Will the TPP Spell National’s Doom?

"John Frum, He Come." The National Government's stubborn promotion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been likened to the post-World War II Melanesian "Cargo Cults" whose followers constructed their own "runways" and "aircraft" to entice the recently departed GIs "John From America" (John Frum) to return bearing the miraculous "cargo" that had so suddenly enriched their lives.
 

IT WAS ONE OF THE MOST EXTREME REACTIONS to a speech that I have ever witnessed. I had written it for the newly-elected Mayor of Dunedin, Sukhi Turner, and she had made it her own. Delivering it with her trademark forthrightness, she set the Dunedin Establishment ablaze. The offending paragraph had been the one in which she accused the Dunedin business community of having a “cargo cult” mentality.
 

The anthropological term, “cargo cult”, arose from the responses of a number of isolated Melanesian populations whose subsistence communities had been overwhelmed during World War II: first by soldiers; then with all the things that soldiers need. When the war ended, and the soldiers and their “cargo” departed (as suddenly and mysteriously as they had arrived) the islanders were distraught. Desperate for the return of these bringers-of-all-good things, they laid out jungle runways and fashioned crude facsimiles of aircraft. “John Frum [John from America] he come”, they intoned to the heavens. “John Frum, he come.”
 

The point I was making in the speech, and which Sukhi embraced, was that our own local (and national) business elites were behaving very similarly to those Melanesian islanders. They also believed that if they laid out the equivalent of jungle runways (financial inducements, deregulated markets) then John Frum’s precious “cargo” – in the form of big, one-off, economy-rescuing, foreign-investment projects – would follow.
 

The firestorm created by the speech took a great deal of hosing down. (Unsurprisingly, I wrote no more incendiary mayoral speeches!) It did, however, teach me a couple of very valuable lessons. First. What are presented as highly sophisticated economic arguments in favour of globalisation are driven by some very unsophisticated (some might even say primal) human impulses. Second. The people advancing such arguments do not take at all kindly to being labelled cargo cultists!
 

That being the case, the veteran journalist, Gordon Campbell, should probably watch his back. Because, in his latest analysis of the Bill English-led National Government’s peculiar obsession with keeping the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) alive, Campbell writes:
 

“New Zealand – and other nations – made concessions and spent their political capital in order to meet American corporate demands. The likes of English are still promising to observe these commitments to the letter, even though the Americans won’t be there to keep their side of the bargain. The TPP has literally become a cargo cult ritual that’s being performed in the hope that someday, one day, the Americans will return, bearing gifts.”
 

No surprise, then, that the National-led Government is so keen to enrol the Labour Party in this, to date, fruitless ritual. Labour’s return to the Free Trade fold would represent a much-needed infusion of political capital to the project. Without it, the New Zealand political class’s considerable reputational investment in TPP stands to be lost.
 

Exactly why Labour would offer its company to all this pro-TPP misery is far from clear. Such an about-face would not only alienate its prospective coalition partners in the Greens (whose opposition to the TPP remains staunch) but also enrage the September election’s likely arbiter, Winston Peters – whose adamant opposition to such agreements is well known on both sides of the parliamentary aisle.
 

Accordingly, by far the most fruitful course of action for Labour would be to make common-cause with the Greens and NZ First against any and all attempts to revive the TPP in its current, unamended, form.
 

Such an alliance would constitute a stern warning to the political class that its participation in such absurd cargo cult rituals must end. It would also signal that the days of electoral politics being a “heads we win, tails you lose” proposition for New Zealand’s “permanent interests” are over.
 

The National Party (which certainly likes to think of itself as the spokesperson for those permanent interests) should recall the fury of the tangata whenua at the sovereignty-threatening clauses of the TPP – especially the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions. Is its relationship with the Maori Party strong enough to withstand such a test of loyalties?
 

The three (possibly four) parties currently positioned to bring National’s nine-year-reign to an end could hardly have wished for a better issue around which to gather the forces seeking a change of government. It offers the Left a rare opportunity to bestow upon its parliamentary representatives the benediction of mass political action: the chance to allow Labour, the Greens and NZ First to be carried all the way to the Beehive’s Ninth Floor on a vast wave of popular discontent.
 

All of which poses the question: Why would English and his allies (both inside and outside of Parliament) willingly hang the weighty carcass of the deeply unpopular TPP around their collective neck? Do they really intend their final words, as the rising tide of change closes over their heads, to be: “John Frum, he come”?
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 23 May 2017.

