Voter Motivators 2017: Poverty.

Making Poverty History: Dorothea Lange's iconic portrait of a Depression Era mother and her children speaks of a time when poverty was a problem to be solved - not a condition to be sneered at.

 

WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE ARE POOR, poverty changes. Instead of being seen as the outward manifestation of vice, poverty is transformed into the enabler of virtue. In communities where everyone is poor, the merits of compassion, solidarity and generosity are everywhere on display. Poor people support one another, take care of one another, defend one another.

 

In societies where wealth and resources are controlled by a tiny minority, it is the rich who find themselves stigmatised. Their greed, love of luxury and relentless selfishness are everywhere condemned. In the eyes of the poor, wealth and vice are indistinguishable.

 

Eighty-five years ago, at the height of the Great Depression, poverty stalked four out of every five New Zealand streets. More than one in four men of working age were unemployed, and those who still had jobs were forced to accept regular – often savage – reductions in their wages and salaries.

 

As the economic crisis deepened, the spectre of poverty crept out of the urban slums and into the leafy suburbs of the middle-class. Respectable men on respectable salaries found themselves “let go”. Poverty ceased to be something that affected the “lower orders”. Now ordinary “decent” people were staring it in the face.

 

In 2017, with a general election looming, the issue of poverty still ranks as one of New Zealand’s big voter motivators. People sleeping in their cars; children succumbing to Third World diseases; workers lining-up at food banks for assistance; whole families going hungry to pay the power bill and keep the landlord happy: those lucky enough to live in the three out of four streets where poverty does not intrude have been made to feel profoundly uneasy by its evident proximity.

 

In a society where only a quarter of children are being raised in poverty, however, the remedies for privation and despair are hotly contested. With security and comfort now the norm in New Zealand, the question a great many voters ask themselves is: “What is going on in these families which prevents them from living a happy and productive life like the rest of us?”

 

In 1935, the answer to that question could be reduced to two words: “The Slump”. The effects of the Great Depression weighed upon the whole of New Zealand like a leaden overcoat. It made all the old explanations of poverty redundant. Whoever was to blame for the collapse of the capitalist economy – it wasn’t the poor.

 

And, for those who were hurting, the remedy was clear: vote for the party pledged to make poverty history. Let the state take the place of your family, friends and neighbours and become the collective deliverer of compassion, solidarity and generosity. All those things denied the poor: good jobs on good pay; free education and health care; a warm, dry house at an affordable rent; a measure of equality in the workplace; state assistance in old age, infirmity and economic adversity; these were the changes that Labour promised – and delivered.

 

Not only was poverty (in the sense of the harsh economic and social conditions experienced by a clear majority of the population in the early years of capitalism) reduced dramatically by the creation of the Welfare State, but in the decades that followed its moral character underwent an enormous revision.

 

No longer was poverty seen as the consequence of the viciously rich and their failed economic system. No longer was it celebrated as the creator of virtuous behaviour. Now it was regarded as the consequence of individual and familial inadequacy. Now it was the poor who exemplified vice. Laziness, drunkenness, violence, cruelty and crime: these became the new markers of Poverty.

 

The National Party’s twenty-first century response to this re-defined poverty is unequivocal: deal with the individual and familial inadequacies of the poor and the vicious circles of deprivation can be broken. They call it “Social Investment”.

 

Labour’s position is much more difficult. Gone are the days when an economically victimised majority saw themselves as the deserving beneficiaries of a long overdue and radical redistribution of society’s resources. In 2017, the no-longer-poor majority identify much more readily as taxpayers, and are much less certain that Labour’s (and the Greens’) compassion, solidarity and generosity are entitlements to which the “undeserving poor” have any claim.

 

Poverty will be motivating voters in 2017 – but in ways far removed from those of 1935.

 

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, 16 June 2017.

The Banner Of Us All

Symbol of Sovereignty: The tino rangatiratanga flag has the virtue of emerging naturally out of our recent history. It flies over the Auckland harbour bridge on Waitangi Day and has become the symbol of that part of the New Zealand nation which yearns to put the dubious legacy of British imperialism behind them.

WHAT IS A FLAG? Like so many of the things that go into the making of a state, flags have their origins in war. Large swathes of cloth bearing simple, easily recognised devices, made it possible for an army’s identity to be determined from a considerable distance. Those who marched beneath these fluttering banners were, accordingly, bound to its fortunes. While their flag flew the soldiers knew there was reason to go on fighting; when it fell, or was hauled down, they knew the battle was lost.

