The Persistence Of Racism: Is the Anti-Racist Cause Winning or Losing?

With Open Arms: Is it at all reasonable to suppose that a colonial society in which whites traditionally occupied all the upper rungs of the ethnic hierarchy, and where the colonised were relegated to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, will respond positively to a concerted indigenous push from below, or, to an extraordinary influx of non-white immigrants? Subject any settler state to these sorts of pressures, and something is going to break.

THE RACISM experienced by Australian writer Louisa Lim raises questions about the persistence of racism in Aotearoa-New Zealand. An invited speaker at the Auckland Writers’ Festival, Lim had to endure an anti-Asian rant when she visited a local noodle bar. When challenged by Lim, the person spewing the racist abuse redirected it at her. Lim shared this distressing experience with her festival audience, many of whom later expressed their anger and embarrassment at the emotional pain she had been forced to endure.

Incidents of this sort are difficult to categorise. Obviously, they are expressions of racism, but to what extent do they represent ingrained prejudices widely shared across the New Zealand population?

The stereotypical Kiwi racist is white, old and male. People like to talk about that embarrassing uncle that every family possesses, the one who feels no shame in vouchsafing racist opinions to his horrified kith and kin. Younger New Zealanders, we are confidently reassured, are much more relaxed about ethnic diversity. The unspoken assumption being that racism – along with the racists who spout it – will eventually die out. A more tolerant and welcoming Aotearoa is on the way. All we have to do is wait.

That is a comforting idea – but is it true?

To answer that question, it is necessary to ask another: What causes racism?

For racism to flourish, two things are necessary: 1) exploitation on the basis of ethnicity must be profitable; and 2) there must be a well-established ethnic hierarchy which explains and justifies that exploitation. Racism is incidental to the imposition of exploitation, but also to resisting it, because to overcome their exploitation those at the bottom of the ethnic hierarchy cannot avoid challenging and infuriating those above them. Racism flourishes because the exploiter has no choice but to kick down, and the exploited has no choice but to kick up.

Nothing intensifies racism more dramatically than the exploiters discovering racism is no longer profitable. At that point, the utility of the existing ethnic hierarchy is fundamentally compromised. It isn’t just a matter of those on the bottom getting out from under, it’s the disruptive impact their upward social mobility has on those positioned above them. The prospect of having to treat as equals persons whose condition of permanent subordination has constituted a defining element of one’s personal and civil identity is unlikely to be well received.

Those nearest the top of the hierarchy will experience the liberation of subordinate ethnicities with considerably more equanimity than those occupying the rungs immediately above them. The phenomenon of white, working-class racism is readily understood when one realises that the super-exploited, receiving less of everything that matters in the capitalist system – money, status, respect – are toiling away just one rung below. Equality feels good – but only when you’re moving up the ladder.

Is it at all reasonable to suppose that a colonial society in which whites traditionally occupied all the upper rungs of the ethnic hierarchy, and where the colonised were relegated to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, will respond positively to a concerted indigenous push from below, or, to an extraordinary influx of non-white immigrants? Moreover, if both challenges are being presented to the white majority simultaneously – making it difficult for them to order the rapidly changing ethnic hierarchy with any degree of confidence – what then? Subject any settler state to these sorts of pressures, and something is going to break.

Crucial to the integrity of New Zealand’s social infrastructure is the strength of its defining social narratives. If the pressures being brought to bear on New Zealand society are primarily ethnic in nature, then, at the heart of the story we tell ourselves about ourselves must be an abiding aversion to racism.

New Zealanders must be encouraged to regard racial prejudice as the worst of all sins. No accusation should be more hurtful to the ordinary New Zealander than the charge of racism. To that end, overt racism must always be condemned publicly – and in the strongest possible terms. It should be widely understood that a proven charge of racism is a career-killer. The desired outcome? A population willing to do just about anything to avoid the accusation – “Racist!”

That this outcome has largely been achieved is remarkable. Those responsible for instilling and policing Kiwi “anti-racism” should take a bow. The fear of being called a racist has kept most of the population dutifully silent as Māori nationalism has acquired a seemingly unstoppable momentum, and as the structure of the New Zealand population has been radically re-shaped by decades of mass immigration.

Certainly, the embarrassing old uncles continue to shock their friends, families and neighbours, but the political and cultural evolution of New Zealand has not been deranged by politicians vigorously condemned as racists (Winston Peters, Don Brash) taking control of the state – as happened elsewhere.

Most New Zealanders simply do not appreciate how close their country came to full-scale ethnic confrontation in 2005. The narrowness of the Don Brash-led National Party’s electoral defeat suggested strongly that the forces behind Kiwi anti-racism were nowhere near as powerful as its promoters had hoped. Labour’s victory obviated ideological introspection, however, and allowed the drive towards Māori sovereignty and multiculturalism to continue and gather strength.

National’s 2008 election victory did very little to hinder the anti-racist cause. Daunted, perhaps, by thoughts of what might have happened had Brash won, his successor, John Key, wooed and won the Māori Party as a supporter of his government. Key was also seized by the importance of New Zealand’s growing economic relationship with China. Key’s National Government encouraged the growth of multiculturalism every bit as assiduously as it enabled Māori nationalism. Accordingly, the anti-racist message, now amplified by large sections of the political class, academia and the news media, underwent a significant increase in volume.

The election of Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-led Government encouraged the anti-racist message to be broadcast even louder. The questions posed by its extraordinary salience, however, were difficult to answer. Were the increasingly jarring manifestations of Māori nationalist and multicultural assertiveness evidence of New Zealand society’s growing acceptance of diversity, or, proof of its opposite? Was ethnic tolerance expanding, or contracting?

The mass demonstrations of solidarity with the Muslim community following the 2019 Christchurch Mosque Massacres strongly suggest that tolerance is growing. The unabashed racism visible on social media, however, hints that, deep down, not much had changed since Brash’s near-victory in 2005.

That the promotion of the anti-racist message is now accompanied by openly expressed concerns regarding the dangers of “hate speech” and unregulated freedom of expression, testifies to the fragility of the anti-racist consensus. The political and cultural elites, to whom the prosecution of the anti-racist cause has been entrusted, are becoming increasingly defensive. Is it any longer sensible to be tolerant of intolerance?

The experience of Louisa Lim makes us wonder. Has racism really been driven into the furthest reaches of rural and provincial New Zealand? Are its promoters, safely corralled among the over-65s, really dying off? Or does it lurk, still, in the shadows of White New Zealand’s gothic psyche? Huge and silent, does it wait for a political leader to do what Don Brash came so close to doing eighteen years ago – give it a voice, and set it free?

Were the racists Lim encountered in that down-town Auckland noodle-bar over sixty-five – or under thirty?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 26 May 2023.

Jacinda’s Choice: “Freedom Day”, Or Failure.

Lining Up With The Right: Though Jacinda Ardern hasn’t endorsed the John Key-Act-National preference for 1 December as Auckland's “Freedom Day” in as many words, that is clearly the timeline she is working to. The Prime Minister of New Zealand cannot assure 1.6 million Aucklanders that they will be free to visit their families at Christmas – wherever they may be located in New Zealand – and then renege on her promise. Not without all hell breaking loose.

The following commentary was written on the afternoon of Thursday, 21 October – about 18 hours prior to the Government’s latest Covid-19 announcements. For those interested in my take on the Announcements themselves, please read the appended postscript. – Chris Trotter.

THE AUCKLAND BUSINESS COMMUNITY has told the Labour Government that it expects 1 December to be “Freedom Day”. Since the Labour Party has consistently done the Auckland Business Community’s bidding for more than 30 years, putting a decent sum on 1 December as the day all double-vaccinated Aucklanders get to fly away would seem like a pretty safe bet.

