The Death Of "Big Norm" - Exactly 50 Years Ago Today.

Norman Kirk
Prime Minister of New Zealand 1972-1974

Born: 6 January 1923 - Died: 31 August 1974

Of the working-class, by the working-class, for the working-class.

Video courtesy of YouTube

These elements were posted on Bowalley Road on Saturday, 31 August 2024.

Who’s Driving The Right-Wing Bus?

Who’s At The Wheel? The electorate’s message, as aggregated in the polling booths on 14 October, turned out to be a conservative political agenda stronger than anything New Zealand has seen in five decades. In 1975, Bill Rowling was run over by just one bus, with Rob Muldoon at the wheel. In 2023, Labour was run over by a million busses – driven by ourselves.

BILL ROWLING told New Zealanders that he felt as though he had been run over by a bus. The metaphor was apt. Rob Muldoon’s 1975 electoral victory represented one of the great turnarounds in New Zealand political history. Three years earlier, Labour’s Norman Kirk had sent the National Government of Jack Marshall packing. But, just three years later, Muldoon, Marshall’s populist successor, exactly reversed Kirk’s landslide. National’s majority in the House of Representatives was identical to Labour’s – a whopping 23 seats. New Zealand had voted for the nation they wanted – and Muldoon was determined to give it to them.

It is nearly 50 years since Muldoon’s bus flattened poor Bill Rowling, but, for those with long political memories, the parallels with the election of 2023 are striking. The greatest of these is the profound sense of shock and disorientation among the activist supporters of the Left. Their discomfort is born not only of the brute facts of the election results, but also by the growing realisation that the incoming coalition government is determined to roll back practically all of the Left’s policy advances of the past six years.

Two generations have grown to adulthood since Muldoon’s reactionary political agenda was unleashed upon New Zealand. Young New Zealanders are not accustomed to governments committed to actually dismantling the changes of their predecessors, or, at least, not outside specialist areas such as workplace relations and educational assessment. For citizens under 50, the changes of the last few decades have all been in more-or-less the same direction. Economic policy has been neoliberal. Social policy has been “progressive”. Indigenous policy has been concessionary. Matters may have moved more swiftly under Labour, and slowed down a little under National, but, since 1984, the direction of travel has always been the same – onwards and upwards!

That’s what makes the experience so wrenching for the progressives of 2023. Especially with regard to the one, recurring issue which New Zealanders cannot escape: Race.

It was the National Government led by Jim Bolger that set in motion the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process – ably guided by his Treaty Settlements Minister, Doug Graham – in the early 1990s.

Not to be outdone, Labour, under the leadership of Helen Clark in the early 2000s, launched a policy effort dedicated to “closing the gaps” between Māori and Pakeha. The public backlash created by the policy was hugely strengthened by the Court of Appeal’s surprise affirmation of an enduring Māori proprietary interest in the foreshore and seabed. To keep Labour’s electoral prospects alive, Clark was forced to rein-in Māori expectations dramatically, a move which led to the creation of the Māori Party.

Don Brash, Leader of the Opposition in the run-up to the 2005 General Election, capitalised on the growing public disquiet over ethnic relations by throwing the National Party’s support behind calls for a comprehensive rolling-back of the state’s support for Māori sovereignty.

Brash lost the 2005 election, but only narrowly. “Progressive” New Zealand had been profoundly disturbed by the breadth of support for National’s reactionary policies. Brash, himself, was forced to endure what amounted to excommunication from “polite” political society. His fate was intended to serve as a warning to all serious politicians: mess with Māori (and Te Tiriti) at your peril.

Brash’s successor, National’s John Key, restored his party’s reputation (in the eyes of the political class) by sending the Māori Party’s co-leader, Pita Sharples, to New York to add New Zealand’s signature to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People.

Labour’s next prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, went one better; commissioning a group of hand-picked “experts” to compile a secret report, He Puapua, setting forth a pathway to the UN Declaration’s full implementation by the 200th anniversary of the Treaty of Waitangi’s signing in 2040. Driven forward by Labour’s radical Māori caucus, Ardern and her Pakeha colleagues felt obligated to support their colleagues’ controversial, Te Tititi-driven constitutional innovation of “co-governance”.

As happened in 2004-05, these bold moves towards Māori sovereignty ignited a Pakeha backlash. In 2023, however, the Left lacked the collective political strength to head-off the forces of reaction.

Across a broad front of social issues, public hostility towards the scope and speed of proposed and/or actual changes neutralised almost entirely the massive support Labour had received in 2020 for its highly successful early handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, the psychological and material damage inflicted upon the population by the pandemic, and the measures adopted to contain it, after 2020, contributed significantly to what the Left only belatedly registered as an alarming swing to the Right.

Separated by nearly 50 years from the strikingly similarly political derangement that followed the onset of the global oil crisis in October 1973, the sudden collapse of public trust and confidence in the Labour Government in 2022-23 was experienced by the Left as a Black Swan event of perplexing severity.