 

The Prime Minister, John Key, has suggested that the time is right for New Zealanders to consider changing their flag. Mr Key appears to subscribe to the widely held belief that the current design lacks distinction and fails to identify New Zealand as a unique and independent nation of the South Pacific. On 29 January he raised the possibility of holding a referendum on the issue in which the current New Zealand flag is pitted against an alternative of the Government’s choosing. Mr Key’s preferred replacement is the silver fern flag so beloved of All Black supporters.

 

The first thing to note about the Prime Minister’s suggestion is its utter disdain for any kind of public participation. Mr Key proposes to give the voters just one alternative to the status quo, its design to be decided by himself and his colleagues. End of story.

 

This is clearly an unsatisfactory (not to say undemocratic) way of handling any change to such an indispensable symbol of our national identity. Indeed, the procedure is so clearly deficient that it raises questions about the amount of thought the Prime Minister has given the subject. The most famous and successful example of the flag-changing process, Canada’s 1965 adoption of its universally admired maple leaf flag, left the final decision to a multi-party parliamentary committee.

 

In terms of speed and simplicity the Canadian model has much to recommend it. But if New Zealanders are determined to have the final say, then I’d advise adopting the following three stage process. First Stage: a special multi-party parliamentary committee invites public submissions from which it produces a short-list of three alternative designs. Second Stage: a referendum is conducted asking New Zealanders to rank the three alternatives in order of preference. Third Stage: the most preferred design is “run off” against the present New Zealand flag in a final, binding, referendum.

 

Such a process would almost certainly produce the following three contenders: the tino rangatiratanga or Maori sovereignty flag; Kyle Lockwood’s graceful combination of the silver fern and the southern cross; and the “All Black” flag featuring the silver fern on a sable field.

 

If the silver fern flag emerged as the most preferred option, I would vote for the existing New Zealand flag. Black has always conferred a palpable sense of power and menace to our national rugby team, but making black the dominant colour of our national flag would be a singularly ill-omened decision. In war, flying a black flag warned one’s enemy that no prisoners would be taken. Much the same bloodthirsty intent became attached to the pirates’ skull and crossbones flag. As the international banner of Anarchism, the black flag is burdened with many negative historical associations. Across the world, black is also recognised as the colour of death and mourning.

 

Kyle Lockwood's New Zealand flag gracefully incorporates the familiar symbols of Silver Fern and Southern Cross with the red-white-and-blue of the existing New Zealand Ensign.

 

Combining as it does the two symbols most commonly associated with New Zealand, along with the red, white and blue of the existing flag, it is difficult to fault Kyle Lockwood’s much admired design. It compares very favourably with Canada’s maple leaf flag in terms of both elegance and simplicity and would quite probably gain the latter’s instant and near universal acceptance.

 

My own preference, however, would be for the tino rangatiratanga flag. As a design, it, too, is a masterful combination of simplicity and elegance. But looking good is by no means all it has going for it.

 

Designed by Hiraina Marsden, Jan Smith and Linda Munn in 1990, its adaptation of the traditional Maori koru motif and its use of Maoridom’s red, white and black colours has imbued this flag with a primal dynamism, a sense of somehow being “right”, that led to its instant adoption by most of Maoridom as well as many Pakeha.

 

The tino rangatiratanga flag also has the virtue of having emerged, naturally, out of our recent history. It now flies over the Auckland harbour bridge on Waitangi Day and has become the symbol of that part of the New Zealand nation which yearns to put the dubious legacy of British imperialism behind them.

 

It is difficult to imagine a more potent gesture of Pakeha goodwill, or of this nation’s determination to unequivocally proclaim its bi-cultural identity, than voting to adopt the flag of Maori sovereignty as the banner of us all.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, February 11, 2014.

Child Poverty: The Manifestation Of Parental Sin?

Simple Message - Contradictory Response: In the minds of many conservative New Zealanders a battle rages between their instinctive urge to protect and defend our species’ most vulnerable members, and an equally powerful conviction that their children, as extensions of themselves, constitute a form of personal property – over whom the community and/or the state should exercise only a strictly limited authority.

