Piling-On The Pressure.

An Unfortunate Perception: Can liberal democracy survive if the news media abandons evidence-based judgement and simply piles-on “as one” against a prime minister and her government? And what if it isn’t just the timing that’s consistent, but the message as well? What then? How is the public to avoid the impression that the news media is rooting for one side and not the other?

WERE YOU AWARE of the Easter “pile-on”? The media assault on Jacinda Ardern’s credibility when, according to Herald journalist, Fran O’Sullivan: “the commentariat … basically rose as one and questioned her prime ministerial abilities”.

Nothing remarkable in that, you might object, in a liberal democracy it is entirely right and proper for the news media to judge the performance of presidents and prime ministers. Yes, but shouldn’t such judgements be based on a sober and objective assessment of the leader’s actual performance? Isn’t that one of the critical (if unspoken) assumptions underpinning the whole notion of media freedom?

Can liberal democracy survive if the news media abandons evidence-based judgement and simply piles-on “as one” against a prime minister and her government? And what if it isn’t just the timing that’s consistent, but the message as well? What then? How is the public to avoid the impression that the news media is rooting for one side and not the other?

This is more than idle speculation. We have only to look at the United States to see what happens when a significant number of voters simply stop believing anything reported by media organisations which have not already identified themselves as co-partisans in the political struggle. Any negative story emerging from the other side’s “lying media” can be branded “fake news” and dismissed as further proof of its uncompromising mendacity.

When President Trump tweets his outrage at “the lying New York Times”, liberal New Yorkers may puff out their chests with pride. The eyes of mid-western conservatives, however, will narrow with suspicion and their hatred of the “coastal elites” intensify.

In a political environment as polarised as this, the openness and tolerance which liberal democracy needs to function withers and dies. It is impossible to engage in any kind of fruitful political discourse when every participant believes every other participant is lying.

The media picture in New Zealand is further complicated by the absence of newspapers and radio stations which loudly and proudly advertise their partisan allegiances. Kiwis do not have the option of subscribing to the equivalent of the UK’s Guardian or Daily Telegraph. There is no MSNBC for liberals to watch; no Fox News for Kiwi conservatives.

That being the case, the New Zealand news media has always strived to balance right-wing opinion with the perspectives of left-leaning commentators. This is not just a matter of fairness, it is vital to the maintenance of trust. Readers, listeners and viewers need to feel that somewhere in the mix of voices there is someone who speaks their language.

Even more important than ensuring a diversity of opinion, however, is the news media’s responsibility to separate fact from fiction and apply a critical eye to the news it reports.

With all these factors in mind, let us turn again to Ms O’Sullivan’s “Easter pile-on”.

The two news stories which generated so much common outrage in the “commentariat” were Jacinda Ardern’s and Winston Peters’ response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK city of Salisbury; and the Prime Minister’s handling of Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran’s coffee-date with RNZ’s head of news and content, Carol Hirschfeld.

In the Skripal case, the reportage and commentary (often filed by the same journalists and in the same story!) appeared to have been scripted by the UK Government. The only course of action which the commentariat was prepared to recognise as prime-ministerial is the one where Jacinda Ardern follows along behind the Russophobic UK Prime Minister, Teresa May, like a dutiful “Five Eyes” poodle.

The very notion that the NZ Government might withhold its judgement until it possessed hard evidence of the perpetrators’ culpability was laughed out of court. Laughter, indeed, featured heavily in just about all of these commentaries – as in “New Zealand has become an international laughing-stock”. As if an independently-minded New Zealand prime minister was simply too risible a notion to be taken seriously.

How quickly New Zealand’s political commentators have forgotten David Lange and the fourth Labour Government’s nuclear-free legislation. And how loath they are to recall the UK’s refusal to condemn the French perpetrators of state terrorism on NZ soil. That so many Kiwi journalists were willing to be guided by the same people who gave the world the “sexed-up dossier” on Saddam’s WMDs; the same country responsible for illegally invading Iraq; spoke very poorly of their ability to evaluate critically the news they were reporting.