New Zealand’s Only Middle Eastern Exit Strategy – Leave Now.

Kiwi Boots On The Ground: To Arab eyes, New Zealand’s continuing presence in Iraq must signal a depressingly familiar message. Since the late-nineteenth century, this country has happily marched in the long imperial columns that have trudged their way across the dry and dusty places of the world.

 

WHY ARE NEW ZEALAND TROOPS in the Middle East? Our soldiers have been there for so long we’re in danger of forgetting why we sent them in the first place. And, since New Zealand’s contribution can only ever be token, what is this country’s apparently permanent presence in the world’s most dangerous region intended to communicate?

 

To Arab eyes, New Zealand’s presence must signal a depressingly familiar message. Since the late-nineteenth century, this country has happily marched in the great expeditionary columns that have trudged their way across the dry and dusty places of the world. From the South African veldt to the Sinai desert, the Kiwis’ broad-brimmed hats have dutifully bobbed along behind the pith helmets of their Imperial British mentors.

 

Numerous speeches have been delivered this year commemorating the grievous loss of young New Zealanders in the muck and fury of France and Flanders during the First World War. The Defence Minister, Gerry Brownlee, was in France only recently intoning the doleful register of our sacrifices at the Battle of the Somme. Not as much is being said, however, about the considerably less muddy and bloody exploits of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles in what was then the Ottoman Empire.

 

All New Zealanders know about their country’s role in the invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. Less well known is the role that Kiwis and Aussies played in driving the British Lion’s blood-stained claws into the carcass of the Ottoman Empire’s Middle Eastern provinces – especially Palestine – between 1916 and 1918.

 

The New Zealand Government’s reticence about drawing Arab attention to the role this country played in the emergence of the State of Israel is entirely understandable. What purpose would be served by reminding Arab historians about the Kiwi and Aussie troops responsible for the deaths of more than 200 Palestinian men and boys in the tiny village of Surafend in 1918? Or about the fulsome vote of thanks delivered to the Antipodeans by residents of the nearby Jewish settlement of Richon Le Zion?

 

Dredging up these historical incidents might prompt Egyptian historians to investigate the role played by the New Zealand and Australian mounted infantry in suppressing the Egyptian nationalist revolt against British domination which exploded in the final months of 1918 – a task made much easier by the Antipodeans’ already fearsome reputation for brutality against Arab civilians.

 

Questions might be asked about whether or not New Zealand’s behavior towards the Islamic world has changed all that much over the course of the past 100 years. True, the British Empire is no longer the dominant global superpower, but its American successor would appear to be no less persuasive when it comes to drawing the Antipodeans back into the marching columns of imperial adventures.

 

Indeed, if Nicky Hager’s book “Other People’s Wars” is to be believed, members of the NZ Defence Force were more-or-less begging the Americans to allow them to participate in the pacification of Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Perhaps it was this country’s soldiers’ enthusiasm to get back in the imperial game that prompted US Secretary of State Colin Powell to inform the world that the USA and New Zealand had, once again, become “very, very, very good friends”?

 

The only serious diplomatic spanner which New Zealand has ever dropped into the works of her imperial allies was the one let slip by Helen Clark in 2003. The Fifth Labour Government’s refusal to invade Iraq without the approval of the United Nation’s Security Council did not go unnoticed by the Arab world. For the first time in its history, New Zealand had declined to join its traditional allies: Australia, Britain and the USA; in a military enterprise. It could have marked the beginning of a new era in this country’s foreign affairs and defence policies. Sadly, it was not to be. Clark’s government was soon “persuaded” to step back into the dry and dusty places of the world.

 

Where, it would appear, we intend to stay. New Zealanders were assured that our assistance to the Iraqi government came with a clear exit strategy. Our troops would be engaged in training the Iraqi army – nothing more. But now, the “mission creep” historically inseparable from these ostensibly limited engagements has our government contemplating extending the NZDF’s training role to the Iraqi police. The Guardian newspaper is, further, reporting the involvement of our Special Air Service in combat operations against Islamic State. These claims have been strenuously rejected by John Key. But then he would say that – wouldn’t he?

 

To the peoples of the Middle East, the first step towards securing peace in the region is extremely simple: the nations of the West must leave. That includes New Zealand. We have aided and abetted the forces of imperialism for far too long. It’s time to go.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, November 01, 2016.

Buying Civilisation – With Higher Taxes

Jam Tomorrow - Maybe: Last Thursday morning (13/10/16) Finance Minister, Bill English told reporters that the unexpectedly large projected government surplus of $1.8 billion “means we have a few choices we didn’t have in the past”. He did not rule out tax cuts.

