Rendering Unto Caesar: In Labour, "L’état c’est Jacinda".

Thank You Very Much For All The Powers: The present Labour Leader was not elected by the Party rank-and-file, Jacinda Ardern stepped into the job in extraordinary circumstances. And although no one would dispute that the members of the Labour Party love Jacinda – and would elect her in a heartbeat if asked – she is also the one who has, oh-so kindly, and oh-so gently, ushered them out of the spaces where important decisions are made.

WELL, WELL, WELL, former Labour Party President Nigel Haworth no longer believes Labour’s leaders should be elected by the membership. Yesterday (19/10/21) on Facebook, Haworth called for “a return to the pre-2012 constitutional arrangement in relation to the Party leadership (that is, leave the parliamentary leadership to a caucus decision).” His (rather bizarre) argument was that having the Leader of the Party elected by the grass-roots membership and trade union affiliates – as well as, it should not be forgotten, Caucus members – “had the perverse effect of weakening the Party in relation to Caucus”. This was, he claimed, “a most unfortunate outcome”.

Leaving aside the historical fact that the weakening of the Party in relation to Caucus happened more than 90 years ago, and that the constitutional reforms of 2012 represented (and were understood by most Labour MPs as) a deliberate attempt to strengthen the Party in relation to Caucus, the question arises: Why now? Why has Haworth taken to Facebook with such a controversial suggestion at this moment? Is it merely the rumination of a retired professor? Or is there more to it? And if he is testing the waters, then on whose behalf?

To say that Haworth’s suggestion was greeted with alarm by many Labour members would be an understatement. Indeed, so voluble was the opposition that, barely 24 hours after his first post on the subject, Haworth felt obliged to “explain my thinking” in another.

It didn’t help.

In its essence, Haworth’s key argument is grounded in the most uncompromising realpolitik. While “well motivated”, he conceded, making the election of the Leader of the Labour Party a “broadly-based democratic arrangement” failed to take sufficient account of “the reality of power.” Curiously, he then chose to expand upon this steely observation with a biblical reference. Caucus’s selection of the Party Leader was, he said, “a version of ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’” Then, as if quoting Jesus wasn’t peculiar enough, he availed himself of what he claimed to be a Chinese saying: “Leaders come, leaders go, but the Party goes on forever.” Given that the “Party” in question could only be the Chinese Communist Party, Haworth’s thinking appeared to be transitioning rapidly from bad to just plain weird.

Was he presenting the Labour Party as a beatific collection of seekers after truth to whom the grubby realities of power could only offer the most dangerous distraction? Certainly, the biblical quotation he uses lends itself to that conclusion. Because, of course, Haworth only quotes half of Jesus’s famous response to the Pharisees who were trying to trap him into saying something against his Roman overlords. The full quote from Matthew 22, reads: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

What that means in the context of the New Zealand Labour Party is an intriguing question. Could the quotation be reformulated to read: “Render therefore unto Caucus the things which are Caucus’s; and unto Democracy, the things that are Democracy’s” Hardly, since the thrust of Haworth’s argument seems to be in the opposite direction. In the good professor’s mind the role of God seems to have been taken on by the Party itself. Certainly, Haworth, like the Chinese communists, sees the Party as eternal. A living thing that must, at all costs, be protected from the potentially fatal consequences of its political leaders’ actions.

But a living thing that has no other purpose but to go on living, would strike most people as a pretty poor model for an effective political party. It is certainly not how the Labour Party, in those moments when it was able to play a significant political role in the life of New Zealand, would have described itself. At the time of its formation, during the First World War, during the years of the Great Depression, and again in the late-1970s and early-1980s, the Party was a vibrant, self-aware political force, resolute in its determination to change New Zealand for the better.

This was the Labour Party that Margaret Wilson (President of the Party 1984-87) fought to save as the Labour Caucus rolled out Rogernomics. The Party which split. The Party, much weaker now, which guided by the calculating hand of Helen Clark, was able, with a final burst of strength, to strip the leadership from Mike Moore and his fellow Rogernomes. The Party which, having expended the last of its political resources, found itself “linked hip and knee” to a Labour Caucus presided over by Helen Clark and filled with her hand-picked allies. But this Labour Party was not the vitally independent entity of Haworth’s ahistorical imagination. It did not exercise “necessary oversight” over its parliamentary representatives. This Labour Party was the handmaiden of Helen Clark – nothing more, nothing less.

And when Helen Clark departed for New York, it was this Party which slowly and painfully began to re-gather the democratic threads of self-government into its members’ hands. First in the area of Party Policy and then – to the utter fury of many of the people who now occupy the most senior positions in Cabinet – by way of a constitutional struggle to give the people who make the Party: ordinary members and trade union affiliates; a decisive role in choosing the person who will lead them. Or, to put it another way: the Party which demanded the very thing that Nigel Haworth believes Labour’s organisational wing should prize the most: power.