The state of NZ journalism was the unspoken theme running through the breathless reportage and commentary of the Curran-Hirschfeld coffee-klatch. Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to call it the State and NZ journalism. Because, at the heart of so many of the piler-ons’ commentaries lies a deep and abiding disinclination to view public service journalism through anything other than an aggressively anti-state lens.

That Ms Curran may have enlisted the support of Ms Hirschfeld in her quest to reinvigorate public broadcasting was presented in the most sinister terms. That the RNZ Board may have been engaged in resisting the Government’s broadcasting policy was not considered sinister at all – quite the reverse.

Prime Minister Ardern was castigated for not reining-in a minister who was clearly determined to extend the reach of “Red Radio”. As an accusation it played beautifully into the commentariat’s subtextual insinuation that this government isn’t just unacceptably socialist, but that its policies are being delivered with a Stalinist inflection. Why else would the PM refuse to condemn the actions of the obviously guilty Russian state and its ex-KGB president?

A commentariat prepared to rise “as one” in its delivery of these rebukes risks alienating all but the most unreconstructed cold warriors and knee-jerk National supporters. Those less disposed to follow the lead of our “Five Eyes Partners” in the Skripal case, along with those who regard the reinvigoration of public service journalism as a very good idea, will feel both affronted and aggrieved by the “Easter pile-in”.

Genuine media freedom, embodied in a diversity of political voices, can only strengthen the public’s trust in journalism. That’s because the truth is always a composite picture – never a single frame.

When the commentariat “piles-in” with a single voice, it is not to our left-wing government that we should look for evidence of Stalinism.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 5 April 2018.

Why is the Neoliberal Establishment so Pissed-Off with Bill English?

Off Message? Listening to the business journalist, Fran O’Sullivan, last Friday morning [10/3/17] on RNZ, the fury and frustration of the neoliberal establishment was evident in every bitter syllable of her commentary. Her rage at the now solid phalanx of NZ Super political defenders which English’s blundering has brought into formation (Labour, the Greens and NZ First) was palpable.

 

IT’S DIFFICULT TO AVOID THE IMPRESSION that the neoliberal establishment is very pissed-off with Bill English. His handling of the NZ Superannuation issue has been an unmitigated disaster from beginning to end. The media wasn’t briefed. National’s surrogates in academia and the business community weren’t primed. The public was not prepared.

 

Unfortunately, for any proposal to reform an institution as popular as NZ Super to have the slightest chance of success, all three of the above groups must be ready to hear it. One can only imagine the frustration of the Retirement Commissioner, Diane Maxwell, as she watched all her patient public diplomacy reduced to ashes in English’s ill-considered political bonfire.

 

English’s actions take on an even more absurd aspect when one recalls that there is a time-honoured and well-tested process for slaughtering a cow as sacred as NZ Super in relative political safety.

 

For a start, it is ill-advised to announce such plans in the early months of an election year.

 

Ill-advised, but not automatically fatal. Instigating an extensive and entirely independent review of any given set of current public policy settings is eminently survivable – if that is the sum total of your announcement. Indeed, it generally prompts hearty praise from all those “experts” agitating for change. It also allows the instigator to refuse the media anything further in the way of specificity until the review is complete.

 

Had English adhered to this process with NZ Super he could also have increased the political pressure on his principal electoral foes. Labour, in particular, would have found it extremely difficult to oppose any government call for a cross-party commitment to a comprehensive review of NZ Super. After all, in both the 2011 and 2014 general elections, reforming NZ Super had been Labour’s policy. The Greens, likewise, could hardly refuse to join in a sober, without prejudice, quest to arrive at the broadest possible political consensus on this highly contentious issue.

 

NZ First could not, however, credibly lend its name to such an effort without, at least implicitly, being bound by the review’s eventual recommendations. But such a dog-in-the-manger stance would put Winston Peters in an extremely difficult position.

 

Refusing to endorse a review of NZ Super would, presumably, leave NZ First no choice but to refuse to enter into any confidence and supply agreement that did not include its cancellation. Assuming both Labour and the Greens had joined National in supporting the proposed review, NZ First would have nowhere to go but the cross-benches – a position of acute and ever-increasing political precariousness.

 

The beauty of establishing any sort of official inquiry is, of course, that the people doing the establishing get to appoint the people doing the inquiring, and to draft their terms of reference. In almost every case this more-or-less guarantees that the inquiry will produce recommendations which correspond remarkably closely to the wishes of those who set it up.