If 1 December does not turn out to be “Freedom Day”, then you can put a big blue ring around Election Day 2023.

It is certainly no coincidence that 1 December was the day chosen by Sir John Key in his in/famous op-ed intervention; by the Act Party; and, finally, by the National Party itself. For those unaccustomed to reading the political runes, this is the New Zealand Right presenting the Labour Government with a united front. If Labour fails to take the hint, then every gun in the Right’s possession will commence firing at it, and they will not stop until the right-wing parties are in a position to form a government.

It has happened before. As soon as it became clear the Labour had won the 2005 General Election by spending money that wasn’t, strictly speaking, its own, the New Zealand Right declared total war on Helen Clark’s Government. There was no respite. The attacks came from everywhere. From National and Act, obviously, but also from the mainstream news media and high-ranking civil servants. Labour also faced the slings and arrows of blogs and websites run by persons whose political connections ran into some very interesting places, and linked them up with some very important people.

This war was as unrelenting as it was successful. In 2008 Helen Clark and her party were cast out of office like an errant puppy that has just been caught widdling on the carpet. John Key didn’t need to say: “And don’t come back until you know how to behave!” Labour had been given the message loud and clear. It would take the Party nine long years to find someone who could open the door and lead Labour back inside the House of Power.

That’s why it would be a political miracle if Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues did not meekly line up alongside the Right and announce 1 December as “Freedom Day”. Auckland is, after all, New Zealand’s largest city and its most crucial political marketplace. Without a fair old swag of the 1.6 million Aucklanders in tow, electorally speaking, a political party’s chances of winning the next General Election are pretty slim.

Keeping Auckland in tow electorally, and keeping its citizens locked-down until Christmas and beyond, don’t really add up as a winning political formula. Especially when a good 70-75 percent of Aucklanders have dutifully presented themselves for their double-dose of the Pfizer vaccine. The idea that they must remain confined within their city’s boundaries, while the unvaccinated of Auckland – and the rest of New Zealand – are wooed and cossetted in what is beginning to look like a futile attempt to persuade them to do the decent thing, is becoming less-and-less saleable as a political proposition.

As a politician with an instinctive flair for political marketing, it is very hard to envisage Jacinda attempting to make that sale. Far easier to see her joining with all the other “serious” parties (and, yes, you’re right, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are not included in that group) by making the date of “Freedom Day” a matter of partisan agreement.

The Greens and Te Pāti Māori will, of course, complain that by joining with the right-wing parties Labour is effectively abandoning Māori to the ravages of the Delta variant of Covid-19. The Government, and the parties of the Right, will likely respond with Judith Collins’ argument that delaying the opening-up of Auckland, and the rest of New Zealand, solely on account of the low rate of Māori vaccination would only expose Māori to all manner of racist abuse. It would make them the scapegoats of every Aucklander with a failing business; a job hanging in the balance; and/or a family member whose mental health is faltering.

Te Pāti Māori will protest that “Freedom Day” will amount to “Genocide Day” for tangata whenua. To which a great many of their fellow citizens will reply: “Not if you use the next four weeks to get vaccinated!”

There will also be many Kiwis who angrily lament the fact that making 1 December “Freedom Day” flies in the face of “The Science”. They may well be right, but, sadly, that boat has sailed. It sailed the day the Labour Government decided, against the advice of its medical scientists, to move out of Level 4 and down to level 3. After that crucial decision, “The Science” no longer entered into it. After that, the decision-making became, first and last, political.

Inevitably, the business community, the right-wing parties, and the right-wing news media have coalesced around a political solution that would leave the Labour Government with just two choices: Stand firm – and lose. Or, join the consensus – and at least retain the chance of winning in 2023.

Not quite Sophie’s Choice, but definitely Jacinda’s.

POSTSCRIPT:

THE FIRST THING to note about the Government announcements of Friday, 22 October 2021 was the staging. Clearly, the dimly lit Beehive Theatrette is no longer considered an appropriate setting for the Prime Minister’s communications. Accordingly, proceedings were moved to the Beehive Banqueting Hall. (The change may have been dictated by the sheer number of journalists clamouring to attend, but still.)

The second change was in the cast. Where was Ashley Bloomfield, the Director-General of Health? Today’s drama featured no experts. As noted above, our Covid universe now rests on politicians – all the way down.

As for the script, well, the date of 1 December may not have been mentioned, but it was there nonetheless. With Auckland declared to be about a day-and-a-half away from topping 90 percent of Aucklanders with one jab, it follows that the city is less than a month away from 90 percent being double-jabbed. That’s the cue for New Zealand’s largest city being set free from its Level 3 Lockdown, on, or just after, 1 December. When asked if that meant Aucklanders can join their families for Christmas, the Prime Minister said Yes – although travelling beyond the city will require a Vaccination Certificate (according to Chris Hipkins, empowering legislation is on the way for employers keen to enforce vaccination mandates) and quite possibly a negative Covid-19 test.

So far, so Key-Act-National.

Likewise with relation to the announcements of Finance Minister Grant Robertson. The appropriate quote here would appear to be: “Mo money! Mo money! Mo money!”; for another month, at least.

And Māori? Ah, yes, that’s where the fancy-footwork really got going. The nationwide goal of double-vaccinating 90 percent of the adult population, and then transitioning to the new “traffic-light” system of managing the virus, makes no mention of the Māori vaccination rates also topping 90 percent. That’s a significant omission. Like Judith Collins, Jacinda Ardern is clearly unwilling to have the whole country “held hostage” to Māori vaccine hesitancy – let alone refusal.

The Government has masked this by opting to tick-off the 90 percent vaccination target DHB by DHB. This will allow Māori leaders to identify where the extra $120 million for the double-jabbing of their people might best be spent. But that’s about as far as the Government is prepared to go.

That Peeni Henare’s Banquet Hall contribution gave every appearance of having been brutally truncated – by someone – may indicate that Labour’s Māori Caucus is less than happy with the Labour Cabinet’s decision. Notwithstanding their objections, however, the Key-Act-National position on Māori vaccination rates also seems to have been embraced by the Labour Government.

Colonisation’s roots are very deep and exceptionally strong.

As for the PM herself, Jacinda Ardern seemed more comfortable and on top of her game than she has been for weeks. Though she hasn’t announced 1 December as “Freedom Day” in as many words, that is clearly the timeline she is working to. The Prime Minister of New Zealand cannot assure 1.6 million Aucklanders that they will be free to visit their families at Christmas – wherever they may be located in new Zealand – and then renege on her promise.

Not without all hell breaking loose.

- Chris Trotter, Friday, 22 October 2021.

This essay and its postscript were originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 22 October 2021.

Forgetting To Remember New Zealand's Racist Election.

A Damn Near-Run Thing: The 2005 General Election was very far from being a triumph of New Zealanders’ tolerance and generosity. In reality, it was an election which saw the National Party come roaring back into political contention on the strength of one of the most racially-charged elections in New Zealand history. 2005 was the election best-remembered for National’s incendiary billboard campaign – most especially the billboard which pitted “Iwi” against “Kiwi”.

WHAT’S WRONG with our journalists? Why do so many reporters and columnists memories appear to fail them? Only this morning, the veteran NZ Herald columnist, Brian Rudman, contributed yet another lapse to the Fourth Estate’s growing tally of memory malfunctions. He’s one of the Herald’s best, of course, with years of intelligent and splendidly trenchant commentary behind him, but today’s memory fade is every bit as egregious as the historical deficiencies so apparent in the writing of much younger journalists.