Haworth does not mention Jacinda Ardern, but it is her political star that lights the path of his argument. The present Labour Leader was not elected by the Party rank-and-file, she stepped into the job in extraordinary circumstances. But, it was not those circumstances which made her extraordinary. Ardern represents the forces within the Labour Caucus that (with a huge amount of help from the man himself) destroyed the leadership of David Cunliffe. Her closest allies led the fight against constitutional reform on the floor of the 2012 Annual Conference. And although no one would dispute that the members of the Labour Party love Jacinda – and would elect her in a heartbeat if asked – she is also the one who has, oh-so kindly, and oh-so gently, ushered them out of the spaces where important decisions are made.

Labour has already rendered everything unto Caesar – and Nigel Haworth does not appear to have noticed that, in the process, the Party has rendered itself powerless.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 21 October 2021.

KiwiBuild Should Be Targeting The Poor.

Lotto - Oops, I Mean KiwiBuild Ballot - Winners: Derryn Jayne and Fletcher Ross pose with Phil Twyford and Jacinda Ardern outside their new KiwiBuild property in Papakura. Twyford is willing to buy Labour’s promised houses straight off the property developers’ plans. At a stroke, bad financial bets are transformed into sure things. Phil’s happy. The developers are happy. The banks are happy. And the winners of KiwiBuild ballots are over the moon.

KIWIBUILD, Labour’s flagship housing policy promising first-home-buyers 100,000 affordable dwellings by 2028, is a dog. It started out as a political fix and has yet to mature into coherent policy. Nowhere are Labour’s ambitions for KiwiBuild matched by the resources needed to fulfil them. Worst of all, the people most in need of 100,000 extra dwellings – beneficiaries and the working poor – are not the scheme’s targets. KiwiBuild is a perverse mixture of corporate and middle-class welfare, offering a handsome subsidy to builders and a generous hand-up to young professionals.

KiwiBuild began its life as David Shearer’s answer to David Cunliffe. In November of 2012, convinced that the Labour Left was plotting to replace him, Shearer was casting about desperately for a political circuit-breaker. He needed something that would halt the ambitious Cunliffe in his tracks and reassure the party’s rank-and-file that he was a Labour man through-and-through. KiwiBuild was that something. His announcement that the next Labour government would build 100,000 affordable homes for young New Zealanders brought Labour’s 2012 annual conference to its feet. In the warm glow of the membership’s support, an emboldened Shearer banished Cunliffe to the back-benches.

Having served its purpose, KiwiBuild was filed and forgotten. The necessary detailed development work on how it would be implemented, by whom, and at what cost, never progressed much beyond the hurried sketch vouchsafed to conference delegates and the news media six years ago. The consequences of Labour’s failure to fill in the gaps are now embarrassingly clear.

A Labour Party with stronger connections to the world beyond Parliament would have identified much sooner the practical limitations of KiwiBuild. The people and the products required to build 10,000 dwellings every year for 10 years simply aren’t out there. New Zealand’s construction industry remains chronically short of labour. The private sector will struggle to meet its own deadlines – let alone the government’s.

Unlike the First Labour Government, Jacinda Ardern’s coalition is attempting to build thousands of additional new dwellings with a construction industry at full-stretch. John A. (Jack) Lee, the man who oversaw Labour’s massive state-house-building programme between 1935-1938 could summon thousands of unemployed carpenters, tilers, plumbers, electricians and other construction workers to the cause of housing the people. Idle factories could be reactivated to supply the required building materials. This is what made “The Houses That Jack Built” possible. The absence of such vital enabling factors explains the houses that Phil Twyford cannot build in 2018.

Six years ago, when KiwiBuild was born, the full extent of the housing crisis had yet to emerge. Back then, affordability was the issue. The near impossibility of young professionals getting their feet on the first rungs of the housing ladder. Fortuitously, these same young professionals just happened to be the Shearer-led Labour Party’s prime electoral targets. First and foremost, KiwiBuild was a political “solution” to a middle-class “problem”.

Six years on, and the focus has shifted to beneficiaries and the working-poor sleeping in their cars or shivering in the overcrowded garages of family and friends. Voters for Jacinda’s transformational “politics of kindness” they may be, but they’ve not been deemed worthy of 10,000 houses per year. For these, the working-class people in whose name Jack Lee built the “social housing” of 80 years ago, 6,000 new state houses, in total, is considered adequate.

The irony is that, at an estimated price of $650,000, KiwiBuild’s “affordable homes” are rapidly moving beyond the reach of all but the luckiest of middle-class offspring. Those to whom the Bank of Mum and Dad still happily provides a deposit. Those for whom the wills of Mum and Dad hold out the prospect of eventual relief.

Undeterred, the Housing Minister presses on. Treasury may have revised downwards its projection of the scheme’s contribution to residential investment – but what do those “kids” know? Twyford is willing to buy Labour’s promised houses straight off the property developers’ plans. At a stroke, bad financial bets are transformed into sure things. Phil’s happy. The developers are happy. The banks are happy. And the winners of KiwiBuild ballots are over the moon.

About the only people who aren’t happy are those who believe that publicly funded social interventions on the scale of KiwiBuild should be directed first to those most in need. Tragically, however, the Coalition Government is selling the poor a pup.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 2 November 2018.

Poking Out The Eyes Of The Public.

Managing The Message: Labour supporters are invited to receive a copy of Andrew Little's conference address by e-mail. The people surrounding the party’s leader have a “message” they wish to present to the public, and they are determined that every single party member should remain resolutely and coherently “on message”. Hence the near total ban on media access to conference proceedings.

