The Greens' "Economic Cred": Hard Won - Easily Lost.

Little Feet: Candidates vying to succeed Dr Russel Norman as the Green Party's Male Co-Leader. From Left: Gareth Hughes MP, Kevin Hague MP, James Shaw MP and Vernon Tava. When tasked by The Nation's Lisa Owen with supplying the answer to a simple economic question, three out of the four candidates failed dismally. His successor will have to work very hard to reclaim even a little of Dr Norman's hard won economic credibility.

 

IT WAS IMPRESSIVE – but it wasn’t real. The Greens’ apparent mastery of economics turned out to be just one man’s – Dr Russel Norman’s – achievement. Hopefully, Dr Norman’s successor will attain an equal level of economic literacy.

 

Because most commentators agree that, throughout John Key’s second term as Prime Minister, the Greens’ co-leader, Dr Norman, easily outstripped his centre-left rivals as the best informed and most articulate economic spokesperson on the Opposition benches.

 

With rare political discipline, Dr Norman acquired a good working knowledge of economics and spoke its language as fluently as Finance Minister, Bill English. Perhaps more so.

 

Quite rightly, Dr Norman had identified the Greens’ unfamiliarity with mainstream economics as a serious weakness. Why should the voters take them seriously if they cannot talk convincingly about the exchange rate’s impact on manufacturing; the effectiveness of the Reserve Bank’s handling of monetary policy; or whether employers are responding adequately to rising levels of worker productivity?

 

It was all very well to talk about a future based on “Green Growth” and “Green Jobs”, but voters living in the here-and-now needed to feel confident that the Green Party understood what was happening in New Zealand’s economy – to their jobs.

 

To become a great artist, it is said, the art student must first learn all the rules and master all the techniques of painting. Only then will he be ready to break all the rules and develop new techniques of his own. Dr Norman clearly believed that the same applied to economics. Only after familiarising themselves with the “dismal science” of classical economics would the Greens be ready to preach the more joyful gospel of sustainability and self-sufficiency.

 

Dr Russel Norman: Big shoes to fill.

 

Dr Norman’s efforts in this all-important sphere of politics did not go unnoticed. Mr Key’s second term had hardly begun when the Parliamentary Press Gallery began referring to Dr Norman as “the real Leader of the Opposition”. This wasn’t solely due to the fact that the Labour caucus’s internal feuding was wreaking havoc upon the Party’s political credibility. It was also about the way Dr Norman, as the Greens’ economic spokesperson, was going head-to-head with the Finance Minister in the House – and not losing.

 

Did all this praise go to Dr Norman’s head? Is that why he raised the possibility that, in a future Labour-Green coalition government, the Finance portfolio might well end up in his own hands? (The very idea was enough to cause serious conniptions in Labour’s ranks!) Was Dr Norman’s much derided suggestion that New Zealand embark on a limited degree of quantitative easing all the evidence his critics needed to prove that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?

 

Actually, neither of these accusations stack up. Subsequent events were to reinforce Labour’s serious lack of talent in matters economic. And the journalists, so quick to pour scorn upon Mr Norman’s QE proposals, revealed much more about their own, and their government briefers’, ignorance of economics than they did about the Green co-leader’s.

 

In spite of the fact that Labour’s policies on superannuation and capital gains had been in place for more than three years, neither the party’s leader, nor its finance spokesperson, proved equal to the task of selling them to the electorate. A Labour-Green coalition could have done a lot worse than making Dr Norman its Minister of Finance.

 

Not that any of this matters now: not after last week’s edition of The Nation on TV3. In the course of introducing the four candidates competing for the co-leader’s job Dr Norman is stepping away from (Gareth Hughes, Kevin Hague, James Shaw and Vernon Tava) the show’s co-host, Lisa Owen, asked each man to answer a quick-fire question on the economy. What’s the unemployment rate? The inflation rate? The Reserve Bank’s official cash-rate? The economic growth rate?

 

Only one of the candidates, Mr Shaw, even came close to supplying the correct answer. In less than five minutes, Dr Norman’s hard graft over more than three years: his gift of (as Ms Owen put it) “economic cred’”; was needlessly thrown away.

 

None of the questions were difficult. A few seconds on the Statistics New Zealand website was all that they required. That none of the candidates had devoted even this much time to acquiring the answers, makes Dr Norman’s economic literacy an even more singular achievement.