 

In other words, English had the chance to appoint a Royal Commission of Inquiry into NZ Superannuation which, after weeks of hearings, and months of deliberation, solemnly recommended to his government that not only would the age of eligibility have to be advanced – and quickly – but also that the means of calculating the quantum of NZ super would have to be altered, and a means-testing regime established.

 

Because Labour and the Greens would already have signed up to the inquiry, their endorsement of its recommendations would be automatic. Any ensuing legislation would thus be guaranteed an overwhelming parliamentary majority.

 

Imagine the celebrations at Treasury, the NZ initiative and across the financial sector. Not only would the whole issue have been depoliticised for the foreseeable future, but also (and best of all!) no neoliberal fingerprints would ever be found on the gun that killed the last great universal entitlement of the social-democratic era.

 

All of these highly-sought-after right-wing objectives have now been put at risk by English’s ineptitude. Listening to the business journalist, Fran O’Sullivan, last Friday morning [10/3/17] on RNZ, the fury and frustration of the neoliberal establishment was evident in every bitter syllable of her commentary. Not only that, but in her rage at the now solid phalanx of NZ Super political defenders which English’s blundering has brought into formation (Labour, the Greens and NZ First) she blurted out the Right’s true intentions.

 

In the event of a National victory in September, Act (acting on behalf of the neoliberal establishment) will insist that means-testing and a reduction in NZ Super’s purchasing power be added to the legislation sanctioning the (immediate?) extension of the age of eligibility to 67.

 

No confusion now about the Right’s murderous intentions towards NZ Superannuation – and not the slightest doubt as to whose fingerprints will be found on the gun.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Sunday, 12 March 2017.

Dropping the Ball, or Saving the Game? A Response to Fran O’Sullivan.

Who's In Charge? That it was left to the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to lead the charge against the rise in protectionism across the globe struck NZ Herald business columnist, Fran O’Sullivan, as particularly galling. Since the 1980s, it has been the West that has set the pace on trade liberalisation – particularly the United States. That this no longer appears to be the case clearly left O’Sullivan unimpressed.

 

THE DEEP ANXIETY of the “Free Trade” lobby was on full display in this morning’s NZ Herald (7/9/16). Fran O’Sullivan, that most indefatigable of the Herald’s free trade advocates, was so moved by the uncertainty currently surrounding the ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that she devoted a good chunk of her business column to the global fight against protectionism.

 

That it was left to the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to lead the charge against the rise in protectionism across the globe struck O’Sullivan as particularly galling. Since the 1980s, it has been the West that has set the pace on trade liberalisation – particularly the United States. That this no longer appears to be the case clearly leaves O’Sullivan unimpressed.

 

Of President Barack Obama’s reticence on the subject – on display at the just concluded G20 meeting in Hangzhou, China – O’Sullivan is scathing:

 

“US President Barack Obama could hardly lead the charge given the two candidates fighting for election to president don’t have the bottle to even support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The US previously argued TPP would enhance US economic supremacy and ‘contain’ China's ambitions.”

 

Those scare-quotes around the word “contain” indicate just how sceptical O’Sullivan has become of the United States’ capacity to any longer dictate economic terms to the world’s major economic powers – especially China. Her dismay at this turn of events is clear:

 

“Now Xi is driving the call for a more open economy, yet another sign of how badly ‘the West’ has dropped the ball in the post-Global Financial Crisis era.”

 

But if the West has “dropped the ball” in relation to the GFC, and if its political leaders no longer “have the bottle” to support free trade agreements like the TPP, then it is surely incumbent upon O’Sullivan to tell her readers why. Sadly, no such explanation is forthcoming.

 

There is, of course, a very good reason for O’Sullivan’s silence on the cause of the West’s failure. Even in the business pages of the Herald, blaming the world’s economic problems on democracy is a reputationally risky gambit. And yet, no other explanation suffices. That the very same international trends: free trade, globalisation; whose declining influence O’Sullivan so volubly laments; are also the root causes of the massive upsurge of populism across the USA and the United Kingdom is simply undeniable.

