time the nation and its regions are kept in lockdown. A point the Newshub Nation’s presenter attempted to drive home to the Westland local government leader. But, Mayor Smith wasn’t having a bar of it. Those who advocated the Elimination Strategy that had kept New Zealand’s Covid-19 death-toll to a world-beating 26, were not to be trusted:

“I think the people who say that are all being paid by the state. They get their pay every Thursday, doesn’t make a lot of difference to them. Coming out into the real world, you’ll find it’s totally different.”

This was the point in the interview when it became clear just how many New Zealands there are out there – and just how hostile some of those New Zealands are to the rest of us. Listening to Mayor Smith unleash on the likes of Ashley Bloomfield, Michael Baker, Sir David Skegg, Shaun Hendy – and all those other New Zealanders “paid by the state”, one was reminded of just how easy it is for people to surrender to the siren-songs of sectoral chauvinism. It requires an effort of imagination to grasp just how interdependent human communities are; to understand that epidemiologists paid for by the state are playing a vital role in making sure that the small-scale, private tourist operator in Westland gets back to business in the shortest possible time.

For Mayor Smith, however, a more “balanced” response is required from the Government. The mix between “our economy and our health”, he suggested, needs a course correction. The Government was too bound up with the threat to people’s health. Insufficient attention was being paid to the business community. The public’s wellbeing was being protected at their expense.

Once again Mayor Smith appealed to a “reality” dangerously divergent from any condition recognisable to science:

“The reality is Covid is with us. It’s no different to polio back in my grandparents’ days. The only way that we can fix it is we’ve got to be vaccinated. I’ve encouraged everybody to get vaccinated, but even then it’s still going to come in. It’ll come in from overseas. It’s part of our lives from here on in and we need to adapt.”

When Simon Shepherd objected that those who talked about “living with the virus” were leaving unspoken the epidemiological certainty that hundreds – perhaps thousands – would be “dying of the virus”, Mayor Smith responded with the observation: “There’s lots of people who have different opinions, different agendas”.

It is against this New Zealand that all the other New Zealand’s must, for their own safety, unite. The New Zealand that rejects “the science” as nothing more than someone’s “opinion”, or, worse still, someone’s “agenda”. The New Zealand in which only those inhabiting the “bubble” of business have any interests worthy of protection. The New Zealand in which all those unfortunate enough to exist outside the “real world” of “our business community” are reduced to mere means to its ends. The New Zealand in which life continues only for so long as there are profits to be made and unavoidable losses to be accepted without complaint. The New Zealand in which no real Kiwi would wish to be found dead – or allowed to die.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 30 August 2021.

“No Jab, No Job!” – Preventing The Injury Of All By One

Intramuscular Solidarity: A trade union movement dominated by the working-class wouldn’t have a bar of all this anti-vax nonsense. The idea that some ignorant believer in conspiracy theories peddled by right-wing nutters on the Internet should be allowed to refuse vaccination – putting countless other Kiwis at risk – would strike them as complete bullshit. A working-class-led trade union movement would have been in the ear of  Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood for weeks, urging him to institute a “No Jab, No Job!” policy ASAP.

ALL TRADE UNIONISTS are familiar with the slogan: “An injury to one is an injury to all.” It encapsulates the principle of solidarity and signals the determination of the collective not to be picked-off one-by-one. Employers who are not brought up sharply by their employees’ union for harming one of its members, will very soon feel emboldened to harm them all. Much more challenging, from the union’s point-of-view is how to guard against the behaviour of a single worker imperiling the health and safety of their co-workers. How to prevent the injury of all by one.

It might be expected that, with the Delta Variant of the Covid-19 virus rampaging through Auckland, and mass vaccination being presented as the most important escape-route from the pandemic, the institutions dedicated to the protection of workers’ health and safety would be leading the charge against those who refuse to acknowledge the obligations of social solidarity. Why then, are the trade unions not at the forefront of a “No Jab, No Job!” movement? In the midst of a pandemic, a refusal to be vaccinated (without medical justification) is surely the crowning example of individual indifference to the welfare of the whole. Is it not the duty of the trade unions to take a resolute stand against such anti-social selfishness?

In the context of a Labour Government with an absolute parliamentary majority, is it not, similarly, the duty of the Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety, Michael Wood, to do all within his power to ensure that the obligations of solidarity are backed-up by the full force of the law? If, upon inquiry, that same Minister discovered that employers presenting their employees with the “No Jab, No Job!” alternative would almost certainly be acting unlawfully, then, surely, his next step would be to arrange for the law to be changed? After all, this is exactly what was done to ensure that “border workers” were all fully vaccinated. If “No Jab, No Job!” was good enough for customs officers and stevedores, then why not for every other group of New Zealand workers?

Wood was unable to provide a clear answer to questions such as these when he appeared (by Zoom) before the relevant parliamentary select committee. A superb chance to cast himself in the role of a hard-nosed, no-nonsense, champion of the working-class was squandered. Instead Wood chose to present himself as the inconsistent and mealy-mouthed champion of, well, God knows what.

The employers of workers already on the payroll, he informed the committee, could not say “No Jab, No Job!”, but, it would be perfectly okay for them to demand it of their next job applicant as a condition of employment. What a principled stand! Almost as principled as dodging the questions relating to the employers’ legal obligation to provide a safe and healthy work environment for their employees. Isn’t New Zealand lucky to have a Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety who is willing to place the rights of anti-vaxxers ahead of the rights of everyone else in the workplace – and the country?

Wood’s failure is emblematic of the more general failure of the entire New Zealand Left. To prevent certain classes of citizens from feeling hurt or offended by the free speech of their fellow citizens, leftists are all in favour of breaching the Bill of Rights Act and jailing “hate speakers” for three years. Those same “leftists” would not, however, dream of overruling the Bill of Rights Act’s prohibition against forcing medical procedures upon citizens – even at the cost of undermining the nation’s collective effort to defeat the Covid-19 Pandemic.

A trade union movement dominated by the working-class wouldn’t have a bar of this sort of “leftism”. The idea that some ignorant believer in conspiracy theories peddled by right-wing nutters on the Internet should be allowed to refuse vaccination – putting countless other Kiwis at risk – would strike them as complete bullshit. A working-class-led trade union movement would have been in the ear of Michael Wood for weeks, urging him to institute a “No Jab, No Job!” policy ASAP.

Sadly, however, New Zealand’s trade union movement isn’t led by the working-class (of which fewer than 10 percent now belong to a trade union) but by a council dominated by middle-class public servants of every description. A surprising number of these regard the right to refuse having their bodies polluted by injections of unwanted fluids as sacred, and not to be overruled for any reason – not even to preserve the health, safety, livelihoods, and lives, of their fellow citizens.

The idea that there are circumstances (fortunately rare) in which the safety of all might require the injury (but only to the pocket) of one, would strike them as barbaric. Unless, of course, the “one” was engaging in Hate Speech!

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 27 August 2021.

Mission Impossible?

Will This Country Self-Destruct? “So more than half of our mission is already accomplished! Nothing beats neoliberalism for dissolving the bonds of community and leaving in their place a collection of selfish individuals. And nothing beats multiculturalism and the creation of isolated ethnic enclaves for fostering economic and cultural division.”

HOW WOULD YOU set about unmaking a country? If you were in the same position as “Mr Phelps”, listening to a tape-recorded message at the beginning of every episode of the 1960s TV series Mission Impossible, and this was your appointed task, how would you do it?

The first question asked of your “Impossible Missions Force” is straightforward enough: “How old and how strong is this state?”