 

THE LABOUR PARTY’s annual conference kicks-off today in Palmerston North and the news media might as well stay at home. Apart from a handful of carefully controlled events: speeches of welcome; tributes to fallen comrades; three spectacularly misnamed “Challenge Sessions” and, of course, the Leader’s Address; the weekend’s proceedings will take place under a comprehensive media ban.

 

The Sector Sessions: where the party’s component groups – trade unionists, women, Maori, youth – meet to discuss issues of special interest to their members, are “closed to the media”. The Policy Workshops; where conference delegates debate policy remits on health and society, jobs and growth, skills and wages, human rights, and a host of other matters, are similarly “closed to the media”. Likewise, all discussion of the Party’s all-important ‘Policy Platform’ (to which all Labour MPs are bound) has been deemed too sensitive for the ears and eyes of the public’s proxies.

 

Also “closed to the media” is the session headed ‘Whakarongo me korero’ – which features “discussions and presentations on a variety of current topics”. Even the announcement of the results of the Party’s internal elections are “closed to the media”, along with a session intriguingly titled “Re-written Constitution and Rules”. The Party big-wigs have also decided that no journalists should be present at the special workshop entitled “How to be a Treasurer”.

 

Most worrying of all, the critical plenary session at which the members’ policy proposals, developed at all those earlier workshops, are debated, amended and voted up or down is – that’s right, you guessed it – “closed to the media”.

 

The extent of this year’s media ban speaks eloquently of a political party at odds with, and mortally afraid of, itself.

 

It is almost a reflex among those who like to think of themselves as political “professionals” to deny the public even the slightest glimpse of events they haven’t already emptied of anything remotely resembling controversy, spontaneity or authenticity. The people surrounding the party’s leader have a “message” they wish to present to the public, and they are determined that every single party member should remain resolutely and coherently “on message”.

 

After the tumult and turmoil of the past four years, the message Andrew Little’s staffers are determined to communicate to the voting public is that Labour is united. And by ‘Labour’ they mean the whole party. The Labour caucus, the New Zealand Council, the trade union affiliates, and even the rank-and-file, are all 100 percent united and raring to go. Nobody’s heard of Jeremy Corbyn. Nobody’s the slightest bit worried about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. From top to bottom, Andy’s electoral vessel has been caulked and sealed and plugged. Nobody’s getting in and, sure as Stalin, nothing is getting out!

 

Except that a political party – especially a left-wing political party – has no right to shut away its deliberations from public scrutiny. After all, the body we’re discussing is not a society of philatelists, but a quasi-constitutional institution within which the future leaders of our nation are raised and readied, and out of which its future economic and social policy directions are expected to emerge.

 

This quasi-constitutional quality is only enhanced when a political party’s membership arrogates to itself the right to choose the leader of its parliamentary caucus. When the choice of who should be Prime Minister or Leader of the Opposition is restricted to the candidates’ caucus colleagues, the voters can at least reassure themselves that these key political figures are being chosen by people who have, themselves, been put to the democratic test. But, they can have no such reassurance when their political leaders are being decided by people whose only qualification is the payment of a membership fee.

 

When Labour’s members took upon themselves the duty of deciding who the next Prime Minister will be, they simultaneously forfeited the right to behave as if they were a society of stamp-collectors. The latter has every right to determine who can participate in and observe its AGM. The Labour Party, however, like all political parties, lays claim to the right to design and deliver the nation’s future. And that must mean that the nation possesses a reciprocal right to watch them do it.

 

By banning the news media from a huge chunk of its conference proceedings, Labour is poking out the eyes and blocking the ears of the voters. Shame on them!

 

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, 6 November 2015.

All In The Family: Labour’s President Keeps The Media Out Of His Party’s Annual Conference.

Family Man: Labour's president, Nigel Haworth, wants key debates and discussions at this year's Labour Party Conference kept "in the family". As a consequence, all but a handful of set-piece speeches and "Challenge Sessions" will be "Closed to the Media". But to ban the media from the constitutional and policy debates of a party’s annual conference is insupportable. Political parties are – by definition – creatures of the public sphere. As such, the presumption must always be that the media, as the voters’ eyes and ears, will be granted free access to as much of their proceedings as possible.

PROFESSOR NIGEL HAWORTH has a peculiar view of the Labour Party. Justifying the exclusion of the news media from most of its annual conference to the NZ Herald’s Claire Trevett, the party’s president explained that its proceedings needed to be kept “in the family”. Putting to one side the obvious fact that a political party is nothing like a family, the professor’s words raise some pretty alarming issues. Families that shut their doors and draw their curtains against the outside world are often trying to hide something. So, what is it that Labour is trying to hide, Professor? Something shameful? Something ugly? Both?

 

Paradoxically, what Haworth and the Leader of the Opposition, Andrew Little, are trying to hide isn’t in the least bit shameful or ugly. Free and frank political debate is the declared objective of the media ban. “We want people to be able to speak freely and frankly and be reported appropriately”, was the way Haworth put it to Trevett.