 

It’s not that Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton lack “the bottle” to back the TPP, more a case of them recognising that to do so at this juncture in American history would cost them the election. What O’Sullivan refuses to recognise is that free trade and globalisation have, over the past 30 years, imposed a tremendous economic and social cost upon the populations of the West. That the effects of free trade and globalisation were bound, eventually, to trigger a day of democratic reckoning was something their proponents preferred not to think about.

 

O’Sullivan offers a fine example of this political denial by quoting the words of the Chinese billionaire, Jack Ma. The founder of Alibaba (China’s equivalent of TradeMe) told CNN that: “We should keep on going along the path of globalisation ... globalisation is good ... when trade stops, war comes.”

 

Wa went on to dismiss the strongly antagonistic tone adopted by Donald Trump towards America’s Chinese competitors: “Every time there’s an election, people start to criticise China. They criticise this, they criticise that ... [But] how can you stop global trade? How can you build a wall to stop the trade?”

 

The answer, of course, is by erecting the very same protectionist trade-barriers that Wa’s President, Xi Jinping, was warning the G20 against. As boss of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi clearly struggles to fathom the West’s sudden falling-out-of-love with what used to be called the “Washington Consensus”. Perhaps his political empathy would be enhanced if his party’s policies were subjected to the judgement of the Chinese people every four years – like those of his Western counterparts.

 

2016 may prove to be the year in which the electorates of the West finally demonstrate to their political elites the democratic folly of pursuing trade policies that are free – but not fair. If that is what they do, then, far from dropping the ball, the voters of the West will have saved the whole capitalist game.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 7 September 2016.

Investigating The Democratic Sausage: Ika Seafood Bar & Grill’s Table Talk No. 6 “One Year On From Dirty Politics – What Has Changed?”

The Journalist As Hero: “One Year On From Dirty Politics – What Has Changed?” Ika Seafood Restaurant & Bar’s Table Talk No. 6 featured Dirty Politics’ author, Nicky Hager; left-leaning columnist, Dita Di Boni; veteran business writer, Fran O’Sullivan; along with the evening’s emcee, the martyred and marvellous, John Campbell.

 

BOBBY KENNEDY often joked that democracy is like a good sausage: tastes great – but you really don’t want to know what goes into it. Otto von Bismarck said something very similar about the making of laws. Regardless of its provenance, the point being made is an important one. The stuff of which politics is made: self-interest, class prejudice, religious bigotry, economic and social necessity; is often ugly and disreputable. That the final product so often turns out to be publicly palatable, is proof of our politicians’ over-riding need to preserve the system’s legitimacy in the eyes of those who elect them.

 

The distinguishing characteristic of left-wing investigative journalism, however, is that its practitioners are never satisfied with just the taste of Democracy’s sausage. They will not rest until a full list of ingredients, how they were combined, and for how long they’ve been cooked, is prepared and presented to the public. As often as not this is done without the slightest public encouragement, and the results are frequently received with considerable animosity. That’s because Democratic Sausage is generally consumed by the voters in blissful (and often wilful) ignorance of its contents.

 

They really don’t want to know what goes into it.

 

The people attending the Ika Seafood Bar & Grill's Table Talk No. 6, “One Year On From Dirty Politics – What Has Changed?”, disagreed. That’s because the journalists on stage: Dirty Politics’ author, Nicky Hager; left-leaning columnist, Dita Di Boni; veteran business writer, Fran O’Sullivan; and the evening’s emcee, the martyred and marvellous, John Campbell – along with the people packing out the restaurant to hear them – all fervently believe that the voting public not only has the right, but also the duty, to understand how Democratic Sausage is made.

 

There’s no disputing that Hager’s Dirty Politics reveals an unprecedented amount of information about what was going on behind the scenes of New Zealand politics in 2014. The wealth of material contained in Hager’s book could not, however, have been acquired outside of the thoroughly digitalised society we’ve become. Thousands of hacked e-mail communications to and from Cameron Slater’s Whaleoil blogsite had been passed on to Hager, revealing a host of startling connections between Slater, the Prime Minister’s Office, Justice Minister Judith Collins, numerous journalists, and a strange coterie of behind-the-scenes movers and shakers calling themselves “The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy”.

