Getting Tough.

Not Mucking Around: With upwards of 800 dead from the virus’s resurgence in the Australian state of Victoria, leniency is not on Premier Daniel Andrews’ agenda. The Victorian Police are cracking down hard on the protesters the Australian press has labelled "Covidiots".

IMAGES OF POLICE, some in riot gear, others on horseback, charging into Victorian protesters have shocked a lot of Kiwis. We all realise that the second wave of Covid-19 has hit the Australian state of Victoria hard. So, when it comes to people deliberately flouting the rules of lockdown, we are not surprised that the patience of both the state government, and the overwhelming majority of its citizens, has run out. With upwards of 800 dead from the virus’s resurgence, leniency is not on Premier Daniel Andrews’ agenda.

How relieved our own Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, must be that she has not had to face anything like the death toll of her Labour counterpart across the Tasman. And, how thankful, that she and Police Commissioner, Andy Coster, have been excused the grim duty of cracking-down hard on illegal protests. At least until very recently, the New Zealand authorities have been able to secure public compliance exclusively through the power of moral suasion. Resort to force has, so far, been deemed unnecessary.

For how much longer, however, can this happy situation endure? After the mass rally which took place in Auckland’s Aotea Square on Saturday, 12 September, the Prime Minister, Director-General of Health and Police Commissioner must all be wondering.

Organised primarily by Advance New Zealand (Jami-Lee Ross) and the Public Party of New Zealand (Billy Te Kahika) the rally attracted somewhere between 1,500 and 5,000 protesters. In flouting the rules severely limiting the size of public gatherings under Level 2, their purpose was to demonstrate to the country their unwillingness to accept that the Covid-19 virus constitutes a threat of sufficient seriousness to justify either restricting personal liberty, or damaging the economy. These impositions, they insist, confirm the reality of a global conspiracy against our rights and freedoms. Evil elites are intent on enslaving us, they say. A tyrannical world government is planned. And, may God forgive them, leading New Zealand politicians are part of the plot.

The extraordinary danger posed by gatherings of such prodigious size, involving persons holding such extraordinary views, hardly requires spelling-out. The Saturday rally had the potential to act as a super-spreader of Covid-19. It may yet turn out to have been a catastrophe in the making.

What to do? Demanding Police action against political parties active in the current election campaign is a big ask. Especially so, given the official blind eye turned to the breaking of Level 2 rules by Black Lives Matter protesters across the country in early June.

The size of the ask grows even bigger when we consider whether provoking some form of Police intervention may not be part of Advance NZ’s and the Public Party’s election strategy. If your party’s claim is that the New Zealand Government has become tyrannical, then what better way of proving it than encouraging the ugly scenes unfolding in Victoria to be repeated in the parks and streets of New Zealand?

Commissioner Coster will also be wondering whether any such hard-line Police response can be assured of unflinching government support. After all, the historical precedents are not encouraging.

Confronted with a group of radicals and revolutionaries undergoing secret weapons training in Tuhoe country back in 2007, the New Zealand Police organised a raid on the tiny Bay of Plenty settlement of Ruatoki. The imagery of heavily-armed police officers, many of them kitted-out like soldiers, rounding-up women and children, generated a ferocious public backlash. In the weeks and months that followed the public relations disaster of the Ruatoki Raid, the Police found themselves politically and legally abandoned.

The purpose of the raid: apprehending potential guerrillas and terrorists; was forgotten. Assailed by the radical Left, Helen Clark’s government quietly distanced itself from the controversy. Many young journalists were content to relay the Left’s version of events uncritically. The Courts threw out key elements of the Prosecution’s case. The accused found themselves transformed into persecuted heroes, while the Police were portrayed as neo-colonial racists. The career of Howard Broad, the Police Commissioner of the time, and a strong advocate for integrating Treaty of Waitangi principles into New Zealand policing, was blighted by Ruatoki.

Commissioner Coster will not want to share his predecessor’s fate. If his officers are asked to enforce the rules keeping New Zealanders safe, then their Government must undertake to do no less for them.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 18 September 2020.

The Left's Lost Allies.

Rebels In A Wrong Cause: The truly frightening thing about Jami-Lee Ross’s and Billy Te Kahika’s success in persuading thousands of New Zealanders that Covid-19 is just another trick, just another way of stealing away their power, is realising just how many of them once marched at the Left’s side. Before recoiling in horror at where so many of their fellow citizens have ended up, and what they have found there, perhaps “progressive” New Zealanders should ask themselves how, and why, their former allies became so lost.

 

LET’S BE HONEST, last Saturday’s Advance NZ rally in Aotea Square was bloody impressive. If the Left had turned out a crowd that large they would have claimed at least 5,000 participants. Now, the last time I remember seeing that sort of number in the Square was when the CTU summoned its affiliates in support of a concerted national push for higher wages. It was a very well organised affair, with workers bussed-in from all over Auckland. By contrast, Jami-Lee Ross and Billy Te Kahika turned out 5,000+ of their people on the strength of not much more than a summons via Facebook and Instagram. It is now vitally important for the Left to understand what it is looking at: a large and potentially dangerous mass movement of the Right.