 

Curiously, the Herald journalist did not challenge Haworth’s implication that she and her colleagues would not report the delegates’ statements “appropriately”. Nor did Trevett point out to the Herald’s readers that with the news media excluded from important debates party leaders can crack down hard on dissident delegates with impunity.

 

This is no small consideration. At the 2012 annual conference, held in the Auckland suburb of Ellerslie, journalists were able to report the extraordinary vitriol hurled at disobedient delegates by Labour MPs. The latter were furious that the conference had voted contrary to their instruction. They were probably even more furious that their behaviour was reported. (See here and here.)

 

Free and frank discussion is actually much more likely when the whole world’s watching. Absent the television lights, anyone daring to challenge the top table is likely to be flayed alive by individuals who throw insults for a living.

 

Another of Haworth’s claims that went unchallenged by Trevett was his attempt to paint media access to Labour conferences as something rare and exceptional. He claimed that the media had been permitted access in 2013 because the party was introducing a new policy platform structure: “We felt at the time it was important for media to see that process. When we go into the revisions of it, these are debates we want to keep in the family.”

 

This is pure bullshit. For most of its 99-year history Labour’s conferences have been freely reported by the news media. Back in the 1970s, for example, a TV outside broadcast unit would set up shop outside the conference venue and broadcast a 20-minute News Special at the end of every day the conference was in session. The often riveting policy debates were beamed into the nation’s living rooms without let or hindrance.

 

It was the same in the 1980s, when the party’s resistance to Rogernomics was dramatically broadcast to the electorate. As Jim Anderton once boasted to journalists gathered to report a crucial debate on GST at a regional Labour conference on the West Coast: “This is the real Opposition!”

 

And it is here that we come to the nub of Haworth’s objection to the news media’s presence at Palmerston North this weekend. He and Little’s staffers are terrified that if journalists are afforded free access to the most important conference sessions they will discover that, on issues like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the leader and his tight inner-circle do not speak for the party as a whole. Words and images conveying any other message than the Labour “family’s” complete and utter unity are, therefore, being prevented from reaching the public.

 

This kind of blatant media manipulation runs counter to everything a trustworthy political party should stand for. In democratic societies, political parties are where the nation’s future leaders are first recognised and readied for public office. They are the places where ideologically motivated citizens gather to debate and refine a broad range of economic and social policies intended to shape the nation’s future. As such, they cannot possibly lay claim to being “private” organisations.

 

Certainly, there are aspects of party activity which are justifiably kept confidential. Financial reports; personnel issues; discussions of election tactics and strategy: no one expects a party to permit the media to report these events. But to ban the media from the constitutional and policy debates of a party’s annual conference is insupportable. Political parties are – by definition – creatures of the public sphere. As such, the presumption must always be that the media, as the voters’ eyes and ears, will be granted free access to as much of their proceedings as possible.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 5 November 2015.

Running Dogs

In Full Cry: In a perverse political version of the blood initiation, members of the Shearer and Robertson factions have guaranteed themselves higher rankings in the Labour Caucus by running down the followers of David Cunliffe.

 

I’M TOLD there were six of them, and that they hunted as a pack. Their prey?

 

Delegates who had voted the wrong way.

 

Moving through the excited crowds at the Ellerslie Conference Centre last November an angry group of Labour MPs was seen taking dissidents aside and telling them, in no uncertain terms, which way was up.

 

Leading the pack was Labour’s employment relations spokesperson, Darien Fenton, and her grim lieutenant, the Dunedin South MP, Clare Curran. No surprises there. Ms Fenton and Ms Curran were among the Caucus members most alarmed by the Labour Party rank-and-file's sudden outbreak of democratic distemper.

 

The other members of the pack, however, came as a surprise. I had never thought of Jacinda Ardern, Megan Woods, Kris Faafoi or Phil Twyford as attack dogs, but my sources assure me that they were there – chewing people out.

 

So what? Such brutal vignettes are the stock-and-trade of party conferences.

 

Certainly “The Pack” was far from being the only example of Caucus aggression at the Ellerslie Conference.

 

It was Chris Hipkins who drew me aside long before the dramatic conference floor-fight to murmur conspiratorially  “Our problems aren’t external – they’re internal.” And Andrew Little who first characterised the rank-and-file's bid to democratise their party as a statement of “anxiety” about the leader, David Shearer.

 

Even from the Media Table, the animosity directed  towards caucus members who spoke in favour of the rank-and-file’s resolutions (the most effective of whom, by far, was Lianne Dalziel) was unmistakeable. Mr Hipkins youthful countenance became an ugly mask of rage as he railed against the proposition that, to avoid a contest in Labour’s new electoral college, the party leader must be endorsed by sixty percent-plus-one of his caucus colleagues.

 

The underlying cause of all this angst was, of course, simple political arithmetic. The first thing all politicians learn to do is count, and the people backing Mr Shearer were fearful that a democratised party (with sufficient support in Caucus) might decide to wrest the power of choosing the party leader from their hands. They were terrified that the new Electoral College would saddle them with the rank-and-file's choice of December 2011: David Cunliffe.

 

And it wasn’t Mr Shearer’s faction, alone, who were counting heads. Labour’s Deputy Leader, Grant Robertson, had as much to fear from the leadership question being decided early, by the party, as his boss.

