The Danish Solution: How Repudiating Co-Governance Could Be the Saving Of Labour.

Copenhagen Was Worth A Mass* The Danish Social-Democratic Party leader, Mette Frederiksen, greeted by supporters during her successful 2019 general election campaign.

THINK OF DENMARK – go on, think of Denmark. What springs to mind? Lego? The Little Mermaid? Squishy little segments of surprisingly tasty cheese? Bacon? Slaughtered Minks? How many of you are thinking of a social-democratic political party reversing its electoral decline by adopting the immensely popular immigration policies of insurgent right-wing populists? Not a lot. Hardly surprising. How often do New Zealand’s news editors think of Denmark?

“The Danish Solution” is worth considering, however, as our own General Election draws ever nearer. Since the political survival instinct is every bit as strong as any other, we should not be surprised when failing politicians and failing parties adopt policies that outrage their supporters. If their ideological heresy is rewarded by the voters, then it’s amazing how quickly that outrage fades. If the voters remain unimpressed? Well, then there will be blood.

Faced with impending electoral disaster, what might New Zealand’s social-democrats throw overboard?

If Denmark offers us any guide, then the choice will be driven by fear of the racial “other”. The right-wing populist Danish Peoples Party made huge electoral gains in 2015 by offering to protect their country from the problems Sweden had brought upon itself by opening its doors to refugees and immigrants from the ravaged countries of the Third World.

Over the course of five decades, Sweden went from being one of the most racially homogeneous societies on Earth, to a global poster-child for the virtues of multiculturalism. For Swedish social-democrats, this policy of welcoming the persecuted and the vulnerable was an article of left-wing faith: proof that their country, unlike so many of their European neighbours, was not irredeemably racist.

Except that large sections of Swedish society were deeply hostile to multiculturalism. Among the Swedish upper-classes, in particular, the ideology of 1930s fascism lingered on long after the end of the Second World War. As the number of immigrants grew, the Swedish far-right grew with them. Racist xenophobia and Islamophobia inspired racist assaults and arson attacks on refugee centres. Undaunted, the Swedish social-democrats held firm to their multicultural dream – and were voted out of power.

Determined not to lose again, the Danish social-democrats opted to bend to the will of the majority. The massive surge of support for the Peoples Party’s hardline anti-immigration policies convinced them that the Danes had no intention of going down the same road as the Swedes. Failure to respond to the clearly expressed preferences of the electorate threatened to condemn the Danish Social-Democratic Party to the status of an also-ran: politically correct, but reduced to making up the numbers for larger, more responsive and racially exclusive coalitions of political parties.

Among the Danish anti-racist Left, the social-democrats’ about-face on immigration represented a shameful capitulation to all that was rotten in the state of Denmark. Better, they said, to remain pure and powerless, than to compromise their foundational principles in the name of reclaiming the DSDP’s lost power.

But, as the Australian Labor leader, Gough Whitlam, told the ideologically obdurate and inflexible left-wing of the Victorian Labor Party in 1967, by advancing such an argument: “We construct a philosophy of failure, which finds in defeat a form of justification and a proof of the purity of our principles. Certainly, the impotent are pure.” Or, as the late Jim Anderton expressed it, rather less tartly: “One day in Government is worth a thousand days in Opposition.”

It may soon be the New Zealand Labour Party’s turn to make a similar choice between the impotence of morally unimpeachable Opposition, and the ethical compromises attendant upon winning, retaining and wielding political power. Just as Helen Clark was required to choose between capitulating to the Court of Appeal’s foreshore and seabed decision, and seeing Don Brash’s National Party ride to victory in the 2005 General Election; or retaining sufficient Pakeha support to remain in office, even at the cost of alienating enough of Labour’s Māori support to make the formation of an independent Māori Party a realistic proposition.

It would be fascinating to know just how far the electorate’s opposition to Labour’s policies of “co-governance” extends. Given the extent of its polling and focus-grouping, one can only assume that Labour’s strategists are well aware of the consequences of rolling out the policy as currently configured. Were it not for National’s and Act’s clear determination to exploit the Pakeha public’s fear of co-governance, it would be easy to assume that only a small minority of the population are sufficiently exercised by the ideas contained in the controversial He Puapua Report to make them the key determinants of their voting choices.