 

That similar exercises in political character assassination, media manipulation, and influence-peddling went on in the past is equally indisputable. It was only very rarely, however, that evidence of such dirty deeds ever came to light. The shrewd operators of the pre-digital era took care to leave no paper trails for pesky journalists to follow. Granted, telephone landlines could be tapped, but not, in the usual course of events, by the Left. Nor was there an Official Information Act to trouble wayward civil servants and Cabinet Ministers. Dirty politics was easier to get away with in those days – and investigative journalism much harder!

 

The result, paradoxically, was that public trust and confidence in our political institutions was much higher in the past than it is today. What the journalistic eye could not see, the electorate didn’t grieve over.

 

Everything changed in the 1970s, however, when the whistle-blowing of Daniel Ellsberg, and the investigative efforts of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, forced the American people to confront the realities of Democratic Sausage-making in an unprecedented way. The Pentagon Papers exposed decades of dishonesty about the Vietnam War on the part of the US Government. And the Watergate Scandal revealed to the people of the United States that their President, Richard Nixon, was a crook. Overnight, investigative reporters became heroes, and the fearless Fourth Estate was hailed as a more effective guardian of the citizen’s rights and freedoms than any politician.

 

Heroic Journalism: The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting brought down all the President's men - and, in August 1974, the President himself.

 

Many Baby-Boomers convinced themselves that this was how it would be from now on – but they were wrong. The blossoming of media freedom in the 1970s was actually an aberration – not a new and beautiful thing. The owners of the news media, frightened by the effective deposition of a President by the news media, tightened-up their control of newsrooms and reined-in the efforts of investigative journalism worldwide. There would be no more Watergates.

 

Partly this was in defence of the beleaguered capitalist system, but it was also about giving the news media’s consumers what they wanted. And what the readers, listeners and viewers of the late 1970s wanted most was to get the hell out of the sausage factory. They had seen enough. The truth made them uncomfortable. They wanted to believe that all was well with their democracy. That Richard Nixon was an exception, not the rule. Accordingly, just six years after the villain of Watergate had been driven from the White House, a much more dangerous President, Ronald Reagan, was moving in.

 

Nicky Hager, Dita Di Boni and Fran O’Sullivan all spoke eloquently about the difficulties facing conscientious journalists in the digital era; about the proliferation of media platforms and the constant shrinkage of newsrooms everywhere. And John Campbell, just by being there, reminded the Ika audience of what can happen to a television current affairs show that strives too earnestly to reveal the composition of Democratic Sausage.

 

What they didn’t discuss, however, was the one, incontrovertible, fact about the publication of Dirty Politics. Namely, that as a political purgative, it didn’t work. Unlike Richard Nixon, John Key was not forced to resign, and his political party was not voted out of office. In fact, a year (and a bit) after the book’s release, Key’s National Government remains as popular as it ever was. The bitter truth is that an electorally decisive number of New Zealanders reacted to Dirty Politics by moving towards – not away from – the National incumbent. Outside the relatively small circle of New Zealanders who celebrated Nicky Hager’s investigative efforts on their behalf, a great many Kiwis responded to his attempt to show them what was happening behind the façade of their democratic institutions with anger and resentment.

 

They liked the Democratic Sausages sizzling on John Key’s barbecue. They did not want to know how they were made. And they definitely didn’t want to be told what – or who – went into them.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 30 September 2015.

Willkommen Im Cabaret: "Table Talk" At Ika Restaurant, Tuesday, 14 April 2015.

 

Welcome To Cabaret! Glücklich zu sehen, Je suis enchanté, Happy to see you, Bleibe, reste, stay.

 

RIDICULOUS I KNOW, but I just couldn’t help it. As I looked around Laila Harré’s Ika restaurant on Tuesday night, I kept thinking: Weimar Germany, 1932.

 

Perhaps it was the cause. In collaboration with the Coalition for Better Broadcasting, The Daily Blog, and her own (and husband Barry Gribben’s) latest venture, Harré had called together a panel discussion on the future of Campbell Live. Looking around the restaurant I momentarily entertained the gruesome thought that one well-placed bomb would wipe out the cream of the Auckland Left (plus Bill Ralston and Fran O’Sullivan!)