Such a thing has not been seen in New Zealand for a very long time. Perhaps the closest historical parallel is “Rob’s Mob”. This, too, was a populist phenomenon, whipped-up on the basis of lies and misinformation by an accomplished political demagogue. The huge difference, of course, is that “Rob’s Mob” was under the firm control and direction of the National Party and its leader, Robert Muldoon. It was a movement created out of whole cloth to challenge the Labour Party’s confident assumption that it remained the party of the people.

With the able assistance of the privately-owned news media – especially the right-wing tabloid “Truth” – conservative working-class voters were encouraged to look upon “Rob” Muldoon as their champion against the pointy-headed intellectuals and communists who were accused of taking-over the Labour Party. The result was a neat anticipation, in reverse, of what has happened with Jacinda. A substantial chunk of working-class voters were drawn across the political divide and into the camp of their traditional enemy. National mustered these defectors with the skill of a heading-dog. The crowds turning-out to Muldoon’s rallies numbered in the thousands. New Zealand had its own Trump when the man himself was still working for his dad!

What we’re looking at in the case of Jami-Lee Ross and Billy Te Kahika, however, is something quite distinct, ideologically and organisationally, from Rob’s Mob. Advance NZ and the Public Party are not under the control of any coherent political group. They are being mobilised by Te Kahika only in the sense that he is drawing together the loose threads of far-Right conspiracism – most them traceable back to Alt-Right social media platforms in the United States – and weaving them into a more-or-less coherent narrative of resistance to Jacinda Ardern’s government.

Once again, the historical parallels are uncanny. In 1974-75, the National Party was offered assistance (at whose instigation remains unclear) from Hanna Barbera – a studio dedicated to producing animated cartoon series for American television. The resulting animated sequences, cleverly embedded in National’s television advertising, burst upon the 1975 election campaign like a thunderclap. Their impact, especially the infamous “Dancing Cossacks” sequence, was devastating. Labour had nothing even remotely comparable with which to answer National’s devastating attack.

Forty-five years later, skilfully constructed media messages are, once again, making a forceful impression on the consciousness of groups who, historically, have identified strongly with the Labour Party. Sourced from the United States, these messages are not, like Hanna Barbera’s cartoons, the product of a shadowy collaboration between the National Party and American “friends” with a mutual interest in ridding New Zealand of a radical social-democratic government. Indeed, it is precisely against such “Deep State” machinations that the political messages of 2020 are directed.

The authors and repeaters of these conspiracy theories have no more interest in restoring the conventional Right to power than keeping the conventional Left in office. Their purpose is to disrupt the status-quo fundamentally: to bring the whole rotten edifice of elite power crashing down upon the heads of its corrupt political mis-leaders. Their loyalty is only to the Disrupter-in-Chief in the White House. But if, by helping Trump, they can also assist his New Zealand imitators and disciples, then where’s the harm?

Overlaying all these hymns of fear and loathing is, of course, the global Covid-19 Pandemic. Without the Pandemic, the febrile environment in which conspiracy theories can take root and thrive would – at least in New Zealand’s case – be lacking.

Interestingly, the formation of “Rob’s Mob”, and the populist campaign (National’s slogan in 1975 was “New Zealand the way YOU want it.”) which they did so much to propel forward, was enormously assisted by the fear and uncertainty created by the 1973 Oil Crisis. Massive increases in the price of crude oil had destabilised the hitherto booming economies of the Western powers. Ordinary people sensed that the whole post-war era of security and prosperity was coming to an end. Muldoon played upon these anxieties “like a piano”.

Now, many on the left will argue that Advance NZ’s 5,000 protesters pale into insignificance when compared to the 30,000 people who turned out against the TPPA, or the 50,000 who protested against the global lack of progress against Climate Change. This is true. Also true, however, is that a large number of the Maori who took part in the TPPA protest, seeing the free-trade agreement as yet another attempt to steal away of their power, were also at Saturday’s protest. Likewise, many of those who joined the climate change protests out of frustration at the lack of action from a prime minister who had promised to make the issue her generation’s “nuclear-free moment”. After so many broken promises – so many betrayals – it takes surprisingly little to convince people that the powers-that-be cannot be trusted. That all politicians lie.

The truly frightening thing about Jami-Lee Ross’s and Billy Te Kahika’s success in persuading thousands of New Zealanders that Covid-19 is just another trick, just another way of stealing away their power, is realising just how many of them once marched at the Left’s side. Before recoiling in horror at where so many of their fellow citizens have ended up, and what they have found there, perhaps “progressive” New Zealanders should ask themselves how, and why, their former allies became so lost.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 15 September 2020.