That National and Act are unwilling to give away the co-governance issue (as Key gave away National’s opposition to the anti-smacking legislation in 2008) strongly suggests that Labour’s policy is shaping-up to be one of the hottest “hot-button” issues of 2023.

The only explanation for the Labour Caucus’ Pakeha majority’s consistent refusal to jettison the party’s commitment to co-governance is its fear that such a decision would spark a full-scale revolt in Labour’s Māori caucus. A revolt so serious that a mass desertion of Māori MPs to the Māori Party could not be ruled out.

In such circumstances, neither the continued loyalty of the Greens, nor that of the entire Labour caucus, could be counted on by the Labour leadership. The resulting parliamentary crisis could only be resolved by calling a snap election.

Could the adoption of “The Danish Solution” rescue Labour? Much would depend on how effectively the Labour leadership presented the range of choices confronting the electorate. If National and Act could be presented as the radical right-wing alternative, whose extremist policies would almost certainly spark serious civil strife, Labour would be able to present itself as a moderate hand-brake on the equally radical co-governance ambitions of the Māori Party and the Greens. Adroitly handled, Labour could emerge from the crisis as the only party capable of keeping the peace. As such it could call upon the electorate to give it the numbers in Parliament to frustrate the reactionary plans of the Right and the revolutionary programme of the Left.

National and Act would gnash their teeth in fury. The Māori Party and the Greens would condemn Labour as sell-outs, moral cowards and traitors. But when the smoke cleared, Labour would find itself finally free of its historical ties and obligations to Maoridom – those would now belong to the Māori Party exclusively. From this position, Labour could advance itself as the only reliable defender of te Tiriti o Waitangi and the democratic and egalitarian principles it embodies.

An altogether preferable alternative to Labour fading into political irrelevance, as a triumphant Right lays waste to New Zealand’s three most precious taonga: Egalitarianism, Democracy – and the Treaty itself.

* Henry of Navarre, a protestant, by converting to Catholicism, made himself King Henri IV of France. When asked to justify his abandonment of Protestantism, Henry replied: “Paris is worth a mass”.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 19 July 2022.

Buying Back The Whenua.

Dangerous Visionaries: Rex Connor wanted to “buy back the farm” (i.e. nationalise Australia’s mineral wealth) and ended up bringing down the government of Gough Whitlam. Nanaia Mahuta’s Three Waters Project is seen by many as a first step to “buying back the whenua” (repatriating Māori lands and waters). A policy which threatens the longevity of Jacinda Ardern’s government.

REX CONNOR is remembered in Australian political history as the Labor Party minister who wanted to “buy back the farm”. In the rough language of Gough Whitlam’s 1970s Labor Party, “buying back the farm” meant bringing Australia’s phenomenal mineral wealth under public control for the benefit of all Australians – rather than a handful of obscenely profitable mining companies. Unlike the Australian Labor Party of today (or the New Zealand Labour Party, for that matter) the party of Rex Connor, MP for Cunningham, New South Wales, still boasted some honest-to-goodness socialists.

Sadly, Rex Connor is remembered for more than wanting to buy back the farm, he’s remembered for actually trying to do it. Bull-headed and scornful of political compromise, Connor stepped beyond the accepted bounds of Cabinet Government and allowed himself to be duped by a charlatan almost certainly in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency. In doing so, Connor brought down not only himself, but also the charismatic Labor Treasurer, Jim Cairns, and, ultimately, the government of Gough Whitlam itself.

Connor’s economic nationalism was about as strong as it gets. He was fond of quoting the Australian poet, Sam Walter Foss. These lines in particular:

Give me men to match my mountains,
Give me men to match my plains,
Men with freedom in their visions
And creation in their veins.

By and large, politics and the poetic temperament do not mix. Had Whitlam paid more attention to the visionary gleam in Connor’s eye, he might have avoided the “dismissal” that brought his stellar career to a sudden and ignominious end. Creativity can be equally dangerous – especially when it extends to swallowing the too-good-to-be-true promises of shadowy “bankers” like Tirath Khemlani.