 

Not that it’s come to bombs – not yet. Not like the poor doomed Weimar Republic. Even so, there’s the same worrying feeling that the forces of the Right are openly manoeuvring; striking ever more provocative poses; showing less and less regard for appearances. To wit, the impending demise of Campbell Live.

 

The thing about a good puppet show is that you either can’t see, or are artfully distracted from noticing, the strings. It’s only when the strings themselves become more interesting than the puppets they’re attached to that the audience should start to worry.

 

And that time has come.

 

Which is why, as I sat there in Ika (formerly the Neapolitan eatery Sarracino, formerly the chapel of Tongue’s the undertakers!) watching present and former MPs, trade unionists and entrepreneurs, left-wing and right-wing journalists shake hands and exchange gossip, my gloomy thoughts led me to the Kit-Kat Club and Bob Fosse’s classic movie, Cabaret.

 

Up on the stage, playing the role made famous by Joel Grey was our Emcee, Wallace Chapman. And the floor-show, Ika’s Cabaret Band, if you will, were (from neoliberal right to post-modern left) Fran O’Sullivan, Bill Ralston, Simon Wilson and Phoebe Fletcher.

"I am your host!" - Wallace Chapman plays Emcee at Ika's "Table-Talk" about the future of Campbell Live.

Together, they discussed and dissected the decision to dangle the sword of Damocles above the marvellous Mr Campbell’s current-affairs half-hour. All good stuff, and the punters lapped it up. (Along with their whole gurnards and snappers, expertly seasoned, and laid out on a bed of the most fashionable vegetables.)

 

But outside in the dark, where the unseasonable weather was turning Mt Eden Road into an icy wind-tunnel, a very different New Zealand was settling in for a very different bill of fare. The languid musings of TVNZ’s Mike Hoskings, perhaps? Or TV3’s X-Factor? Maybe The Bachelor, or NCIS, or How To Get Away With Murder, or any of a host of other shows beamed into their living rooms by Sky TV’s bounteous satellite. Their thoughts and feelings so far from the worries of these left-wing luvvies that they might as well be living on another planet.

 

Hence the ominous analogy with the tragic Weimar Republic. In the nite-clubs of Berlin’s demi-monde the clever and artistic lamented what was happening in the streets outside. The running battles between Left and Right. The strategic re-positioning of big business as the economy tanked and politics turned sour. And, most of all, the looming presence of a man who seemed almost umbilically joined to all the little people living in all the little rooms where democracy was fast becoming a dirty word.

 

“Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome. Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret!”

 

A version of this essay was first posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 15 April 2015.

Ms O'Sullivan's Curious Commentary

Not Stupid: Fran O'Sullivan is one of New Zealand's most experienced journalists. What, then, lies behind her rather odd analysis of David Shearer's political options at this weekend's Labour Party Conference?

 

LET’S BEGIN with the headline: “Shearer’s vision can unite Labour”. That’s what the Herald’s subs called this morning’s opinion piece by Fran O’Sullivan. It sounded hopeful, but it didn’t take me very long to realise that Ms O’Sullivan was actually urging Mr Shearer to do exactly the opposite:

 

“He should not be afraid to upset grassroot Labour Party members this weekend – particularly the anonymous bloggers who get far too much attention.

 

“Shearer should make it clear he has not resiled from the vision he put forward in Parliament soon after his colleagues voted him leader. That vision is more likely to capture middle-class votes than simply playing to ‘our people’.”

 

Now, I’ve known Ms O’Sullivan for many years, and one thing she isn’t is stupid. On the face of it, however, her column in this morning’s Herald was just that: stupid.

 

Why would any credible political commentator advise a party leader installed over the objections of his own rank-and-file to roll up to his first party conference and piss them off all over again? Why would she suggest that his policy announcements be directed not at “our people” (i.e. the party’s electoral base) but at middle-class voters whose most distinguishing political characteristic over the past four years has been their open contempt and hostility towards the poor and the marginalised?

 

What does Ms O’Sullivan know that we “anonymous bloggers” don’t? (And let me note here how surprised I was to learn that Duncan Garner, Gordon Campbell, Martyn Bradbury, Danyl McLachlan, Brian Edwards and Scott Yorke weren’t those bloggers’ real names!)