 

Some very hard yards await his successor.

 

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, 20 March 2015.

Shouting From Beyond The Crossroads

Green Marx: The growing awareness that Capitalism, unchecked, will ultimately consume the life-giving properties of the planet itself is challenging Green parties' reliance on "Green Technology" and the technological fix. Karl Marx saw the overthrow of the capitalist system as a social and ethical necessity, but it is now clear that revolution and human survival are no longer separable.

DO YOU SHOUT at the television? Indulge in lengthy harangues at the radio? I’m afraid I do. Increasingly so, given that it’s an election year and there’s a growing number of things to shout at television about. Time was when I’d have attributed this habit of berating inanimate objects to advancing years. But young people assure me that nowadays they do it too.

 

Last Sunday I gave my lungs a good workout during TVNZ’s current affairs programme Q+A. Bryce Edwards, the University of Otago’s peripatetic commentator on all things political (and compiler of that utterly invaluable compendium of political news and commentary, NZ Politics Daily) was criticising the Greens for attempting to use Green Capitalism to save the planet.

 

“Awh, jeez, Bryce, give us a break!”, I yelled at the offending collection of electronic circuitry, “How many viewers do you suppose are going to hold that against them? And how many extra votes do you reckon they’ll attract by decking out Karl Marx in a green suit?”

 

Later that morning, however, after my blood pressure had returned to normal, I began to think more carefully about Bryce’s criticism. By mid-afternoon I’d already half-convinced myself that the young political studies lecturer was right.

 

If even the Greens aren’t prepared to call things by their true names – who is?

 

Can you really prefix “Green” to the global phenomenon that’s pouring more and more Carbon Dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere? From Brazil to Indonesia: in all the world’s denuded tropical rainforests, what else but Capitalism is powering the chainsaws of the tree-fellers? Could the gaunt and exhausted construction workers recruited from across the Muslim world really distinguish between the Capitalism that vomited up their squalid shanty towns and the Capitalism that’s erecting Dubai’s towering “eco-friendly” architecture? And, much closer to home, can Green Capitalism really displace the Cow-Cockey Capitalism pouring nitrates and phosphates into our waterways? Or the Carbon Capitalism sinking drill-shafts into our deepest seas?

 

Green Capitalism? You might as well speak of Green Cancer. But, if you’re looking for alternatives – why not ‘Man Crusher’? Or, ‘Earth Eater’?

 

I’m old enough to remember when the first whispers began to spread about the limits to capitalist growth. When individuals like Rachel Carson and groups like the Club of Rome first connected the insatiable appetites of industrial capitalism with the gaping rents that were appearing all around the globe in the fragile webs of life we were only just beginning to call ecosystems.

 

It was around the time when, in the manner of a glittering cosmic cue, the Apollo astronauts began sending back to humankind the first images of its tiny blue planet floating – so beautiful, so vulnerable and so alone – in the infinite reaches of space.

 

And it was here, in New Zealand, that those whispers first cohered into an audible political voice. Formed in 1972, the Values Party was the first to openly question the idea that economic growth could be pursued endlessly and without cost.

 

It was heresy, but it stuck. Tens-of-thousands had just signed the ‘Save Manapouri’ petition. The Labour Party’s election ads depicted the environment in an Agee preserving jar! Tantalisingly close to the surface of the voters’ minds, not only in New Zealand but all across the developed world, a realisation of extraordinary power was taking shape. That humanity had reached a cross roads.

 

Down one road lay something new, something transformative. A new, lighter and less destructive way of being human. Charles Reich called it “The Greening of America”. Values promised to take us "Beyond Tomorrow".

 

Down the other road lay more: much more; unbelievably more. Waiting for us was a cornucopia of technological wonders that also offered something new and transformative. A human society increasingly wired to its machines, and those machines becoming more and more human.

 

But such magic technology could only ever be the distillation of processes fatally destructive of the planet’s capacity to maintain ecosystems conducive to human survival.

 

Capitalism’s technological fix, founded upon the shifting sands of cheap energy, finite resources and cheap labour is, ultimately, unsustainable. Its ever-more miraculous industrial alchemy can only be sustained by cannibalising its own children and heating up the planet’s atmosphere.

 

These are unglad tidings for any political party to bear. Values tried to warn New Zealand about the ultimate cost of Capitalism but only succeeded in splitting itself apart. Like the rest of us, Values’ members (and now the Greens’) have found it easier to believe in the power of science to resolve all contradictions.