Connor’s tale is a cautionary one. So much so, that between 1975 and 1984 the lessons to be drawn from the Lands and Minerals Minister’s pig-headed economic nationalism were dinned into our own Labour MPs. Two lessons in particular were emphasised. One: It is impossible for a Cabinet Minister to operate secretly without the tacit support of his officials. Any attempt can only end in disaster. Two: Threatening the core economic interests of your country’s capitalist class is always a bad idea. They will get you long before you get them.

Connor’s tragic history therefore contributed in no small way to the readiness of both Antipodean labour parties to be convinced that there were no viable political alternatives to the free-market economic policies urged upon them in the mid-1980s. Rex Connor’s failure to buy back the farm, and Roger Douglas’s eagerness to sell it, are not unrelated.

But what have these fifty-year-old experiences got to do with the New Zealand of 2021? Surely our own government contains no one even remotely like the recklessly quixotic Rex Connor?

Actually, it does. Her name is Nanaia Mahuta.

Labour’s Minister of Internal Affairs is not an economic nationalist, but she is a Māori nationalist. Her mission is not to buy back the farm, but to redeem the whenua out of which New Zealand’s farms were fashioned. And not just the whenua. Mahuta’s sights are firmly set upon Aotearoa’s waters as well.

Though she is extremely guarded about the potential of her controversial Three Waters Project to provide an answer to the question: “Who owns the water?”; the Waitangi Tribunal evinces no such reticence. According to the Tribunal, Aotearoa’s waters do not belong to the Crown. Nor do they belong to “no one” – as Prime Minister John Key insisted, when 50 percent of New Zealand’s hydro-electric assets were being floated on the share market. No, Māori and water cannot be justly separated. Hence the “co-governance” provisions embedded in Mahuta’s Three Waters reform package.

Mahuta does, however, possess advantages Rex Connor lacked. In the Aotearoa of 2021 there is no Rupert Murdoch figure ready to publish devastating leaks from senior bureaucrats outraged by their Minister’s secret manoeuvrings. On the contrary, a great many journalists and public servants share the transformative visions contained in the Mahuta-commissioned He Puapua Report. Nor is it the case that Mahuta’s colleagues are being kept in the dark, as Connor’s were, about the implications of the Minister’s radical plans.

On one thing, however, Mahuta’s colleagues need to be very clear. Her version of “buying back the farm” cannot avoid buying a political fight every bit as consequential as Rex Connor’s.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 November 2021.

Vision And Creation – Or Fiscal Restraint?

Fatal Obsession: It was Gough Whitlams' Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor, whose lifelong dream of "buying back the farm" (nationalising Australia's mineral and energy resources) led him into the coils of an American-inspired conspiracy featuring the shady Pakistani banker, Tirath Khemlani, that precipitated the infamous dismissal of his Labor government on 11 November 1975. Every reforming Labour government should have Connor's name tattooed over its heart - as a warning.

THERE’S ONE NAME that should be tattooed over the heart of every Labour Party politician: Rex Connor. It was Connor’s determination to “buy back the farm” – i.e. deliver Australia’s mineral wealth into public ownership – that set in motion the sequence of events which persuaded the Australian Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, to dismiss Gough Whitlam’s Labor government on 11 November 1975. The lesson for all subsequent Labor (and Labour) governments was clear: never let the policy commitments of a single minister deepen to the point where they drag an entire government down to defeat.

Connor was an old-time Labour socialist and economic nationalist who was fond of quoting the American poet, Sam Walter Foss:

Give me men to match my mountains,

Give me men to match my plains,

Men with freedom in their visions

And creation in their veins.

When the Australian Treasury persuaded Connor’s Labor colleagues that his plans to borrow $4 billion (a colossal sum in 1974!) were economically and legally reckless, the bluff old socialist went behind their backs and attempted to borrow the money from Middle Eastern potentates, who, following the dramatic oil price-hikes precipitated by the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbours, were awash with “petro-dollars”.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the United States government, alerted to Connor’s intentions, laid a trap for him. A shadowy Pakistani banker by the name of Tirath Khemlani was able to ensnare Connor by promising to arrange a loan large enough to make all of the Minister for Minerals and Energy’s dreams come true. It was the Liberal Opposition’s exposure (undoubtedly with American assistance) of the “Loans Affair” which sparked the political crisis culminating in Whitlam’s dismissal.