 

Does this veteran business journalist have some special insight into this country’s political machinations which allows her to confidently brush aside the rank-and-file of the Labour Party as irrelevant to the outcome of the next general election? In spite of the recent US presidential election demonstrating just how important an effective “ground game” has become to securing victory, Ms O’Sullivan feels able to reassure Mr Shearer that he can safely ignore the very people who make an effective “ground game” possible. Why is that?

 

Perhaps the answer lies in her prediction that playing to the prejudices of the middle-class rather than “our people” would “also yield good results for New Zealand’s economy and business”. Perhaps she envisages the business audiences (to which Mr Shearer – a “fiscal conservative” – is said to have so much appeal) digging deep into their pockets to finance a campaign that would allow the Leader of the Opposition to make an end-run around his own membership?

 

That would certainly seem to be the strategic thinking behind both Ms O’Sullivan’s and Mr Shearer’s references to the former Finnish prime minister, Esko Aho.

 

“[H]e thought it was more important to make a difference than to get re-elected”, Mr Shearer is quoted as saying. “I can tell you I have no interest in being a prime minister who just cautiously tinkers.”

 

And it is here, I believe, that we come to the heart of Ms O’Sullivan’s thinking about Mr Shearer and the sort of Labour Government he might lead. The template in use is, of course, the one bequeathed to us by the Fourth Labour Government.

The Labour Party that gave us “Rogernomics” will always enjoy the special affection of neoliberals like Ms O’Sullivan. Not only for implementing policies that a conservative government would have had to introduce at the point of a gun, but for destroying both the Labour Party and the labour movement in the process.

 

The Lange-Douglas government corrupted everything it touched – including the MPs and party officials who opted to remain inside the empty shell Labour had become after three-fourths of its members – including the best and brightest of its left-wing heart – had departed in disgust. Helen Clark and her enablers may not have been neoliberals, but nor were they prepared to confront or repudiate the neoliberalism which the Lange-Douglas partnership had made the default setting of “New Zealand’s economy and business”.

 

In the nine long years it took Labour (with Jim Anderton’s Alliance in support) to claw its way back to the treasury benches, the trade union movement, as an effective counterweight to corporate power, had been destroyed and the state bureaucracy purged of its civil service ethic. And yet, after nine long years of Labour rule, the countervailing democratic powers of these crucial institutions remained unrestored.

 

It is this seeming inability (or is it unwillingness?) to challenge the neoliberal establishment with something more robust and modern (Josie Pagani take note) than a reheated Blairism which lies at the root of the Labour Party’s (as opposed to the Labour Caucus’s) restiveness. It explains the party membership's endorsement, by a margin of two-to-one, of David Cunliffe's candidacy last December.

Alone among his caucus colleagues Mr Cunliffe grasps how profoundly the global financial crisis is changing the nature of the political-economic game. In response (and in marked contrast to his boss) he's increasingly willing to publicly challenge the dominant neoliberal paradigm. Mr Cunliffe’s popularity among rank-and-file Labour members reflects the wider societal hunger for a genuine alternative to what is clearly a failing system.

 

It is also, I suspect, why even Ms O’Sullivan (who, as I said, is not stupid) writes: “[I]t is abundantly clear that Cunliffe would make a much more compelling Opposition leader than Shearer. He is hard-headed. He has been politically blooded. He has Cabinet experience. He is in tune with Labour’s base.”

 

So it is Mr Cunliffe’s – not Mr Shearer’s – vision that can unite Labour. Isn’t that what Ms O’Sullivan’s column is really saying? And isn’t that why she and all her right-wing colleagues in the mainstream news media are so determined that he NOT replace the incumbent? Isn’t that why they are talking-up Ms Pagani? Isn’t that why they’re begging Labour’s members to give Mr Shearer “more time”?

 

A Labour-led Government headed by the man who takes inspiration from the right-wing Esko Aho; the man who has no interest in being a leader who “cautiously tinkers”; the man who thinks it’s “more important to make a difference than get re-elected”; would be a government hell-bent on repeating the devastating mistakes of the 1980s.