The context for Rudman’s misrecollection was Shane Jones’s recent playing of the race card. This was not, as the columnist quite correctly pointed out, the first time NZ First has reached for its racially-loaded rhetorical shotgun. Rudman quotes from a 2003 pamphlet entitled “Who’s Country Is It?” – a document fairly dripping with anti-immigrant animosity. Fair call. It was only when he attempted to draw a moral from his tale that Rudman went astray.

Here’s what he said:

“To New Zealanders’ credit, this casual racism turned voters away from NZ First. The following election, its party vote nearly halved to just over the 5 per cent threshold needed to stay in Parliament, and Peters lost his Tauranga electorate seat. It’s a lesson Jones should be contemplating.”

To anyone who wasn’t here at the time – an immigrant perhaps? – Rudman’s observation offers a reassuringly happy ending to a rather unsavoury political story. If you knew absolutely nothing about New Zealand’s 2005 General Election, his account of NZ First’s electoral comeuppance would be heartening. Your confidence in New Zealanders’ tolerance and generosity reaffirmed, you could look forward to Jones’s insulting statements about Indian immigrants being answered with punishing force at the ballot-box.

Except, of course, the 2005 General Election was very far from being a triumph of New Zealanders’ tolerance and generosity. In reality, it was an election which saw the National Party come roaring back into political contention on the strength of one of the most racially-charged elections in New Zealand history. 2005 was the election best-remembered for National’s incendiary billboard campaign – most especially the billboard which pitted “Iwi” against “Kiwi”. Had National, led by the former Reserve Bank Governor, Dr Don Brash, won the election (and he came within 100,000 votes, out of 2.3 million votes cast, of doing so) then the Treaty of Waitangi would have been retired; all reference to “Treaty Principles” in New Zealand legislation removed; all “affirmative action” programmes for Maori discontinued; and the Maori Seats abolished.

Not quite so tolerant, then. Not entirely generous.

The Right’s race-driven comeback might have been even stronger if the NZ First Leader, Winston Peters, hadn’t been so roughly treated by the National Party in the late-1990s. Jenny Shipley’s plot against her coalition partner, which involved luring half NZ First’s parliamentary caucus away from their leader, fatally poisoned the relationship between the two parties. Had Shipley not betrayed Peters, then the electorate’s rightward swing in 2005 would, almost certainly, have been even more emphatic.

As an enthusiastic globalist, Brash was unwilling to lead National too far down the anti-immigrant road. As a consequence, there was plenty of space for NZ First to fill around the immigration issue. Had Shipley not torpedoed her party’s chances of ever again forming a coalition with NZ First, Brash could have quietly encouraged the Right’s more rabid supporters to treat the election as a “twofer”. Those who despised Maori more than immigrants could vote National. Those who despised immigrants more than Maori could vote NZ First.

Such a strategy would likely have boosted NZ First’s vote at Labour’s expense. As it was, however, Brash’s overall strategic goal of uniting the whole of the Right under National’s banner not only actively discouraged right-wing voters from splitting their support, but also, by turning National into a much bigger and scarier political monster, persuaded Labour’s more conservative supporters, who might otherwise have indulged their own, deeply ingrained, anti-immigrant sentiments by voting for Winston and NZ First, to stick with Helen Clark and her government for another three years.

The 2005 General Election was, therefore, a “damned close-run thing”. Only 45,000 votes separated National’s vote-count from Labour’s, which suggests that if Peters’ nearly 6 percent of the Party Vote had been added to National’s column, then 2005 would have been an even closer-run thing. When offered the choice of an openly anti-Maori National Party and a strongly anti-immigrant NZ First, very close to half the NZ electorate voted for one or the other. Nor should it be forgotten (although Rudman somehow failed to recall the fact in his column) this was the same electorate that lifted National’s support from 28 percent in the polls one month before his in/famous “Nationhood” speech to the Orewa Rotary Club (27 January 2004) to 45 percent two weeks after it.

A much better example of New Zealand voters turning away from NZ First’s “casual racism” came three years after 2005, in the first general election contested by the National Party’s new leader, John Key. Under Key’s sunny tutelage, National got quite a lot bigger and a whole lot less scarier. He achieved this not only by reaching out to Labour’s more conservative voters, but also by making sure he wouldn’t have to deal with NZ First’s.

Key simply refused to play the race card in the same brutal way as Brash. It was clever politics, because, by ditching the Iwi/Kiwi rhetoric he expanded his coalition options well beyond Act’s hard-line neoliberalism. The resulting National-Act-Maori Party-United Future coalition government placed a floor under National’s support that has remained preternaturally solid for 12 years – and counting.

Though lacking Key’s sunny disposition, Simon Bridges could, nevertheless, learn a thing or two from his predecessor’s bland opportunism. One of the ways, Key convinced the electorate that he was the anti-Brash was by coming to Labour’s and the Greens’ rescue over their highly contentious anti-smacking legislation. To the bill’s opponents on the rabid Right, national’s leader was saying: “You’ll get nothing from me.” (Who else were they going to vote for!?) To the rest of New Zealand, Key’s bravura display of bi-partisanship, guaranteeing the success of a long-overdue social reform, signalled that his were a safe and compassionate pair of hands.

A similar display of bi-partisanship in relation to the current Covid-19 medical emergency could offer similar reassurance to an electorate which has yet to learn the knack of relaxing in the arms of the Leader of the Opposition.

Which is, finally, the lesson from our history which Rudman, along with an alarming number of his colleagues, has somehow managed to forget. That New Zealanders, as a people, are more than capable of rising – or sinking – to just about any political occasion.

Providing they have someone to show them how.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 12 March 2020.

Ihumatao Watched By Unfriendly Eyes.

Zero Tolerance: For the moment, the raw racist response to the Ihumatao Occupation amounts to not much more than an infuriated buzz. Ten thousand voices, all speaking at once, are producing only an incoherent babble. It points to the current lack of organisation and direction in the Settler Nation’s political reaction to Ihumatao. The voice of a leader has yet to assert itself above the rising racist din. This anarchic phase will not last for long.

IHUMATAO’s intersectional celebrations, derisively dubbed “Wokestock” by right-wing commentator, Matthew Hooton, are being watched by unfriendly eyes. The Settler Nation has zero tolerance for the politics of radical decolonisation.

While progressive New Zealanders were raising their glasses to Jacinda’s belated intervention on Friday evening, those responsible for preserving the status quo were setting theirs down in icy disbelief. What did the woman think she was doing? Has she no idea how badly this could end for her party?

It was ever thus. The initial rapturous eruption of “people power”, followed by the Establishment’s remorseless re-imposition of control. First: the planting of trees and a police constable singing in harmony with the crowd. Then: the fear blowing in, cold and unforgiving; blighting all the bright colours; silencing the songs.

It is always dangerous to remind the colonisers of the world they have extinguished. To offer them a glimpse of that world is more perilous still. It proves that the culture they conquered and left for dead can be brought back to life. Ihumatao has smouldered for 156 years. The effect of the mass occupation of the past week has gifted it a sudden inrush of oxygen. Now there are flames amongst the fern.

Those flames glitter in the narrowed eyes of the watchers. From the ill-educated and ill-disciplined the responses are already forthcoming. Angry posts on Facebook and Twitter, filled with the raw racism of those for whom the possession of a white skin constitutes their sole claim to superiority. Reading these, it is difficult to decide who they hate the most: Maori, or the Pakeha who support them? Whichever it is, their animosity is palpable.