Why are political events which occurred in Australia more than 40 years ago being rehearsed in New Zealand in 2018?

The memory trigger, in this case, was pulled by the National Party Opposition’s Transport spokesperson, Judith Collins. In a media release issued on Tuesday, 16 January, Collins castigates the Minister of Transport, Phil Twyford, for raising the possibility of diverting motorist-derived revenues from the National Land Transport Fund for the purposes of developing Auckland’s light-rail network.

“This desperate grab for more taxes is the result of this free-spending Government realising how much it’s going to cost to build its pet rail line from Auckland’s CBD to the Airport”, argued Collins, “so it’s looking to divert funding from regional roads as a result.”

Collin’s criticisms were echoed in a release from the right-wing lobby group, The Taxpayers’ Union, which enjoined Twyford to keep his “hands off motorists’ piggy bank”.

Now, this is a very long way from Khemlani’s false promise to provide Rex Connor with the wherewithal to “buy back the farm”, but every doomed journey begins with a single step.

Phil Twyford has staked his own reputation – and that of the Labour-NZF-Green Government – on fulfilling not only their commitment to end Auckland’s traffic gridlock, but also, and more importantly, to have Labour’s “KiwiBuild” affordable housing initiative well underway by the 2020 election.

The $4 billion question is: are there sufficient financial resources available to permit the government to meet these (and many other) policy commitments? The answer, of course, is yes. All governments have the power to beg, borrow or steal whatever resources are needed to implement their plans. In the case of this government, however, the matter is more complicated.

Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet contains many men and women with “freedom in their visions” and “creation in their veins” but, unfortunately, on his performance to date, her Minister of Finance isn’t one of them. Grant Robertson’s determination to keep his government within its self-imposed “Budget Responsibility Rules” is presently on a collision course with ministers’ determination to keep their promises.

If the Prime Minister allows that collision to occur, then the chances of someone doing a Rex Connor will increase spectacularly. Whitlam’s fatal error was to refuse to make a choice between vision and creation, and the budgetary restraint necessary to keep the confidence of the Australian people. Ardern’s challenge is to decide what sort of government she intends to lead. Will it be a government of vision and creativity? Or, a government which refuses to abandon its commitment to fiscal rectitude.

If it’s the latter, then Jacinda needs to sack her Rex Connors – now.

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 January 2018.

Palace Coup? Shocking New Revelations About The 1975 Dismissal Of Gough Whitlam’s Labour Government.

Queen's Man: Australian Research Professor, Jenny Hocking, in her just published book, The Dismissal Dossier: Everything You Were Never Meant To Know About November 1975, alleges that Sir John Kerr was in contact with Queen Elizabeth II, her Private Secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, and Prince Charles, weeks before the final dismissal of the Whitlam Government. At no point, says Hocking, did any member of the Royal Family alert the Prime Minister of Australia that his country's democratically-elected government was about to be overthrown.

 

SCEPTICISM ABOUT THE EXISTANCE of the “Deep State” is very strong in New Zealand. This country has been fortunate in avoiding the sort of constitutional crises that bring the machinations of Deep State actors into public view. Our neighbours across the Tasman have not been so fortunate.

 

It is almost exactly 40 years since the Governor General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, sacked the government of Gough Whitlam’s Labour Party. The “dismissal” of the Whitlam Government was long thought to be the work of Kerr alone; a vice-regal intervention intended to resolve a constitutional stalemate that was threatening to bring Australia to its knees. This “official” version of events is now being challenged. In The Dismissal Dossier: Everything You Were Never Meant To Know About November 1975, Australian Research Professor, Jenny Hocking, makes it frighteningly clear that Kerr had help.