 

Now was the time for all who were not for Mr Cunliffe to unite against him. MPs from both factions fanned out across the conference venue to dampen down and/or extinguish the dissident hot-spots.

 

The Parliamentary Press Gallery were encouraged to interpret the rank-and-file’s attempt to “take back our party” as a leadership bid by Mr Shearer’s rival. The roving pack made up of Shearer and Robertson MPs would be joined by an even more vicious media pack led by TV3’s Patrick Gower.

 

The rest is history.

 

20 November 2012: Mr Cunliffe is demoted and his faction isolated.

 

4 February 2013: Mr Shearer manages – just – to secure the backing of sixty percent-plus-one of his caucus colleagues.

 

19 February 2013: Six days before Mr Shearer’s long-awaited shadow cabinet re-shuffle, Charles Chauvel, a supporter of Mr Cunliffe, quits Parliament.

 

25 February 2013: Mr Shearer’s new line-up is announced.

 

The Pack are well rewarded. Ms Fenton and Ms Curran both rise two places in the pecking order, while Mr Twyford goes up three to take a seat on the front bench. Megan Woods enters the top twenty – a back-bencher no longer. Andrew Little rises with her. Mr Shearer’s chief swordsman, Chris Hipkins, climbs five places to claim the shadow portfolio of Education from Mr Cunliffe’s running-mate, Nanaia Mahuta.

 

Ms Dalziel’s eloquence on behalf of rank-and-file democracy is rewarded with demotion to the back benches.

 

Mr Cunliffe remains outside the magic circle.

 

In Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express all the suspects are shown to have wielded the fatal knife. Labour’s MPs seem equally impressed by the advantages of collectivised bloodletting.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 1 March 2013.

Party-Wide Vote No Guarantee Of Shearer (Or Cunliffe) Victory

Reading The Signs: An early leadership vote in Labour's new Electoral College poses as many political risks for David Shearer as it does for David Cunliffe. It would be cruelly ironic if the two leading contenders were to beat themselves to death for the benefit of a third - Grant Robertson.

 

AS FEBRUARY’S scheduled leadership ballot looms, Labour Leader, David Shearer, and his rival, David Cunliffe, have some tough strategic decisions to make.

 

Since last November’s Annual Conference and its controversial aftermath many Labour members have demanded that the February vote be transferred from Caucus to the party’s newly-established Electoral College. Only in this way, they argue, can the sins of David Shearer and his minions be washed away. The unspoken assumption behind these dissidents’ demands is that the Electoral College will return not Mr Shearer but Mr Cunliffe as Labour’s leader.

 

Now we learn from the pseudonymous “Eddie”, writing at “The Standard” – New Zealand’s third-largest and Labour-leaning blogsite – that Mr Shearer may be preparing to call Mr Cunliffe’s supporters’ bluff by giving them the Electoral College vote they’ve been clamouring for.

 

Though indisputably a bold and potentially game-changing move, Mr Shearer cannot be unaware of the many and serious strategic and tactical risks associated with this course of action.

 

The most obvious risk is that once an Electoral College vote is arranged the likelihood of the contest being limited to just two candidates is extremely remote. Once the process is set in motion, Mr Shearer’s supporters have no way of preventing Grant Robertson or Andrew Little from adding their names to the ballot paper. Should that happen the political calculations immediately become much more complex.

 

Labour’s new Electoral College is required to tally the votes cast by the Parliamentary Caucus, Ordinary Members and Trade Union Affiliates and then re-calculate the results so that the votes of the Caucus account for 40 percent of the total, Ordinary Members 40 percent, and Affiliates 20 percent. Whether the contest will be decided on the basis of a simple plurality of the votes cast, or according to some form of preferential voting system, is not yet clear.

 

If it’s the former, then the margin separating Mr Shearer and Mr Cunliffe is likely to be very narrow. But if some form of preferential system is employed, then neither Mr Shearer nor Mr Cunliffe is assured of victory. Supporters of the principal contenders are most unlikely to put their candidate’s rival anywhere but last on their list of preferences. Mr Shearer and Mr Cunliffe could thus face early elimination, leaving the field to Mr Robertson and Mr Little. The smart money in that fight would be on Mr Robertson.

 

Demanding the leadership question be decided by the Electoral College in February 2013 is, therefore, the worst possible move Mr Cunliffe’s supporters could make. Because even if he emerged victorious from the calculations of the Electoral College, Mr Cunliffe’s problems would be far from over.

 

His greatest challenge would lie in persuading those colleagues who have repeatedly demonstrated a quite irrational animosity towards the New Lynn MP’s leadership ambitions to swing in behind the Electoral College’s choice. If their past actions are any guide, the “Anybody But Cunliffe” faction would immediately set about undermining Mr Cunliffe’s position. Secret caucus debates would be repeated verbatim to favoured members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and senior Labour MPs would not shrink from vicious public criticism of their leader’s favoured policies.

 

Such a public display of political disunity would very quickly reduce Labour to a laughing-stock. Subjected to unrelenting media criticism and with its poll numbers collapsing the Cunliffe-led Opposition would be judged to have very little to offer the electorate.