The answer supplied does not fill you with confidence that this mission will be easy.

“It’s not that old, but it’s pretty strong. In fact, it’s said to be the oldest continuously functioning democracy on earth. It was the first to enfranchise its indigenous people. The first to enfranchise its women. And among the first to enfranchise all of its men.”

Seeing your shoulders sag, another member of the team pipes up with the information that for many years the country was referred to as “the social laboratory of the world”. Its progressive legislation was admired and copied around the globe.

“Fantastic!” you exclaim. “I suppose the next thing you’ll tell me is that the place boasts a homogeneous population, is unblemished by extremes of wealth and poverty, guarantees every person a house and a job, along with health care and education, all provided free of charge by the state.”

You notice immediately that your team has brightened. With obvious relief, the same bright spark replies:

“Now, if you had asked that question 50 years ago, the answer to just about all of your questions would have been Yes. From the mid-1980s on, however, two crucial decisions have produced a profound series of changes in this nation. The first was the decision to open up its economy to the full force of globalisation by implementing a series of extremely radical neoliberal reforms. The second, much less well known, was to dramatically re-orient the country’s immigration policy. Rather than continue with a regime dedicated to preserving the ethnic and cultural status quo, the government of the day opted to transform the country into a multi-ethnic and multicultural society.”

“Brilliant!”, you exclaim – this time without the slightest trace of irony. “So more than half of our mission is already accomplished! Nothing beats neoliberalism for dissolving the bonds of community and leaving in their place a collection of selfish individuals. And nothing beats multiculturalism and the creation of isolated ethnic enclaves for fostering economic and cultural division.”

“It gets better”, another team member responds. “Just before the introduction of neoliberalism and multiculturalism, the indigenous people, whose lands were taken to provide the economic foundation for the colonial society which took off rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century, embarked on a cultural and political renaissance, using as their battering-ram a hitherto ignored treaty negotiated more than a century earlier to facilitate the colonisation process.”

“Perfect!” You exclaim, slamming your right fist into the palm of your left hand. “And, let me guess, the left-wing intelligentsia bought the whole kit and caboodle?”

“Well, yes, that goes without saying,” says the bright spark. “What makes this country different, however, is that the anti-colonial ideology of the indigenous people has been taken up with bewildering speed by the judiciary, the civil service, the universities, large numbers of the country’s leading artists and writers, the news media, and most of the political class. The formerly moribund treaty is now officially recognised as the nation’s ‘founding document’ – guaranteeing ‘partnership’. A recent report, presented to the incumbent government by a collection of scholars, even goes so far as to recommend a revolutionary restructuring of the state. A new constitution of ‘co-governance’ is proposed, involving the indigenous people and the descendants of the original colonisers ruling together.”

You study the faces of your Impossible Missions Force.

“And the voters have simply gone along with this? Everybody in the country is just deliriously happy with the idea of sharing power with the people their ancestors conquered way back in the nineteenth century? Happy, too, presumably, to return all the land and resources they stole to construct – what did you call it? – ‘the social laboratory of the world’?”

“Actually,” murmurs the bright spark, “the elites’ grand plan hasn’t been publicly disclosed yet.”

“Jeez!”, you exclaim. “This mission just went from being ‘impossible’ to a walk-in-the-park! All we have to do is tell them!”

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 27 August 2021.

A Disturbing Preoccupation: Why the Right-Wing Media Hates Jacinda’s Covid Elimination Strategy.

Captain of The Life Star: A great many of Jacinda Ardern’s right-wing opponents seem to be inspired by a sexist antipathy towards a young, female prime minister, from a tiny and powerless country, who has outperformed (by a wide margin) the male leaders of much larger and more powerful nations. In doing so, Ardern has produced a disturbance in the conservative “Force” that makes them shudder: as if an entire political ideology suddenly cried out in indignation and was rudely silenced. 

THERE IS SOMETHING DECIDEDLY SINISTER about the way the right-wing media is pursuing the “elimination strategy is madness” argument so doggedly. Yes, it’s always interesting to discover what people are saying about New Zealand overseas, but the NZ Herald re-publishing anti-Jacinda Ardern editorials from the Daily Telegraph – mouthpiece of the British Conservative Party – points to an altogether more disturbing preoccupation. These misgivings are only reinforced when one considers the near unanimous hostility directed towards the Prime Minister and her government by New Zealand’s talk-back hosts.

At the most superficial level, one could argue that the right-wing media’s editorial hostility is generated almost entirely by bottom-line anxieties. With most of its advertising revenue generated by realtors, retailers, the hospitality industry and tourist operators, the big media outlets must experience significant financial pain whenever New Zealand and/or its most important economic hub, Auckland, goes into lockdown. The pressure brought to bear on media bosses to get the doors open for their advertisers’ paying customers is easily imagined.

More than anything else, commercial enterprises hate surprises. Certainty and predictability are what they need to go on generating profits for their shareholders. The sudden appearance of Covid-19 in the community, followed by lockdowns of a severity to make the eyes of overseas commentators water, bring with them consequences that are costly, disruptive and generally bad for business. Unsurprisingly, a significant fraction of the business community would very much prefer that Covid-19 was responded to in a fashion less injurious to their financial health.

Those business leaders less bound by the short-term selfishness of their colleagues take a more responsible position. They understand how very bad it looks for businesspeople to convey the impression that they care a great deal less about people getting very ill, and quite possibly dying, than they do about making money. They also know that New Zealand’s style of short, sharp, uncompromising lockdowns protect the economic interests of the business community a whole lot more effectively than the loose, dangerously porous, lockdowns on display in the UK, the USA, and across the Tasman in Australia.

Not that anything as mundane as “the facts of the matter” have ever slowed the Government’s critics down. Neither New Zealand’s extraordinary success in keeping the number of Covid-19 deaths below 30, nor the powerful bounce-back of its economy, cuts any ice with the “elimination strategy is madness” brigade. Indeed, the obvious success of Jacinda Ardern’s elimination strategy only seems to make them madder.

So what is it? What drives Ardern’s critics so crazy?

Sadly, a great many of her right-wing opponents seem to be inspired by nothing more edifying than sexist antipathy towards a young, female prime minister, from a tiny and powerless country at the bottom of the world, who has outperformed (by a wide margin) the male leaders of much larger and more powerful nations. Something about this picture is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Young women are supposed to defer to the “big dogs” of the international community – not show them up. Ardern has produced a disturbance in the conservative “Force” that makes them shudder: as if an entire political ideology suddenly cried out in indignation and was rudely silenced. They fear something terrible is going on.

And, in a way, they’re right. From the perspective of those responsible for creating a world in which the interests of business take precedence over even the ordinary person’s right to stay safe and well (some might say especially over the ordinary person’s right to stay safe and well) the sight of a young, female prime minister putting the interests of ordinary people first is a terrible thing. Because Jacinda Ardern’s “kindness” doesn’t just work a little bit, it works way beyond neoliberalism’s capacity to supply a credible explanation.

Take Sweden, for example. For a while it was the “who needs lockdowns?” brigade’s poster child. But Sweden, with just twice the population of New Zealand, racked-up a horrifying 14,000+ Covid fatalities. Had Ardern followed the Swedish prime minister’s example, her country would have sustained upwards of 7,000 deaths. By following its leader’s strict elimination strategy, however, New Zealand’s “Team of Five Million” kept their country’s Covid death toll to 26.