 

One of the questions often asked by students of Whitlam’s dismissal is: Why didn’t the Prime Minister simply pick up the phone and dial Buckingham Palace? The Governor-General is, when all is said and done, merely the monarch’s stand-in. Should he so forget his place as to seriously contemplate dismissing a democratically re-elected government from office, then, surely, a quick conversation between the Prime Minister and Her Majesty would secure his instant removal from Government House and replacement by somebody more committed to the democratic process.

 

According to Hocking, that most simple of solutions was denied to Whitlam for the very simple reason that the Queen and her Private Secretary, Sir Martin Charteris, were forewarned of the dismissal. Kerr had taken the precaution of both writing and speaking to the Queen about what he was planning to do well in advance of 11 November 1975. Indeed, the Queen’s Private Secretary and the Governor-General had together run through the options should Whitlam attempt to secure Kerr’s removal from office. In the event of this “contingency”, Charteris informed Kerr, the Queen would “try to delay things”.

 

Had Whitlam dialled Buckingham Palace, it is highly likely that Charteris would have informed him that Her Majesty was indisposed and unable to take his call.

 

At no time during the course of these alleged exchanges, says Hocking, did the Palace think it appropriate to speak to the Prime Minister of Australia about his Governor-General’s intentions. In such circumstances it would have been very difficult for Kerr to interpret the Palace’s silence as anything other than tacit support.

 

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, Hocking claims that, in addition to the Queen, Kerr also discussed his plans to dismiss the democratically-elected government of an independent Commonwealth nation with the heir apparent to the British throne, Prince Charles. The latter’s alleged response, if accurately reported by Hocking, raises serious questions about Charles’s suitability as New Zealand’s next head of state.

 

According to Hocking, the Prince of Wales’ reply was: “But surely, Sir John, the Queen should not have to accept advice that you should be recalled at the very time should this happen when you were considering having to dismiss the government.”

 

It seems that the Royal Family was not Kerr’s only source of advice and support. The Governor-General is also said to have consulted senior members of the Australian judiciary and, shockingly, the Liberal Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser. Apparently, they, too, saw no reason to acquaint the Prime Minister with the fact that Kerr was planning to overthrow the Australian government.

 

There was another person in Australia who seemed to be extraordinarily well-informed about the future of Whitlam’s government – Rupert Murdoch. He had returned to Australia in the early months of 1975 peculiarly confident that the Labour Government would be gone by Christmas. Accordingly, the Murdoch-controlled press, well-informed by sources deep with the civil service, waged an unrelenting campaign against Whitlam’s beleaguered ministry, and was entirely supportive of the bloodless coup that toppled it.

 

Hocking’s accusations are, of course, political dynamite. They call into question not only the constitutional reliability of the House of Windsor, but all of Australia’s and the United Kingdom’s unelected power structures – their Deep States. Australians also have cause to wonder about their country’s relationship with the elected governments of the United Kingdom. After all, how likely is it, if Hocking’s allegations are true, that the Queen would have kept her own Prime Minister and his Cabinet in the dark about Kerr’s intentions? Mind you, these were the years in which rumours of coups against the Labour Government of Harold Wilson were rife. Was Her Majesty advised that it might be wisest to keep Sir John Kerr’s intentions to herself?

 

Of course Hocking’s allegations, if wide of the mark, could very easily be corrected by releasing all of the Palace’s 1975 communications with Kerr. Unfortunately, these remain sealed under a 50 year suppression order not set to expire until 2027. Even then it is most unlikely that they will be released until all of the persons involved in the events of November 1975 are deceased.

 

The Deep State does not like the light.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 28 October 2015.

When The Nation’s Permanent Interests Override Its Impermanent Politicians

Pushback: Rob Muldoon's NZSIS Amendment Bill 1977 inspired huge protest demonstrations up and down the country. The Bill passed, but only at the price of massive and enduring public mistrust of the SIS itself. Were a left-wing government ever to give legislative expression to that mistrust, however, the true purposes of our national security apparatus would very quickly be revealed.

 

SUBMISSIONS TO the Independent Review of Intelligence and Security closed last Friday. No doubt the “Independent Reviewers”, Sir Michael Cullen and Dame Patsy Reddy, are already up to their elbows in the earnest recommendations of their fellow citizens. By March of next year we will learn what they have made of them.