 

WHEN IT COMES to children, the attitudes of New Zealanders are contradictory and hard to fathom. On the one hand, we respond with genuine anguish to media accounts of infants fallen victim to adult violence. On the other, we sign monster petitions demanding the right to administer corporal punishment to our own children. If asked, we will agree emphatically that “the needs of the child must always come first”. But, when welfare agencies and anti-poverty campaigners attempt to do just that, we attack them for undermining parental responsibility.

 

It’s as if, in the mind of every Kiwi, a battle rages between the instinctive urge to protect and defend our species’ most vulnerable members; and an equally powerful conviction that our children, as extensions of ourselves, constitute a form of personal property – over whom the community and/or the state should exercise only a strictly limited authority.

 

Nowhere are these contradictory impulses more clearly on display than in the current debate over whether or not our schools should provide their pupils with meals. Wrapped around this narrowly-focused proposal to “Feed the Kids” is a much wider debate about whether or not a substantial minority of New Zealand children (estimated at 270,000) are living in poverty.

 

Conservative New Zealanders take umbrage at the very suggestion that such a large number of their fellow citizens could be living in such conditions. They simply deny that child poverty exists. What they believe New Zealand is witnessing, in the children who arrive at school every morning hungry, unshod and ill-clothed, is evidence not of inadequate resources, but of poor parenting.

 

According to these conservative New Zealanders, thousands of Kiwi parents are making poor choices about their priorities. What’s more, the institutions of the welfare state, by failing to impose a more appropriate set of priorities and enforce more sensible parental choices, have ensured that the perfectly adequate resources allocated to welfare beneficiaries are both misapplied and misspent.

 

Underpinning this conservative view is what can only be described as an alarmingly eugenicist set of assumptions.

 

So many poor parental choices, the conservatives argue, is proof that a certain (and seemingly quite large) percentage of the population are simply not up to the role of parenting. The straightforward, and brutal, solution? Do not allow such people to breed – or, if they do, take away their children and place them with couples whose parental choices pass muster.

 

It was this sort of thinking that, in Australia, led to the “Stolen Generation”. Thousands of Aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their parents and placed with God-fearing, upstanding, middle-class White Australians. The parental choices of the latter, it was assumed, would be far superior to those of Aboriginal Australians. The cycle of poverty and abuse which plagued indigenous communities could thus be broken, and in just a few generations the Aboriginal “problem” would disappear.

 

The colossal failure of imagination which the “Stolen Generation” policy represented; the singular lack of empathy which made its implementation such a shameful chapter in Australian history; similarly disfigures the analysis of New Zealand’s conservatives.

 

It is common to hear talkback callers and conservative commentators declare that no matter how hard family life has become and no matter how tough their financial circumstances, no parent should ever be excused for allowing their child to go to school hungry.

 

The mental, physical and moral disintegration afflicting individuals subjected to prolonged periods of social isolation and material deprivation is well-attested in the academic literature. The collapse of self-esteem; the recourse to alcohol and drugs as a means of deadening intense emotional distress; the increased propensity to explosive episodes of violence and self-harm: all of these symptoms – the entirely predictable consequences of poverty – are encountered by WINZ staff, police officers, social-workers, GPs, practice nurses and teachers every day of the week. They are not, however, encountered with any frequency by those who claim there is no excuse for sending a child to school hungry.

 

The conservatives have become intellectually immune to even the logical inconsistencies of their hard-line attitudes. They refuse to differentiate the weak and broken-spirited adults of their analysis from the innocent and suffering children. As mere extensions of the pathetic human-beings they were foolish enough to choose as their mothers and fathers, the children of poverty are clearly expected to go down with the parental ship.

 

The polarisation of New Zealand society into “comfortable” and “struggling” has been accompanied by a not unrelated polarisation of political convictions. Among the comfortably-off we are witnessing a wholesale rejection of the paternalism which characterised the politics of earlier conservative leaders like Gordon Coates and Keith Holyoake. In its place we find a new enthusiasm for the politics of exclusion, punishment and shame.

 

As if our children’s only role is to embody for posterity their parents’ blameless success or guilty failure.

 

This essay was originally published by The Press of Tuesday, 21 May 2013.

Digging With Teaspoons

An Honest Shovel: The intimate nature of New Zealand society has taught it's citizens to call corruption by other, less troublesome, names. When asked to dig, the responsible agencies almost always set out with a teaspoon - not a spade. Who knows what levels of corruption an honest shovel would now uncover in "the least corrupt nation on earth"?