Too Close For Comfort.

Hand In Hand: Is there not then a serious risk that their constant breathing-in of the aphrodisiacal perfumes of naked power will seduce the Parliamentary Press Gallery from their role of Democracy’s gamekeepers and transform them into poachers on the people’s estate? What is the electorate supposed to do if those entrusted with reporting the actions of the principal political players, themselves become important actors in the drama?

IN THE BACKWASH of the Jami-Lee Ross debacle, the National Party has announced an internal review of its organisational culture. The exercise will not be open to public scrutiny. National’s board will undoubtedly argue that a confidential review is more likely to encourage a “warts and all” representation of the party’s features. It won’t, of course. Before you could say “Copy” and “Send”, any honest estimation of National’s strengths and weaknesses would be leaked. Understanding this, the reviewers will produce a document as bland as it is unhelpful.

National’s proposed review does, however, serve as a useful pointer to our capital city’s flawed culture of power – as well as to its long-standing imperviousness to reform. There is simply too much power on offer in Wellington for anyone with the slightest chance of wielding it, limiting it.

Proximity lies at the heart of the capital’s power culture. The higher an ambitious person climbs, the closer they get to the people who exercise decisive political authority. This proximity works both vertically and horizontally. The higher one climbs, the more opportunities one finds to influence the course of events. This, in turn, encourages other ambitious souls to get as close as possible to the successful climber. Power in Wellington thus flows not only up and down the city’s many hierarchies, but also through them, spreading outwards in all directions.

In the centre of this three-dimensional web of power looms the parliamentary complex. The Beehive and the House of Representatives are the most obvious repositories of executive and legislative authority. Easily forgotten, however, when mapping the distribution of power, is the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Its members enjoy an enviable degree of access to the entire cast of Government and Opposition players. In the proximity-to-power stakes, few get as up-close-and-personal as political journalists.

The justification for allowing political journalists such easy access to Government and Opposition politicians is that it allows them to observe and interrogate the nation’s leaders and thereby hold them accountable for their actions. Ostensibly, this is done in the interests of the voters: without an unimpeded flow of political information, democracy cannot work.

Except that the above is not the real job description of a parliamentary press gallery journalist. The common-or-garden parliamentary journalist’s primary function is to preserve the best possible access to the movers and shakers of Government and Opposition. Their editors need to know that when a story breaks, or a major announcement is signalled, their reporters will have no difficulty getting into the media conference, and that every few weeks they will be in line for a “strictly-background, not-for-attribution” ministerial briefing.

The parliamentary journalist who made a habit of holding Cabinet Ministers to genuine account; or who successfully uncovered secrets she or he wasn’t supposed to expose; would not only be guilty of writing about matters that nobody else was writing about (a cardinal sin) but, even worse, would be provoking increasingly bitter complaints to their bosses from ministerial press secretaries (former parliamentary press gallery journalists for the most part) along the lines of: “What the hell does so-in-so think she’s doing? You tell her that unless she plans to stay on the salary she’s receiving forever, she needs to pull her bloody head in!”

It usually works.

But this poses a real problem for those who assume that the purpose of the “Fourth Estate” is to “keep the bastards honest”. If the true function of a parliamentary press gallery journalist is act as the glove into which power inserts its steely hand, then their formal democratic role is nothing but a sham.

It gets worse. If political journalists are positioned close to power, but warned against antagonising the powerful, then doesn’t it make more sense for them to befriend and enable the Government and Opposition players they are supposed to be observing and interrogating? Is there not then a serious risk that their constant breathing-in of the aphrodisiacal perfumes of naked power will seduce them from the role of Democracy’s gamekeepers and transform them into poachers on the people’s estate? What is the electorate supposed to do if those entrusted with reporting the actions of the principal players, themselves become important actors in the drama?

Was Jami-Lee’s downfall the result of him having too many enemies in National’s caucus – or too many friends in the Press Gallery?

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 October 2018.

Questions, Questions, Questions.

The Public Calls Simon Bridges To The Stand: For Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett the Jami-Lee Saga is far from over. A great many questions have accumulated over the course of Labour Weekend and it is clear that neither the Leader nor his deputy can answer them without the risk of re-igniting the political firestorm of the past ten days.

THE RIGHT’S RESPONSE to Jami-Lee Ross’s temporary detention at Middlemore Hospital has been interesting. The National Party’s defenders flatly reject the idea that its leadership has acted in any way improperly in relation to Ross. And yet, piecing together what little information has made its way into the public domain, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that at the point of crisis, early on Sunday morning (21/10/18) Ross was in the company of a National Party MP. Whether it was this MP, or someone else, who became so alarmed by Ross’ behaviour that they called the Police, remains unclear. What is certain is that Ross was conveyed to Middlemore because he represented a danger to himself, or others, and against his will.