Young leftists had read about the swift succession of progressive moves undertaken by Norman Kirk’s Labour Government. The abolition of compulsory military training; the troop withdrawal from Vietnam, the recognition of “Red” China; the sending of a NZ frigate to protest French atmospheric nuclear testing at Mururoa; the cancellation of the 1973 Springbok Tour; the creation of ACC and the NZ Superannuation Fund. This is what Labour was capable of delivering – from the left.

Less well understood were the social dynamics which made it possible for a right-wing politician as shrewd and ruthless as Rob Muldoon to bring about an absolutely catastrophic change in the political climate. In the 15 months following Kirk’s sudden death in August 1974, New Zealanders egalitarian instincts were harnessed to an aggressively populist campaign directed against a Labour Party portrayed as having been taken over by intellectuals and radicals whose values were wildly at odds with those of “the ordinary bloke”. Not only was Muldoon able to present himself as the saviour of the country’s middle-class, but of its working-class as well. National’s slogan: “New Zealand the way YOU want it”, said it all.

Depressing though it is to admit, New Zealanders’ deeply ingrained social conservatism; their fury at any person, or group, who see themselves as being better than everybody else; their unwillingness to tolerate one rule for thee, and another for me; their impatience with intellectuals and artists; their wariness of difference; their hatred of privilege; and their comfort in conformity; remains as powerful today as it was 50 years ago.

Perhaps, not seeing a Muldoon figure looming over the electoral landscape, the Left felt itself to be safe. But, 50 years on from 1974-75, charismatic leadership is no longer strictly necessary. Fifty years on, we have the Internet, social-media, and algorithms. Today, we can manufacture a Muldoon for every taste. A protean Muldoon, who addresses tens-of-thousands of voters every day, with a message cleverly crafted for them alone, and delivered instantaneously through those magic rectangles of glass that never seem to leave the voters’ hands.

The sum total of these messages, as aggregated in the polling booths, is a conservative political agenda stronger than anything New Zealand has seen in five decades. In 1975, Bill Rowling was run over by just one bus, with Rob Muldoon at the wheel. In 2023 Labour was run over by a million busses – driven by ourselves.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 27 November 2023.

The Greens’ Manifesto Is Called “The Time Is Now” – But Is It?

You Cannot Be Serious! To announce that your party is even “exploring” the idea of bestowing upon Māori the “right of first refusal” to privately-owned land offered for sale will certainly test the relative strengths of collectivism and individualism in New Zealand! Attempting to restore the status-quo-ante that prevailed prior to the enforced alienation of Māori land is an invitation to civil war.

NORMAN KIRK’S COLLEAGUES called it the “bloody red book”, and privately lamented that he referred to it constantly at Cabinet. But Labour’s 1972 Manifesto was taken very seriously by “The Boss”. It contained promises which the voters expected a Labour Government to keep – and Kirk was not about to let them down.

It is a measure of how profoundly the practice of New Zealand politics has changed since the 1970s that, back then, both the public sector chiefs and the news media took party manifestos very seriously. The former detailed talented underlings to tease out the costs and consequences of the parties’ plans. The news media did its best to do acquaint the public with the same information.

Just how far party manifestos had been downgraded was demonstrated vividly by another Labour prime minister, David Lange, who frankly admitted to his party not bothering with a manifesto in 1987 – on the grounds that had his government told the voters what it was planning to do they would have voted it out of office!

What passed for manifestos in the aftermath of the radical economic changes of the 1980s and 90s were glossy documents containing few words and many pictures. Coherent arguments were replaced by bullet-pointed sentences inspired by the reactions of focus-groups. From being statements of party principle and purpose, manifestos simply told voters what they wanted to hear – as interpreted by the polling agencies hired to translate the vox populi.

Even then, there was no guarantee that these pre-tested promises would be kept. The extent to which cynicism had come to guide the behaviour of New Zealand politicians was famously revealed by the Labour Cabinet Minister Steve Maharey, who informed the House of Representatives that an unfulfilled party promise was: “Just one of those things you say when you’re in Opposition, and then forget about when you’re in Government.”

The exception to this downgrading of the election manifesto was the small, ideologically-driven party determined to present its transformational programme to the electorate in considerable detail. Perhaps the most famous of these was the manifesto prepared by the Values Party for the 1975 general election. Across 91 pages, its idealistic authors described the sort of nation the Values Party believed New Zealand could/should become. Retailing for $1.65 (roughly $20.00 in today’s money) Beyond Tomorrow became a best seller.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the impressive precedent set by their Values predecessors served as an inspiration to the Greens who remembered it. So much so that, even today, the Green Party makes an effort to present its ideas in some detail to the public. This year’s effort, The Time Is Now, at 48 A4 pages, may not be as inspiring as Beyond Tomorrow, but the Greens have, at least, made an effort.

