Kiwi Citizens Cry In Vain

Last Post? The Aussies and the Kiwis were "mates" once. Since 2001, however, New Zealanders living across the Tasman have been subjected to the most extraordinary legal discrimmination at both the state and federal levels of Australian society. In spite of their rising clamour for equal treatment, New Zealand's Prime Minister, John Key, has, to date, proven deaf to his compatriots cry for a fair go.

 

“CIVIS ROMANUS SUM!” “I am a Roman citizen!” That was the cry that echoed from a lonely Sicilian headland two thousand years ago. A cry that roused the Senate and People of Rome to fury when the celebrated lawyer, Marcus Tullius Cicero, described how the corrupt Governor of this wealthy province had treated a humble Roman citizen who had come before him seeking justice. The Governor, Gaius Verres, had ordered the man, Publius Gavius, flogged and crucified. Gavius’s last words, shouted over and over again from the cross, were a ringing declaration of his political identity and legal rights. Three Latin words that invoked the sacred relationship between the Roman state and its citizens. No matter whether the speaker lived in Sicily or in the heart of Rome itself: “Civis Romanus sum!” was a cry that could not be ignored.

 

As anyone who has ever glanced at the words printed on the front page of their passport will know, that relationship between the state and the citizen remains as strong as it was in the days of the Roman Empire. Those opening the little blue book are enjoined by the New Zealand Head of State to allow “the holder to pass without delay or hindrance and in the case of need to give all lawful assistance and protection.”

 

But, for the more than quarter-of-a-million New Zealand citizens living across the Tasman those words have acquired a hollow ring. Australian law singles out New Zealanders for special treatment. Not only does it delay and hinder the progress of Kiwis in “The Lucky Country” but it specifically denies them assistance and protection. Our government is well aware of this legal discrimination against its own citizens and yet it does nothing to assist them.

 

As recently as this past weekend, when the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, met with our own Prime Minister, John Key, in Queenstown, to celebrate thirty years of the Closer Economic Relationship (CER) agreement with Australia, the opportunity to forcefully address that country’s unconscionable discrimination against New Zealand citizens was allowed to pass.

 

Mr Key’s position is that it ill-behoves a New Zealand prime minister to attempt to dictate to an Australian prime minister how her country should be run. We would not appreciate an Australian prime minister telling us how to run our affairs, says Mr Key, so he’s in no hurry to tell the Aussies how to run theirs.

 

That would be fine if New Zealand had not, thirty years ago, signed up to an agreement specifically intended to create a single Australasian market. Fundamental to the Australia-New Zealand CER was the acknowledgment that in economic (and, increasingly, in legal) terms the much larger Australian economy couldn’t help but influence the way New Zealanders earned their livings and pursued their careers. Ask a New Zealand farmer about how much – or how little – the big Aussie banks run his affairs. (But be prepared for more than a few hair-raising expletives in his reply!)

 

Back in 1983, a rising level of Australian influence did not unduly worry most New Zealanders. Since colonial times dwellers upon the great Australian island and its smaller “shaky isles” neighbour to the east have considered themselves members of the same “Australasian” family. We were governed by the same London-based imperial system and we came and went in each other’s territories without the slightest need of passports or visas. At Gallipoli, in 1915, we fought and died together under a single acronym – ANZAC. Mickey Savage, our most beloved prime minister, was born in Tatong, Victoria. Aussies and Kiwis were “cousins”. More importantly, they were mates.

 

Who else but a mate would have come to the aid of little Johnny Howard by helping him out of the embarrassing mess surrounding Australia’s illegal detention of the Norwegian-protected refugees aboard the cargo vessel Tampa in August 2001? Who else but a mate, this very weekend in Queenstown, would have agreed to receive 150 souls from Australia’s refugee gulags in Papua-New Guinea and Nauru? Who else but a mate (or a bloody fool!) would have struck such a morally repugnant deal without asking for something in return?

 

Maybe it’s time we just accepted that Australia stopped being New Zealand’s mate more than a decade ago. Time we realised that Aussies no longer even see the NZ in ANZAC. We are welcome to fill the gaps in their labour force, and the taxes Kiwis pay are gratefully received by the Australian Treasury, but when it comes to affording New Zealanders the same assistance and protection as Australians its: "Sorry, Cobber."

 

A closer economic relationship we may have with Australia, but when it comes to admitting us, without delay or hindrance, as equal participants in their society – forget about it .

 

Crucified Kiwis in Australia can cry “I am a New Zealand citizen!” until they are hoarse. Their state is deaf.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 12 February 2013.

The Politics Of Negativity

The Wages of Timidity: A hung Australian Parliament has become the outward manifestation of Julia Gillard's (above) and Tony Abbott's negative approach to political leadership.