On the Right, however, this sort of science-guided, humanitarian response to Covid-19 just doesn’t compute. Conservatives around the world react by accusing Ardern of political cowardice. She simply doesn’t have the balls to adopt a strategy that will lead directly to hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths. Look at the Brits; look at the Yanks; they had the courage to condemn tens-of-thousands of their people to early and unnecessary deaths; they know that “you can’t live in a cave forever”; that, in the end, the economy must come first.

This is the upside-down world towards which the right-wing media’s wayward editorial decisions are dragging its readers, viewers and listeners. A world in which saving New Zealanders’ lives is the wrong thing to do. A world where “freedom” means nothing more than being able to go shopping wherever and whenever you want – without a mask.

That the big media companies haven’t quite arrived there yet is because there are still some executives who understand that, ultimately, the news media relies on ordinary people to read its copy and listen to its broadcasters’ opinions. Ordinary people who, if right-wing editors and producers ever get around to actually swallowing the insanity-inducing Kool-Aid swishing about in their mouths, will be offered-up to deranged conservatives (and the advertisers) as unavoidable human sacrifices to the Moloch god of the free market.

The only elimination strategy these right-wing media bosses will ever wholeheartedly support.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 26 August 2021.

Labour Must Uphold The Rule Of Law

The Equal Application Of The Laws: There is only so much a judicial system, or any other important part of the state apparatus, will stand before it moves to defend itself. Judges and lawyers cannot be expected to turn a blind eye to egregious breaches of legal norms. As Officers of the Court, it is their sworn duty to uphold the law. They cannot be asked to treat one category of citizen better or worse than another, nor are they permitted to stand back and see injustice done without taking steps to prevent it.

WHEN DAILY BLOG Editor, Martyn Bradbury, says Labour’s lucky the country’s currently distracted by the Covid-19 Delta Variant, he’s right. Were New Zealand safe and out of Lockdown, it would be in the midst of a dangerously divisive row about Oranga Tamariki, the Judiciary, Race, and the Rule of Law.

Given that the matters at the heart of this controversy are sub judice (i.e. under the authority of the court) I shall forbear from discussing the particular case in question. What must be discussed, however, is the direction in which Māori-Pakeha relations are travelling, and exactly what it would take for this government to intervene.

There is only so much a judicial system, or any other important part of the state apparatus, will stand before it moves to defend itself. Judges and lawyers cannot be expected to turn a blind eye to egregious breaches of legal norms. As Officers of the Court, it is their sworn duty to uphold the law. They cannot be asked to treat one category of citizen better or worse than another, nor are they permitted to stand back and see injustice done without taking steps to prevent it.

Attempts to racialise New Zealand’s courts are bound to provoke significant public disquiet. So, too, will any attempt by the Crown to influence the outcome of trials, or civil cases, by exerting unwarranted pressure on judicial officers. Any government made aware of such behaviour has a duty to act decisively to uphold the Rule of Law. Those responsible must be held to account for their actions.

Though the mere mention of the He Puapua Report will elicit the usual protests from the usual suspects, the events highlighted by The Daily Blog’s editor raise vital issues about what inferences the Crown is allowing and/or encouraging Māori to draw from its recommendations.

Any failure to uphold the equal application of the laws, on the grounds that a separate Māori justice system will soon replace the long-established principle of “one law for all”, will be taken as proof that this government intends to change profoundly the constitutional and judicial arrangements of the New Zealand state.

Such a fundamental change to the manner in which justice is administered in New Zealand, especially one predicated on ethnic and cultural considerations, could have no legitimacy without having first secured the endorsement, by way of referendum, of a majority of New Zealand citizens.

To suggest that the articles of the Treaty of Waitangi in some way obviate the Crown’s need to obtain the consent of the New Zealand electorate before changing the way justice is administered, and by whom, is tantamount to suggesting that the Treaty legally entitles the Crown to extinguish democracy in the Realm of New Zealand without reference to its citizens and in defiance of its laws.

Such action would constitute a declaration of war upon the people of this country. Any government participating in such an open attack on the civil and political rights of its citizens would immediately identify itself as their enemy, and forfeit all claims to their continuing loyalty. It would be responsible for unleashing civil war upon New Zealand.

The Labour Government’s silence on these matters is indefensible. A clear statement of its determination to uphold the Rule of Law and protect the democratic rights of all New Zealanders is long overdue.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 24 August 2021.

Sir Michael Cullen: 1945-2021

Labour Saver? Thanks to Michael Cullen’s clever alchemy, the base metals of neoliberalism could be transmuted into the glittering gold of “modernisation”; and the grim squares of betrayal transformed into happy circles of fulfilment.

SIR MICHAEL CULLEN’S DEATH leaves Helen Clark as the sole remaining adult in Labour’s room. While he lived, Cullen’s influence on the present government was considerable. He was one of the few Boomers this Gen-X government listened to with genuine respect. Was that because Cullen took care to reassure his protégé, Finance Minister Grant Robertson, that the Labour-led Government’s economic settings were more-or-less correct? Undoubtedly that helped, but so did Cullen’s formidable intellect, his sense of humour, and his undoubted possession of that increasingly rare commodity – political wisdom.

Cullen called his recently published memoir Labour Saving. The title is instructive. Like so many Labour Party members confronted with the unrelenting radicalism of “Rogernomics”, Cullen had to decide how best to preserve the political party responsible for improving the lives of so many New Zealanders. Unlike Jim Anderton and his followers, he was convinced that the humanitarian essence of the Labour Party could be safeguarded without jettisoning Roger Douglas’s neoliberal programme.

It was a conviction he shared with Helen Clark, and without it their formidable political partnership would have been impossible. It is no small part of his legacy that, alongside Clark, he was successful in convincing both Labour’s remaining members, and an increasing number of centre-left voters, that the “reforms of the 1980s” were compatible with Labour’s core values. What historians will be called upon to decide is whether Clark-Cullen’s social-democratic rhetoric was ultimately reflected in Clark-Cullen’s on-the-ground achievements.

What cannot be disputed is Cullen’s immense usefulness to the Lange-Douglas Government as the Rogernomics “revolution” was passing through its early critical phases. Nowhere was this usefulness more evident than in the internal party debate over the introduction of the all-important Goods and Services Tax. Without the revenue collected by GST, the dramatic cuts in personal income tax would not have been possible. These reductions were absolutely essential if Rogernomics was to be accepted and, more importantly, supported by the New Zealand middle-class.

It was Cullen’s job to defuse the widespread opposition to the clearly regressive GST that was growing within the Labour Party. He did this by moving an amendment to any remits opposing GST. The amendment appeared to endorse the opposition to GST unless the inevitable increase in the cost-of-living of low-paid workers imposed by GST was fully offset by income tax reductions.

The choice of Cullen as the promoter of this “No GST unless …” solution was extremely shrewd. Within the Labour Party, Cullen was widely credited as having liberal-left leanings. Prior to winning the St Kilda nomination in 1981, he had been an active member of the Castle Street Branch of the Labour Party. Founded by the late Austin Mitchell, Castle Street, like Auckland’s Princes Street, was seen as a haven for university-based radicals. If Cullen was convinced that the regressive effects of GST could be offset by tax-cuts, then Labour traditionalists – as well as Labour “modernisers” – could vote in favour of Douglas’s “reform” with a clear conscience.

It was a template which would serve Cullen and the neoliberal Labour Party extremely well over the years that lay ahead. Decisions objectively inimical to the interests of low-paid workers and beneficiaries could be presented simply as new and better ways of achieving Labour’s traditional objectives. Thanks to Cullen’s clever alchemy, the base metals of neoliberalism could be transmuted into the glittering gold of “modernisation”; and the grim squares of betrayal transformed into happy circles of fulfilment.