 

Labour’s leadership, secured too early, is, therefore, much more likely to destroy, rather than enhance, Mr Cunliffe’s chances of becoming Prime Minister. The gift they are most anxious to bestow is, paradoxically, the gift Mr Cunliffe’s followers should, for the time being at least, withhold.

 

Mr Shearer, too, should think very carefully before confirming “Eddie’s” rumour. It was, after all, the same pseudonymous writer who kicked off all the discussion about Mr Shearer’s leadership deficiencies immediately prior to last year’s Conference. That discussion, which suddenly (and without justification) morphed into the media-driven accusation that Mr Cunliffe was mounting a leadership challenge led, in turn, to his savage relegation to the back-benches.

 

I have learned that at about the same time as “Eddie” was mounting his first assault against Mr Shearer, a representative of at least one of the trade union affiliates was sounding-out fellow unionists’ opinions of a Robertson candidacy. (It is important to note here that Mr Robertson emphatically denies any involvement in, or knowledge of, such soundings.)

 

Now “Eddie” is at it again. Were Mr Shearer to allow himself to be goaded into an early vote in the Electoral College it is possible – indeed it is quite likely – that both he and his most serious rival, Mr Cunliffe, could find themselves manoeuvred out of contention.

 

It would be cruelly ironic if Mr Shearer and Mr Cunliffe were to beat each other to death – for the benefit of Mr Robertson.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 22 January 2013.

Islands In The Mainstream

Keeping The Story Straight: But if a conflict arose between the mainstream media's version of events and the version presented by the citizen journalists of the blogosphere - what then? Even more alarming - what if the bloggers' version proved to be the more believable?

SOMEWHERE THERE’S GOT TO BE a focus-group report. Nothing else adequately explains the current behaviour of the “mainstream media” (MSM). Somewhere, somehow, someone has been incautious enough to ask a representative sample of MSM readers, listeners and viewers how often they visit, and what sort of credence they give to, the blogs. Their answers appear to have shocked some journalists into full-scale retaliation.

 

My guess is that the consumers of news and opinion are not abandoning the MSM altogether – not yet. Most probably it’s still just a case of people turning to the blogosphere for a second opinion. The big problems will only arise when the stories people read on the blogs begin to sharply contradict stories being printed in the newspapers and broadcast over radio and television. That’s when the MSM should really begin to worry.

 

But if the note of alarm that has crept into the MSM’s coverage of blogs – especially political blogs – over the past few weeks is anything to go by, some of that worrying has already begun. The final edition of The Nation, broadcast on TV3 last weekend, warned ominously of the potentially destabilising political influence of the left-leaning blog The Standard. Senior Parliamentary Press Gallery journalists have launched repeated attacks against “anonymous bloggers” with many eagerly accusing their blogs of playing a sinister role in David Cunliffe’s alleged “attempted leadership coup” at the Labour Party’s Annual Conference.

 

The tone of these attacks leaves little doubt that not only do these political journalists consider bloggers to be unwelcome and illegitimate contributors to the nation’s political discourse, but that nothing would make them happier than to see them tightly regulated and controlled. It’s an attitude that should send a shiver down every New Zealander’s spine. A genuine “Fourth Estate” would welcome the democratisation of the gathering and distribution of news which the Internet has made possible. That so many MSM journalists have greeted the competitive spur of the blogosphere with a mixture of self-serving patch-protection and outright authoritarianism is cause for considerable concern.

 

It also casts much of their recent reporting of political news in a new and worrying light. If the truth is indeed out there, then presumably it’s as readily accessible to bloggers as it is to members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery? If both are present at the same event, then their reports should be (making obvious allowance for nuance and emphasis) at least broadly similar? But what if they are not similar? What if the MSM’s coverage of Event X is radically at odds with both the experience of participants and the reportage of bloggers? Wouldn’t that raise some extremely disturbing questions about the credibility and trustworthiness of MSM journalism?

 

The recent Labour Party conference demonstrated in the most dramatic fashion the MSM’s capacity to misrepresent and mislead the NZ public. The political journalists covering the conference were either collaborators with, or the dupes of, a faction of the Labour Party Caucus which, fearing the consequences of radical changes to the party’s constitution, manufactured a leadership challenge to Opposition Leader, David Shearer, by his front-bench colleague, David Cunliffe.

 

That the rule changes endorsed by the rank-and-file offered Mr Cunliffe a route to the leadership of the party which allowed him to by-pass his Caucus enemies was obvious to anyone familiar with the agreed reforms. Quite legitimately (if somewhat maladroitly) the MP for New Lynn declined to rule-out taking advantage of these new constitutional opportunities at some point in the future. To translate this sequence of events into a full-scale leadership challenge, as TV3’s Patrick Gower did, lacked even the slightest evidential foundation. It did not prevent him, however, from telling Mr Shearer that Mr Cunliffe was “coming for you” and demanding to know what he was going to do about it.

 

The peculiar political-economy of news reporting from the Parliamentary Press Gallery ensured that Mr Gower’s conspiracy theory became the core of the MSM’s reporting. Effective Gallery reporting is based on easy access to the principal political newsmakers of both the Government and the Opposition. Once it becomes clear that those principals have agreed upon an interpretation of events it is extremely hazardous for any political journalist to offer an alternative view. It would risk not only an immediate denial of access to the principal players, but also the wrath of one’s editor. Any narrative at odds with the main media outlets’ agreed version of events has the potential to make the perpetrator appear both eccentric and/or ill-informed. These are not epithets with which most MSM editors feel comfortable. Multiple interpretations of the same event might also encourage the public to question the competence of the MSM’s journalistic staff. Much safer all round if the coverage remains consistent across all media.