A GROUP of wealthy ranchers and industrialists importunes the man most likely to lead their party to the White House. He hears them out politely, takes a contemplative sip from his glass of whiskey, and replies: “Boys, I’d like to help. But, like every man, I have my price. If you want me to run, it’ll cost you a well-watered ranch in prime cattle country.” The party big-wigs exchange glances and nods. Their spokesman rises from his big leather chair, extends his hand towards the beaming candidate, and exclaims: “Done!”

 

Now who would you say this politician was? A Texan, surely? Lyndon Baines Johnson? George W. Bush? Some corrupt citizen of the Lone Star State where elections were regularly franchised out to party bosses who, when it came to vote-rigging, only ever had one question: “Do you want us to count ‘em, or vote ‘em?” (Meaning: Do you want us to stuff the ballot boxes, or merely round up the required number of bribed and/or intimidated electors?)

 

Well, to be honest, this story isn’t about Texan – or even American – politics. I only used words like “ranchers” and “White House” so that you’d have no difficulty in recognising all the behind-the-scenes deal-making for what it was: political corruption.

 

Had I told you from the beginning that we were talking about New Zealand farmers and businessmen, and that the politician negotiating the price of his co-operation was the future National Party Prime Minister, Keith Holyoake, then you would already be objecting: “So what? That’s not corruption. It’s not illegal to buy somebody a farm!”

 

I remember my old editor at The Independent Business Weekly, Warren Berryman, shaking his head in wonderment when, once again, some international outfit declared New Zealand to be the least corrupt country on Earth. Warren was born in the United States and had lived what might, euphemistically, be called “a colourful life”.

 

“This is one of the most corrupt countries I’ve ever lived in”, he told me. “It’s everywhere you look – but you Kiwis just don’t see it. New Zealand tops all these surveys not because it’s corruption-free, but because New Zealanders have become experts at looking at corruption and calling it something else.”

 

How much longer, I wonder, is the rest of the world going to be hoodwinked by Kiwis’ perverse willingness to substitute an ornamental teaspoon for a spade?

 

Imagine a foreign corporate investor reading an account of the New Zealand Government’s management of the process of securing a world-class convention-centre for its largest city. Can’t you just see his eyes flicking back to the top of the story to make sure that he’s reading about New Zealand – and not some dodgy regime in the developing world.

 

Because, let’s be honest: if we were reading about a Prime-Minister meeting privately, over dinner, with the operator of the country’s largest casino; if we learned that his government was seriously considering changing the gaming laws to the advantage of said casino operator in return for it stumping-up the cash for said convention-centre; if we discovered that civil servants were operating outside official procedural guidelines and that Treasury concerns about this lack of proper process were being ignored; then wouldn’t the last place we’d think we were reading about be “the world’s least corrupt nation” – New Zealand?

 

And hasn’t the Deputy Auditor-General, Phillippa Smith, proved the late Warren Berryman absolutely correct by first detailing an extraordinary series of highly irregular activities on the part of New Zealand politicians and civil servants, only to conclude that she has no “substantive” issues with the outcome?

 

And doesn’t it remind you of those movies in which an obese southern sheriff interposes his sweating bulk between the bloodied bodies lying face-down in the street and the gathering crowd of townspeople, saying: “Nothing to see here, folks. Y’all just run along home now. Everything’s under control.”

 

Because isn’t that precisely what Prime Minister John Key’s Mr Fix-it – Steven Joyce – has been telling us to do all week?

 

And isn’t that because New Zealand is much closer to that sleepy southern town than we’d like to think.

 

Ours is an extremely intimate society in which “ordinary” citizens know (and are known by) all manner of “important” people. In such close-knit communities it is often unhelpful to rely too literally on the black letters of the law. When everybody knows where everybody else’s bodies are buried, setting forth in search of wrong-doing with an ornamental teaspoon arguably makes more sense than marching off with a spade.

 

And once the tradition of digging with teaspoons becomes established the use of a spade becomes even more dangerous. Who knows what dirty deals, sleazy quid-pro-quos and ghastly miscarriages of justice might be uncovered if an honest shovel was ever allowed to turn over the topsoil of “corruption-free” New Zealand?

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 26 February 2013.

Spooks In The Spotlight

Permanent Interests: Elected politicians come and go; political parties move backwards and forwards between the Treasury and the Opposition benches; the news media reports, critiques and, very occasionally, exposes the actions of the powerful; but the Permanent Government endures - and its servants are almost never held accountable for their actions.