 

In all probability, neither Sir Michael, nor Dame Patsy, will end up recommending much more than a little tweaking here and there to New Zealand’s national security apparatus. The terms of reference of their inquiry were extremely narrowly set – always an indication that nothing too dramatic is expected by the politicians who set the process in motion.

 

A few judicious redefinitions of the scope and powers of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) is the most we should anticipate. (Especially after the Prime Minister has strongly and publicly hinted that this is what his government is expecting!)

 

Indeed, any government attempting to make more than minor changes to either institution is asking for trouble. In 1977, the National Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, ignited a firestorm of nationwide protests when he announced his intention to legislate a substantial increase in the powers of the SIS. The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service Amendment Bill, which dramatically expanded the Service’s capacity to intercept private communications, and forbade the public identification of its agents, was passed by Parliament, but only at the cost of a significant portion of the citizenry’s trust and goodwill.

 

That New Zealand’s so-called “intelligence community” is anxious to retain and build public trust and goodwill has been evident over the past fortnight in the substantive public relations campaign it has waged in advance of the Independent Review. SIS Director, Rebecca Kitteridge, knows how difficult her job will become if her fellow citizens are unwilling to concede the legitimacy of the SIS’s role.

 

But, if losing the trust and goodwill of New Zealand’s citizens is a bad thing, losing the trust and confidence of New Zealand’s allies would be much, much worse. This would, however, be the most likely outcome if the recommendations of those who made submissions to the Independent Review from the left were ever to be taken up and implemented by a future left-leaning government.

 

The submission from the Anti-Bases Campaign, for example (whose spokesperson is the redoubtable left-wing activist, Murray Horton) has recommended to Sir Michael and Dame Patsy that: “New Zealand immediately exits the Five Eyes regime.”

 

The reviewers will, of course, ignore this demand – if only because it falls outside the scope of their inquiry. But, what if a future Labour-Green Government was persuaded to withdraw from the UK-USA Agreement, to which New Zealand has been party for more than 60 years?

 

It is precisely in circumstances such as these that the true function of our national security apparatus would be demonstrated.

 

It was the United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, who infamously remarked of the democratically elected socialist government of Chile: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” On 11 September 1973, that government was overthrown by the Chilean armed forces.

 

"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
- US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, justifies the overthrow of Chile's socialist government.

 

On 10 November 1975, outraged that his government was under CIA surveillance, the Australian Labour Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, let it be known that he would be closing down the joint CIA/National Security Agency’s satellite tracking station at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The following day, Whitlam’s government was dismissed by Sir John Kerr, the Australian Governor-General. (The Pine Gap station was critical to the effectiveness of the “Five Eyes regime”.)

 

In the eyes of both the Chilean armed forces, and Australia’s national security apparatus, the permanent national interests of their respective states had been placed at serious risk by political figures who either did not understand, or were hostile to, those interests. In arriving at these conclusions, both institutions relied upon the intelligence and advice of their nation’s principal military and economic ally, the United States.

 

Although neither Sir Michael, nor Dame Patsy, will admit it, “national security” is all about identifying which permanent national interests are best kept beyond the reach of Democracy’s impermanent practitioners.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 August 2015.

The Impotence Of Purity

"Certainly, The Impotent Are Pure": Gough Whitlam struggled to make the left of his party understand that purity at the expense of power is a poor bargain. “It is true that some parties can exist only as pressure groups ..... Neither our traditions nor our purpose permit us to adopt this role for ourselves. We are in the business to serve and preserve democracy. Parliamentary democracy.”

 

GOUGH WHITLAM’S LEGACY to Australian Labor is huge, so it’s easy to assume that he was always its hero. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such a doctrinaire beast was the Australian Labor Party in the 1950s and 60s that the “modernising” Whitlam was widely and deeply distrusted. Nowhere was this more evident than in Victorian Labour Party (VLP). Victorian Labour saw itself as the Keeper of the Flame of “true” socialism. Whitlam, a silver-tongued Sydney lawyer, born of privilege and power, was not the sort of person these “true believers” warmed to.

