“Yesterday’s Controversy” – Labour Better Hope So!

Murky Waters: Essentially, what the world’s money-lenders are saying is that, when it comes to financing large infrastructure projects, like Nanaia Mahuta’s Three Waters project, democratic accountability is a deal-breaker. The surprise here is not the Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency’s demand, but this government’s uncritical acceptance of it.

ANDREA VANCE’S CLAIM that: “Beyond 2022’s local government elections, Three Waters will be yesterday’s controversy”, is a bold one. Had the Delta Variant of Covid-19 not made it to New Zealand, and if Jacinda Ardern’s government was still basking in the warm glow of public adulation, then it is just possible that the Three Waters project would, indeed, have become “yesterday’s controversy” by 2023. But Delta did arrive, and the Prime Minister has become the lightning-rod for a noisy political movement dedicated to the utter destruction of both herself and her government. Labour’s Three Waters project can only assume an ever-increasing salience as that anti-government movement grows.

What Vance was careful to sidestep in her Polyanna-ish determination to focus our attention on the good intentions of Nanaia Mahuta and her colleagues, was the rock-solid promises of both the National and Act parties to dismantle the entire scheme the moment they reclaim the Treasury Benches. This is hardly surprising, because the Right’s pledge to repeal Three Waters makes a nonsense of the Government’s key explanation for the undemocratic construction of the four “entities” responsible for delivering the Three Water’s objectives.

We are told, by Vance herself, that the governance structure has been designed according to the specifications of the Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency – now known as S&P Global Ratings. Without it, says S&P, the cheap money required to repair New Zealand’s drinking-, storm-, and waste-water infrastructure will not be forthcoming.

It is worth spending a few moments unpicking this extraordinary intervention from the enforcers of international finance. Essentially, what the world’s money-lenders are saying is that, when it comes to financing large infrastructure projects, democratic accountability is a deal-breaker. The surprise here is not S&P’s demand, but this government’s uncritical acceptance of it. Rarely has the naked power-politics of the neoliberal world order been on such unabashed display. That the Labour Cabinet, Labour’s parliamentary caucus, and the Labour Party organisation, itself, have so meekly rolled-over on this issue is astonishing. That they have then concluded that slitting Democracy’s throat is their sad but necessary duty, is more than astonishing – it’s chilling.

Vance simply passes over this brutal abrogation of New Zealand’s sovereignty, and the political facilitation it has elicited, without comment, exposing with unusual clarity the ideological bankruptcy of “woke” journalism. Vance is eloquent in her description of the racism inherent in local government’s treatment of Māori, but she has nothing at all to say about the derangement of this country’s democratic institutions at the behest of neoliberalism’s international enforcers. The wonder of it all is that Vance and her journalistic colleagues still evince surprise and indignation when they find themselves bracketed with the Left’s politicians as “enemies of the people”.

Returning to S&P’s bottom line, the question arises: How will the world’s lenders react to the pledge of New Zealand’s right-wing parties to dismantle the Three Waters project? Asked to invest money in a venture so subject to the whims of the electorate, it beggars belief to suggest that any lender so disposed would not demand a premium rate of interest. Only a fool would throw cheap money into such a risky enterprise, and whatever else international financiers may be – they are not fools.

This creates an insurmountable problem for Mahuta and her colleagues. If the whole justification for the undemocratic structure of the Three Waters project is that nothing else can guarantee access to the cheap money needed to make it happen. And if it then turns out that the political risk involved with the Three Waters project is so great that the possibility of cheap money must be taken off the table. Well, then the justification the Three Waters project – as presently structured – must also be taken off the table.

That this would be the outcome must have been clear to Mahuta’s economic advisers. So, why is she still proceeding? Without the support of the right-wing parties, the Three Waters project simply cannot assume that the necessary cheap money will be forthcoming. Mahuta’s conduct only makes sense if the cheap money argument is nothing more than a smokescreen for another, much more important, if unstated, set of objectives.