For the moment, however, this raw racist response amounts to not much more than an infuriated buzz. Ten thousand voices, all speaking at once, producing only an incoherent babble. It points to the current lack of organisation and direction in the Settler Nation’s political reaction to Ihumatao. The voice of a leader has yet to assert itself above the rising racist din.

This anarchic phase will not last for long.

It will be interesting to see whether it is the Right, or the Left, which first attempts to organise the reaction to Ihumatao. The Settler State’s response to the Foreshore and Seabed crisis was led, at least initially, by the Labour leader, Helen Clark. It was she who called the organisers of the Hikoi “haters and wreckers”, and it was her Attorney General who drew up the Foreshore and Seabed legislation. This taking of the initiative by Labour, though it cost the party dearly in the Maori seats, was, almost certainly, what allowed it to retain sufficient Pakeha support to hold-off the 2004-05 challenge from National’s Don Brash.

The force of the Right’s assault on Maoridom was formidable. Brash’s Orewa Speech mobilised the most conservative elements of New Zealand’s settler society in ways not seen for decades. Had National won the general election, it was pledged to remove all reference to the Treaty of Waitangi from legislation, wind up the Treaty Settlement Process and abolish the Maori Seats.

Such was the fury inspired by the prospect of Maori enforcing their customary rights on the nation’s beaches. Only two percentage points separated the Labour and National Party Vote in 2005. New Zealand escaped an “Iwi/Kiwi” war by the skin of its teeth.

Small wonder that Labour’s Maori caucus is so conflicted. The prospect of a large and voluble land occupation developing sufficient political momentum to void the legal status of Maori land confiscated unjustly by the Crown in 1863 has clearly sent shivers up and down its collective spine. If one victim of the raupatu of the 1860s can secure the restitution of their lost land, then why not all the victims? The absolute prohibition against the return of privately held property to its original owners is all that keeps the Treaty Settlement Process alive. Do away with that prohibition, and the Settler Nation will erupt in fury.

But, if Ihumatao is not returned, or at least transformed into a public space from which large scale development is excluded, then Labour’s Maori caucus’ grip on the Maori seats will be significantly – perhaps fatally – weakened.

The same may well apply to Labour’s strong support among progressive young New Zealanders. For Jacinda to gaze upon Ihumatao’s celebration of diversity and not be moved would raise all manner of doubts. It’s one thing to promise New Zealand “transformational” change, only to be thwarted by the nation’s decrepit bureaucratic machinery. Quite another, to look at the change her most fervent supporters are making – and turn away.

But, if she remains true to her vision of trailblazing a new politics of kindness, by rescuing Ihumatao, what then?

The Act Party has already put in its bid to lead the backlash. By 9 o’clock on Friday 26 July – barely two-and-a-half hours after Jacinda halted development at Ihumatao – David Seymour had released a statement to the media.

“The Prime Minister has cultivated a brand of a kinder more inclusive politics, but some things such as occupying private property are always wrong. The Prime Minister of New Zealand has just sent a message: ‘if you occupy private property, the Government will take your side instead of protecting property rights.’”

Seymour is but a scout for the main force of the Settler Nation. The National Party’s troopers will not take long to move up to the front lines if Labour is brave enough to make the next election a referendum on whether or not the fruits of colonisation remain firmly in the hands of Pakeha; or are shared out more equitably among the citizens of a new nation: The Bi-Cultural Republic of Aotearoa.

That would be an election worth voting in.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 30 July 2019.

Dark Matter

Dark Realm: Since Friday, 15 March, the Left has been dazzled by Jacinda’s light. So much so, that it has failed to understand that, far from defeating the Right’s darkness, the Prime Minister’s recent illuminations have only exposed the terrifying dimensions of its realm. Light speaks only to light. Political dark matter has always been, and always will be, profoundly deaf to everything except the soundless screaming energy of its black and inexhaustible rage.

ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS. That’s the brutal truth to keep in mind. Even in the golden afterglow of last Friday’s extraordinary National Remembrance Service: all is not as it seems.

So many on the Left do not appreciate the true dimensions of the vast and immovable cultural-political consensus that allows Capitalism to survive and thrive. If it wasn’t there: or, if it was there, but amenable to reason and love: then Capitalism would long ago have given way to a more human order.

This grim judgement is a lot easier for the Left to accept when reactionary ideas and parties are in the saddle and riding them hard. In those moments, it is easy to convince Capitalism’s enemies that it is, indeed, a monstrous nightmare pressing down upon the lungs of human hope.

A Left without illusions has a much better chance of organising effectively and, on rare occasions, winning.

The real danger comes when events conspire to make it appear as though the Left has already won.

Consider the events that shook Paris and the rest of France in May 1968. The tens-of-thousands of students in the streets. The barricades. The CRS – France’s brutal riot police – counter-attacking. Parisians rushing to the aid of the beaten and bloodied citizens. Clouds of tear-gas wafting down the boulevards of the capital. Spontaneous strikes in France’s largest industries. Workers turning their bosses away from the factory gates. Surely, in May 1968, France teetered on the brink of revolution?

That is certainly what it looked like and felt like.

Except, that is not what was happening.

After the French Communist Party had bribed the striking workers with a ten percent across-the-board wage rise and the factories had been handed back to the bosses. After President Charles De Gaulle had returned from Germany, where he had taken refuge with the French army units stationed there. After the French Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, had allowed the scheduled elections for the French legislature to proceed. Only then was it made clear what the people of France really thought about the events of May 1968.

In those elections, the governing Gaullist party and its allies won 387 seats in the National Assembly. The Socialist Party and the Communist Party, between them, just 91. The Governing party had taken 111 additional seats. The combined forces of the Left had lost 99.

What had looked like a revolution was anything but.

In the United States the story was the same.

Between 1968 and 1972, the USA was rocked by some of the most tumultuous political protests of its entire history. Mass demonstrations against the Vietnam War grew ever larger. The “Youth Revolt” filled newspaper columns and the airwaves. Young left-wing delegates to the 1972 Democratic Party Convention secured the presidential nomination for Senator George McGovern – an avowed liberal and fierce opponent of the Vietnam War. The Democrats offered the American electorate the most progressive party platform since Roosevelt’s New Deal.

McGovern’s opponent, President Richard Nixon, appealed to “the great silent majority of Americans” to give him four more years in the White House.

The great silent majority were only too happy to oblige.

Nixon won an astonishing 60.7 percent of the popular vote: McGovern just 37.5 percent. The streets of America may have been teeming with young, idealistic protesters, but they were vastly outnumbered by the silent and invisible armies of the Right.

Closer to home, in 2002, the National Party was routed by Helen Clark’s Labour Party, receiving just 20.9 percent of the Party Vote. Pundits reckoned it would take National several elections to rebuild its support. Some even suggested the party might be over. Three years later, however, the Don Brash-led National Party came within 46,000 votes of winning the 2005 General Election.

Brash’s in/famous “Nationhood” speech, delivered to the Orewa Rotary Club in January 2004, unleashed a vast wave of hitherto unacknowledged Pakeha resentment towards the New Zealand state’s official policy of bi-cultural “partnership”. Responding to the highly-charged mood of racial anxiety which Brash’s speech had whipped-up, Clark felt obliged to pass the deeply divisive Foreshore & Seabed Act. Had she not, it is probable that Brash would have defeated her government, scrapped the Treaty of Waitangi and abolished the Maori Seats. The sleeping dogs of Pakeha racism, kicked into a state of vicious wakefulness, had demanded, and been given, large chunks of raw political meat – by both major parties.