That, barely 48 hours later, Middlemore was willing to release Ross strongly suggests that the circumstances which gave rise to his temporary detention no longer existed. Friends have provided a place of refuge for him out of Auckland where he is currently recuperating, taking stock, and considering his future.

For Simon Bridges and Paula Bennett, however, the Jami-Lee Saga is far from over. A great many questions have accumulated over the course of Labour Weekend and it is clear that neither the Leader nor his deputy can answer them without the risk of re-igniting the political firestorm of the past ten days.

If, for example, the blogger Cameron Slater’s claim that three of the four anonymous complainants who featured in the Newsroom exposé of Ross’ behaviour towards women are employed in either the Leader’s or the Deputy-Leader’s office is confirmed, then the public may feel that they have been short-changed when it comes to being given all the relevant details surrounding the charges levelled against the Botany MP. The public may also begin asking why these details are available from a blogger, but not from the journalists of the Parliamentary Press Gallery?

Questions are also being asked about whether or not, over the course of the past month, the National leader and/or his deputy were in contact with Ross’ medical adviser/s? And, if so, whether those advisers had warned Bridges and/or Bennett that it would be unwise to do or say anything likely to jeopardise Ross’ already compromised mental state? If the public were to discover that the National Party leadership had been explicitly cautioned against naming Ross as the probable leaker of Bridges’ travel expenses – but went ahead and did it anyway – then they might form the opinion that Ross’ manic night-time ride from Auckland to Wellington, and his epic media stand-up the following morning, were entirely avoidable events.

Such speculation cannot possibly be helpful to Bridges and Bennett – raising as it does the thought that Ross may have been used as the unwitting instrument for rallying the National Party caucus behind a leader whom the voters showed little sign of warming to or respecting. The idea of making a mentally unwell MP the means of achieving such a disreputable objective is not likely to inspire very much in the way of trust or confidence in the putative perpetrators. Quite the reverse, in fact.

The problem with this sort of speculation is that much of the known conduct of the National Party leadership appears to reinforce it. If someone was intending to push a mentally fragile person over the edge, then threatening him with the anonymous testimony of four aggrieved female complainants, might recommend itself as a highly effective way of doing so. If that someone then publicly suggested that the person in question had been behaving in ways incompatible with his status as a married man, well then, it’s easy to see how the notion that he was being pushed to the limit might take a firmer grip on the public mind.

To the truly cynical, the sudden appearance, in the very midst of Ross’ jihad against his former National colleagues, of a sensational exposé detailing the Botany MP’s abusive and manipulative relationships with three parliamentary staffers and an unnamed National MP would elicit only the most sardonic of grins. If one was writing the script for such a political melodrama, the line given to Bridges would have to be: “Whew! That was lucky!”

Just how lucky was revealed by TVNZ’s political editor, Jessica Mutch Mackay, on Tuesday evening (23/10/18) when she described how National’s numbers, in the Colmar-Brunton poll being conducted coincident with Jami-Lee’s jihad, were plummeting right up until the moment, mid-week, when the story detailing Ross’ improprieties began to dominate the headlines. The word “fortuitous” hardly seems to cover it!

Questions, questions, questions: there is still so much that we don’t know about the extraordinary events of the past ten days. And perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the whole saga is how unwilling all but a handful of journalists have been to dig too deeply for the facts the public is so anxious to learn.

Fortunately, for the historical record, there is one person who knows a great deal about all of the events touched on in this post. Resting quietly, in an undisclosed but secure location, the MP for Botany, Jami-Lee Ross, waits patiently for all of these many questions to be put to him. How should we expect a man who has nothing left to lose to answer – except with the truth?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 25 October 2018.

Missing.

Where's Jami? Jami-Lee Ross has promised to expose what he alleges to be the corruption and moral failings of at least some of this country’s leading parliamentarians. When a person promising revelations of this kind is suddenly uplifted and immured in a secure mental health facility, the public has a right to know on whose authority it was done; how it was accomplished – and to what purpose?

LOCKING DISSIDENTS AWAY in mental institutions was arguably a more humane sanction than sending them off to the gulag. Even so, many of the stories that have emerged from the Soviet Union of the 1970s and 80s are just as chilling as Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s description of the camps. “Patients” subjected to chemical lobotomisation wandered the corridors of state asylums like ghosts. By no means all of the citizens detained were released, and those who made it out were much changed. For a start, they were no longer dissidents.

Learning that a New Zealand Member of Parliament had been detained under the Mental Health Act, it was hard not to think of those Soviet era victims. After all, the MP for Botany, Jami-Lee Ross must be counted among the most destructive malcontents ever to occupy a seat in the NZ House of Representatives. His determination to punish the National Party and its leadership for (as he saw it) abandoning him, was threatening to dissolve all the protections so painstakingly erected by MPs to keep themselves safe from each other’s spite. Prior to Ross’s detention, the party was looking at weeks, perhaps months, of drip-fed excoriation. Who knew how much undiluted political acid Jamie-Lee had in his possession?