Vance, herself, makes reference to this opaque communications environment:

“Where the Government has failed is in its communication of its intentions, and critics have exploited this weakness. Mahuta is not a natural communicator and has done a poor job of explaining how the asset ownership works, fudging direct questions about royalties.”

As well she might, if “royalties” were included among those important and unstated objectives.

Vance will not, however, entertain for one moment the idea that there may be more to Three Waters than cheap money. With unseemly relish she reaches for that trusty journalistic stand-by: the accusation of conspiracy theorising. So handy whenever the paths of inquiry lead into territory neither editors nor publishers are keen to have their journalists traverse:

“Some critics have drawn a very long bow with a conspiracy theory which links the Three Waters proposals to the question of allocation of water rights.”

A long bow? Really? When the Waitangi Tribunal and a growing number of iwi have made it clear that the question of “Who owns the water?” must be answered soon – and that the correct answer is neither “The Crown”, nor “Nobody/Everybody”. A long bow? When the He Puapua Report, commissioned by Mahuta, makes it clear that by 2040 the restoration of Māori water rights should be an acknowledged and accomplished fact.

Mahuta’s strategic reticence on discussing Three Waters freely and fulsomely, along with Vance’s airy dismissal of any significant reasons for her doing so, are all of a piece. At their heart lies a deep (and not unjustified) fear that the truth will outrage sufficient New Zealanders to kill the project stone dead. This government, and its journalistic bodyguard, no longer trust the democratic system to deliver the “right” answers. Their response: to propose, and defend, a massive centralisation of power in bodies sealed-off from democratic accountability.

This would have been a bad idea in the very best of circumstances. Pursued with the sort of ruthlessness we have witnessed in the case of Nanaia Mahuta’s Three Waters, it has turned out to be much more than a bad idea. In the minds of a growing number of frightened and angry New Zealanders Mahuta’s project is further evidence of a political project of unprecedented scale and ambition. Justified, or unjustified, in the fraught conditions imposed upon New Zealand society by the Delta incursion, the belief is growing that Labour is making plans for New Zealand. Plans that its citizens will have no opportunity to either endorse or reject.

Andrea Vance rejects these people’s fears as conspiracy theories. She remains confident that Three Waters and its political siblings will be “yesterday’s controversies” by the time the next General Election rolls around in 2023. If she’s right, then all will be well for the Labour Government and its media apologists.

But, if she’s wrong …..

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 16 November 2021.

Outdated Views? Andrea Vance On Sean Plunket.

Re-Platforming: In the eyes of senior Stuff journalist, Andrea Vance, Sean Plunket’s “dalliances with controversy make it easy to paint him as a two-dimensional character: a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.” Dear me! The scorn dripping from those words could fill a large spittoon! Regardless, Plunket’s new media product “The Platform” will soon be going head-to-head with his woke detractors.

IT’S ONE OF THOSE throwaway lines which, precisely because so little conscious thought was given to it, tells us so much. The author, Andrea Vance, is an experienced political journalist working for Stuff. The subject of Vance’s throwaway line, Sean Plunket, is an equally experienced journalist. It was in her recent story about Plunket’s soon-to-be-launched online media product “The Platform”, that Vance wrote: “Plunket’s dalliances with controversy make it easy to paint him as a two-dimensional character: a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.”

It’s hard to get past those first four words. The picture Vance is painting is of a dilettante: someone who flits from one inconsequential pursuit to another, taking nothing seriously. And, of course, the use of the word “dalliances” only compounds this impression. To “dally” with somebody it to treat them casually, offhandedly – almost as a plaything. Accordingly, a “dalliance” should be seen as the very opposite of a genuine commitment. It smacks of self-indulgence. A cure, perhaps, for boredom?

To dally with controversy, therefore, is to betray a thoroughly feckless character. Controversies are all about passion and commitment. Controversies are taken seriously. Indeed, a controversy is usefully defined as a dispute taken seriously by all sides. And yet, according to Vance, Plunket has only been playing with controversy: trifling with it, as a seducer trifles with the affections of an innocent maid.