When we look up into the night sky, what do we see? The moon, the planets and the stars ranged across the heavens in a glittering diadem of light. Looking at all this beauty, it is easy to believe that the universe is made up of nothing but light. But, all is not as it seems.

What the physicists and cosmologists tell us is that in between the stars there is something else. Something mysterious and invisible, and yet so powerful that without it the universe could not exist. These unknown forces are said by the physicists and cosmologists to make up 85 percent of the universe. The world of light, they calculate, represents a mere 5 percent. The names given to these mysterious and invisible cosmic forces are “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy”.

The capitalist universe is similarly held together by dark matter infused with dark energy. Though silent and invisible, these political forces are ubiquitous and immensely strong. Powered by the dark psychic energy that drives capitalism: the lust for power and wealth; the willingness to exploit and consume; the hatred of all that is weak and in need; the worship of force and violence; and the ever-present fear of falling into powerlessness and poverty; dark political matter is not exceptional in the capitalist universe – it is the rule.

Since Friday, 15 March, the Left has been dazzled by Jacinda’s light. So much so, that it has failed to understand that, far from defeating the Right’s darkness, the Prime Minister’s recent illuminations have only exposed the terrifying dimensions of its realm. Light speaks only to light. Political dark matter has always been, and always will be, profoundly deaf to everything except the soundless screaming energy of its black and inexhaustible rage.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 2 April 2019.

Play It Again, Winston: An Article Written 12 Years Ago For "The Independent".

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. 

- Humphrey Bogart (as Rick Blaine) in Casablanca 

WINSTON PETERS may have thought he could sit out the looming years of parliamentary conflict on the cross benches. Like Rick Blaine, the flawed hero of Warner Brothers’ classic movie Casablanca, he figured on doing as little harm and as much good as he could, as far away from the action as he could possibly get. But just because you don’t go looking for trouble, doesn’t mean trouble won’t come looking for you. Now trouble has found Winston Peters. Trouble in the shape of a lanky brunette with a bad haircut and a crooked smile. “Here’s looking at you kid.”

Like one of those affairs that seem inevitable to everyone except the participants, Labour and NZ First were bound to get together sooner or later. There’s just too much of the old Labour spirit in Winston. That cussed determination to set an independent course for the New Zealand economy – the vision that drove Coates and Sutch and Kirk - has always been central to NZ First’s philosophy. In much the same way, Winston’s instinctive mistrust of big business, and his realisation that only the state is strong enough to challenge its power, used to be central to Labour’s philosophy.

Most of the men Helen works with aren’t like that. Today’s Labour men tend to resemble the Victor Laszlo character in Casablanca – high-minded types who grasp the theory, but struggle to master the practice. Above all else, Winston is a practical man.

And so, in ways that Winston has yet to appreciate, are the Greens. When it comes down to the nitty-gritty of practical politics, he may find that he and Rod Donald are not so far apart. Sustainability, for example, may turn out to have a great deal in common with forging a multi-party consensus on the optimum size and composition of New Zealand’s population.

The Greens opposition to Free Trade Agreements, their call to “Buy NZ Made”, and their policy of keeping New Zealand land in New Zealand hands, slot easily into Winston’s campaign for economic sovereignty. Both parties also decry the fact that 25 percent of New Zealand children live in poverty, and both have called for the Minimum Wage to be raised to $12 per hour.

Give the deal a year, and Winston may even end up repeating to Rod and Jeanette Rick’s famous line to the Vichy French police captain at the very end of Casablanca: “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

An even closer alliance stands ready to be forged between Winston’s team and the beleaguered remnants of Labour’s right-wing faction.

Right-wing Labour MPs like Phil Goff, Clayton Cosgrove and Damien O’Connor will find ready-made allies in the likes of Ron Mark, Peter Brown and Doug Wollerton. These are men who can be relied upon to hold the line against the Labour Left and the Greens’ obsession with unpopular causes.

It may even have occurred to the wily Mr Peters that his current core constituency of elderly New Zealanders isn’t getting any younger. If it is to grow and prosper in the 21^st Century, NZ First needs to expand its electoral base beyond white-haired old women and grumpy old men. This is especially pertinent given Winston’s surprise defeat in Tauranga.

In Labour’s socially conservative, blue-collar voters there lies a vast reservoir of potential NZ First support. Fed up with “political correctness”, sick of the Treaty, opposed to mass immigration, punitive when it comes to drugs and crime, instinctively protectionist and proudly patriotic, these voters used to regard the incautious Mr Tamihere as their spokesman. Now that he’s no longer in Parliament, they may be in the market for a new champion.

It’s not a silly idea. Jim Anderton and Matt Robson have spent the last three years trying to persuade Labour’s blue-collar battlers to switch over to the Progressive Party. Unfortunately for Jim and Matt – especially Matt - the fledgling party was sending out too many mixed messages. On the one hand there was the Progressive Party’s popular stance on drugs and the drinking age; on the other, its decidedly unpopular championing of Ahmed Zaoui and the rights of refugees.

Winston Peters and his team are in no danger of getting their messages mixed. No one is likely to mistake Ron Mark for a bleeding-heart liberal.

On some issues, however, Winston and his colleagues will have to tread carefully. Granting confidence and supply to a Labour-Progressive minority government presupposes a willingness on NZ First’s part to engage both more frequently and more effectively with organised labour. The same social conservatives who applaud Peter’s stance on Ahmed Zaoui, will look askance at any attempt to undermine workers’ rights in the workplace.

Once again, NZ First and its leader may discover they have allies in the unlikeliest places. Winning a $2.50 increase in the Minimum Wage is not the worst way to kick off a closer relationship with the Council of Trade Unions. And Winston Peters’ distinct lack of enthusiasm for Labour’s proposed Free Trade Agreement with China is unlikely to get him off on the wrong foot with CTU economist, Peter Conway, or the Engineers Union boss, Andrew Little.

Nearly ten years ago, in the April/May 1996 issue of NZ Political Review, Bruce Jesson attempted to define the phenomenon that was Winston Peters. Jesson felt aggrieved that his fellow political journalists were always so quick to brand him as both a racist and a populist:

“I personally think that they have consistently misjudged Peters as a politician. His strength as a politician is that he has the ability to cause a sensation, but that does not make him simply a sensationalist. He has the ability to tap popular feeling, but that does not of itself make him a populist (whatever that means in the New Zealand context).”

Jesson took a kinder and more measured view of his subject:

“Perhaps the truth is that Peters is a sensationalist with an element of sincerity? Who knows? Probably not even Peters. It doesn’t matter anyway because Peters’ importance is his role not his motives. His role is indicated by the name he has chosen for his party: New Zealand First. And it is indicated by the things he campaigns about, because there is a consistent thread running through them. He is as fiercely opposed to foreign investment as he is to the government’s immigration policies. Peters is a rarity in New Zealand, he is a nationalist – probably our only serious nationalist politician since Norman Kirk, or perhaps even John A. Lee.”

It is significant, I think, that both of the politicians to whom Peters is compared by Jesson were from Labour.

At this point in its history, New Zealand stands in need just such a nationalist politician. Already, in the private seminars and political briefings paid for by the big corporations, there is talk about the changes our association with the burgeoning economies of Asia is bound to bring. Hints that our Enlightenment faith in individual liberty and the Rights of Man may have to be modified if we are not to antagonise our new “partners”.

Winston Churchill heard similar whispers in the early months of 1940 – and rejected them. Britain, he knew, was more than a collection of islands, it was a collection of ideas. Ideas too valuable to surrender for the paltry “rewards” of a dictated “peace”. Ideas worth fighting for.