Who has that acid now? Who is in possession of Ross’ property? His family? The unnamed mental health facility detaining him? The Police? The National Party? What, if any, obligation are those holding Ross’s phone, his laptop, his hard-copy files, under to keep them safe from prying eyes? What, if anything, has been happening at Ross’s home and/or his parliamentary and electorate offices in the time that has elapsed since he was taken into state custody? Has anyone come calling? If so, who was it – and what were they after?

The public has a right to know the answers to these questions. That would not be the case if Ross was just another citizen, but he is much more than that. Ross is someone who has promised to expose what he alleges to be the corruption and moral failings of at least some of this country’s leading parliamentarians. When a person promising revelations of this kind is suddenly uplifted and immured in a secure mental health facility, the public has a right to know on whose authority it was done; how it was accomplished – and to what purpose?

In particular, the public has a right to know what part, if any, the most obvious beneficiary of Ross’s extraction from the political environment, the NZ National Party, played in his detention.

There has been some comment to the effect that National has a duty of care to Ross. Such a claim presupposes that, in its dealings with Ross, National stands in a relationship akin to that of an employer. Such a presupposition is hard to reconcile with the fact that all political parties are voluntary organisations, whose members are free to remain with them, or leave, as they see fit. Having announced his resignation from the National Party on Tuesday, 16 October, Ross had clearly exercised his right to exit the organisation. Whatever relationship existed between Ross and National ended then. So, why, five days later, was the National Party giving out the very strong impression that it had, in some way, been involved in his detention under the Mental Health Act?

Moreover, if some nebulous duty of care towards Ross remained on National’s part, then why was the party so aggressive in its response to his actions. If its MPs were convinced that their former colleague was mentally unwell (something which the National Opposition’s spokespeople had strongly insinuated in a number of public statements) then why did they feel it necessary to so dramatically increase the stress he was under?

On his Whaleoil blog, Cameron Slater states that it fell to him and at least one other person to inform Ross’s wife of her husband’s fate. This information is deeply disturbing: suggesting, as it does, that at least one of Ross’ next-of-kin was not told of his situation, or even his whereabouts, by the authorities responsible for his detention. If confirmed, it raises serious questions about the legality of the entire process.

This is why the public deserves a full explanation of the Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? of Jami-Lee Ross’s detention. There may be a completely acceptable reason for the MP for Botany being taken into custody; and those responsible may have been acting in strict accordance with the provisions of the Mental Health Act; but given the extraordinary circumstances in which Ross and his antagonists were enmeshed, and the very high stakes for which they were playing, the people of New Zealand need to hear it – all of it.

The old Soviet joke had it that the Russians must enjoy the best mental health in the world, because only an insane citizen would complain about living under Communist rule – and so few did. It’s the sort of black humour that dictatorships have long been famous for. Let’s hope that New Zealanders never learn to laugh, however sardonically, at their own loss of freedom.

This essay was posted simultaneously on Bowalley Road and The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 23 October 2018.

A Quick Update. (Satire)

Well, all I know, REDACTED, is that you scare the hell out of me!

“OPERATION HOTSPUR”

EXEC-COM TELE-CONFERENCE REDACTED TRANSCRIPT

( ON THE CALL: REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED )

REDACTED: Are we all here? Good. I thought it would be useful to arrange a quick update on the progress to date of Operation Hotspur.

REDACTED: Before you do, REDACTED, Why Hotspur?

REDACTED: Oh, well, JLR reminds me so much of Harry Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One – the headstrong knight who refuses to be humiliated by the King and rises in rebellion against him.

REDACTED: Oh, right, very good. Sorry – go on.

REDACTED: Well, as REDACTED predicted, SB’s refusal to grant JLR everything he asked for back in February sent him into a black fury and made him extremely receptive to the idea of getting his own back. It really was very clever of you, REDACTED, to identify JLR’s acute sensitivity to even the slightest of slights. I’ve seldom encountered anyone more willing to allow their passion to over-rule their reason.

REDACTED: Yes, he really has proved to be the perfect patsy, hasn’t he?

REDACTED: However did you persuade him to tape his conversations with SB?

REDACTED: I simply told him it was necessary to prevent SB reneging on any more promises made to caucus colleagues and party members.

REDACTED: Your assessment of the recordings’ worth?

REDACTED: Oh, they’re dynamite. Not only in relation to SB, but to the whole party. If JLR is able to release even a handful of them before the by-election, then National’s going to be left looking pretty tawdry.

REDACTED: And, therefore, in even more need of a new, no-nonsense leader. Someone with the experience and the toughness to restore a sense of purpose – and discipline – to the Opposition.

REDACTED: Precisely, REDACTED. And exactly what Operation Hotspur was set up to achieve.

