Social Cohesion In A Second Term?

The Road Not Taken: Simply for bringing the Maori Party into his government, and sparing us the complete breakdown of social cohesion that would undoubtedly have followed if National's promise to abolish of the Maori Seats had been kept, John Key deserves a second term. The question is: will he be able to keep the peace for another three years?

NEARLY THREE YEARS AGO, Rob Campbell, who (by processes we haven’t the space to go into here) had undergone the remarkable transformation from Trades Hall brawler to capitalist investor, told me something I have not forgotten.

We were seated, very comfortably, at Auckland’s Cin-Cin restaurant, discussing what was already quite clearly a financial crisis of global significance. As I recall, the proportion of the world’s wealth which finance capital’s croupiers had just raked off the table amounted to about one-third.

Rob’s diagnosis of the situation was brutally clear. It would take upwards of a generation for the global economy to make good such colossal losses. The world, he said, was about to go through some very hard times.

I asked him what that meant in political terms.

“The greatest challenge we face,” said Rob, “as we go through this, will be maintaining social cohesion.”

IT IS, PERHAPS, the greatest achievement of John Key’s first term in government that the breakdown in social cohesion which Rob Campbell feared – and which we have just witnessed on the streets of the United Kingdom – has not taken place on our own.

For this the Prime Minister merits high praise.

What kept us together was his inspired decision to bring the Maori Party into his government. Had he not done so: had he simply relied upon National’s natural allies in Act; things could have been very different.

The Maori Seats, for example, would’ve been slated for abolition. This move, alone, threatening as it did the very existence of the Maori Party (and leaving them with dangerously little to lose) would have tested New Zealand’s social cohesion to breaking-point. Serious political disturbances – up to and including terrorist violence – could very easily have torn this country apart.

Simply for sparing us that terrible scenario, John Key deserves a second term.

THE BIG QUESTION,  I guess, is whether – having won a second term – John Key will be able to preserve this country’s social cohesion for another three years? Will the Prime Minister be strong enough to stare down the far-right of his own caucus (along with their clones in the Act Party) and pursue a policy agenda which, rather than driving New Zealanders apart, is designed to bring them together?

I have to say that, as things now stand, I am far from confident that the Prime Minister will be able to hold the line against a full-scale onslaught by the Right.

After three years of holding their noses against the cologne of compromise, they are ready to throw open the doors and let the winds of change blow through the House.

Mr Key, to his credit, is doing his best to win a comprehensive electoral mandate for the changes his colleagues are so desperate to make. In pursuing this objective, however, the Prime Minister is presupposing that the opinion polls are correct, and that National, for the first time since 1951, will secure more than half the votes cast on 26 November.

My gut tells me that, barring an extremely low turnout, such an outcome is highly unlikely. And, if the turnout is low, then National’s mandate will be next to useless. Dramatically falling levels of electoral participation is one of the surest signs that social cohesion is weak – and getting weaker.

THE OTHER FACTOR militating against Mr Key joining the great “coherers” of the past: men like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Michael Joseph Savage; is that in 2011 – unlike the 1930s – global capitalism is not threatened by either a communist Russia or a fascist Germany.

Hedged-in by such existential threats, the intelligent capitalists of the Great Depression threw their support behind the “stimulus packages” of their day.

In 2011, however, unconstrained by the prospect of being supplanted by either the far-left or the far-right, global capitalism is demanding austerity measures of the most socially-destructive kind.

If National, in a second term, bows to those demands, then my old comrade’s, Rob Campbell’s, worst fears will be realised.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 August 2011.

Budget 2011: Front Line Casualty

Registered In Flesh and Blood: If Bill English could see what his numbers added up to, I wonder: would his calculations be different?

BUDGETS ARE WRITTEN for the sake of abstract nouns: Prosperity; Stability; Productivity. But they are experienced by people who are all-too-real. And, if the decisions of our Finance Minister are expressed in numbers, their effects are registered in flesh and blood. If Mr English could see what his numbers added up to; I wonder: would his calculations be different?


THE POLICE CONSTABLE stared at the blank page of his notebook and took a deep breath.

“Can you tell me why your father took his own life?”

The young woman seated opposite him lifted her head slowly, as if the knowledge inside it was too heavy for her body to bear.

“He’d lost everything that meant anything to him. His wife, his home, his job, his self-respect. I think he looked ahead and saw nothing but uselessness and loneliness. In the end, I reckon he just didn’t see any point in going on.”

“He was an educational consultant?”

The young woman snorted.

“That’s what he called himself after he’d been made redundant in that first round of cuts. Used nearly all his redundancy money setting himself up in business. God, he was so keen. But there were no contracts – not one. His whole life had been devoted to research. He picked the eyes out of other countries’ education policies and fed them into the Department. But no one wants ‘back-office bureaucrats’ any more. These days everything’s for the ‘workers on the front line’. He went bust.

“And your mother?”

The young woman smiled wanly.

“She tried – she really did. But the mortgage was just too big for one salary to service. They got behind. The bank was pressuring them to sell. Dad blamed himself. He got more and more depressed – started drinking. There were arguments – fights. In all my life, I’d never seen Dad raise a hand to anyone. But one night I got a call from Mum – she was crying. Dad had hit her. I told her to get out: ‘Go to Women’s Refuge’, I said. Mum just laughed. ‘You’re behind the times over there in Australia’, she told me. ‘The Government’s stopped funding the refuges, most of them have shut up shop.’ I told her I would fly back as soon as I could get a flight, but she told me to stay where I was. ‘They’ll be after you for that student loan of yours’, she told me. ‘You save your money. Your father and I will be all right’.”