The success of this strategy was compounded by the departure of the traditionalists’ leader, Jim Anderton, in 1989. With him went the party members who understood the true implications of the Rogernomics Revolution, and who possessed both the will and the wherewithal to oppose it openly in party forums. Though Anderton’s NewLabour Party – which in 1991 became the Alliance – harried Labour relentlessly throughout the 1990s, it could not, in the end, compete with the immense power of the Labour “brand”. As a former lecturer in social and economic history, Cullen rightly wagered that the doggedly loyal working-class voters who re-elected him to Parliament every three years would never abandon the party of Michael Joseph Savage.

Cullen also understood what so many of Anderton’s Alliance voters did not. That in the 15 years since the election of the Fourth Labour Government in 1984, neoliberalism had so firmly embedded itself in New Zealand’s key economic and administrative institutions that it could only be dislodged by an upheaval of revolutionary force. Neither Clark and Cullen were revolutionaries, which is why, when confronted with an employer class spooked by the genuinely social-democratic policies of the Alliance (Labour’s coalition partner between 1999 and 2002) they capitulated without a fight.

Stared down by the A-team of Auckland employers gathered in the Cathedral Room of the exclusive Auckland Club on 24 May 2000, Cullen blinked. The following day, speaking to yet another group of angry employers, Labour’s Finance Minister purred: “We want to be a government that moves forward with business, not one that watches indifferently from the side-lines.”

Sobered by what soon came to be known as “The Winter of Discontent”, Cullen proved as good as his word. The big reforms that constitute his political legacy: The Superannuation Fund; Working For Families; KiwiSaver; far from being the solid social-democratic victories Labour presents them as, were actually a sequence of inadequate workarounds for the problems created by neoliberal policies Cullen now knew better than ever not to challenge.

The Superannuation Fund (quickly dubbed the “Cullen Fund”) kept billions of dollars safely out of the hands of cash-starved ministries. This sequestering function was amply demonstrated by the speed with which the National Government suspended contributions to fund its GFC and Earthquake recovery projects. Working For Families, far from being “communism by stealth” acted as a giant wage subsidy for New Zealand employers. KiwiSaver, a privately run scheme, unguaranteed by the state, poured billions into the pockets of financial institutions. Social-democracy, at least as Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk understood it, had been murdered in the Cathedral Room.

With Cullen’s passing, the Labour Party has only Helen Clark to turn to for advice and consolation about the hard business of preaching Labour kindness while delivering neoliberal cruelty. Frustratingly for the present Labour Government, Clark is a much more protean figure than her former Finance Minister: less prone to staying put and saying only the right things.

Those who locate themselves on the centre-left will miss Michael Cullen. They’ll miss his prodigious intellect and his wickedly witty tongue. They’ll miss his wisdom. He has, however, left them with an enigma.

Who was he? This son of a London artisan who won a scholarship to the upper-class Christ’s College? This radical history lecturer who hung John Ball’s challenge to the English peasantry: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” on his office wall – and then went on to accept a knighthood? This “too clever by three-quarters” MP with a left-wing reputation – who was willing to sell Rogernomics to a confused and disoriented Labour Party? This Labour Finance Minister who left state housing underfunded and beneficiaries’ children unassisted by Working For Families?

Sir Christopher Wren, buried in the heart of his greatest architectural achievement, St Paul’s Cathedral, wrote his own epitaph: Si monumentum requiris circumspice “If you would see his monument, look around.” Looking around at the New Zealand he has left behind him, how should we sum up Sir Michael Cullen’s legacy? Who won? Who lost? And who will eat that shame?

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 23 August 2021.

The Men of the West’s Day Has Come – and Gone.

The Western Sun Sets: What nation, looking aghast at the chaos and confusion created by the United States precipitate withdrawal from Afghanistan, would consider putting its faith in American promises? What peoples, oppressed and abused though they may be by tyrannical regimes, will ever again look to the Western democracies for inspiration? What enemy of freedom and equality need any longer quail before the might of the West? The answers, tragically, are: “None.”

AS I WATCHED the big American helicopters circling the US Embassy in Kabul, I thought of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings”. As the smoke of burning files billowed out of the Embassy compound, I recalled Aragorn before the Black Gate of Mordor. As Sauron’s Orc legions marched towards the uncrowned King of Gondor’s vastly outnumbered army, he rallied his quailing knights with a speech that has always stuck in my memory:

“A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!”

In those stirring lines, Fran Walsh captures perfectly the chivalric Western ethos. The idea that an oath, once given, cannot be broken. That protection offered and accepted cannot be withdrawn unilaterally and arbitrarily. Most of all, that there is no greater sin than the betrayal and abandonment of the weak by the strong. Through all the blood and sweat and tears of our history. In spite of them being honoured more in the breach than in the execution – these have been the animating ideals of the “Men of the West”. The principles they strove to live by.

No more.

What nation, looking aghast at the chaos and confusion created by the United States precipitate withdrawal from Afghanistan, would consider putting its faith in American promises? What peoples, oppressed and abused though they may be by tyrannical regimes, will ever again look to the Western democracies for inspiration? What enemy of freedom and equality need any longer quail before the might of the West? The answers, tragically, are: “None.”

The true measure of the Afghanistan debacle will not be calculated in terms of the blood and treasure expended in that unhappy country. It will be calculated in terms of the loss of faith in the West’s word, and the West’s values, that the West’s betrayal and abandonment of the Afghan people – especially its women and girls – has provoked.

Henceforth, whenever anyone hears the “International Community” (a mealy-mouthed euphemism for the nations of North America, Europe and Australasia) warning some international miscreant against earning its displeasure, all that’s likely to be evoked is hollow laughter. It is difficult to imagine a more compelling miscreant than the Taliban, but it is equally difficult to imagine the Taliban losing too much sleep over what the “International Community” might do to it. After all, it’s been demonstrating its displeasure for twenty years with “Daisy Cutter” bombs, Cruise missiles, and “pinpoint” drone strikes, and all the “International Community” has achieved is the restoration of Taliban power.

And what about the nations not generally included in the “International Community”? What of the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Peoples Republic of China? What will they make of the West’s forsaking of its friends; its breaking of the bonds of fellowship?

What has happened, they will ask themselves, to the West that responded to Stalin’s provocations of 1948 with the Berlin Airlift? The West that met North Korea’s sudden southward thrust with a UN “Police Operation” that drove its forces back across the 38th Parallel, and which, thanks to the United States, has maintained a strong military presence in South Korea for nearly 70 years? The West that massed its armies against Saddam Hussein in 1990-91 and made good the promise of President George H.W. Bush that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait “would not stand”. The West that, however imperfectly, and self-interestedly, kept its word?

Gone.

Writing for the Newsroom website earlier this week, Professor Robert Ayson, observed: “Kabul’s fall could be the last echo of a period when western governments believed their armed forces could knit together broken nations. Despite all of today’s talk about democratic values, the message is that we don’t really mind how you govern yourselves, or actually whether you govern yourselves, as long as you don’t harm us.”

But, cowering behind walls, while the rest of the world burns, is the policy of appeasers and defeatists. The Men of the West’s day has come – and they have not stood.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 20 August 2021.

Of Prophets – True And False.

Billy Te Kahika Busted: In this age, the Internet has taken the place of God. And why not? It feels as powerful and omniscient as the Almighty, and seems to possess the same ability to reward the pious seeker with all manner of alarming insights and arcane knowledge. Jehovah is said to have communicated with Moses through a burning bush. Is a cellphone, laptop, or PC, any less preposterous as a vessel for the word of God?