 

WILL THE GOVERNMENT Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) end up in the dock? Is it really possible that senior GCSB officers will be required to give evidence in the Kim Dotcom Case? The answer is: “probably not.” The maintenance of state security is arguably the most important function a government has. It is, therefore, extremely unlikely that anyone will sanction publicly exposing the blurred lines of authority, legality and accountability so basic to effective state security.
 

Though it is nowhere clearly spelt out, it is nevertheless firmly believed by those who inhabit them that the vital institutions of a fully-functional modern state: the professional civil service; the Armed Forces and Police; the Judiciary; senior local government officials; constitute the “Permanent Government” of the Realm.
 

Elected politicians come and go; political parties move backwards and forwards between the Treasury and the Opposition benches; the news media reports, critiques and, very occasionally, exposes the actions of the powerful; but the Permanent Government endures. Over the centuries, it has been forced to concede a number of important roles to the people’s elected representatives, but obstructing the duties of the Permanent Government isn’t one of them.
 

The Kim Dotcom Case is unusual because the conduct of the Permanent Government is being disrupted by one of its own – the Judiciary. While there are many examples of politicians frustrated by the actions of a security apparatus only notionally under their control, it is rare to see the “spooks” brought to heel by lawyers and judges. So rare, in fact, that it raises the possibility that Kim Dotcom and his legal team have unleashed some kind of rogue judicial energy. It has already seriously embarrassed the Prime Minister and his National Party Government, and now threatens to compromise the operational reliability of the GCSB.
 

This is no small matter. New Zealand’s signals intelligence operation is inextricably bound up with those of the four other Anglo-Saxon powers: the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia. It is barely conceivable that the global security reach of these “Five Eyes” might be compromised by some arcane dispute over the intellectual property rights of the American film and music industries.
 

Even more unlikely is the prospect that the FBI – a principal player in the Dotcom Saga – will meekly submit to the orders of a New Zealand High Court Judge (or even our Supreme Court). The FBI may include the entire planet in its jurisdiction, and consider every Western police force to be an extension of the already very long arm of American law enforcement, but, when it comes to external scrutiny of its own investigations, the FBI answers solely to the Attorney-General of the United States.
 

The most likely outcome of the Dotcom Saga, therefore,  is that, somehow, the case will be made to disappear. Somewhere – both here in New Zealand and (hopefully) in the United States – a collection of wise old heads will be reviewing the succession of public relations, political and security disasters which followed the spectacular arrest of Mr Dotcom in January 2012 and asking how many more disasters it’s going to take before someone in authority locates the “Off” switch.
 

The whole extraordinary story calls to mind a knitted jersey with a loose thread. The garment which once comfortably covered the naked power of the Permanent Government has, thanks to Mr Dotcom’s legal team, unravelled to the point where all manner of formerly hidden things are now on clear display.
 

Before the arrest of Mr Dotcom how many New Zealanders were aware that the GCSB regularly co-operated with the New Zealand Police by intercepting the cell-phone and e-mail messages of their fellow citizens?
 

Who among us was aware that it was within the power of our Prime Minister to sign a document suppressing any and all references to the GCSB in a New Zealand court of law? When was that extraordinarily undemocratic and dangerous power conferred upon a politician?
 

Did anyone suspect that the FBI in Washington had only to pick up the phone to the New Zealand Commissioner of Police to set in motion a full-scale armed assault on the property of a man accused of nothing more sinister than copyright violation?
 

And, how many Americans would have believed that a handful of irritated movie moguls and record producers could activate the enormously complex and expensive machinery of the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA and the FBI for no better purpose than to scratch a longstanding commercial itch?
 

Is it really all that likely that this litany of embarrassing revelations is going to be lengthened by the FBI handing over its evidence to Mr Dotcom’s lawyers? Or that one of this country’s most distinguished Queen’s Counsels is going to be unleashed on our top spooks?
 

I don’t think so.
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 8 January 2013.

'Waitakere Man' Finds His Avatar

It's Alive! When the monster escapes its creator's control terrible things happen. 'Waitakere Man' first appeared on the pages of The Independent Business Weekly in September 2009 and gained wide currency as a shorthand term for Labour's conservative deserters to National. Now Waitakere Man has found his own political avatar - John Tamihere.