 

“THERE’S NEVER A BAD TIME FOR TAX CUTS”, was Rodney Hide’s message to Radio Live’s listeners last Thursday afternoon. The Finance Minister, Bill English, appeared to agree. At least, he didn’t rule them out.

 

On Thursday morning, English told reporters that the unexpectedly large projected government surplus of $1.8 billion “means we have a few choices we didn’t have in the past”.

 

Not that the National Party-led government’s fiscal goals: “reduced debt, infrastructure investment, reduced taxes for lower and middle income families”, were about to change. On the contrary, the Finance Minister remained firmly wedded to the view that the best means of achieving his government’s fiscal objectives were “expenditure control and a growing economy.”

 

Civil society’s reaction was swift and unequivocal. The very idea of deliberately reducing state revenue, when additional government spending on crucial social services is needed so urgently, was greeted with dismay.

 

“The government has left, over the last eight years or so, a social deficit, which we are now seeing literally on the streets of Auckland and elsewhere”, was how the Salvation Army’s policy analyst, Alan Johnson, responded to English’s announcement. Adding bitterly that “it doesn't appear to be interested in bridging that deficit.”

 

The NZ Council of Trade Unions’ economist, Bill Rosenberg, was equally aghast at what he identified as the National Government’s strategy of deliberate procrastination and deferral: “You can’t put off dealing with child poverty indefinitely. You can’t put off dealing with a struggling health system indefinitely.”

 

Compelling evidence that the Government’s fiscal stinginess is generating a measurable electoral backlash would lend a deadly cutting edge to Johnson’s and Rosenberg’s criticisms. Unfortunately for the institutions they represent, no such evidence exists.

 

David Farrar, the owner of the National Party’s indefatigable polling agency, Curia Research, averages-out the major polls for his Kiwiblog blogsite. His latest calculations give National 44.3 percent of the Party Vote, to the Labour-Greens’ 42.7 percent. Widespread public revulsion at National’s fiscal strategies would see a Labour-Green government-in-waiting positioned well ahead of its centre-right opponents. It isn’t.

 

If an angry electorate is out there, then the best that can be said is that it’s very well hidden.

 

Clearly, there is a very large constituency for the views on poverty expressed recently by the Police Minister, Judith Collins.

 

Asked how her government proposed to address the link between gangs and childhood poverty, Collins asserted that there was always sufficient money available for New Zealanders in need. What she saw in poor households, she said, was something quite different from material deprivation: “I see a poverty of ideas, a poverty of parental responsibility, a poverty of love, a poverty of caring.”

 

Collins’ remarks were roundly criticised by experts on social deprivation, who dismissed them waspishly as a “middle-class New Zealand myth”.

 

“Forty per cent of children in poverty are in households in paid work”, observed Associate-Professor Mike O’Brien on behalf of the Child Poverty Action Group. “Are we saying there’s a large chunk of parents who are working who are inadequate? That’s hard to sustain. This is not about behaviour. It’s about access to resources, the way we distribute opportunity.”

 

“In some ways [and] at the risk of being simplistic”, said O’Brien, “it’s easier to blame parents rather than doing something about the social and economic setting.”

 

The Associate-Professor is right: it is easier. Which is, presumably, why the National Government goes on doing it.

 

Bill English could inform the country that his surplus is unavailable for tax cuts. That, instead, the extra revenue will be spent on raising benefits, housing the homeless, and refilling the coffers of New Zealand’s cash-strapped health and education services. He could commend to voters the words of the celebrated American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr, who said: “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization”. But, if he did, how would “middle-class New Zealand” react?

 

Political parties tailor their policies to meet the interests and prejudices of the people who vote for them. As an explanation for poverty, “poor parenting” may infuriate the experts as a “middle-class New Zealand myth”. But, since it is overwhelmingly the New Zealand middle-class that turns out to vote in local and national elections – it’s a myth that counts.

 

On the subject of voting, it is very tempting to paraphrase Judith Collins:

 

“Poverty’s not the problem, it’s people who don’t understand the role of voting in ending poverty, that’s the problem. Poverty persists because these people no longer vote in elections, or even think they should vote in elections.”

 

Poverty plummeted in New Zealand when the working-class poor organised themselves  industrially and politically to end exploitation on the job and deprivation in the home. For their own shot at civilisation, they happily voted for higher taxes. It’s an historical lesson today’s working poor could help themselves enormously by re-learning.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 18 October 2016.