WHAT DO THEY WANT? These motley collections of the angry and the ignorant in whose eyes the Covid-19 Pandemic is a “Scamdemic”. What do they hope to achieve? Some part of them, aware of their pitifully small numbers, must know that they have placed themselves beyond the comforting approbations of the tribe. How do they deal with such painful awareness? Human-beings are social animals: they draw strength and confidence from one another. So, to deliberately locate oneself outside the circle of the tribal firelight requires a motivating force of enormous power.

At the heart of their decision to step away lies an unshakeable conviction that they possess special knowledge. By “doing the research” they have discovered that the world is not as the Government and its “experts” would have them believe. They are convinced that these, the Powers-That-Be, mean them and their unenlightened fellow citizens harm. It is, therefore, their moral duty to call out these malign “mis-leaders”, and to bear steadfast witness to the “Truth” – no matter what.

This very old delusion (if ‘delusion’ is the right word) can lay claim to a surprisingly honourable cultural pedigree. For what else were the religious leaders and prophets of the past, if not a motley collection of individuals who believed fervently that they had been vouchsafed a vision of the Holy City, and had been chosen by God himself to rescue the sinful masses from themselves?

Nobody who has read the Old Testament will have the slightest difficulty in recognising the prophetic archetype: the outsider who descends upon the city from the wilderness: wild, unkempt, eyes ablaze with the certainty of God’s mandate; to stand before the King and rebuke him for his sinful failure to safeguard the welfare of the people.

In this age, the Internet has taken the place of God. And why not? It feels as powerful and omniscient as the Almighty, and seems to possess the same ability to reward the pious seeker with all manner of alarming insights and arcane knowledge. Jehovah is said to have communicated with Moses through a burning bush. Is a cellphone, laptop, or PC, any less preposterous as a vessel for the word of God?

Once the prophetic archetype is understood, it becomes much easier to comprehend why a group as tiny as the one which gathered outside the TVNZ studios in Auckland on Wednesday morning (18/8/21) did not feel in the least embarrassed. The prophetic narrative doesn’t work if the world around the prophet nods in enthusiastic agreement. The masses have to be so mired in sin and ignorance that they can no longer recognise the truth – even when it is laid bare before them. The evil mis-leaders, similarly, cannot slap their foreheads and cry ‘My God, you’re right! How could we have been so blind?’ They have to remain as steadfast in their vice as the prophets remain steadfast in their virtue.

An open confrontation with evil is critical to the prophetic narrative. One cannot be a true prophet in secret (or even online). It is crucial that the eyes of God, or, in this case, the cameras of TVNZ, witness his servant in action. Proof must be supplied of the prophet’s willingness to suffer for the Truth.

A man as well-versed in the Bible as the charismatic Billy Te Kahika knows that a true prophet goes Kanohi ki te Kanohi with the Devil, and that, in this fallen world, the Devil usually wins. Which is why, when the Police closed in upon him outside TVNZ he was at pains to calm his angry disciples, telling them that the officers were only doing their job. It wasn’t quite “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” – But it was close.

The conundrum which presents itself to Billy TK – and to all others who aspire to be the mouthpieces of God – is how to differentiate the lies of the Devil from God’s truth. For the Devil is deceitful and delights in pretending to the wisdom and beneficence of the Almighty, while all the time leading the deluded down the primrose path to perdition. How can one know that what one believes to be the truth isn’t a big fat fib?

The greatest of all the biblical prophets, Jesus of Nazareth, wrestled with this question. This was his answer:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

What manner of evil king – or queen – would encourage her “team of five million” to be kind and keep one another safe? What true prophet would feed evil fruits to his people? Only the Devil craves the chaos and division in which evil takes root. If your harvest is all thorns and thistles, Billy, then maybe you’re barking up the wrong tree.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 19 August 2021.

The Failure Of The West.

Kabul, Afghanistan. 16/8/21:  There is always an enthusiastic audience for tales of imperial ruin. The Western Left will have watched the helicopters circling the American Embassy in Kabul with the same grim satisfaction as it watched the Hueys taking-off from the US Embassy roof in Saigon forty-six years ago. Such is the fate of all empires, the wise old intellectuals will opine. The only lesson of history is that men never learn the lessons of history.

THE WEST HAS FAILED. It is unlikely that we shall ever again see North American, European and/or Australasian ground troops deployed “overseas”. Naval and air forces, yes, but not “boots on the ground”. The Western powers no longer possess the ruthless conviction necessary to impose their will on weaker nations face-to-face. From 15 kilometres offshore, or 30,000 feet above the target, the West may still make its mark. (Although, with cruise missiles and drones, distances hardly matter anymore.) But the brutal confidence that once allowed illiterate British redcoats to make a gift of the world to their lords and masters. For better or for worse, those days are gone.

There is always an enthusiastic audience for tales of imperial ruin. The Western Left will have watched the helicopters circling the American Embassy in Kabul with the same grim satisfaction as it watched the Hueys taking-off from the US Embassy roof in Saigon forty-six years ago. Such is the fate of all empires, the wise old intellectuals will opine. The only lesson of history is that men never learn the lessons of history.

Before the Western Left breaks out the Champagne, however, it should pause for a few moments to consider what it has just witnessed in Afghanistan. For Afghan women, the withdrawal of United States and Nato ground forces represents an historic betrayal and abandonment. For 20 years, the emancipation of the women and girls of Afghanistan was held up to the world as the single greatest achievement of western intervention. Like Saddam Hussein’s “human shields”, they were paraded before the world. “Look!” cried the Americans and the Europeans, the Australians and the New Zealanders. “This is why we are here. This is why we cannot leave.”

Billions of dollars were spent to lift Afghan women from sexual abjection to full personhood and independence. “Girls can do anything!” The hip slogan of western societies which had long ago enfranchised and liberated the female half of their populations, became in Afghanistan a revolutionary rallying cry against the brutal “medieval theocracy” (hat-tip to Helen Clark) that first the Soviets, and then the West, expended so much blood and treasure attempting to supplant.

And it worked. Women and girls were uplifted. They thrived in the classrooms, filled the lecture theatres, took charge in shops, offices and factories. Like proud parents, the Western Occupiers looked on. Here, they told themselves, was the proof of the West’s moral superiority. Here was the vindication of neoliberal modernity.

Almost – but not quite. Because if the West had truly been committed to sexual equality; if it had truly wanted a democratic and modern Afghanistan to emerge from the theocratic brutality of the Taliban; then it would have driven through the one truly revolutionary reform that might have made that possible: it would have inducted women into the Afghan Army.

Why is the Taliban in Kabul? The answer is brutally simple: because the men of the Afghan Army were given nothing to fight for. The president of their country was a corrupt crook and coward. The ministers and provincial governors of the Afghan regime took their lead from the President. The Army commanders stole their troops wages and sold their rations in the marketplace. For what, then, were the men of the Afghan Army being asked to lay down their lives? Democracy? There was none. Freedom? They had none. A better life? After 20 years – where was it? Who was to say their lives would not be better under the Taliban?

Kurdish Female Fighter.

Only Afghanistan’s women had something to fight for – something to die for – and nobody from the armies of the West, let alone their own fathers, brothers and husbands, were willing to give them something to fight with – and teach them how to use it.

Had the West still possessed a skerrick of imperial statecraft, it would have recognised and armed the nation state of Kurdistan, and encouraged it to send its best female troops to teach the Afghan women how to fight. That it did none of these things proves that the billions it spent “liberating” the women of Afghanistan were drawn exclusively from the Public Relations Budget. Having decided it was time to leave Afghanistan, Donald Trump and Joe Biden simply turned their backs on the women and girls of that blood-stained country – and withdrew. The Taliban would look after them.