 

Hence Russel Norman’s promise that Green Capitalism, wielding Green Technology, will rescue us from the twin threats of Global Warming and critical resource depletion. I suspect he knows this is nonsense. The Devil is not defeated by weapons manufactured in Hell.

 

From the road we’ve chosen there is no turning.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 20 May 2014.

Mr Jones Goes To Taranaki

Defanging Misapprehensions: Labour List MP, Shane Jones', recent foray into Taranaki served as a forceful reminder of Labour's role as the party which, in order to serve its electoral base, must govern for capitalism as a whole - unlike its National Party rival which can and does govern narrowly for favoured capitalists - like Sky City Casinos and Warner Bros.

 

“THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN the two main parties,” said the late Bruce Jesson, “is that National governs for capitalists, and Labour governs for Capitalism.”

 

In the course of a provocative foray into the energy-rich province of Taranaki, earlier this week, the Labour List MP, Shane Jones’, offered a neat demonstration of Bruce’s point.

 

“I am keen to defang these misapprehensions that are abounding that somehow industry has disappeared from our purview”, he told Fairfax NZ News.

 

“Nothing could be further from the truth and if my visit provides the opportunity to reinforce the centrality of jobs, the importance of industry and the need for a future Labour-led government to assuage whatever anxieties might be there in the minds of employers or future investors then I am up for the task.”

 

A great deal of very important information is packed into Mr Jones’ typically pithy statement.

 

First and foremost, Taranaki’s business leaders are being assured that, so long as he retains the Regional Development spokesperson’s role, they have nothing to fear from a future Labour-led government.

 

Mr Jones’ decision to offer that assurance in the form of a personal commitment: “I am up for the task”; was not, however, accidental. He was warning the Taranaki business community that, in Labour’s bitterly factionalised caucus, very few others are able to say as much.

 

Further decoded, Mr Jones’ message to the business leaders of Taranaki (most especially its powerful energy sector) may be read as an appeal for their support against those within his own party who have become reconciled to the centre-left vote being forever split between Labour and the Greens.

 

When Mr Jones talks about “the centrality of jobs” and “the importance of industry”, he is inviting his business audience to mentally complete the sentence Labour cannot utter for fear of alienating its most likely coalition partner.

 

“Labour wishes to reinforce the centrality of jobs and the importance of industry … ahead of the environment.”

 

The business community would be wise to take Mr Jones’ assurances very seriously.

 

When the National Party attempts to justify its current assault on the environment by talking up the likely expansion of employment opportunities, they are much less likely to be believed than when Labour talks about “the centrality of jobs”.

 

Voters look at the Government’s pokies-for-a-convention-centre deal with Sky City Casinos and all their prejudices about National governing on behalf of its “rich mates” are confirmed.

 

With Labour it’s different. The voters know that the bulk of the party’s electoral support is drawn from New Zealand’s wage and salary earners. Only a Labour Party whose priorities are “jobs, jobs, jobs” has the slightest chance of mobilising and sustaining that support.

 

This is what Bruce Jesson meant when he said Labour governs for Capitalism – rather than capitalists. To go on winning elections the party needs to foster job creation on a system-wide scale. It’s why Labour’s economic development policies have always been geared to promoting growth across entire industries – rather than just assisting individual firms like Sky City Casinos or Warner Bros.

 

When Helen Clark stated over and over again: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”, she wasn’t simply talking about the workers’ wages, she was also referring to the profitability of the bosses’ enterprises!

 

Unlike a great many of his colleagues, Mr Jones is far from convinced that, when it comes to promoting employment and protecting the environment, Labour can have its cake and eat it too. His response to the Greens plans for a new, “sustainable”, economic system: a variant they’re calling “Green Capitalism”; is brutal:

 

“Sustainability is as much about sustaining the livelihood of people as it is about guarding the ecological habitat of the Hochstetter’s frog. As long as I am in politics as a Maori politician I am going to be unambiguous in standing up for jobs and people.”

 

It’s difficult to think of a sharper contrast between Labour’s view of the environment and the Greens’. When Mr Jones’ uses the word he is not thinking of the unspoilt sands of the East Coast or the dense bush of Northland. In his mind he sees the bleak urban environments of Tamaki Makaurau and Porirua: a world without decent housing; without steady employment; without hope.