Defending What? Against Whom?

Are Armed Forces A Necessary Evil? Conservatives assert that government’s highest priority is, and must remain, the protection of its people from armed assault by foreign and/or domestic enemies. A state that can neither defend its borders, nor protect its citizens, is hardly worthy of the name. But, if national defence does not mean ensuring the basic welfare (Health, Education, Housing, Employment) of every citizen – then what does it mean?

 

IF POLITICS is the language of priorities, then we have been left in no doubt as to how this government ranks the importance of housing and defence. Twenty billion dollars, over the next 15 years, will be spent on weapons of war. Though the outcry against homelessness grows louder every day, hardly a voice has been raised in protest at this monstrous outlay on the NZ Defence Force.

 

How to explain this reluctance to compare the Government’s willingness to expend more than a billion additional dollars every year, for 15 years, on new and improved weaponry, with its unwillingness to expend a similar sum on the construction of homes for New Zealand’s poorest citizens?

No doubt conservatives would respond by asserting that government’s highest priority is, and must remain, the protection of its people from armed assault by foreign and/or domestic enemies. A state that can neither defend its borders, nor protect its citizens, is hardly worthy of the name.

 

Conservatives would further insist that, since a small nation like New Zealand will forever be dependent on the willingness of larger powers to come to its defence, it must be prepared to “pull its weight” military expenditure-wise. Expecting our friends to pour out their blood and treasure in our defence, when we are unwilling to do the same, is not only unrealistic – it’s morally indefensible.

 

But this romantic – almost chivalric – understanding of national defence bears little resemblance to the brute historical realities of international conflict. Blood and treasure are almost never poured out for purposes unrelated to either expanding the borders, or defending the interests, of the state/s doing the pouring.

 

If the only arguments in favour of military intervention are moral arguments, then it is most unlikely to happen. How many nations with the military capability to do so intervened in time to prevent the Rwandan genocide? None. Contrast that fatal inaction with the number of New Zealand’s “friends” who joined in the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a ruined nation which posed no threat to its neighbours – let alone its aggressors.

 

The eminent Jewish scientist and historian, Jacob Bronowski, described war as “organised theft”. How many equally wise scientists and historians would be prepared to argue that war is organised morality? (Acknowledging that nearly all American politicians, and an alarming number of their British and Australian counterparts, believe that war and morality go together like apple and pie!)

 

A more realistic assessment of New Zealand’s national security (or lack of it) would take as its starting point our extraordinary geographical isolation. So far away are we from the rest of the world that only a major military power could hope to assail our shores. That being the case, we need to ask ourselves what other major power would be willing to prevent such an assault – and why? The blunt answer is that any intervention on our behalf would be undertaken solely on strategic grounds. If the subjugation of New Zealand was deemed inimical to the interests of the United States and Australia, then they would hasten to our defence. If not, they wouldn’t. The capability and readiness of our miniscule armed forces would not materially alter their calculations. Although, it’s at least arguable that the weaker we are, the quicker they’ll come.

 

Perhaps, therefore, we should follow the example of Costa Rica and abolish our armed forces altogether. On 1 December 1948, following a bloody civil war, the President of Costa Rica announced the abolition of that country’s armed forces. His decision was confirmed the following year in Article 12 of the Costa Rican constitution. The monies previously spent on the military were reallocated to education and culture. The maintenance of internal security was left to the Police.

 

Why not do the same? We already have the SIS to warn us of terrorist attack. Protecting our fisheries could become the task of a specialised division of the Ministry of Primary Industries. Defence against cyber-attacks could, similarly, become the responsibility of a special unit within the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management.

 

Imagine the number of state houses and affordable apartments this country could build over the next 15 years with even half the $20 billion currently promised to the NZ Defence Force. Surely, in a democratic state, it is the adequate provision of health, education, housing and employment that should take priority over the vast sums required to purchase the most up-to-date weapons of war? If national defence does not mean ensuring the basic welfare of every citizen – then what does it mean?

 

As the Costa Rican President realised 68 years ago, if you maintain a body of armed men, then they will forever be searching for opportunities to use their weapons. If not provided with foreign foes to fight, they will start looking for enemies at home.

 

This essay was originally posted on the Stuff website on Monday, 13 June, and published in The Press of Tuesday, 14 June 2016.

Blurred Vision: The Interview.