 

Whitlam, however, had a very clear idea about where Labor needed to go if it was ever to bring the seemingly interminable reign of the Liberal-Country Party Coalition to an end. The VLP, he knew, was a vital station on the federal party’s path to power. The Keepers of the Flame would have to be politically confronted – and ideologically defeated. In June, 1967, Whitlam finally bearded Victoria’s socialist lions in their den.

 

Speaking to the VLP’s annual conference, Whitlam laid it on the line – as only he could. Addressing directly Labor’s abysmal electoral record at both the state and federal level, he spoke the words that everyone knew to be true, but which no one dared to utter:

 

“We construct a philosophy of failure, which finds in defeat a form of justification and a proof of the purity of our principles. Certainly, the impotent are pure. This party was not conceived in failure, brought forth by failure or consecrated to failure. Let us have none of this nonsense that defeat is in some way more moral than victory.” [My emphasis.]

 

Nor was he afraid to name Labor’s two great enemies on the Left: the Moscow-aligned Communist Party of Australia; and that bastard child of Catholic reaction, the Democratic Labor Party (DLP).

 

“It is true that some parties can exist only as pressure groups. The Communists support this view because they do not want to win Parliamentary representation or power; the DLP supports it because it cannot win Parliamentary representation or power. Neither our traditions nor our purpose permit us to adopt this role for ourselves. We are in the business to serve and preserve democracy. Parliamentary democracy.”

 

It was this key insight that made Whitlam such an extraordinary change agent. He grasped what the Keepers of the Flame had either forgotten, or never quite understood in the first place. That before it could be about socialism, Labor had to be about democracy. Why? Because socialism only happens when people start taking democracy seriously.

 

The events of the past three weeks have made it clear just how urgently the New Zealand Labour Party is in need of a good Whitlam-style dressing down. Members of Labour’s Caucus have been stunned and hurt by the viciousness of their own party’s Keepers of the Flame. That Phil Twyford’s campaign to highlight the role played by offshore Chinese property investors in Auckland’s housing bubble could be likened to the activities of the Ku Klux Klan was beyond outrageous.

 

New Statesman columnist, Helen Lewis, calls it “values signalling”. Heedless of the personal and political damage inflicted by their social media interventions, the Values Signallers are only interested in letting their “friends” and “followers” know just how emphatically they are on the side of “the right and the good”. Not for them the hard slog of increasing their political party’s electoral support – always a desperately frustrating process, fraught with difficult personal compromises and dubious moral elisions. To operate in this world requires a level of maturity which most Values Signallers simply do not possess. For them, proclaiming one’s principled purity to the world is much more satisfying than helping one’s party win the next election. That such strident and unhelpful posturing might indefinitely delay the day when their principles are backed by the power of a parliamentary majority is not an idea they are much given to considering.

 

In the end, Whitlam’s observations about impotence and purity go to the heart of a much more profound political and philosophical debate. The invitation to sacrifice one’s personal political purity in favour of collective political potency is always a hard one to accept. And yet, if it is not, then the conditions permitting the enlargement of social, as well as individual, morality cannot be realised.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 31 July 2015.

Gough Whitlam: 1916 - 2014

A Mighty Totara has Fallen: Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam paying his respects to the late NZ PM, Rt. Hon. Norman Kirk, during his Lying-in-State at Parliament Buildings, Wellington. Wednesday, 4th September, 1974. (Photo by John Miller.)

 

A BIG MAN IN EVERY SENSE, Gough Whitlam tested the boundaries of social-democracy under capitalism. Though he wielded power for just three years (1972-1975) it seemed longer because he had made Australia, and the world, feel larger. Wherever the power of principled advocacy and progressive endeavour is honoured, Gough Whitlam will be remembered.

Men and Women of Australia! The decision we will make for our country on 2 December is a choice between the past and the future, between the habits and fears of the past, and the demands and opportunities of the future. There are moments in history when the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. For Australia, this is such a time.

Gough Whitlam - 13 November 1972

Well might we say 'God save the Queen', because nothing will save the Governor General!