For more than two thousand years, the people of the West (among others) have built empires. Mysteriously, the more removed in time they became from the imperial powers of the past: Greece, Rome, Spain, France, Britain; the less adroit they became at holding on to their conquests.

The key objective of empire is not to occupy territory, but to prevent your enemies from occupying it. In other words, to make sure that, having conquered a people, you make it worth their while to stand with you, not against you. Peace, security and prosperity is what a clever imperial power offers: overseen and administered as far as possible by the locals themselves. (Or, at least, the local elites.) The British and the French got to be quite good at this. The Americans never got the hang of it.

Having been out-waited and out-fought in Afghanistan, the United States will now have to endure watching the Chinese play the role of the Afghan people’s new best friend. Aid will pour in from Beijing, infrastructure projects will proliferate, peace, security and prosperity will cement the new friendship in place. More to the point, not a single Chinese combat-boot will disturb the Afghan dust.

And the Uighurs languishing in concentration camps across the border in Xinjiang Province? Why, the Taliban will expend about as much energy on their behalf, as the Western Left will expend on helping the women and girls of Afghanistan.

Because it’s not just the statesmen, diplomats and generals of the West who have failed to live up to the achievements of their forebears; the aspirations and ideals of its revolutionaries have similarly dwindled. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ended The Communist Manifesto with the ringing declaration: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” What would the Western Left cry today? “Persons of every identity (except White, Cis-Males) make full use of intersectional opportunities whenever practicable. Break free from all imposed moralities, but do not attempt to impose your personal notions of right and wrong on the rest of the world.”

Especially not in Afghanistan.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 17 August 2021.

Shelter From The Storm.

Storm Warnings: Racism is always and everywhere the creation of elites. “Perfect storms” are invariably unleashed upon us from above.

RAWIRI JANSEN, co-director of Te Rōpū Whakakaupapa Urutā, the National Māori Pandemic Group, is warning of “a perfect storm”. This daunting description was prompted by the disturbing news that, to date, only 9 percent of Māori and 13 percent of Pasifika have received both shots of the Pfizer vaccine.

Certainly, the prospect of the Delta variant of Covid-19 rampaging through New Zealand when, say, upwards of 85 percent of the Pakeha population has been fully vaccinated, but 65 percent of the Māori and Pasifika population has not, is fraught with danger. The tragedy currently unfolding in the United States, where the Delta variant is cutting a vicious swathe through that country’s unvaccinated population, is not one New Zealanders wish to see unfolding on their own shores.

Avoiding such an outcome has, however, been made extremely difficult by “official” New Zealand’s zealous embrace of racialised politics. The acute risks associated with this race-based approach were on full display during TVNZ’s Q+A current affairs programme of Sunday, 15 August 2021. The show’s presenter, Jack Tame, spoke tremulously of the possibility that Pakeha New Zealanders would “swamp” the full-scale vaccination effort scheduled to get underway from 1 September 2021. Though he was careful not to come right out and say it, implicit in his concern about “equity issues” was a vaccine roll-out that prioritised Māori and Pasifika over Pakeha. How this option could be made to work without requiring Pakeha to wait for their jabs, is one of those questions just about every person in authority is too afraid to answer.

An important factor in the success of New Zealand’s elimination strategy against Covid-19 was Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s constant reiteration that every citizen was a member of “The Team of Five Million”. This was “progressive” nationalism at its best. Ardern’s formulation spoke directly to every New Zealander. “You are Us”, it said, “Whether or not your ancestors arrived here 800 years ago, 150 years ago, or last week; you are a valued member of the team. Your health and safety is no less, or more, important than any other member of the community. This government is here for you. This government will protect you.”

Crucial to the effectiveness of the Prime Minister’s strategy was her willingness to turn a blind eye to the check-points erected by a number of Iwi to guard against any repeat of the deadly flu pandemic of 1918-19 which killed a disproportionately high number of Māori New Zealanders. With the full co-operation of the Police, the Government conveyed to Māori everywhere the vital message that, within the team of five million, many different ways of keeping communities safe will be tried and tested – and that’s okay. Just so long as the job gets done.

The great tragedy of the 18 months since the first nationwide lock-down is that neither the Government, nor the Ministry of Health, nor the DHBs, have built upon these early improvisations. Had Māori been encouraged to develop and roll-out their own plans for the vaccination of their people, just as soon as an effective vaccine became available, then the chances of securing a high Māori up-take would have been dramatically improved. The Māori Battalion, of undying fame, may have been a separate military unit, but it was also an integral part of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

It has been an outstanding feature of the New Zealand state that, until very recently, it had mastered the art of both acknowledging the special status of its indigenous people while, at the same time, locating them unequivocally within the circle of citizenship. That this art quite often defied logic and science in no way detracted from its practical success. New Zealand’s No. 8 Wire constitutional and ethnic arrangements may not have been elegant – or even rational – but they worked. Until, that is, the official acceptance, and extremely rapid uptake, of the “colonisation” narrative caused them to stop working.

It is simply not possible to maintain New Zealand’s ‘two peoples, one nation’, solution in the face of an ideology that casts 85 percent of the population as “baddies” and the remaining 15 percent as “goodies”, and then invites the state to develop its policies in accordance with this uncompromising Good versus Evil dichotomy. As exemplified in Jack Tame’s concerns about Pakeha “swamping”, adherents to the colonisation narrative will look at the mass vaccination of the Team of Five Million and, rather than seeing a positive sign that New Zealand is moving closer and closer to being able to open-up to the rest of the world, they will see only more evidence of Pakeha privilege and systemic racism.

Even more counterproductively, the first instinct of the colonisation narrative’s adherents will be to demand that Māori and Pasifika (who always seem to end up being parenthesised in these debates) be vaccinated first, rather than be exposed to the Delta variant unvaccinated. Hard to believe though it may be, this approach requires the authorities to look upon the New Zealand population not as a single entity of five million human-beings – all equally vulnerable to Covid-19 virus – but as a collection of racial/cultural communities to be prioritised for vaccination in accordance with the seriousness of their historical sins.

Always left unstated in these outrageous, racially-charged discussions about who should go in front of whom, is the likely reaction of those being asked to accept a lower priority. The anger and resentment engendered by such a policy do not seem to enter the political equation. Not even when the quantum of the group being asked to wait is greater than the quantum of the group being promoted to the front of the queue. The assumption is always that if moral suasion does not ensure compliance, then coercion will.

It is in this dangerous assumption that the essence of the problem with the colonisation narrative lies. It presupposes the rectification of historical injustice by judicial fiat. Rather than seeing the state as a body of self-governing citizens, the adherents of the colonisation narrative see it as a kind of court, whose uncontestable judgements must be obeyed – on pain of severe punishment. In a country where the Māori Renaissance was kicked-off by crucial judgements in the Court of Appeal, or the findings of the Waitangi Tribunal, this is not, perhaps, surprising. It would, however, be a huge mistake to forget that this nation’s highest court is Parliament, and that the balance of power within the People’s House is determined by the people themselves – by majority.

It is to be hoped that Jacinda Ardern and her government will resist the racially-charged demands of the colonisation narrative’s adherents, and continue to deal with the Covid-19 Pandemic as a problem afflicting human-beings – not racial groups. Also to be hoped is that the Government will, at last, display a readiness to devolve the responsibility for achieving the only rational vaccination target – 100 percent – to those groups most likely to engage successfully with their communities. These may include Te Whanau o Waipareira Trust, or the Congregational Church of Samoa, a local Marae, or a nationwide trade union organisation. God knows, they could hardly do worse that the Ministry of Health and New Zealand’s DHBs!