TONY ABBOTT’S rapturous reception by hundreds of delighted supporters last Sunday morning was more than merited. The leader of the Australian Liberal Party had done what only a few weeks ago the pundits were telling us was impossible: he’d stripped Julia Gillard’s Labor Government of its majority.

Eighteen Labor seats fell in last weekend’s Australian elections, nine of them in Queensland, home state of the man Ms Gillard deposed, Kevin Rudd. For the first time since 1931, a first-term government had been, if not quite thrown out, then at the very least firmly escorted to the front door.

The Australian election result has much to tell us about modern democratic politics.

The first and the most important lesson to be drawn from Labor’s debacle is the ominous power of negative politics.

The Australian Labor Government’s unique success in bringing the country through the global economic crisis virtually unscathed should have been enough to see it returned to office with an increased majority. Astonishingly, Mr Abbott was able to persuade the Australian electorate that – far from being a triumph – Labour’s handling of the economy had been an untidy and extravagant botch-up.

Mr Abbott also successfully re-ignited (and then ruthlessly re-exploited) the fears of many Australians that their country was being "over-run" by sea-borne refugees. With great skill he persuaded his countrymen that Labor had "gone soft" on these so-called "boat people" – a charge which slyly invited voters to question Labor’s membership of "Middle Australia".

The sudden "rolling" of Prime Minister Rudd in a brutal, faction-driven coup spectacularly confirmed Mr Abbott’s characterisation of Labor as a collection of reckless, ruthless and boorishly arrogant ambition-heads, who wouldn’t recognise a political principle if it jumped up and bit them on their over-upholstered rear-ends.

Unfortunately for Ms Gillard, Mr Abbott’s crude caricature of Labor as inept, disloyal and unprincipled had just enough truth in it to stick.

Less than three years ago, Mr Rudd was describing Climate Change as "the great moral issue of our time". One of his first actions as Australia’s new Prime Minister was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. With the enthusiastic support of most Australians he set about devising an Emissions Trading Scheme.

Absolutely predictably, the Labor Government’s Climate Change policies ran into a hailstorm of right-wing opposition. At that point, Mr Rudd’s job was to stand firm and make the case for change. This he did not do. Rather than face down his Climate Change-denying opponents, Mr Rudd cut and ran. Australians were appalled. Labor’s poll-ratings plummeted.

This sudden voter disaffection reflects another, deeply troubling aspect of negative politics. It’s not just about the unkind accusations an opposition levels against a government; it’s also about the unkind impressions a government leaves in the minds of its own supporters. The political dynamic to be avoided at all costs is the one that sees a government assailed with renewed energy by its enemies, even as it is being deserted by its friends.

Finding herself in this unenviable position, Ms Gillard’s winning strategy was clear: carry the fight to Mr Abbott and the Liberal-National Coalition; and rebuild trust and faith in Labor’s mission among her wavering and/or outright rebellious supporters.

This Ms Gillard did not do. Rather than repudiate Mr Rudd’s timidity, she endorsed it and, to the utter dismay of her followers, took it further.

"The great moral issue of our time" was unceremoniously booted into touch by the new prime-minister. Then, in a craven closed-door-deal, Mr Rudd’s one genuinely radical economic policy, taxing the super-profits of the mining companies, was watered down. Ms Gillard was even willing to resurrect the Coalition’s internationally decried "Pacific [or, in her case ‘Timor Sea’] Solution" to the sea-borne refugee "crisis". Anything, to thrust Mr Abbott’s attack-dogs back inside their kennels.

Of course the new prime minister’s strategy of appeasement instantly vitiated whatever moral justification Labor’s fractious barons may have advanced for deposing Mr Rudd.

Mr Abbott’s critique of Labour as an unprincipled band of ruthless opportunists had been vindicated. The Coalition, scenting blood, redoubled its attack. Left-wing voters, disgusted, struck-out for the Greens.

Taking stock of the 2010 Australian election I am reminded of the Muldoon-led National Party’s ruthless demolition of Bill Rowling’s Labour Government back in 1975. That, too, was a relentlessly negative campaign, conducted by a man the pundits insisted could not win, against a Labour Party curiously oblivious to the size and ferocity of the political monsters massing around it.

If, over the next few days, Ms Gillard succeeds in cobbling together a Labor-led minority government, it’s hard to see it representing anything other than the timidity, lack of principle and cynical opportunism which gave it birth.

Australians seem fated to endure either Mr Abbott’s passionate intensity, or Ms Gillard’s lack of conviction.

The politics of negativity come at a high price.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 24 August 2010.