REDACTED: To expose and discredit the milksops and dunderheads who will never understand that “extremism in defence of liberty is no vice”.

REDACTED: Or that “moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue”.

REDACTED: Back to JLR’s recordings for a minute. What’s next?

REDACTED: The next conversation will really set the newshounds off. They’ll all be replaying All The President’s Men in their heads. All determined to “follow the money”.

REDACTED: Good. Good. It always pays to let the journos think they’ve uncovered the story all by themselves.

REDACTED: Like JLR’s victims. I don’t imagine Newsroom found them without a little help from their “friends”.

REDACTED: Quite a lot of help actually.

REDACTED: Remind me again why that was necessary. Their story left JLR looking like a complete arsehole.

REDACTED: My dear REDACTED, that was the whole point! After all, we don’t want him to win Botany, do we? His primary use to us is as a dirt-thrower: against SB; against the front bench; the caucus; the whole poisoned party. We want the public to be in the market for a very stiff new broom. Someone determined to sweep every last trace of muck out of the cowshed.

REDACTED: May I inquire as to what happens when JLR finally twigs to the fact that he’s been set up? That he’s been acting as REDACTED’s stalking-horse all along? If he lost it over SB’s “treachery” – how do you suppose he’ll react to ours?

REDACTED: Something tells me that by the time JLR realises what has happened to him he’ll be so discredited that no one will believe a word he says.

REDACTED: Dear God, REDACTED, that’s cold. Are you really willing to see the man disintegrate completely?

REDACTED: Yes, who knows what he might be driven to?

REDACTED: Honestly, who on this call would be all that upset if JLR did do something foolish?

REDACTED: Jesus! This is all getting a little too “House of Cards” for my liking. It’s REDACTED’s leadership we’re promoting here – not Frank Underwoods!

REDACTED: That’s enough! Of course we’ll look after JLR. No one who stands with me now – even unwittingly – will go unrewarded. This party is going to be lifted – by the scruff of its neck if necessary – out of the mire into which that mincing currency trader led it. If you only knew how much I hated all that “Labour-Lite” poison we were forced to swallow. National’s not here to be the executor of Labour’s will. It’s here to draw out the best, the brightest and the strongest from New Zealand society. You don’t achieve that by being soft – by being weak. You do that by being strong. By not surrendering to the nay-sayers and the nimbys and the bleeding hearts! What was it Machiavelli said: “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

REDACTED: He also said: “Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.”

REDACTED: Well, all I know, REDACTED, is that you scare the hell out of me!

This satire was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 19 October 2018.

How Much Damage Has Jami-Lee Ross Really Done?

A Disturbance In The Force? The politics of countries like New Zealand are extremely difficult to derange. A politician like Jamie Lee Ross may give the political gyroscope the most almighty shove – causing it to wobble alarmingly – but in a surprisingly short period of time it will regain its equilibrium.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING inside the National Party Caucus? Are we witnessing a genuine intra-party meltdown or merely the political and personal disintegration of a single individual? When all the dust has settled, will very much have changed?

In the bluntest terms, what we are witnessing is the fullest measure of a single Member of Parliament’s power to disrupt New Zealand’s political life. It is rare to see this power deployed so comprehensively, but the damage inflicted will, ultimately, be relatively light.

There will be costs, of course. Taxpayers will pick up the cost of the by-election which Jami-Lee Ross’ resignation has forced. The National Party – and all other parties choosing to participate in the Botany by-election – will have the costs of campaigning to shoulder. Ross, himself, if he follows through on his promise to stand for re-election, faces an especially heavy burden. The party organisation which formerly met his election expenses is now ranged against him. Everything: from pamphlets to bill boards; radio spots to social media; must now be paid for out of his own pocket.

To what end? The result of the by-election is a near certainty. National’s candidate will be elected by a huge margin, and Ross will lose the contest in the most humiliating fashion. At National’s victory party, the winning candidate will be applauded – but nowhere near as enthusiastically as the Leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges, who will be cheered to the echo. He will seize the opportunity of Ross’ humiliation to reassert his leadership of the New Zealand Right. The conservative media will amplify his words across all platforms. In all likelihood his popularity will spike upwards.

Jami-Lee’s full-throated attempt to kill Bridges politically will only have made him stronger.

Unless.

If Ross’ “evidence” – the recorded telephone conversation presented to the Police this very afternoon (17/10/18) – turns out to be damning, then National’s caucus will be faced with the necessity of removing Bridges as leader. He may not be the only person to go. Paula Bennett’s decision to make reference to Ross’ private life: her insinuation that he is guilty of marital infidelity; may be regarded by her caucus colleagues as having crossed a line long-considered inviolable by all Parliamentarians. To reassure the members of all the other parties represented in Parliament that their private lives remain “off limits”, National may opt to lose its deputy-leader as well.