 

FOR DR FRANKENSTEIN the moment of maximum horror and surprise came when the monster he’d created disobeyed his orders. He’d assumed it was his to command. But, once abroad in the world, the monster went its own way.
 

Mulling over the Labour Party’s decision to re-admit John Tamihere to its ranks, I’m beginning to understand how Dr Frankenstein felt. “Waitakere Man” – the monster I created more than three years ago on the pages of The Independent Business Weekly – has not only gone its own way, it’s acquired a powerful, new, flesh-and-blood political avatar.
 

Before proceeding any further, I’d better introduce my monster. He was born out of a desire to understand the character of the thousands of former Labour voters who had switched to National in the elections of 2005 and 2008.
 

This is how I described the person I called “Waitakere Man” back in 2009:
 

He’s the sort of bloke who spends Saturday afternoon knocking-back a few beers on the deck he built himself, and Saturday evening watching footy with his mates on the massive flat-screen plasma-TV he’s still paying-off.

His missus works part-time to help out with the mortgage, and to keep their school-age offspring in cell-phones and computer games.
His trade certificate earns him much more than most university degrees. Indeed, he’s nothing but contempt for "smart-arse intellectual bastards spouting politically-correct bullshit". 

What he owns, he’s earned – and means to keep.

"The best thing we could do for this country, apart from ditching that bitch in Wellington and making John Key prime-minister," he informed his drinking-buddies in the lead-up to the 2008 election "would be to police the liberals – and liberate the police."

Waitakere Man values highly those parts of the welfare state that he and his family use – like the public education and health systems – but has no time at all for "welfare bludgers".

"Get those lazy buggers off the benefit", he’s constantly telling his wife, "and the government would be able to give us a really decent tax-cut."

On racial issues he’s conflicted. Some of his best friends really are Maori – and he usually agrees with the things John Tamihere says on Radio Live. 

It’s only when the discussion veers towards politics, and his Maori mates start teasing him about taking back the country, treaty settlement by treaty settlement, that his jaw tightens and he subsides into sullen silence. 

Though he didn’t say so openly at the time, he’d been thrilled by Don Brash’s Orewa Speech, and reckoned the Nats’ "Iwi-Kiwi" billboards were "bloody brilliant!"
 

Waitakere Man proved troublesome from the moment he emerged from my computer keyboard. Many people believed he was my avatar. They charged me with counselling the Labour Party to embrace this bigoted blowhard and tailor its policies to suit his prejudices. Not true. My intent was only ever to make Labour aware of Waitakere Man’s existence. To remind the party that he represented a lot of voters, perhaps as many as five percent of the electorate, and that if Labour had no thought of reclaiming this important political demographic, it could not avoid devising some means of replacing it.
 

But it soon became clear that Labour – or at least those elements advising Phil Goff – were openly entertaining thoughts of reclaiming Waitakere Man from National. They were anxious to shed the party’s image of being a place where no red-blooded, heterosexual working men would dare to venture; where political correctness had ousted common sense; and where the pet causes of educated middle-class New Zealanders (teachers) took precedence over the values of ordinary Kiwis (small businessmen).
 

The social liberals and trade unionists in Labour’s Caucus defeated Mr Goff’s attempt to re-connect with Waitakere Man. But, under his successor, David Shearer, the invitation has been re-sent. Mr Shearer’s sickness-beneficiary-on-the-roof story was one sop to the Waitakere Cerberus, his veiled threat to the teaching profession another.
 

And now, apparently at the behest of Mr Shearer, the New Zealand Council of the Labour Party has voted to re-admit Mr Tamihere to full membership status. Waitakere Man now possesses his very own ideological champion.
 

But what an ideology! Mr Tamihere is, after all, the man whose unreconstructed sexism and homophobia (“front-bums”, “queers”) cost him his seat at Helen Clark’s Cabinet Table. His subsequent career as Radio Live’s political shock-jock has only given these intellectually bankrupt and reactionary prejudices a wider audience. In welcoming him back, Labour’s New Zealand Councillors have spat in the faces of their most progressive members.
 

Because, like Dr Frankenstein’s monster, Waitakere Man’s newly-minted avatar answers to no one but himself. Labour has opened the door to an individual who regards most of its membership with undisguised contempt.
 

When, inevitably, he brings his knee up between progressive Labour’s legs, let no one who voted for Mr Tamihere’s re-admission feign either horror or surprise.
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 4 December 2012.