It’s that same determination to stand and fight that lifts the movie Casablanca so far above the ordinary Hollywood fare. The unlooked for appearance of the idealistic Ilsa, draws forth a kindred response from the world-weary Rick. In the end we discover that the hero’s dead-pan, wise-cracking persona hides something altogether more admirable - more noble.

So play it Winston. Play it one more time.

You know what we want to hear.

You played it for Bolger, now play it for Clark.

If he could stand it, so can she.

Play it.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Wednesday, 19 October 2005.

Unconvincing: Labour Appeals To Its South Auckland Base.

"We can't do it on our own." Andrew Little appeals to the voters of South Auckland to, once again, push Labour over the line to victory.

 

SOUTH AUCKLAND is another country. The country New Zealand could have been, had colonisation unfolded differently. The country New Zealand may yet become, if current immigration policies are abandoned.
 

South Auckland is a Pacific country: where the faces are brown; the neighbourhoods are poor; and the churches – of which there are a great many – are full of worshippers.
 

South Auckland is also Labour country – and that is not something one can say about many other places in New Zealand. In 2005 it was the voters of South Auckland that saved Helen Clark’s Labour-led Government and sent her back for a third term as their Prime Minister.
 

If Labour is saved again: if it avoids a fourth consecutive defeat at the hands of the National Party; then it will be the people of South Auckland that Andrew Little and his party have to thank.
 

No surprises, then, that the place Labour chose to launch its Community Action Network (CAN) was in the spacious hall of the Otara Mormon Church.
 

A sprawling state-house suburb, Otara bends itself around the Tamaki River and Otara Creek. It has the dull topography of a former swamp: low-lying, flat and featureless. Trees are few and far-between, but power pylons bestride the land like H.G. Well’s Martian fighting machines. The streets are full of bright-eyed kids riding bicycles. White faces are rare.
 

The Otara Mormon Church is itself a sprawling complex set in the middle of an even larger car park. It’s sheer size confirms the central role of religious observance in the communities of South Auckland. As the venue for Saturday afternoon’s launch, however, it also drew into sharp focus the huge cultural gulf separating Labour’s parliamentary leadership from its most loyal South Auckland supporters.
 

To be sure, the Labour MPs from that part of the world: Jenny Salesa (Manukau East) Su’a William Sio (Mangere) Louisa Wall (Manurewa) and Peeni Henare (Tamaki Makaurau) all offer a comfortable ethnic fit with the communities they represent – and all of them were present in the hall, but none of these politicians are members of Labour Leader Andrew Little’s inner circle of confidants and advisers. That group remains an overwhelmingly Palangi affair.
 

CAN itself is something of a paradox. It’s prime organiser, Keiran O’Halloran, is an import from Ireland via the British Labour Party.  Now, someone who grew up under the government of Tony Blair, and has the accent to prove it, might not strike every observer as the ideal pick to organise the South Auckland Vote. Yet, there he was on Saturday, belting out slogans which may have resonated in the London boroughs, but which left this “Southside” audience visibly underwhelmed.
 

As an organisation dedicated to recruiting and training hundreds of local volunteers to get out Labour’s South Auckland’s Party Vote, CAN boasts a rather confusing name. A cynic might say that CAN’s gloriously non-partisan moniker testifies to the dwindling potency of the party’s brand. “Volunteers For Labour” would have been a more accurate description of the project: but if that was its name – would they have come?
 

In introducing Andrew Little, his new deputy, Jacinda Ardern, talked about Labour being “the people’s party”. Its National opponents may have a lot of money, she told the 300-strong audience, but we have people. Engaging those people in a genuine conversation was critical, she argued: “ordinary people talking to ordinary people”.
 

Little, himself, reiterated Ardern’s sentiments: telling his listeners that: “We win with the love and conviction and passion of ordinary New Zealanders”, admitting, almost plaintively, “we can’t do it on our own”. Exactly why Labour merited Southside’s help remained frustratingly frothy. The audience’s response, as befitted its overwhelmingly Pacific composition, was warm and polite. It was not, however, the sort of speech that inspires young volunteers to form queues at the recruitment trestles. (As they did for Barack Obama in 2008 and Bernie Sanders in 2016.)
 

Had Donald Trump been in attendance he would undoubtedly have described Little’s performance as “Low Energy”. Given the week Labour had just been through, its leader’s lack of fire was, perhaps, understandable. It was not, however, forgivable. Not in front of that audience.
 

Because the stand-out moments of Saturday’s launch came not from Labour’s politicians and apparatchiks, but from the South Auckland people themselves. Such energy as was on display all flowed from them. From the child soloists, the traditional dancers, the little Mormon choir and, most especially, from the Pacific audience, when it lifted up its collective voice in song.
 

That richness of sound; those effortless harmonies; spoke of faith, passion and conviction beyond the reach of Labour’s current repertoire. It spoke of communities forged out of enduring values widely shared - values which Labour was challenged to embrace not only tactically, but emotionally. It commanded them to stop talking – and start listening.
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 9 May 2017.

Trumpism's Shock-Waves Will Reach New Zealand.

Been There, Very Nearly Did That: Imagining how different this country would be if Don Brash had won the 2005 General Election makes the task of understanding how disruptive Trump’s presidency is likely to be for the United States a lot easier.

 

AS NEW ZEALAND RETURNS to work and the tempo of the year quickens; so too does the pace of politics. The inauguration of President Donald Trump has certainly given the domestic politics of the United States a mighty shove between the shoulders. And because the USA still dominates the world, the knock-on effects of Trumpism unbound will reverberate around the globe.

 

Even here, in far-flung New Zealand, policies and attitudes which have for long been considered beyond the pale of civilised discourse will coming rushing back at us out of the darkness. Old arguments, from both sides of the Left/Right divide, will be dusted off and thrust back into the political arena.

 

Rather than a sedate walk to the ballot-box in November, we may find ourselves shoving our way into the polling booth through surging crowds and angry cat-calls.

 

Too much? We must hope so. But it behoves us to remember the historical transformations made possible by those in authority suddenly signalling a relaxation of taboos and/or a reconsideration of what is and isn’t politically acceptable.

 

When the former Reserve Bank Governor, and Leader of the National Party-led Opposition, Dr Don Brash, delivered his in/famous “Orewa Speech” on 27 January 2004, for example, ideas and expressions which had hitherto been condemned as “racist” were instantly rendered acceptable to a very large number of New Zealanders.

 

The political impact of Brash’s speech was registered with dramatic emphasis in the next Colmar Brunton opinion poll. National had improved its position by a staggering 17 percentage points. Overnight, the National Party which had been humiliated in the 2002 general election had got its electoral mojo back.

 

Brash led National to the brink of electoral victory in 2005 on a radically right-wing political programme. This included, inter alia, downgrading the Treaty of Waitangi and abolishing the Maori seats, along with significant tax cuts funded by a dramatic reduction in public spending. Had the Helen Clark-led Labour Party not edged past National in the final hours of the 2005 campaign, New Zealand would now be a very different country.

 

Imagining how different this country would be if Brash had won should make the task of understanding how disruptive Trump’s presidency is likely to be for the United States a lot easier. (Allowing, of course, for the fact that Don Brash is a judicious, well-educated, and highly-experienced public servant, and, at the personal level, a generous and tolerant human-being – and Donald Trump is not.)

 

Cast your mind back to the venomous quality of public debate in the run-up to the 2005 election. Recall the scandalous rumours that circulated about the Prime Minister’s marriage and private life. The level of misogyny in New Zealand society was astonishing. And there was nothing “casual” about the racism on display in the National Party’s “Iwi/Kiwi” billboards.