 

Labour makes capitalism work not in the interests of capitalists – but for the sake of their victims.

 

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, 26 July 2013.

The Name Game

A Spectral Green: John Key (with apologies to Sir Arthur Conon Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles) has labelled the Labour-Green alternative government a "Devil Beast" of the "Far-Left". But the names our politicians attach to their opponents very seldom correspond to their actual position on the ideological spectrum.

 

A CHOICE BETWEEN the Centre-Right and the Far-Left. That’s how the Prime Minister and his National Party colleagues intend to frame next year’s General Election. It’s a shrewd strategy. Most Kiwis feel considerably more comfortable with “centre” than they do with “far”.

 

Nobody wants to be far away when they could be at the very centre of things. And who doesn’t enjoy being the centre of attention? Indeed, the discovery that we’re not in this happy position leaves most of us feeling very far from happy.

 

By attaching the word ‘centre’ to the word ‘right’ National is also adding a crucial political modifier. Very few New Zealanders will own to being unequivocally “Right” or “Left”. It smacks too much of the sort of ideological inflexibility they associate with places where peace tends to be as short-supplied as freedom.

 

“Right-wingers” and “left-wingers”, alike, are deemed to lack the easy-going temperament and the pragmatic approach to problem-solving that we Kiwis (and, apparently, the rest of the world) find so appealing. ‘Laconic’ has always suited us better than ‘histrionic’. If asked to choose a path between two extremes, most of us generally head for the middle of the road.

 

And then, of course, there’s History.

 

Invoke the Right and people immediately think of Adolf Hitler receiving the “Sieg Heil!” salute, as rank after rank of jack-booted Brownshirts goose-step their way towards the Holocaust under a forest of swastika banners. Mention the Left, and the mental image is of Joe Stalin smiling wolfishly from Lenin’s Tomb as a May Day parade of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles rumbles by and the Red Army Choir belts out the “Internationale”.

 

But how dramatically the picture changes when “right” and “left” are prefixed with “centre”.

 

Ask Kiwi baby-boomers to think of a “Centre-Right” politician and they’ll probably recall the ridiculously pompous – but essentially harmless – Sir Keith Holyoake. Ask a member of Generation-X, and five’ll getcha ten they think of John Key escorting Aroha to Waitangi, or swigging Steinlager from the bottle in the garden of Premier House.

 

Say “Centre Left” to the Boomers and they’ll recall David Lange informing a startled young American at the Oxford Union that he could “smell the uranium” on his breath. Gen-Xers will (hopefully) remember Helen Clark refusing to join George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

 

It’s wonderful political shorthand – but is it the truth? Apart from conjuring-up both positive and negative political images and memories, does the Prime Minister’s use of the terms “Centre-Right” and “Far-Left” truly correspond to the Government’s and the Opposition’s objective location on the ideological spectrum?

 

The answer must be an emphatic “No!” National and Labour both subscribe to the same basic tenets of neoliberal economic theory that have dominated the policy-making of the OECD countries for the past thirty years. The Greens, too, recognise the marketplace as the most effective means of allocating scarce resources. Their “Green Capitalism” might be “cleaner”, and turn out a more environmentally friendly range of products than the Smoke-Stack Capitalism of the past, but the social relations underpinning that production are just as dirty.

 

Mr Key lambasts the Green Party co-leader, Russel Norman’s, enthusiasm for “Quantitative Easing” – citing it as proof of his “Far-Left” lunacy. But this charge merely reveals the Prime Minister to be either economically ignorant or deeply cynical.

 

Quantitative Easing is the official policy not of North Korea, Cuba or Venezuela, but of the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. Mr Norman’s ideas about lowering the value of the currency by expanding the money supply are proof not of his revolutionary fervour – but of his economic orthodoxy.

 

Mr Key would be better advised to stick with his “Devil Beast” description of the Opposition parties. Using the term “Far Left” to characterise a Labour-Green coalition is intended to elicit exactly the same emotional response as likening it to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, but comes at much greater cost to the Prime Minister’s credibility.

 

The truly ironic aspect of this name game is that the New Zealand electorate is almost certainly well to the left of its political leaders and their parties. A visiting French journalist once described New Zealanders as “socialists without doctrines”. Talk to most Kiwis about the sort of country they’d like to live in and you’ll find that most of us still are.

 

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 May 2013.