Such an outcome would provide Ross with some measure of satisfaction. The two politicians he holds most responsible for his “persecution” will have been brought down with him. Like Captain Ahab, in Moby Dick, he will have exacted his vengeance upon the Great White Whale – even at the cost of being dragged to his death by the dying monster.

The National Party itself, however, might not be all that upset to lose a leader that the country’s conservative voters had declined to take to their collective heart. Among the persons most likely to be dismayed by Ross’ extraordinary behaviour, therefore, are the members of the Labour-NZ First-Green coalition government. The strategists of all three governing parties undoubtedly regarded Bridges as a gift from the electoral gods. Up against the relentlessly positive sunshine of Jacinda, Bridge’s surly temperament was an electoral non-starter. The last thing Labour, NZ First and the Greens want to confront in 2020 is a National leader with oomph!

Perhaps it was this thought that drove Ross to “go nuclear” against is boss. Perhaps, somewhere beneath Jami-Lee’s fevered brow, the notion had taken root that only by the selfless sacrifice of his own career could the National Party be saved from the depredations of Bridges and Bennett. Though they would never admit it to themselves, Ross’ actions will thus have provided National’s Caucus with the opportunity to undo the damage it had collectively inflicted upon itself.

Perhaps not.

The politics of countries like New Zealand are extremely difficult to derange. A politician may give the political gyroscope the most almighty shove – causing it to wobble alarmingly – but in a surprisingly short period of time it will regain its equilibrium.

By the start of the New Year Jami-Lee Ross will, almost certainly, have been reduced to a political footnote. Simon Bridges, if he is able to disprove all the charges leveled against him, will have emerged from the whole sorry business stronger and with a firmer grip on his party. If he fails to do so, National will begin 2019 with a new leader. Whatever happens, Labour, NZ First and the Greens will remain in government. New Zealanders will have been forced to endure a great deal of sound and fury – signifying bugger-all.

Of Jami-Lee Ross, however, people will say, in the spirit of the old Maori proverb: “He died like a shark, not a flounder.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 18 October 2018.

Jami-Lee Ross Lets It All Hang Out. Simon Bridges Stonewalls.

Making Him Deny It: Dramatic allegations, of the sort leveled against Simon Bridges by Jamie Lee Ross, are intended to force the targeted person onto the defensive. Requiring one’s opponents to deny the accusations leveled against them, all-too-often produces the paradoxical effect of rendering those accusations more – not less – believable.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, on 17 November 1973, declared to a gathering of newspaper editors: “I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.” This infelicitous sentence would, of course, come back to haunt Nixon as the Watergate scandal that brought down his presidency ground remorselessly on.

Hearing Simon Bridges solemnly reassure the Parliamentary Press Gallery: “I have done nothing wrong”, couldn’t help but remind me of Nixon’s exculpatory performance. Not, I hasten to add, because I believe the Leader of the Opposition to be guilty of the charges leveled against him by his former colleague, Jami-Lee Ross, but because it’s in the nature of such allegations to force the targeted person onto the defensive. Requiring one’s opponents to deny the accusations leveled against them, all-too-often produces the paradoxical effect of rendering those accusations more – not less – believable.

In terms of political theatre, the initial performances of Jami-Lee Ross and Simon Bridges offered some telling contrasts.

As befitted a man with very little left to lose, Ross spoke clearly and compellingly and answered the assembled journalists’ questions with impressive composure and a minimum of prevarication. To borrow once again from the Watergate lexicon, he opted for the “let it all hang-out” approach – openly divulging information which, in the normal course of political events, is kept under wraps.

Bridges’ performance was nowhere near as open, or impressive, as Ross’. Over and over again he declared his former colleague’s accusations to be “baseless”. Over and over again, he referred to Ross as a “liar”, a “leaker” and a “lone wolf” guilty of “appalling behaviour”. What he refused to do, however, was respond in detail to the charges of corrupt electoral practice and political blackmail which Ross had leveled against him.

During Watergate, a refusal to respond expansively to journalists’ direct questions was termed “stonewalling”. It is not a good look. I was disappointed that the Leader of the Opposition did not opt to match Ross’ earlier demonstration of candour. Laying to rest “baseless” charges surely requires nothing more than a frank description of what happened and why. In the United Kingdom, persons charged with an offense are cautioned that “it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court.” These are wise words, which politicians facing judgement in the Court of Public Opinion would do well to remember.

What remains to be seen is whether or not Simon Bridges and his caucus will be able to “draw a line under Jami-Lee Ross” and “move on”. I suspect the future of the National Party and its leader will turn upon the quality of the “evidence” (a recorded telephone conversation) which Ross promised on Tuesday to place in the hands of the Police. Much, too, will hinge on whether Ross’ allegation that he was threatened with false accusations of sexual harassment (a threat which, he claims, caused him to experience a mental breakdown) can be verified.