 

National’s narrow loss did nothing to still these voices. If anything, they grew in intensity. Those Kiwis who recoiled in horror at the viciousness of Trump’s attacks on Hillary Clinton, have clearly forgotten the appalling acidity of the vitriol hurled at Helen Clark.

 

The person who put an end to this Trumpism-before-Trump was, of course, John Key. Though National’s dirty politics continued under the radar of mainstream political scrutiny, Key’s overthrow of Brash in November 2006 signalled a major strategic shift. The most dramatic demonstration of Key’s “pivot” towards the “moderate centre” came in 2008 when he very publicly joined forces with Helen Clark to ensure the passage of Sue Bradford’s controversial anti-smacking legislation.

 

This was like Trump announcing that he was cutting all ties with Steve Bannon, Breitbart News and the Alt-Right, in order to lead the international fight against climate change!

 

Key’s deliberate policy of ideological decompression allowed New Zealand to pass through the potentially highly-divisive aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis without serious political disorder. Indeed, Key’s embrace of the policy package dubbed “Labour-lite”, coupled with his relaxed style of governance, allowed him to extend National’s political honeymoon indefinitely.

 

No such decompression is about to occur in the United States. On the contrary, the needle on the political pressure-gauge is already entering the red zone. Trump’s inaugural address signalled his intention to double-down on the populist manifesto that carried him to the White House. His Cabinet, and the triumphalist Republican congress, cannot wait to give it regulatory and legislative effect.

 

With America’s leader urging them on, the global disciples of the Far-Right will spring from the political shadows in vast numbers. The demoralised opponents of abortion will be re-energised by the imminent reversal of Roe vs Wade. Cyberspace will be littered with the virtual corpses of out-numbered and out-gunned “social justice warriors”. Accusations of racism will no longer make racists feel ashamed – they will be worn as badges of honour.

 

Can’t happen here? Oh yes, it can. It very nearly did.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 24 January 2017.

Homes Are Where The Votes Are.

Working Class Voters' Ballot Papers At Work: A massive programme of state house construction; a graduated Land Tax; a radical and comprehensive overhaul of New Zealand’s tenancy legislation along European lines: each of these measures would lower the cost of housing dramatically. All those suffering from the worst effects of the current housing crisis, the young and the poor, have to do is vote for them.

 

NEW ZEALAND’S HOUSING SITUATION grows daily more perplexing.

 

In the country’s largest city, Auckland, the price of residential housing surges from one scarcely believable peak to the next. Neighbour’s stand open-mouthed as the sale-price of the property across the street is communicated to them in hushed tones and wide-eyed disbelief. Like the purchaser of a Lotto ticket, Auckland homeowners are mentally spending the hundreds-of-thousands of additional dollars they’re absolutely certain to win.

 

Woe betide the politician who tramples on those dreams.

 

Meanwhile, as the amount of the required deposit leaps impossibly far ahead of their ability to save such a sum, younger New Zealanders attempting to purchase their first residential property are growing increasingly desperate.

 

Woe betide the politician who tramples on those dreams.

 

The news media is calling it a housing crisis. But the advocates for state house tenants are crying foul. “How can there be a crisis,” they demand, “when hundreds of Housing NZ properties are standing empty?”

 

What’s going on?

 

The brutally simple answer is that those New Zealanders sufficiently motivated to participate in large numbers in general elections are ruthlessly enriching themselves.

 

With sufficient political will, New Zealand’s housing problems could be resolved quite quickly. To say this, however, is to beg the question of how that political will might best be summoned. A question which, in its turn, raises the perennial and deeply subversive issue of social class – and the bitter conflicts spawned when the interests of social classes clash.

 

For an excellent example of how these class conflicts get played out politically, we have only to look at the final days of the 2005 General Election Campaign.

 

The incumbent Labour Government was on the ropes, and the Don Brash-led National Party Opposition had the scent of victory in its nostrils. It was then that Labour’s campaign manager (and party president) Mike Williams sent out a last-minute letter to state house tenants. The letter warned them that, if Labour lost the election, the new National Government’s housing policies would see many of them evicted from their homes.

 

The letter had the desired effect. As Election Night 2005 drew to its close, and the counting of the ballots cast in the polling booths of the nation’s sprawling state house suburbs was completed, Labour’s tally of Party Votes surged triumphantly past National’s to secure for Helen Clark her final and most dramatic electoral victory.

 

Had those same state house tenants turned out to vote in the same numbers at the 2008, 2011 and 2014 General Elections, then John Key may never have become New Zealand’s prime minister. But they didn’t – and because they didn’t (at least in part) the policies of John Key’s National-led Government have, for the past eight years, exacted a very heavy toll on the nation’s state house tenant’s.

 

The same could be said of the nation’s younger citizens.

 

In 2005, Helen Clark (egged on by former student president, Grant Robertson) announced that Labour would be introducing interest-free student loans. With this prospect before them, scores-of-thousands of young New Zealanders made the journey to the polling-booths on Election Day to vote for the thousands-of-dollars-worth of savings Labour was promising. A significant number of their parents did the same thing – and for much the same reason! They, too, had a role to play in pushing the red line above the blue line.

 

In the 2014 General Election, however, only 49 percent of the 743,200 New Zealanders aged 18-29 years bothered to cast a vote. Of the 864,100 New Zealanders aged 60 years and over (they’re the ones with the houses) the participation rate was 87 percent! The young people struggling to buy their first home in 2016 should, perhaps, consider how much more attention politicians would pay to their housing needs after 2017, if 87 percent of them turned out to vote.

 

At the moment, middle-class Kiwis (especially those living in Auckland) are doing amazingly well out of John Key’s government’s housing policies. With the thumb of unprecedented immigration numbers pressing down on the demand side of the scales, and the supply side embarrassingly light on available residential properties, existing home-owners are laughing all the way to the banks – who are only too happy to lend them the money for a second, third or fourth house.

 

It’s not difficult to guess which party these folks will be voting for next year.

 

Nor should it be difficult for Labour, the Greens and NZ First to work out what they need to offer young and poor voters in 2017.

 

A massive programme of state house construction; a graduated Land Tax; a radical and comprehensive overhaul of New Zealand’s tenancy legislation along European lines: each of these measures would lower the cost of housing dramatically.

 

All the young and the poor have to do is vote for them.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 May 2016.

“By Their Fruits Shall Ye Know Them”: There’s nothing ‘moderate’ about John Key’s government.

Wolves In Wolves' Clothing: What Key and Joyce, both inveterate poll-watchers, clearly grasped after National’s last-minute failure in 2005 was that when push came to shove, the New Zealand electorate just wasn’t ready to take yet another wild ride into political and economic upheaval. National had to learn how to "make haste slowly".

 

NEW ZEALAND’S LOVE AFFAIR with John Key, like most enduring relationships, is based on trust. Ever since he wrested the leadership of the National Party from the scary Don Brash, it has been Key’s unwavering mission to present both himself and the party he leads as ordinary, decent and (most important of all) non-threatening. Looking back over the past six years, only a fool would say he hasn’t been extraordinarily successful.

 

Had Brash won the 2005 election New Zealand would have been plunged into a period of acute political instability.

 

Faced with a government determined to relegate the Treaty of Waitangi to the status of an historical relic, and abolish the Maori seats altogether, the Maori Party, the Greens and (with much less enthusiasm) the Labour Party would have found themselves mobilising not only a furious Maoridom, but also a very significant swathe of Pakeha society as well. The resulting clash of a very significant minority of the population with “the racist Right” would have made the 1981 Springbok Tour protests look like a tepid historical dress rehearsal. After three years of increasingly violent and ultimately fatal confrontations, it’s likely that Brash, the National Party and their rabid Act allies would have been consigned to electoral oblivion. The Right’s electoral rehabilitation would have taken at least a decade.