In Vance’s eyes, this indifference to matters of genuine and serious concern distinguishes Plunket as a “two-dimensional character”. It reduces him to a cardboard cut-out, a promotional poster, a thing of printer’s ink and pixels – insubstantial. Or, which clearly amounts to the same thing as far as Vance is concerned: “a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.” Dear me! The scorn dripping from those words could fill a large spittoon!

As if the holding of right-wing views somehow renders a person less than three-dimensional. As if conservative thinkers from Aristotle to Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke to Carl Schmidt haven’t contributed enormously to Western political thought. As if Keith Holyoake, Jim Bolger and Bill English aren’t respected by New Zealanders of all political persuasions for their rough-hewn dignity and love of country. To hold right-wing views isn’t a sickness, It doesn’t make you a bad person. It merely denotes a preference for the familiar; a wariness of the new; and a deep-seated fear of sudden and unmandated change.

As for “shock-jocks”: well, that is the sort of broadcasting talent commercial radio producers are constantly searching for. People of energy and enthusiasm, with a way of communicating both qualities to the radio station’s listeners. And if they also have a talent for decoding the zeitgeist on air: for tapping into the audience’s anger and frustration; and giving voice to their hopes and their fears? Well, then they are worth their weight in gold – and usually get it. The more people a “shock-jock” glues to the station’s frequency, the more the advertisers are prepared to pay. That’s the business.

Perhaps Vance should have a word with the people who pay her salary: perhaps they could explain where all that money comes from.

The most important words, however, Vance saves for last. What really confirms Plunket’s lack of three dimensions are his “outdated views on privilege and race”. It is with these six words that Vance betrays both herself and her newspaper.

Who says Plunket’s views on privilege and race are “outdated”? According to whose measure? After all, his views on privilege and race correspond closely with those of Dr Martin Luther King. Is Vance asserting that Dr King’s view that people should not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character, is outdated? Is she suggesting that a poor white man has more in the way of privilege than Oprah Winfrey? Or that the privileges which flow from superior economic power and social status count for less than those attached to race, gender and sexuality?

The answer is Yes. Those who declare such views to be “outdated” are, indeed, making all of the claims listed above. This locates them among a relatively narrow section of the population: highly educated; paid well above the average; more than adequately housed; and enjoying all the “privileges” accruing to those who manage the bodies and shape the minds of their fellow citizens.

Andrea Vance is a member of this truly privileged group, and so, at one time, was Sean Plunket. So, why the sneering condescension? Why the scorn? The answer is to be found in the new priorities of the truly privileged; the people who actually run this society. They have determined that their interests are better served by fostering division and bitterness. Rather than see people promote a view of human-beings that unites them in a common quest for justice and equality, they would rather Blacks assailed Whites, women assailed men, gays assailed straights, trans assailed TERFS – and vice versa. In short, the “One Percent” have decided that their interests are better protected by corporations, universities and the mainstream news media all promoting the ideology of identity politics.

By setting his face against this new “Woke” establishment, Sean Plunket the conservative poses as large a threat to the status quo as Martyn Bradbury the radical. On the one hand stand those who question the necessity and morality of changes now deemed essential by persons no one elected. On the other, those who insist that such divisive policies will produce results diametrically opposed to their promoters’ intentions. Right and Left, joined in an “outdated” search for the common ground that makes rational politics possible. The place where both sides are willing to acknowledge and agree that, in the words of John F. Kennedy:

[I]n the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 21 September 2021.

The End Of Merlin: Or, Was Dunne Done-in?

No Fool Like An Old Fool: In the Arthurian legend of Merlin and Vivien, the old wizard's infatuation with Vivien, a young lady of the court, leads to his downfall. The story of Peter Dunne's fall from grace bears a very similar shape and feel.