 

Not only that, it would be a government which left what’s left of the Left as demoralised and divided as the government which, in the six bitter years between 1984 and 1990, tore New Zealand’s social-democratic society to pieces.

 

A consummation devoutly to be wished – at least by Ms O’Sullivan.

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

This Is New Zealand: Anna Stretton

Don't Let Them Eat Cake: After reading Fran O'Sullivan's summary of fashion designer, Annah Stretton's, thinking on New Zealand's social policies, I sincerely hope that she never becomes Prime Minister - not even for a day.

WHAT WAS FRAN O’SULLIVAN THINKING when she devoted her Weekend Herald column to the political thoughts of “fashion maven” Annah Stretton? Did she honestly believe she was doing the woman a favour by publicising her controversial opinions? Did Ms O’Sullivan really believe New Zealanders would be better off if the sharp-edged social policies promoted by this designer of expensive ladies’ frocks were given practical effect?

Personally, I was more disposed to believe that the veteran journalist had inwardly been so appalled by Ms Stretton’s comments that she decided to share them with an audience much larger than the Ernst & Young-sponsored “Dress For Success” event at which they were delivered.

“Oh, Christopher, you’re so naïve”, came the immediate response from a (now former) wearer of Stretton’s creations. “In the circles Fran O’Sullivan moves in nobody regards Stretton’s ideas as in any way odious or vicious. On the contrary, most of Fran’s friends probably subscribe wholeheartedly to Annah Stretton’s views.”

I thought about this for a moment and realised, with a sinking feeling, that she was right. You don’t have to look very long or listen very hard to discover Ms Stretton’s catch-phrases: “culture of entitlement”; “family unit of care”; the “absurdity” of universal, un-means-tested, superannuation; tripping merrily off the tongues of “successful” business-women all over New Zealand – especially in the provinces.

These ideas have been repeated so often by the solid citizens of Tauranga, Napier, Ashburton and, of course, in Ms Stretton’s home town of Morrinsville, that they’ve become a sort of right-wing catechism – something to be recited at the drop of a designer hat (or an Ernst & Young invitation). In such sealed social environments these proud adherents to the conservative faith will seldom, if ever, hear anything to contradict their prejudices.

Ms Stretton is fêted in the fashion magazines for her charity work. For example, the “Dress for Success” organisation, at whose fundraiser she was speaking, aims to help disadvantaged women back into the workforce by clothing them in “professional attire”. As if the solution to structural unemployment involved nothing more than offering these unfortunate proletarian frumps a good zooshing-up. While handing out their second-hand frocks and fashion tips, I wonder if Ms Stretton and her colleagues ever take a moment to listen to the young women they’re dressing-up. It would be nice to think that, just occasionally, social reality took a stroll down the catwalk.

Sadly, the maven’s manifesto suggests that, amongst all that frilly condescension, reality failed to secure a back-stage pass. To argue that the DPB should be capped at two children; that there be no automatic entitlement to National Super; that ACC should be privatised; and that no one under the age of 20 should be able to collect an unemployment benefit (sorry, “Job Seekers Allowance”);  is to identify oneself as someone without the faintest conception of what the consequences of such policies might look like.

The kindest excuse is that in promoting such hard-line measures, Ms Stretton was simply disbursing the ideological currency of her class. Readily exchangeable in provincial towns like Morrinsville and throughout our leafier city suburbs, but worthless on the mean streets of Otara and St Kilda.

Or, perhaps, I am once again displaying my naivety? Maybe Ms Stretton, Ms O’Sullivan, and their ilk know only too well what the effects of their “PM for a Day” prescriptions would be on those required to swallow them.

Of course there must be pain. How can these people be expected to learn if it doesn’t hurt? Tough love is what they need – not bleeding hearts!

Such is the language of social inequality: the merciless diction of those who have mastered the obscene stage directions of Neoliberalism’s theatre of cruelty.

The Weekend Herald is to be congratulated for publishing this snap-shot of the successful business entrepreneur’s world view. Now we know how the 1 percent think of, and speak about, the 99 percent of New Zealanders who could never afford (and after Ms O’Sullivan’s extraordinary column, probably shouldn’t be found dead wearing) an Annah Stretton creation.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.