Democracy’s direction of travel is always downwards and outwards. Only authoritarians draw decision-making inwards, and send it upwards.

Racism is always and everywhere the creation of elites. “Perfect storms” are invariably unleashed upon us from above.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 16 August 2021.

The Future Of Act: Climate Change Cannot Be Stopped, But It Can Be Ridden.

Back To The Land: Act understands that rural New Zealanders are feeling put upon and devalued by urban New Zealanders; that they are chafing under an ever-increasing number of government rules and regulations. Keen to draw these voters away from National, David Seymour is not about to tell his audiences that, thanks to Climate Change, life on the land is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

ACT HAS A PROBLEM: one which it shares with just about every other Western conservative party; Climate Change. William F. Buckley, who founded, and for many years edited, the thoughtfully right-wing magazine, The National Review, described a conservative as “someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” All very well when the forces driving history are human; but not helpful at all when inhuman forces are driving events, and yelling “Stop!” will in no way slow them down.

At present, Act isn’t really addressing the Climate Change crisis seriously. Oh sure, it pays lip service to the reality of anthropogenic global warming, but its policies show scant evidence of serious thought about the problem that is going to dominate the economics and politics of the next fifty years.

Out in rural and provincial New Zealand, for example, the Act Leader, David Seymour, and his colleagues are attracting big audiences. Farmers, their families, and voters working in businesses associated with farming, are angry with the Labour Government, and disillusioned with their traditional electoral champions in the National Party.

Act understands that rural New Zealanders are feeling put upon and devalued by urban New Zealanders; that they are chafing under an ever-increasing number of government rules and regulations. Keen to draw these voters away from National, Seymour is not about to tell his audiences that life on the land is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Instead, he promises to abolish the Climate Change Commission and make a bonfire of the Government’s regulations and red-tape. The cockies, of course, applaud, and Act’s poll-numbers rise. For the moment, that’s all Seymour and his party care about. Their mission is to drag National’s numbers down to around 20 percent, and pump their own up into the high teens. At that point (as Labour discovered vis-à-vis the Alliance) the whole equation on the Right could very easily unravel – leaving Act as the runaway favourite of conservative voters.

All very well, but if the ultimate balance of political forces leaves the Right sharing 40-45 percent of the Party Vote, and the Left in firm command with 55-60 percent, then Act will find itself all dressed up, but with nowhere to go.

What’s more, without a coherent and believable policy response to the unrelenting pressures of Climate Change, Act could easy end up becoming the top-dog in a conservative kennel that gets smaller and smaller with every passing year.

In ten years’ time, the big political and economic arguments will have moved well beyond the Neoliberal shibboleths that defined the period between 1979 and 2008. In ten years’ time, Capitalism itself will be struggling to retain the support of a majority of citizens – even in the West.

Parties like National and Act will find themselves in the same unenviable position as the reactionary political movements that advocated for the return of absolute monarchy in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. It won’t be a case of them having no supporters, merely of having too few to count any longer as a serious force. History will have rolled right over them. Their last, unheeded, words will be: “It’s not stopping!”

Regarding the politics of the future, the lines of division are already becoming clear. The battle will no longer be between capitalists and socialists: comprehensive state control of the economy will be taken for granted. How else could humanity have responded with any degree of effectiveness to devastating floods and droughts; heatwaves and cold-snaps; rising seas and advancing deserts? No, the political battles of the future will be between those who still believe that science can and will rescue humanity from the ravages of Climate Change; and those who offer a new “green” paradigm for the way in which human societies interact with the natural world.

In the elections of the future, the followers of Scientism will contend for power with the followers of Ecologism. A meritocratic technocracy will find itself opposed by an anarchistic collectivity of simple-lifers. The technocrats, based overwhelmingly in the cities, will be trapped in a frustratingly symbiotic relationship with the simple-lifers – for the very simple reason that, overwhelmingly, it will be the rural simple-lifers who grow the food. Dependent upon one another, and united in their struggle to survive in an overheated world, the parties of Scientism and Ecologism will be constantly re-defining and re-negotiating the terms of their co-existence, while contending jointly with an increasingly hostile planet. Parties determined to rehearse the arguments for and against capitalism/socialism will have become utterly irrelevant.

Ironically, it was the recent “Groundswell” protests that anticipated the fundamental political proposition of the Climate Change-driven future: those Tractors bearing placards declaring “No Farmers, No Food” spoke more truly than they knew.

For Act, that fundamental division between technocrat and simple-lifer offers a straightforward path to political survival. Ever since the father of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, wrote Reflections Upon the Revolution in France conservatives have celebrated the slow rhythms of the seasons and the tiny, incremental changes that shape the world beyond the mad rush (and even madder ideas) of the city. A party that celebrated the stoic virtues of rural living and was content to be instructed by Mother Nature, would find many followers. Alternatively, as a party of libertarian individualists, an urban culture – based upon the unsentimental rigors of scientific expertise, might offer Act’s followers a better fit. As they used to say in the Middle Ages: “City air makes you free.”

The world to come: the world shaped by Climate Change; will not be a neoliberal, or even a capitalist, world. The state will offer and organise whatever defence still avails humanity. It will hold the ring while the children of Climate Change weigh the relative merits of the “technological fix” versus the simple life of the ecologically-friendly farmer.

William F Buckley’s peremptory demand that History stop in its tracks was profoundly unrealistic. The key conservative insight has always been that, while History cannot be stopped, it can be ridden.

While National resigns itself to going “gentle into that good night”, Act just needs to learn how to hold on tight.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 13 August 2021.

The Coming War Against Climate Change.

Code Red: In its latest report, released on Monday, 9 August 2021, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change warns humanity that it has less than ten years to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels – or face catastrophe. Putting it even more bluntly: unless the governments of the world treat Climate Change as the moral equivalent of war, humanity will kill itself.

CODE RED. Red Alert. Or, as the robot in Space Family Robinson used to say: “Warning! Warning! Danger!” In its latest report, released on Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns humanity that it has less than ten years to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels – or face catastrophe. Putting it even more bluntly: unless the governments of the world treat Climate Change as the moral equivalent of war, humanity will kill itself.

War has many, many downsides, and very few upsides. One upside, however, is the way it dissolves ideological objections to the policies required to secure victory. To win World Wars I and II, governments repurposed their economies and mobilised their populations in ways which, under normal circumstances, would have been unthinkable.

So successful was the banker and businessman, Walter Rathenau, at marshalling the resources of the German nation for war, that the Russian revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin, transformed his methods into a template for the socialist economy he and his fellow Bolsheviks were determined to construct. Confronted with the existential threat of a Nazi invasion, Winston Churchill availed himself of the Defence of the Realm Act, which placed all the property of the United Kingdom – public and private – at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government for the duration.

The seriousness with which the world’s governments are taking this latest and most unequivocal warning of the IPCC may be judged by their willingness to place their nations on a war footing. The maturity of the world’s political parties may be similarly assessed by their readiness to shed their ideological skins to win the fight for humanity’s future.

In this regard, the New Zealand National Party (whose AGM concluded the day before the release of the IPCC’s report) has a great deal of work to do. If last weekend’s performance is any indication, National is still a very long way from “getting” Climate Change. Far from seizing the opportunity provided by its AGM to make the party’s stance on the issue clear and unequivocal, National’s leadership relegated Climate Change to the status of a second-order issue. Certainly, it was not among the seven key issues identified in the Leader’s, Judith Collins’, keynote address.