 

THE SELF-DESTRUCTION of Peter Dunne has unfolded with the dream-like logic of our oldest and unhappiest myths. How could the master shape-shifter have got it so wrong? Made so many mistakes? Let down his guard so foolishly?

 

These are questions Mr Dunne himself found it difficult to answer. Indeed, at the press conference announcing his resignation from John Key’s ministry, the Member for Ohariu observed more than once that he could offer no “rational” explanation for his behaviour.

 

Throughout his encounter with the assembled media pack on Friday afternoon, Mr Dunne maintained an extraordinary dignity and clarity. It was almost as if he was discussing the behaviour of another man – one he barely recognised as himself. Again and again, he denied leaking the Kitteridge Report on the GCSB. It was at home, he said, in his study, in a locked briefcase. But, yes, he had discussed leaking the report with Fairfax Media’s parliamentary correspondent, Ms Andrea Vance.

 

He sounded like a man bewitched.

 

More than one journalist has hinted that Mr Dunne’s fall owes almost as much to Ms Vance as it does to the man himself. Between 30 March and 7 April, the politician and the journalist exchanged more than 64 e-mails. It was to preserve the confidentiality of these exchanges that the Minister was ultimately moved to tender his resignation.

 

These extraordinary events have the shape and feel of a very old and tragic tale. The bones of the story may be found in the mythology of every culture, but I first encountered it in the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table. There it is called the tale of Merlin and Vivien.

 

In the words of Alice M. Hadfield, whose 1953 version of the Arthurian legends I grew up with as a child: “Merlin the Wizard was a wise man nearly all his life, but when he was old he fell into foolishness.”

 

Unwisely, for a person so high in King Arthur’s esteem, he allowed himself to become bedazzled by Vivien, a young lady of the court. “He became quite crazed about her, followed her about everywhere, and told her any secret of his magic she wanted to know.”

 

Though initially “flattered and excited by his attention”, the young woman soon discovered that it was not “altogether comfortable to receive so much devotion from a wizard, and after a time Vivien became very tired of it.”

 

This was hardly surprising since Vivien had been raised under the guidance and protection of another magician. An ominous development because, as Ms Hadfield delicately puts it: “One wielder of magic seldom likes another, and Vivien had grown up to have no love for Merlin.”

 

Merlin’s end came when he invited Vivien to view the treasures hidden in a subterranean cave whose concealed entrance only he knew the whereabouts. Allowing the old wizard to lead her to the cavern, Vivien waited until he was well inside before sealing up the entrance with an incantation Merlin himself had taught her.

 

“Only the person who had said the word could say the other word which would undo it”, writes Hadfield. “Merlin is sealed up in the earth by his own folly and pride till all spirits meet before their Ruler.”

 

Such is the tale of Merlin and Vivien, which, I’m sure you now agree, bears a not unfamiliar shape and feel – even to us, who dwell at several centuries remove from the Middle Ages.

 

For there is much in politics that still carries the whiff of magic. How is it possible that those blessed with every conceivable political advantage fail so abysmally to spark the public’s interest? Why do the voters flock to politicians so bereft of wisdom or imagination? From whence do the words and phrases that inspire nations arise?

 

These matters are not described as “the dark art of politics” for no reason.

 

Few would dispute that, until very recently, Mr Dunne’s career bore all the hallmarks of a master political magician. To have shifted with such ease from Left to Right, and then, without disturbing a hair of his trademark coiffure, from Right to Left, and back again to Right, he must surely have mastered the elements of more than a few political incantations.

 

But he is not the only powerful magician at the court of King John. And, as Ms Hadfield has told us: “One wielder of magic seldom likes another”. It may have been Ms Vance’s own magic that persuaded Mr Dunne to contemplate (at the very least) sharing secret information with her newspaper, but we would be foolish to rule out the possibility that she was working with more than just one political wizard.

 

Speaking on TVNZ’s Q+A, Winston Peters observed: “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

 

Nor, it would seem, an old tale.

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.