 

CHRIS TROTTER follows-up on many of the issues canvassed in the previous posting in this interview with Paul Henry, broadcast on Thursday, 17 March 2016.

This posting exclusive to Bowalley Road.

Shaken - But Not Stirred: Canterbury Is Denied Democracy For The Third Time.

Water and Grass: The economic value of productive pastures is deemed by the National Government to be more important than popular political control over the water that keeps them green. In Canterbury this has led to a third delay in the return of full democracy to the region.

 

THE GREAT CANTABRIAN RIGHTS ROBBERY continues. With six of the thirteen Regional councillors set to be appointed, until at least 2019, by the Environment Minister, Dr Nick Smith, Canterbury’s long-promised return to democracy has, once again, been delayed.
 

And still the streets are empty.
 

That the people of Christchurch have been a little preoccupied since 2010 is acknowledged. But the same high-handedness that prompted the elimination of Cantabrians’ regional democracy has also been a frustrating feature of their city’s rebuild.
 

And still the streets are silent.
 

Large sums of money continue to be extracted from the people of Canterbury by “Commissioners” for whom no one has voted. Practically without a murmur, the oldest principle of democratic governance – that taxes may only be levied by representatives chosen by the people themselves – has been cast aside.
 

“No taxation without representation!”: the principle for which seventeenth century Englishmen were ready to execute their King, and in the name of which eighteenth century Americans proclaimed a revolution; has stirred New Zealanders hardly at all.
 

Where are our John Hampdens? Our John Pyms? Why have we yet to produce an Antipodean version of John Adams? John Hancock? Thomas Jefferson? All of these champions of representative government – the farmers, merchants and lawyers who challenged King Charles I and King George III – were men of substance. They dared to win, even though to lose meant death. But New Zealand’s men of substance; our farmers, merchants and lawyers; what have they dared?
 

Precious little has been risked by those whose screams would, undoubtedly, be among the loudest were Cantabrians rights being abrogated by a left-wing government. Indeed, one could argue that the destruction of regional democracy in Canterbury was undertaken at the behest of farmers, merchants and lawyers. For isn’t it these latter groups that have the gained the most from the elimination of their fellow citizens’ democratic rights? While ordinary Cantabrians retained the capacity to thwart their grand plans for Canterbury’s precious water, how could the region’s farmers, merchants and lawyers possibly have attracted the level of investment required to bring them to fruition?
 

Dr Smith dismisses all such claims as cynical. Rather than a case of careful political engineering, erected in the interests of the farmers, merchants and lawyers who vote National, the destruction of Canterbury’s regional democracy is presented by the Minister as some sort of glorified water conservation measure. Any return to normal democratic governance, argues Dr Smith, would inflict irreparable damage on a process which he clearly believes to be beyond the capabilities of elected citizens.
 

“The fear would be that you’ve got this population divide pretty even between rural and urban, and rather than those commissioners being able to look for the middle way through, that you end up where we were – a highly polarised council not making any progress on these very important issues.”
 

Dr Smith refuses to accept that, by silencing the voice of urban conservationists, he has, in effect, facilitated the water exploitation schemes of rural Cantabrians. His justification hinges on what he considers to be the superiority of technocratic over democratic decision-making.
 

But this justification works equally well for any and all attempts to limit the scope of democratic decision-making. The notion that society would be morally and materially improved if all the important decisions were left to a self-replenishing caste of “philosopher kings” is as old as Plato’s Republic. That every attempt to put Plato’s ideas into practice has very quickly resulted in the decisions of the wise becoming practically indistinguishable from the interests of the wealthy, has always been one of the strongest arguments in favour of democracy.
 

Nor is it reasonable to suppose that Dr Smith’s technocratic problem-solving will remain quarantined in Canterbury. In October 2016 it is likely that the balance of power on the Hawkes Bay Regional Council will shift decisively against the proposed Ruataniwha Water Storage Scheme. But, after what happened in Canterbury, the region’s voters are surely justified in wondering whether their democratic judgement will simply be over-ruled by Dr Smith, and a group of Commissioners installed to make certain that “progress on these very important issues” continues.
 

Would this be enough to see the people’s pitchforks lifted up and their flaming torches lit? One hopes so, but all the evidence so far suggests otherwise. New Zealanders definition of democracy appears to embrace a sort of plebiscitary oligarchy, under which a group of politicians are given the right to govern exactly as they please – subject only to a triennial vote of confidence.
 