 

But consistent is not the same as accurate. What happened at the Labour Party Conference, far from being an attempted leadership coup, bore all the signs of a pre-emptive strike against the man most likely to front a successful leadership challenge under the new rules. Political journalists who rejected the principal players version of events, could have spoken to conference delegates who witnessed incidents strongly suggestive of the attacks on Mr Cunliffe being carefully orchestrated well in advance of the actions which ostensibly provoked them. Persistent questioning would also have uncovered evidence that it was supporters of Grant Robertson, not Mr Cunliffe, who had been gauging the level of support for a leadership spill in the weeks leading up to the Conference. No hint of these alternative narratives appeared anywhere in the MSM.

 

They have, however, been appearing in both the postings and commentary threads of the political blogs. Is this the real explanation for the sudden spate of attacks on the anonymity of these citizen-journalists? Has a focus group warned the MSM that the stories it declines to tell – and which are now turning up in blogs – are being believed? Are more and more of the MSM’s readers, listeners and viewers coming to the conclusion that the Fourth Estate, far from speaking truth to power, has become its willing stenographer?

 

If this is true, then the decision by so many active participants in the blogosphere to remain anonymous or write under a pseudonym becomes entirely reasonable. Any system powerful and mendacious enough to suborn the one institution specifically charged with exposing its malfeasance is probably not the sort of system to be openly challenged or taunted by vulnerable individuals using their real names.

 

The day focus groups and their deliberations cease to be confidential is the day bloggers will gladly abandon their pseudonyms and the current “pandemic of anonymity” will be ended.

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

David Cunliffe's Pride

Momentary Triumph: David Cunliffe beams as the Labour Party democratises itself over the concerted resistance of his parliamentary colleagues. Within hours he was being set up as the scapegoat for the Conference delegates' insubordination. (Photo by John Chapman)

 

“OUR PROBLEMS aren’t external – they’re internal.” Chris Hipkins has one of those eternally youthful countenances which argue strongly against such ominous utterances. It’s as if such old words couldn’t possibly slither between such young teeth. And yet there he was before me, speaking darkly about the enemy within.

 

Hardly surprising, perhaps, given the fall-out from Labour’s tumultuous annual conference?

 

Except that Mr Hipkins’ political paranoia was being carried into the hall well before the acrimonious constitutional debate which caught so many Labour MPs and political journalists by surprise last Saturday morning. Because it was Friday afternoon, not Saturday morning, that the Chief Opposition Whip vouchsafed to me his grim opinion on the inherent character of Labour’s “problems”.

 

No matter. From the moment the failure of David Shearer’s followers’ all-out effort to defeat a proposal requiring Labour’s leader, in the February following a general election, to secure the backing of more than 60 percent of his caucus, or face an election involving Labour MPs, party members and affiliated trade unions, became clear, Mr Hipkins and the rest of Mr Shearer’s faction worked tirelessly to paste David Cunliffe’s face all over Labour’s “internal” difficulties.

 

The narrow victory (264/237) of the new party rule was presented as proof that not only were “dark forces” (as one journalist colourfully described them) conspiring behind the scenes, but that a Cunliffe-inspired leadership coup was imminent.

 

The eagerness with which journalists accepted this version of events is, from a week’s perspective, rather puzzling. Had a leadership coup truly been unfolding, how likely is it that its purported leader, well short of the numbers, would kick it off by publicly over-exciting TV3’s irrepressible Patrick Gower with repeated and repeated and repeated refusals to declare his support for Mr Shearer’s leadership?

 

Ambition, as Mark Antony said of Julius Caesar, should be made of sterner (or at least more tactically adroit) stuff. A genuine plotter would have grinned broadly, and with a twinkle in his eye, pledged undying loyalty to his leader. Continuing the Shakespearian theme: he would have “smiled and smiled, yet been a villain”.

 

The one really intriguing question still awaiting a satisfactory answer is, therefore: “Why did he do it?” Why did Mr Cunliffe not tell Mr Gower that a leadership challenge was out of the question? He must have known that his refusal to do so would dominate the news media’s coverage of the conference; overshadow the Labour Party’s radical democratisation process; and draw public attention away from both his leader’s keynote address and the party’s new housing policy.

 

What was he thinking?

 

I can, of course, only speculate. But my best guess is that Mr Cunliffe’s behaviour was driven by a combination of high political excitement; a powerful sense of vindication; and simple, old-fashioned, personal pride.

 

In part, the constitutional victories achieved at last weekend’s conference were the product of the rank-and-file’s indignation at seeing Caucus over-ride their clear leadership preference last December. One could say, therefore, that the votes against Mr Shearer’s allies on the conference floor were votes for Mr Cunliffe. Bathed in the golden light of victory; savouring the sweet taste of vindication after nearly twelve months of unceasing vilification at the hands of Mr Hipkins and his ilk, Mr Cunliffe simply wasn’t prepared to even ritually tug his forelock in the direction of Mr Shearer. (And certainly not via the leering medium of Paddy Gower!)