Gough Whitlam - 11 November 1975

Australian Labor Party election advertisement 1972

 

 

Video courtesy of YouTube

 

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Gut Reactions

Horizontal Revolution: Labour's (and Labor's) inspirational leaders of the 1960s and 70s, Norman Kirk and Gough Whitlam, both grasped the decisive electoral potential of suburban voters who longed to escape the relentless sameness of their days. The votes of the women who lived in the "Hill's Hoist suburbs" around Sydney were crucial to Whitlam's 1972 victory.

 

GETTING ELECTED has always been the Number One priority of parliamentary democracy. It follows, therefore, that the role of a parliamentary leader is to identify and remove every obstacle to his or her party becoming the government. Partly, that’s a matter of opinion polls, focus groups and communication strategies but, mostly, it’s about a leader’s instinctive feel for the hopes and aspirations, the gripes and disappointments, of the people who have the power to make him or her Prime Minister.

 

It’s John Key’s indisputable ability to divine what’s eating the average New Zealand voter that makes him such a formidable political figure. Yes, he may slip up from time-to-time, say foolish (or downright offensive) things, but always the needle of his political compass recovers the location of electoral North and he’s back on track.

 

Much as I hate to admit it, David Cunliffe simply does not have Key’s knack for staying on course. The Labour leader has many intelligent advisers, a good polling agency, pages and pages of Focus Group reports and (allegedly) a speechwriter. What he doesn’t have, however, is Key’s feel for where the voters’ heads are at; that unerring ability to find true electoral North.

 

What makes me even more depressed is I don’t believe that ability can be instilled. You either have it, or you don’t.

 

Consider the case of Norman Kirk and what he understood about the lives of the people who could make him Prime Minister. Read these lines from the first chapter of the autobiography he began but never finished. The place described is the street in working-class Linwood, in Christchurch, where he grew up.

 

It did not brood. It had no character. Instead it conformed. The people were drab. The street was drab. The people were poor. The street was poor. It was there because it had to be. It had nowhere else to go. Neither did the people. It did not inspire. It was a sponge. It soaked up hope. And at night it counted its people like a warder counts his prisoners.

 

Kirk understood that there were hundreds of thousands of Kiwis who’d been raised on identical streets and, like him, yearned to escape the confinement of such hope-consuming suburbs. In these lines you’ll find no romantic celebration of working-class existence, only a visceral longing for something better; for somewhere else to go.

 

Kirk’s contemporary, Gough Whitlam, understood a very different kind of suburb. The bare, amenity-starved, post-war subdivisions that had sprung up on the outskirts of Sydney in the 1950s and 60s. They were a step-up from the inner-city tenements of the 1930s but the people who lived in them felt almost as constrained as they had in Sydney’s slums. Even in the years of Menzies and the Great Boom there was still so much that was denied to them.

 

Whitlam, alone of all his colleagues in the near-moribund Australian Labor Party, grasped the progressive political potential of the “Hill’s Hoist” suburbs.

 

But first he had to clear all the obstacles to getting elected, and in the Australia of the late-1960s that included the proudly proletarian and staunchly left-wing Victorian Labor Party. On the 9 June 1967, as the ALP’s new leader, Whitlam bearded these socialist lions in their den. In what many Aussie historians consider the best speech of his career, Whitlam addressed directly the defeatist political mindset that had produced eight consecutive Labor defeats.

 

We construct a philosophy of failure, which finds in defeat a form of justification and a proof of the purity of our principles. Certainly, the impotent are pure. This party was not conceived in failure, brought forth by failure or consecrated to failure. Let us have none of this nonsense that defeat is in some way more moral than victory.

 

That killer line: “Certainly, the impotent are pure”, provoked an uproar – but it was a necessary uproar. Because, as Whitlam reminded them: “We are in the business to serve and preserve democracy. Parliamentary democracy.”

 

Kirk and Whitlam understood instinctively the intense dissatisfaction building up beneath the National/Liberal status quo. Both men’s political intestines told them that the Hill’s Hoist generation – and their increasingly restive children – would not remain prisoners of their own streets forever.

 

So, Mr Cunliffe, which obstacles to “getting elected” will you remove? What is your gut telling you to do?

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 13 June 2014.