But this definition of democracy condemns us all to live under an elected dictatorship where politicians are free to impose decisions of ever-increasing mendacity: ceasing only when a decision of such outrageous awfulness pushes the population beyond its collective pain threshold; and the people remember that they have rights.
 

This essay was originally published by The Press of Tuesday, 24 March 2015.

The Electorate Strikes Back.

Not A Happy Chappy: Queensland's Premier no longer, the Liberal National Party leader, Campbell Newman, is forced to acknowledge that he has not only lost his Ashgrove parliamentary seat, but his entire political career. In the space of just three years, Newman's neoliberal extremism turned an unprecedented, 73-seat-majority victory, into one of the most stunning routs in Australian electoral history.

 

DO YOU FEEL that chill breeze on the back of your neck, Prime Minister? It’s blowing across the ditch, from Queensland. And the message it’s carrying across the Tasman – and even farther away, from the Greeks – is very clear. Electorates all over the world are flexing their muscles.

 

Voting last Saturday in a cold but fearsomely focused fury, the people of Queensland wiped out the 73-seat majority they had bestowed upon the Liberal National Party (LNP) just three years ago. Not even the leader of the LNP, Queensland’s erstwhile Premier, Campbell Newman, was spared. His Brisbane seat of Ashgrove was reclaimed by the opposition Labor Party as the electoral tsunami swept over the state.

 

No one could say that Mr Newman wasn’t warned. His predecessor in the Premier’s Office, Labor’s Anna Bligh, had been hurled from power with equal force for unleashing a privatisation programme she’d somehow neglected to present to Queensland voters in the run-up to the 2009 election. But, instead of drawing the obvious lesson from Labor’s 2012 debacle, Mr Newman proceeded as though Queenslanders had voted for his extreme brand of neoliberalism, rather than against Ms Bligh’s political duplicity.

 

For Queenslanders, the result was three long years of economic, environmental and legal “reform” that was as draconian as it was unheralded. Thousands of public servants lost their jobs, the privatisation programme (Bligh’s downfall) far from being halted, gathered pace. Legal changes struck down civil liberties considered basic to democratic governance. And Queensland’s thriving tourist industry, based upon the state’s exquisite natural treasures, found itself outmanoeuvred by rampant mining interests determined to rid themselves of all environmental restraints.

 

Saturday’s vote constituted Queenslanders’ emphatic response to Mr Newman’s scorched-earth tactics. With their political leaders clearly having failed to draw the correct message from Labor’s 2012 wipe-out, the people of Queensland felt obliged to repeat it. Mr Newman’s successor, whoever he or she turns out to be, would be very foolish to goad them into a third demonstration of their power. Indeed, anything other than a general healing of neoliberal harms will likely be interpreted by the Queensland electorate as yet another invitation to unleash electoral Armageddon.

 

For our own Prime Minister, the messages blowing-in from Greece and Queensland will not be received as harbingers of doom, but rather as welcome confirmations that his kind of politics is the kind that survives. To his hard-line critics in National’s caucus, and throughout the broader right-wing community, Mr Key can now say: “You see? This is what happens when you push people too hard, too fast and too far.” It’s difficult to conceive of a better argument in favour of Mr Key’s softly-softly, don’t-frighten-the-horses, populism than the Biblically unforgiving backlashes of the Greek and Queensland electorates.

 

At the heart of the Prime Minister’s political success, is his unwavering conviction that a government must always possess more friends than enemies. Mr Key will never allow a situation to develop in which a majority of the electorate feels harmed or threatened by his government’s policies.

 

Alienating the six percent of New Zealand families who live in State Houses will not threaten the National Government. Nor will policies disadvantaging the roughly 20 percent of New Zealanders who still belong to unions. After all, neither of these groups have ever been notable National supporters.

 

On the other hand, failing to come up with policies that make it easier for “Middle New Zealand’s” children to buy their first home. (Or even rent their first flat!) Doing nothing to assist the increasing number of young graduates who struggle to find a job remotely commensurate with their qualifications. Refusing to address the steadily worsening condition of the country’s rivers, streams and beaches. Or, downplaying the fact that more and more New Zealand farms, businesses and houses are being sold to foreigners. These are precisely the kinds of issues that could unite a majority of the electorate against the National Government.

 

And, there is one more issue that might yet jeopardise the remarkably consistent popularity of Mr Key’s government: civil liberties and the rights of the citizen. It’s a slow-burning issue, but no less dangerous for being so. And if it is allowed to grow in relevance (as it did in Queensland, where Mr Newman’s reckless blurring of the necessarily strict constitutional boundaries between politicians and the Judiciary made the ordinary voter feel distinctly uneasy) then the potential for a Queensland-style electoral backlash will increase.