This is an extraordinary political failure on Ms Collins’ part. She does not appear to understand that a party which is seen to downplay the seriousness and urgency of the climate change threat, risks being dismissed by the electorate as an irrelevant throwback to a bygone era. Just imagine if, in September 1939, the National Party had dismissed the German invasion of Poland as a second-order issue, of little immediate interest to New Zealanders, about which they had yet to develop a clear policy position. They would have been laughed off the political stage!

New Zealand’s governing party, Labour, cannot avoid formulating and implementing a broad range of responses to the climate change threat. As Greta Thunberg has already made embarrassingly clear, we still have much to do, and the world expects us to do it. If the right of New Zealand politics declines to participate in the global “war” against climate change, then the future contours of New Zealand politics will end up being shaped by the differing strategies adopted by Labour and the Greens.

Over the next four or five decades, the key political dividing lines may run between parties convinced that some kind of “technological fix” will rescue humanity from the ravages of climate change; and those who argue that only a fundamental shift in the way human-beings interact with the natural environment will generate an effective response to the threat of anthropogenic global warming.

The 200 year stand-off between capitalists and socialists may, in the course of the long fight against climate change, evolve into a clash between those who continue to put their faith in the “solutions” developed by scientific and managerial elites; and those who look to the ecologically-sensitive and collectively-driven lifeways of indigenous peoples for inspiration.

It is easy to see how Labour versus Green political competition could, over time, morph into a contest between meritocratic scientism and collectivist ecologism. It is much more difficult, however, to see a future for National and Act. If capitalism, itself, falls victim to the Climate Change War, then what chance have the capitalist parties?

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 13 August 2021.

Take Back Your Power! What A Real Labour-Green Government Might Do To Combat Climate Change.

“Come On, Kiwis, It’s Time For Action!” In our dreams the Government-inspired “Take Back Your Power!” campaign brings an impressive number of New Zealanders on to the streets. At what is billed as the campaign’s “Struggle For Tomorrow” rally, the Prime Minister delivers an impassioned speech about the need to fight Climate Change the way our parents and grand-parents fought fascism.

ON THE SAME DAY as the IPCC warned us of impending doom, half the country’s lights went out. It was a sign. Like the chilling wailing of air-raid sirens that echoed across London just seconds after Neville Chamberlain told the people of the United Kingdom that their country was at war with Germany, the IPCC report and Transpower’s enforced “load reduction” signalled a shift from one state to the next. Except that no one in charge seemed to notice. Energy Minister Megan Woods huffed and puffed at Genesis Energy, but none of her Labour colleagues were in any hurry to blow the profit-driven electricity market down.

And the Greens? Astonishingly, they were in no greater hurry to call time on profit-driven energy than Labour. Proof – if further proof is needed – that the Greens’ commitment to fighting global warming is about as serious as the Exxon Valdez’s commitment to clean ice. Tragically, there isn’t one member of the current House of Representatives willing to urge the utterly obvious and desperately needed next step: moving Aotearoa-New Zealand on to a war-footing against Climate Change.

Only the assumption of full war powers will equip this, or any other, government with the legal authority necessary to reprioritise the economy and mobilise the population against the existential threat of an overheated world. But, since it is not yet possible, in this country, to point to a flesh-and-blood enemy at the gates (although, one might have thought that all those recent floods came pretty close!) obtaining the electorate’s permission for such a drastic and irrevocable decision will require a bit of fancy political footwork.

Since neither the Labour nor the Green caucus possesses a person with the requisite dancing skills, it will be necessary, from here on, to imagine a Labour-Green Government positively overflowing with politicians who know all the steps and who are willing to make all the necessary moves.

So, it’s Monday night, the PM and her colleagues have their noses deep in the IPCC report and the phone rings. It’s TVNZ’s political editor, Jessica Mutch McKay, asking for comment about the Waikato black-out. Just as soon as everyone calms down, and the Energy Minister stops heaping all manner of unprintable curses upon the heads of Transpower and the profiteering “gentailers”, the Prime Minister suggests that everybody takes a deep breath and spends a few moments considering the extraordinary opportunity which this unique confluence of events has dropped into their lap.

As understanding slowly dawns in her Cabinet’s eyes, the Prime Minister presses on. She suggests that, in the light of the “Code Red” IPCC report, and the abject market failure evident in the deliberate shutting-down of the power-grid across much of New Zealand (not to mention the fact that the Government only got to hear about the blackout from the news media) the Cabinet determine that the re-nationalisation of the entire energy sector is now an urgent necessity.

Naturally, the Labour-Green Government experiences immediate and massive pushback. The National and Act parties are the least of their worries. Most of the pressure comes from the public servants employed by Treasury, MFAT and MBIE. Nobody re-nationalises whole industries anymore, the Cabinet is informed. At least, not with any intention of holding on to them for any longer than it takes to rescue those that are “too big to fail”. Very soon, the officials are leaking like sieves to employer lobby groups, right-wing think tanks and the news media. The whole neoliberal establishment pitches in, confident that the Government will soon buckle under the weight of so much “mainstream” opposition.

The Prime Minister just smiles. This is exactly the response she anticipated, and she is ready with her counter-move. The word is passed along to Greenpeace, Action Station, School Strike 4 Climate and the CTU that the Government could use a little help on the streets. The PM’s spin doctors prepare a list of talking-points to emphasise, in what it hopes will become a popular campaign to re-nationalise the energy sector.

Re-nationalisation will:

• Hasten the shift from fossil fuels to renewables
• Keep electricity prices under control
• Ease the transition from the internal combustion engine to electrically-powered motor vehicles and facilitate the full electrification of the railway network
• Allow for coherent long-term energy planning
• Simplify the funding and construction of new energy generation facilities

The Government-inspired “Take Back Your Power!” campaign brings an impressive number of New Zealanders on to the streets. At what is billed as the campaign’s “Struggle For Tomorrow” rally, the Prime Minister delivers an impassioned speech about the need to fight Climate Change the way our parents and grand-parents fought fascism:

Nobody complained then about the state taking over the economy and asking everybody to play their part in securing victory. And yet, today, with the future of humanity itself hanging in the balance, the promoters of profit and private gain insist that we cannot mount a collective defence against Climate Change. They do not, even at this eleventh hour, understand that we are confronted with the moral equivalent of war – a total war for the survival of life on earth. If we cannot rely upon their co-operation, then we must insist upon their acquiescence. In the war against Climate Change we will not tolerate a fifth column of do-nothing-deniers!

With the cheers of her supporters still ringing in her ears, the Prime Minister drives through the re-nationalisation legislation under urgency. With many voters urging her government to take the next logical step and put the country on a full war-footing (as she hoped they would) the Prime Minister bolsters the already declared Climate Emergency with a comprehensive legislative package giving the Labour-Green Government powers equivalent to those wielded by Labour prime minister Peter Fraser during World War II.

In a Facebook post to her followers, the Prime Minister recalls Winston Churchill’s grim observation that he had nothing to offer the beleaguered British people but “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Smiling, as only she can, the PM declares:

I am confident that I can spare the Team of Five Million Churchill’s blood, but toil, tears and sweat there will be in abundance. You have my solemn promise, however, that the burden of rescuing our planet will be borne equally. And when we are safe, you may rest assured that the lessons learned in the struggle for tomorrow will not be forgotten.

Now, if we could just lay our hands on 60 or 70 of these “do-something” politicians, then hoping for a cooler future might not seem such a pointless exercise.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 12 August 2021.