The Populist Cocktail: Take, ‘Immigrants willing to work for ridiculously low wages preventing ordinary Kiwis from accessing well-paying jobs’. Add, ‘Big cities – particularly Auckland – sucking up the nation’s scarce resources and leaving New Zealand’s provincial heartland starved of everything from decent roads and railways to policemen able to respond when called’. Shake vigorously and decant into the nearest polling-booth.
TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP. Has an American president ever
dominated the global conversation so effortlessly – or so absolutely? All those
foreign policy “experts” who argued that under the lofty administration of Barack
Obama American power has waned have been forced to reconsider their position.
And no wonder, because practically every hour of every day since his
inauguration, President Trump has proved beyond all doubt that the United
States remains, indisputably, “the indispensable nation”.
So completely does Trump dominate the global news cycle
that, even here, at the bottom of the world, political experts have begun
speculating as to whether New Zealanders might be in line for an Antipodean
version of “The Donald”.
Others object that the Americans have, as usual, come late
to the party. New Zealanders, they insist, have had their very own populist
political leader for nigh-on a quarter-century. His name? Winston Peters.
But identifying Peters as the New Zealand Trump merely
pushes the question back one space. Instead of asking: Does NZ have its own
Donald Trump? The question now becomes: Can Peters replicate Trump’s
extraordinary success?
The short answer is: No. Trumpism could only be established
in New Zealand by a politician drawn from the ranks of one of the major
parties. Such a person would then have to take his or her party by storm:
over-ruling and over-powering its existing power structures with the assistance
of fanatical supporters drawn from both within and without the party.
Labour’s rules make such a political eruption much more
achievable than National’s, but the absence of a Trump-like figure in its
caucus makes one much less likely. National, on the other hand, has Judith
Collins who, given the right conditions (and they would have to be very
far-right conditions) could place herself at the head of a populist putsch –
but only if her caucus colleagues believed themselves to have no other option.
Because populism is not summoned into existence by the wiles
of an ambitious politician. In fact, the opposite is true. The conditions that
make populism viable invariably prepare their own political executors.
“Rogernomics” empowered Jim Anderton. “Ruthanasia” called forth Winston Peters.
The disintegration of the American working class caused by globalisation and
automation; the challenge posed to the hegemony of White America by rapid and
irreversible demographic change; these were the principal ingredients of the
spell that summoned forth Donald Trump.
What, then, are the economic and social forces currently
influencing New Zealand society that could enable Peters and NZ First to give
the forthcoming general election a populist tinge?
Essentially, they are the same forces that drove the United
States into the arms of Donald Trump: fear of the “other”, and the hollowing
out of the heartland.
The ethnic composition of the New Zealand population has
changed so dramatically since the mid-1980s that native-born New Zealanders no
longer regard their social and economic ascendancy as unassailable. Although
Peters has yet to give unapologetic voice to these racial anxieties, their
potential to deliver the coup de grace to an already faltering
bi-partisan consensus on population policy is undeniable.
What populist worthy of the name could have viewed the
shocking video footage of an angry young Maori woman abusing a pair of young
Muslim women stretching their legs at Huntly and not drawn the all-too-obvious
conclusions about the volatility of race-relations in contemporary New Zealand?
It is, moreover, very likely that the young Maori woman’s
anger was fuelled by more than racial animus. It’s highly probable that envy
was also a factor.
For those whose lack of education and skills keeps them
trapped in declining provincial communities, the presence, however fleeting, of
young professionals from metropolitan New Zealand can only remind them of all
the things they seek but cannot find: employment, income, accommodation,
mobility, freedom … and a future.
It is a potent political cocktail just waiting to be mixed.
Take, ‘Immigrants willing to work for ridiculously low wages
preventing ordinary Kiwis from accessing well-paying jobs’. Add, ‘Big cities – particularly
Auckland – sucking up the nation’s scarce resources and leaving New Zealand’s
provincial heartland starved of everything from decent roads and railways to
policemen able to respond when called’. Shake vigorously and decant into the
nearest polling-booth.
Peters delivered the latter ingredient straight to the
voters of Northland in March 2015. Mixed with the former, and garnished with
the bitter fruit of homelessness and poverty, he would have a political
cocktail of unprecedented potency.
The only question that remains is: will Peters mix it?
Is our political culture as irredeemably divided as
America’s? Are our core institutions as bereft of competent defenders? Is
Winston Peters as blinded by ignorance and narcissistic self-regard as President
Trump?
Personally, I do not think so. If the drumbeat is Peters,
Peters, Peters – it’s unlikely to accompany our collective march to the
scaffold.
This essay was
originally published in The Press of Tuesday,
14 February 2017.