 

In Greece, and again in Australia, two “we know best” political parties pushed their respective electorates too hard, too fast and too far. Both have paid the price. New Zealand’s right-wing government stands out from its Australian, Canadian and British counterparts for the sensitivity with which it handles the electorate that can make or break it.

 

Mr Key’s and National’s political longevity is no accident.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 February 2015.

“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.

National's Housing Policy: Squander and Squalor.

Free Market Solutions: In 1890, Jacob Riis, one the world's first 'photo-journalists', published How The Other Half Lives, depicting the lives of New York's slum-dwellers. This is what affordable housing for the poor looks like when the provision of this vital social need is left to the tender mercies of "the free market".

WHAT IS IT ABOUT the National Party and state housing? What is it about supplying safe, warm and affordable housing for the poorest New Zealanders that they do not understand? Are Bill English and Paula Bennett so wedded to the notion that ‘the market must decide’ that they are willing to live with the squalor it inevitably engenders?

 

All around us we see the consequences of allowing market forces to set New Zealand’s housing policy. Young, well-qualified Kiwis, holding down good jobs on good pay, cannot afford to buy a house. While young families, struggling to survive of a benefit, cannot even find one. Property developers and builders, responding to market signals, construct dwellings for those in search of large and expensive dwellings. The smaller, cheaper homes New Zealand so desperately needs exist only in the dreams of the homeless, and on the drawing-boards of progressive architects.

 

And what is the National Government’s response? To sell up to a third of the state houses entrusted to it by the wisdom and compassion of earlier generations of New Zealanders! When thousands of their fellow citizens are living in damp, over-crowded houses; or caravan parks; or their cars; Mr English and Ms Bennett are proposing to reduce the State’s stock of housing for the poor. Why in God’s name would they want to do that?

 

National’s comeback is that the provision of social housing is best left to religious, charitable, and other not-for-profit institutions. The State, they say, is a poor landlord. The country’s poorer citizens, they insist, will be better off in the care of the Salvation Army; or their local Iwi; or a city council.

 

Really?

 

From what possible source will the not-for-profit sector acquire the resources to construct social housing on a scale even remotely commensurate to the urgent need of the homeless? What bank is going to lend money to an institution whose prospective clients are required to endure the most precarious of living conditions? There are very good reasons why very poor people are refused mortgages. (As the whole world discovered in 2008, when the US and UK banks’ insane decision to lend money to people who couldn’t possibly pay it back triggered a global financial crisis.)

 

Nor is there the slightest historical justification for believing that the housing needs of the poor can in any way be satisfied by the charitable impulses of churches, individual philanthropists, or even – heresy of heresies! – by the good offices of the free market’s mysterious “invisible hand”.

 

We have all, at some time, used the expression “how the other half lives”. But how many of us realise that it has its origin in a scandal arising out of market-driven housing “solutions”? It was in 1890 that one of the world’s first “photo-journalists”, Jacob Riis, published How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, a collection of photographs depicting the horrendous living conditions of the city’s slum-dwellers. The free-market’s “solution” to New York’s ever-increasing demand for affordable housing was to construct gimcrack, windowless, disease-ridden, fire-traps where whole families were forced to eke out their sorry existence in a single, fetid room. To their credit, New York’s middle-classes were shocked into action. Their radical reforms owed little to market forces.

 



State Provided Solutions: A street of "State Houses" in New Zealand.

 

And neither did the radical reforms of the First Labour Government. Because, fundamentally, market failure was the problem. Daringly, Labour’s reformers borrowed the capital required to house the homeless casualties of the Great Depression from “NZ Inc”, in the form of Reserve Bank credit. We paid ourselves back out of the increased revenue generated by the housing programme itself (state houses were built, as a far as possible, out of local materials) and, over time, out of the rentals of the tenants themselves. (Being immortal entities, states can wait a long time for their loans to be repaid!)

 

Has the Government truly forgotten that there is NO non-squalid market-driven solution to a market-induced crisis in affordable housing? Mr English and Ms Bennett certainly haven’t forgotten. If you press them they will admit that their own government may end up lending the potential purchasers of state houses the money needed to acquire our long-ago amortised assets. Yes, that’s right, National’s “market-driven” solution to the housing crisis is to require taxpayers to heavily subsidise private investment in property they already own because the new owners’ “independence” from the State better qualifies them to manage the nation’s stock of social housing than the State itself.