“But they weren’t.”

“No. Dad thought he’d go back to varsity – do a law degree. But the Government had stopped lending to mature students – reckoned the over fifty-fives would never pay them back. Seemed like everywhere he turned someone slammed a door in his face. Mum says he just spiralled down and down. His GP referred him to a private psychotherapist, but they couldn’t afford the fees. The public mental health service was no bloody use – just filled him full of lithium. Mum said he was like a zombie. He’d just sit and sit and sit. She couldn’t bear to watch. The house was sold. Mum set Dad up in a little flat – arranged for him to go on the Sickness Benefit. What a joke that was! All he got were endless hassles from the MSD. Told him that if he wasn’t actively seeking work they’d stand him down. A Master’s degree in Education and they had him sweeping floors at the local primary school.

“And that’s where they found him?”

“Yes, that’s where they found him. He’d hanged himself from a metal beam in the school’s reception area.”

The young constable closed his notebook.

“I’m very sorry for your loss.”

The young woman looked out the window at the grey winter sky and blinked.

“You know what Mum said?”

The constable shook his head.

“She said: ‘Dad gave his whole adult life to the back office – but that wasn’t enough to save it from the bottom line’.”

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 20 May 2011.

Budget 2011: A Moderately Good Hand

Raising The Stakes - But Not Too High: John Key knows that if he's to keep on winning the electorate must be persuaded to keep on playing. That's why Bill English will not risk the voters betting everything on a change of government.

NEW ZEALAND should count itself fortunate in having a governing political party located in the centre of the political spectrum. In trying economic times the peddlers of extreme solutions are never without an audience. It takes genuine courage to embrace moderation when the political rewards for extremism can be so high.

For nearly three years now, John Key and Bill English have resisted the advice of extremists and kept the New Zealand economy right-side up. Reading the signals ahead of this week’s Budget, it’s clear they’ve no intention of turning it upside-down anytime soon.

As far as possible – without attracting the unwanted attentions of the international credit rating agencies – Bill English will strive to maintain the purchasing power of the voting public. He cannot avoid making some gestures in the direction of reining-in Government expenditure, but such cuts as there are in the Budget will not be felt universally (as happened with the GST increase) or even immediately.

Mr Key’s announcement of a “Zero Budget” in conditions of relatively strong inflation actually signals a 2-3 percent reduction in the real level of Government expenditure.

Government departments and agencies may receive the same appropriation as last year, but in dollars that are worth less. Maintaining the same level of services to the public in these circumstances will be a struggle. Civil servants will find it equally difficult to preserve (let alone increase) their incomes. Indeed, the value of their wages and salaries will almost certainly decline in real terms.

So, its name notwithstanding, there will be quite substantial public spending cuts in Thursday’s “Zero Budget”. It’s just that by being restricted to the public sector, and because they’ll be happening in slow-motion, most of the electorate won’t notice them.

Private sector savers, families with children, and tertiary students will, however, find it difficult not to notice the Government’s plans to cut-back the State’s contribution to Kiwisaver; tighten-up the eligibility for “Working For Families”; and take a more aggressive approach to the recovery of outstanding student loans.

But, even here, Mr Key and Mr English have made moderation their watchword. Very wisely they have ignored the advice of the business community’s more feral elements – which was to squander a huge chunk of the Prime Minister’s personal political popularity by rushing through these austerity measures under Urgency. Instead, Mr Key and his Finance Minister have chosen the impeccably democratic option of post-dating the reform of Kiwisaver, Working For Families and the recovery of student loans until after the General Election.

In effect, the Prime Minister is daring the electorate to abandon his government for an Opposition in varying degrees of disarray. “Back me or sack me!” is his cry – leaving the average voter in the agonising position of the poker player holding a weak hand who must decide whether or not to pony up his last dollar to discover if his opponent is bluffing.

John Key is asking voters to look at the Opposition parties, assign them playing cards according to their worth, and then decide whether or not their hand is stronger than the Government’s.

If they decide the Oppositions’ cards are too low, then they should give the Government what’s on the table. But, if they honestly believe the combination of Phil Goff (King?), Metiria Turei (Queen?), Winston Peters (Joker?) and Hone Harawira (Knave?) constitutes a winning hand, then, by all means, they should push all their chips forward. Lose a little or win a lot: that’s the wager. And it’s only their own, their children’s and their country’s future that’s at stake.

It’s high risk politics for Mr Key and his government, but the genius of the Prime Minister’s proposition lies in how little he has actually put on the table.

If he had followed the advice of the Business Roundtable, or Dr Don Brash, or the right-wing commentariat, Mr Key would have pushed everything into the centre of the table. All of the state assets; interest-free student loans; Working For Families in its entirety; Paula Rebstock’s welfare reforms; the whole kit and caboodle of neoliberal obsessions would have gone into the pot.

Had he done that, then the voters might have been willing to risk everything – even on the poor hand the Opposition parties have dealt them. The wager would have been a terrifying zero-sum choice: win it all or lose it all. Folding wouldn’t have been an option.

But John Key, the successful currency trader; the self-made millionaire; the high-stakes riverboat gambler; has made throwing-in our hand a reasonable option. The Key-English version of moderate-conservative poker may set the table limit low, but by reassuring the punters that they’re not engaged in an all-or-nothing gamble, it keeps them at the table.

And so long as they keep on playing, the Prime Minister knows he can keep on winning.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 17 May 2011.