If fire is detected among all this smoke, then National faces a grim future. Having voted unanimously to expel Ross from their caucus, National’s 55 remaining MPs have voluntarily roped themselves to their precariously positioned leader. If he falls, they are all at grave risk of falling with him.

Reverting, once again, to the language of Watergate: if Ross is in possession of a “smoking gun” capable of bringing down Bridges; and if his caucus refuses to cut through the rope binding them to his fate; then the possibility opens up for Ross to run for re-election in Botany not as an independent (his current intention) but as the harbinger of a new and uncorrupted conservative movement.

Paradoxically, such an eventuality might ultimately rebound to the National Party’s electoral advantage. A new conservative party, located to National’s right on the political spectrum, would be ideally positioned to supply New Zealand’s dominant right-wing party with what it so sorely lacks at the present moment: a natural coalition partner.

The problem, to date, has been how to set up such a party without the voters dismissing it as a mere National Party contrivance. Well, problem solved. Whatever else may be said about the enmity between Bridges and Ross – it certainly isn’t contrived.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 October 2018.

The Right To Say - "No."

ALL OUR HUMAN RIGHTS derive from the power to say just one word: “No.” If we cannot speak that one word – and be heeded – then we have no rights.

 

This right to refuse does not give us licence to do exactly as we please; but those to whom we entrust the authority to limit the citizen’s right to refuse must always be able to justify its use.

 

Jami-Lee Ross, the National Party MP for Botany, will soon introduce a bill to Parliament limiting the right of workers to say “No” to their bosses. His innocuous-sounding Employment Relations  (Continuity of Labour) Amendment bill, by authorising employers to recruit temporary staff to perform the duties of striking or locked-out employees, undermines, fundamentally, the latter’s right to refuse to work for the pay offered and under the conditions proposed.

 

Withdrawing their labour, as a means of inducing their employer to make a better offer on wages and conditions, is the only truly effective negotiating tactic available to employees.

 

Not that “going on strike” is an easy decision to make. Obviously, while a strike is in progress the workers involved will not be paid. The impact on the strikers’ families is readily imagined.

 

Nor are strikes easy on employers. While its workforce refuses to perform their normal duties, no business can function effectively.

 

This is, of course, the point. By imposing a financial penalty on both sides, the strike provides a strong incentive for the contending parties to resume their seats at the negotiating table.

 

One’s opinion on the rights and wrongs of going on strike is one of the great differentiators of politics. This is because it goes to the heart of how Left and Right define the legitimate limits of the individual’s rights. More simply: in which circumstances are we entitled – both individually and collectively – to say “No.”

 

It’s a paradoxical question. In order for the individual employee’s right of refusal to have any practical effect, it must first be joined with every other employee’s right to say “No.”

 

One worker, alone, is seldom able to negotiate with his or her employer from a position of strength. “If you don’t like the wages and conditions on offer here,” the boss will say, “there’s the door!” You may, of course, be lucky and possess a skill in short supply and which the business cannot do without. If so, then the boss will do all he or she can to persuade you to say “Yes.”

 

But, if the work on offer is easily mastered, the individual applicant’s position is hopeless. Take the job, or remain unemployed, becomes the choice. And if that is your choice, then be ready for the Ministry of Social Development to withdraw any assistance you may have been receiving as a “Jobseeker”.

 

Now the choice becomes: take the job, or starve. And that is no choice at all.

 

It is only through a union that the individual employee’s power to say “No.” can be realised. In the words of Ralph Chaplin’s celebrated union anthem, Solidarity Forever:

 

When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;

Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?

But the union makes us strong.

 

To conservative politicians like Jami-Lee Ross, however, this strategy of preserving the individual’s rights by aggregating them into a single unit of advocacy and assertion is anathema. Rather than interpret the union’s collective voice positively – as a way of amplifying each member’s individual “No!” – the Right hears only a collective roar drowning out the minority’s refusal to be aggregated.

 

But that is not all the Right hears. In the collective voicing of workers’ demands, the conservative detects a baleful bass note of systemic danger. The winning of individual rights by means of aggregation may begin in the workplace, but what guarantee do the defenders of private enterprise have that it will stay there? Once individual citizens work out that they’re much more likely to secure the good things of life by working together, than they are by struggling alone, the foundations of capitalism itself begin to crack and crumble.

 

And so, Jami-Lee Ross proposes a measure that will render every union in the country powerless. Even if 100 percent of the employees on a worksite vote to strike, their employer will, nevertheless, be empowered to over-rule their unanimous shout of “No!” – by hiring temporary replacement workers.

 

If Mr Ross’s private member’s bill becomes law, then the only recourse available to those workers who still insist upon their right to say “No!” will be to physically prevent these replacement workers; these strike-breakers; these scabs – from entering the workplace.

 

Then, the only justification for Mr Ross’s newly minted authority will be the justification of force.

 

“No.”

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 25 June 2013.