 

But even if that were true, the State’s alleged indifference as a landlord is almost entirely attributable to the National Party’s longstanding antipathy to the idea that when it comes to putting a roof over people’s heads we are, and must remain, “our brothers’ keeper”.  Ultimately, the Government’s market-driven alternative can only be achieved by squander and squalor.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 4 November 2014.

Stupid Silence (Farewell to 2010)

Perfectly Calm: 2010 was year characterised by the politics of denial.

‘WE HAVE MAINTAINED a silence closely resembling stupidity." Do you remember who said that – and when?

The words belong to Neil Roberts, New Zealand’s only suicide bomber. He spray painted them on a toilet wall shortly before blowing himself to pieces outside the Wanganui Computer Centre on 18 November 1982.

Thirty years ago, when personal computers and cell-phones were still in their infancy, the Wanganui Computer Centre loomed large in New Zealanders’ imagination as the ultimate symbol of the "Big Brother" state.

Fourteen months after the massive upheavals of the Springbok Tour, and just 9 days shy of the first anniversary of Rob Muldoon’s re-election, the 22-year-old anarchist and punk rocker, despairing of his fellow citizens’ commitment to freedom and democracy, detonated a carry-bag-full of high explosive directly outside the Wanganui Computer Centre’s front doors.

While Neil Robert’s acute depression found an extreme form of self-expression, he was by no means the only person alienated from New Zealand society under Rob Muldoon.

Paradoxically, the supreme effort of the preceding year, when tens of thousands of Kiwis rose up against the suffocating conservatism of the Muldoonist regime, had only made things worse. For young idealists like Roberts it seemed as though the country had turned a corner. But, almost as soon as the Springboks boarded their flight to Johannesburg, the great tide of anger and frustration which their visit had occasioned began receding. Far from wanting to carry the revolt against Muldoonism to new heights, most of the anti-tour protesters could not escape fast enough into normalcy.

By November 1982, the National Party’s grip on New Zealand had regained its full strength. A wage and price freeze had reduced the economy’s machinery to a slow grind. Unemployment was rising rapidly. And Labour’s new leader, David Lange, had yet to hit his stride as Opposition leader. The whole country seemed to have retreated into itself.

For thousands of young people the words of Blam Blam Blam’s "There is No Depression in New Zealand" had taken on the ring of prophecy.

But we’re as safe as safe can be,
there’s no unrest in this country

We have no dole queues,
we have no drug addicts,
we have no racism,
we have no sexism, sexism, no, no

It was this: New Zealanders’ wilful political denial; their sullen, self-defeating silence; that Neil Robert’s bomb was intended to shatter.

Today, nearly three decades later, both Neil Robert’s name and the final devastating act of his tragically short life have fallen victim to the collective historical amnesia that allows New Zealanders to repeat their political, economic and social mistakes over and over and over again.

Reviewing 2010, I cannot escape a feeling of déjà vu. The route John Key has chosen may differ markedly from Rob Muldoon’s, but he has led New Zealand back to all the old familiar places.

We are gripped by the same collective urge to deny the evidence of our eyes and ears. As if the dismissal of the Canterbury Regional Council; the creation of Auckland’s "democracy-proof" CCOs; the Canterbury Earthquake Reconstruction and Recovery Act; Simon Power’s and Kate Wilkinson’s relentless stripping away of our civil and workplace rights; and the extraordinary expansion of the State’s search and surveillance powers; are happening in some other country – to some other people.

There’s that same sullen refusal to be moved by the plight of our fellow citizens. Paula Bennett’s hand-picked razor-gang terrorises the sick, the disabled, and the solo mums. Judith Collins privatises the administration of misery. Nick Smith dismantles the world’s most successful no-fault accident compensation system. Sir Peter Jackson (to the frenzied cheers of the news media) pummels Actors Equity to a bloody pulp.

And what do we do? Sod all.

New Zealanders appear to have forgotten how to resist their government. That glorious anti-mining march aside, there’s the same "What’s the point?" fatalism that seized the country following the Springbok Tour and Muldoon’s subsequent, demoralising, success at the polls.

Neil Roberts never got to see what happened after his bomb went off. We are luckier. Looking back, it’s clear that New Zealand’s "silence closely resembling stupidity" was not maintained. In less that two years, change came – and on a scale young Neil could scarcely have imagined.

For me, at least, that’s an encouraging thought to take into 2011.

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 31 December 2010.