 

It was pride, and a surfeit of amour propre, that led Mr Cunliffe to turn a considerable political triumph into what has turned out to be a colossal personal defeat.

 

And that, surely, is the point. No man possessed of a serious intention to unseat his leader could possibly have made such a huge and career-damaging blunder.

 

Because, in politics, blunders are almost never forgiven.

 

From his now much-reduced position in Labour’s hierarchy, Mr Cunliffe can, however, comfort himself with the thought that although he has not conquered – neither has he stooped.

 

And there’s always February.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 23 November 2012.

Revolution On The Conference Floor

Reclaiming The Party: "Today's the day we take our party back!" Len Richards challenges the Caucus's attempt to blunt the rank-and-file's campaign for democratisation at the 2012 Annual Conference of the Labour Party. (Photo by John Chapman)

HOW DO REVOLUTIONS BEGIN? With ordinary people discovering their power. When someone or something previously regarded as all-powerful is suddenly seen to falter and fall.

 

Is it over-the-top to call what happened last weekend at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Auckland a revolution? Do twenty-first century political parties even wield that sort of power anymore? Hasn’t “revolutionary party” become an oxymoron?

 

Maybe. But something is changing in the world of progressive politics and the radical changes ratified by the 622 delegates to last weekend’s Labour Party Conference have put New Zealand squarely into the vanguard of that change.

 

And that’s not just because Labour’s membership voted themselves a decisive role in choosing their party leader. After all, the British Labour Party did something very similar thirty years ago. Nor is it a matter of members having left their parliamentary wing very little in the way of wiggle room when it comes to implementing party policy. All of these changes were important, but a long way short of revolutionary.

 

No, the revolution really began when a number of senior members of Labour’s Parliamentary Caucus attempted to water-down the rank-and-file’s radical changes to the Party’s constitution.

 

Suddenly all the pent up frustrations of a membership long accustomed to being treated as little more than an enthusiastic applause-machine boiled-over into a bitter but utterly gripping floor-fight for the heart and soul of the Labour Party.

 

Those who had not made the minutiae of Labour Party politics their special study (which these days includes most of the Parliamentary Press Gallery) may not immediately have grasped the import of what was unfolding before their eyes last Saturday.

 

Historically-speaking, Labour’s traditionally restive rank-and-file have been ruthlessly whipped into line by a combination of Members of Parliament, Labour Electorate Committee (LEC) Chairs and/or trade union bosses. At the close of conference business, seated comfortably in the nearest pub, they may have groused to one another about remits they were “forced” to support or reject, but only very rarely did the membership make a fight of it. Victories for the rank-and-file were rarer still.

 

On Saturday, however, events unfolded very differently. At issue was the number of Labour MPs needed to “trigger” a leadership vote in which the whole party could participate. The percentage of the parliamentary caucus required to activate the party’s new Electoral College (comprising 40 percent MPs, 40 percent ordinary members, and 20 percent trade union affiliates) had originally been set at 66 percent. After loud protests this was amended to 55 percent and then reduced again by the conference delegates to 50 percent + one.

 

So far, so good.

 

The debate then shifted to the number required to precipitate a membership-wide vote after each general election. It was proposed that any party leader failing to secure the support of 60 percent of his or her caucus colleagues would have to fight it out in the Electoral College. In other words, the post-election trigger for a party-wide vote would be set at just 40 percent.

 

Many Labour MPs construed this as an attack directed at Labour leader, David Shearer, by his erstwhile rival, David Cunliffe. Not since the dark days of the 1980s and Rogernomics had an annual conference of the Labour Party echoed to such bitter thrusts and counter-thrusts.

 

But while the intense personal rivalries currently besetting Labour’s Caucus undoubtedly accounted for much of the vitriol flying back and forth last Saturday, rank-and-file resentment at being ignored and over-ruled by their parliamentary representatives was an even more important driver of dissent.

 

Ordinary members of the Labour Party knew their preferred candidate for party leader, David Cunliffe, had been passed over by the Caucus in favour of David Shearer. It was this decision, following years of being dictated to by the parliamentary leadership, that generated the great wave of constitutional reform which broke over last weekend’s conference.

 

But another factor was at work on the conference floor last weekend. In the minds of many delegates were the bitter memories of a Caucus which had not only over-ruled but betrayed the party membership: the caucus that unleashed Rogernomics.

 

When delegate Len Richards declared “Today’s the day we take our party back!” He was alluding to much more than last December’s leadership vote.

 

In the end, and despite all the arm-twisting and brow-beating by Mr Shearer’s surrogates, the 40 percent trigger – symbol of the rank-and-file’s newly-minted authority – was approved: 264 votes in favour, 237 against.

 

Pebbles rolling down a hillside, you may think. But landslides – and revolutions – have to begin somewhere.

David Shearer’s Sunday speech – full of bold, radical and unmistakably Labour rhetoric and policy – was his direct response to the party membership’s noisy determination to reclaim their party.

 

They received Mr Shearer’s speech with whoops and cheers because, in truth, they had written it themselves.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 20 November 2012.