 

In a very real sense, then, National (and New Zealand) dodged a bullet in 2005. And the two National Party politicians who appreciated just how big a bullet it was that had whistled over their heads were John Key and Steven Joyce. It’s not that these two politicians underwent some sort of Road to Damascus conversion from far-Right fanatics to kitten-eyed moderates – far from it. What they grasped was that any further attempts to impose the entire right-wing agenda in one fell swoop were bound to produce exactly the same electoral failure.

 

Brash had taken his inspiration from Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson. All three of these politicians were “policy aggressors” determined to overturn “the conventional wisdom” in the name of a radically reconfigured New Zealand economy and society. But what Key and Joyce, both inveterate poll-watchers, clearly grasped was that National’s last-minute failure in 2005 was only partly due to Brash’s personal stumbles. When push came to shove, the New Zealand electorate just wasn’t ready to take yet another wild ride into political and economic upheaval. If National was to capitalise successfully upon the electorate’s growing disenchantment with “Nanny Helen’s “ “political correctness” and a Labour Party fast becoming unrecognisable to “Middle New Zealand”, then the negative legacies of Richardson, Shipley and Brash had to be expunged.

 

And nobody does expunge like John Key. In spite of the fact that in his earliest incarnation as a National Party back-bencher, the MP for Hellensville boasted a decidedly reactionary political profile, John Key, as Leader of the Opposition, proved to be extraordinarily adept at presenting himself as “Mr Moderate”, “Mr Bloke-Next-Door”, “Mr Guy-I’d-Like-To-Have-Beer-With” or (if you were a woman) “Mr Guy-I’d-Like-To-Shag”. If Brash’s mentors had been Douglas and Richardson, the policy aggressors; Key’s were Sir Keith Holyoake, Jim Bolger and Clark herself: incrementalists all.

 

But just because, as a politician, you’ve decided to make haste slowly, doesn’t mean that you don’t get to where you’re going in the end. A dispassionate review of the Key Government’s legislative achievements since 2008 could only conclude by observing that notwithstanding all the taunts of National having turned into “Labour-Lite”, this is a very right-wing government indeed. It’s unrelenting hostility to all forms of environmental protection; its opening of our land and sea to mineral exploration and extraction; its blank refusal to take any meaningful action against Climate Change and its determination to protect the dairy industry from any and all forms of practical regulation: these are only the beginning of what is now a very long list National’s reactionary victories.

 

And just consider what has characterised the opening shots of National’s third term. Dismissed as mere technical adjustments, the Government’s changes to the Employment Relations Act place New Zealand at the far right-wing reaches of the OECD. (As the CTU president, Helen Kelly, quite rightly points out.) Then there is Bill English’s and Paula Bennett’s extraordinary decisions in relation to state housing. At a time when people are living in caravan-parks and cars, the idea of selling up to a third of the nation’s state houses represents a sudden and utterly unmandated return to the darkest days of Jenny Shipley. And as if these measures weren’t reactionary enough, it now seems certain that Key will commit New Zealand military forces to the confused and almost certainly ineffective US-led war against the Islamic State.

 

“Moderate”? “Labour-Lite”? Not really. John Key’s government is every bit as bad as its predecessors. It is, however, a great deal better than most of them at pretending it isn’t. And to those who find it impossible to see “that nice Mr Key” as being anything other than the soul of reason and common sense, I can only offer the words of St Matthew’s Gospel:

 

 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.”

 

This essay was posted simultaneously on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Tuesday, 4 November 2014.

The Kowhai And The Birch: Chris Trotter's 'From The Left' Column, Election Eve, 2005.

A Plea For Tolerance: On the eve of the 2005 General Election - an election which threatened to plunge New Zealand into bitter racial conflict, I penned the following column.

YESTERDAY morning, as I turned into the driveway of my daughter’s school, a shaft of sunlight broke through the fog, and the first flowers of the Kowhai tree standing by the gate blazed forth like fiery flakes of gold. A stand of Silver Birches framed the forward Kowhai, their white trunks tapering into a fine filigree of bare branches. It is too soon in the season for their buds to burst.

 

It was a pretty sight and, it occurred to me, a highly symbolic one. The indigenous Kowhai, with its lustrous flowers, holds much in common with the exotic Birch. They are both trees, after all. But the Kowhai and the Birch are also very different. The indigenous tree remains much closer to the earth than its exotic neighbour, spreading its soft brown arms wide across the forest floor. The Birch, by contrast, is a questing tree – its graceful limbs forever raised towards the sun.

 

But the gardener at my daughter’s school has made room for both of them at this gateway to learning: the hugger and the reacher; the brown limbed and the white.

 

And so it has been in the larger garden that is our homeland. In the vast forests that greeted the Maori stood the mighty children of Tane – the Kauri, and Kahikatea – silent and strong, rich with years, and only to be felled with the greatest of reverence and ceremony. But to those who came after the Maori, Tane’s children were for many years no more than things to be used. The vast indigenous forests were felled and out of their dismembered bodies arose a nation.

 

Far from their northern homes, the new citizens of this nation sought to soothe the pain of distance by surrounding themselves with the familiar foliage of childhood gardens. The Oak, the Elm, the Poplar and the Birch: old friends from a forsaken hemisphere – but strange and unfamiliar company for the Kowhai and Pohutukawa.

 

As indigenous gave way to exotic, the ancient wisdom of the trees was lost. And soon a grey-green army of ramrod-straight, fast-growing California Pines was marching across every plain and up every hillside. In place of wild diversity we raised a featureless monoculture, laid out in straight lines, sown and reaped without ceremony, leaving nothing to memory and threatening to turn the sacred wilderness of Tane into a vast factory of indistinguishable timber.

 

But, as the indigenous forests retreated into the fastnesses of the Ureweras and the Southern Alps, something strange began to happen in the suburban gardens of the nation. More and more New Zealanders began to question the wisdom of their grandparents who had filled the parks and reserves of their towns and cities with the flora of Mother England. In more and more gardens people began planting indigenous flowers and trees.

 

Perhaps it was because the seed of the Maori and the Pakeha were becoming as intermingled as the seeds of the Kowhai flowers and the catkins of the Birch: blown together in the great storms of change that were remaking the nation of New Zealand.

 

For now the call was to halt the advance of the grey-green army and to preserve what was left of the family of Tane. The time had come for the descendants of homesick settlers to learn, at last, the true names and the long lineage of their homeland’s native trees.

 

Because here, at the end of the Earth, exotic flora and fauna are prone to dangerous explosions. Freed from the natural constraints of their true homes, they burgeon forth with terrifying enthusiasm. Gorse, rabbits, possums: the list is carved into the bones of this country, and the lessons of their depredations must never be forgotten.

 

Because what is true of our ecology is also true of our ideology. We New Zealanders have a dangerous habit of letting our imported ideas get as out of control as our imported plants and animals.

 

We must be much more careful about what seeds we plant – and where. A monocultural empire of Pinus Radiata is as unacceptable as the pristine forests of Tane are unrecoverable.

 

Tomorrow, then, as you go into the polling booth, remember the wise practice of the gardener at my daughter’s school. And remember, too, the wise words of the poet Kahil Gibran, who cautioned us to stand together, yet not too near together:

 

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

 

And neither, I think, do the Kowhai and the Birch.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post of Friday, 16 September 2005.