No matter how odious comparisons are said to be, it is instructive to compare the opening lines of The Time Is Now with those of Beyond Tomorrow. The latter begins with a quote from Gandhi: “The earth has enough for everyman’s need, but not enough for everyman’s greed.” The opening line of The Time Is Now reads: “Our vision is a climate-friendly Aotearoa that honours Te Tiriti and meets the needs of everyone within the boundaries of the planet, so that we and the rest of nature can thrive.” The remaining 47 pages are intended to translate that “vision” into a consistent policy platform.

Introducing the Greens’ manifesto to the party’s AGM on Sunday (9/7/23) Co-Leader Marama Davidson began by describing what she believes to be the essence of Greenness:

“As Greens we have always found [our] humanity in being part of a collective.”

Not the best start in a nation whose majority culture is firmly founded upon the principle that the human individual is supreme, and whose touchstone novel is entitled Man Alone. Being of Ngāti Porou, Te Rarawa, and Ngāpuhi descent, it is entirely reasonable for Davidson to espouse the values of te Ao Māori, but for a party whose voter base is overwhelmingly well-educated, middle-class and Pakeha, extolling collective values may not be the most effective opening gambit – psycho-socially speaking.

Never mind. Let us proceed on the assumption that the Green Party’s members and voters are all staunch collectivists. Certainly, that would need to be the case if their commitment to an Aotearoa which honours te Tiriti is genuine. Especially when honouring te Tiriti involves facilitating “the return of whenua that was wrongfully alienated from tangata whenua, including through exploring a right of first refusal process that enables the return of private land to iwi, hapū and whānau at point of sale”.

To announce that your party is even “exploring” the idea of bestowing upon Māori the “right of first refusal” to privately-owned land offered for sale will certainly test the relative strengths of collectivism and individualism in New Zealand!

There was a very good reason why the Waitangi Tribunal was forbidden from considering privately-owned land, a reason which is, almost certainly, as valid today as it was forty years ago. Restoring the status-quo-ante that prevailed prior to the enforced alienation of Māori land is an invitation to civil war. One suspects that the Greens’ manifesto promise to “Implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in Aotearoa”, would amount to the same thing.

Not to worry, just a few pages on, under the heading of “Workforce”, the Greens’ manifesto promises to: “Legislate for a right to solidarity strikes and political strikes.”

One of the most effective political strikes on record is the general strike of Protestant workers organised by the Ulster Workers Council, which took place in Northern Ireland between 15-28 May 1974. The strikers successfully destroyed the Sunningdale Agreement establishing a power-sharing arrangement between the (majority) Protestant and (minority) Catholic communities under the auspices of the governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The ruthlessly enforced sectarian strike forced the UK Government to restore direct rule from London.

This sort of political strike is, patently, not the sort of political strike the Greens were thinking of when they confirmed that particular element of their Workforce policy. But they should be under no illusion that it is but one of the many radical responses to which the Pakeha majority would likely have resort if UNDRIP was imposed from above by a Green Government.

Many readers will undoubtedly object that the Greens are fully aware that they will be in no position to enforce the policies contained in their manifesto, and that its content is purely aspirational. But, if that is the case, then they are merely children playing at the game of politics, and should not be treated as serious contenders for office.

A political party offering a manifesto to the public, is expected to have thoroughly debated its contents and satisfied itself that the measures proposed are both desirable and workable. And, further, that its MPs are committed, 100 percent, to implementing its promises. “Given the power, this is what we’ll do.” That is the pledge they are making. If the only purpose of publishing a manifesto is to make themselves feel better, then the Greens should abjure participation in any government.

Norman Kirk was very likely the last New Zealand prime minister to take his party’s manifesto promises seriously. What New Zealanders read in the “bloody red book”, was what New Zealanders got from “Big Norm” – until the pressures of giving it to them killed him.

If the “bloody green book” is not a document to be taken seriously, then neither is the party that wrote it.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 10 July 2023.

The Facts Don’t Always Tell The Truth.

Sins Of Omission: Ardern’s speech to the 2022 Labour Party Conference shows just how much of the truth can be obscured through the presentation of the “facts”. Had she been of a mind to speak honestly to her party, Ardern could have explained to conference delegates that the reason so little has been accomplished on her watch is because the Fourth Labour Government deliberately powered-down the state.

WHAT WOULD YOU THINK of a man who offered himself for high political office with the following credentials? He was raised in humble circumstances, fought his way out of poverty and, at 44, is a twice-decorated war hero. He does not eat meat or drink alcohol, loves animals and has an easy rapport with children.

Worth a go?

Not when you hear his name. Not when you discover that the man seeking your support is Adolf Hitler.

And yet, all the attributes listed above are completely factual. Adolf Hitler was all of those things. But, simply listing facts, especially when they are stripped of context, is not the same as telling the truth. To grasp the truth of Adolf Hitler’s contribution to world history requires more than mere facts, it requires understanding, interpretation and judgement.

When the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, addressed her party’s annual conference on 6 November 2022, she cloaked herself in the legacy of the Labour leaders who had preceded her. This is what she said:

On the 9th floor of the Beehive building in Wellington, sitting directly behind my desk, is a picture of Michael Joseph Savage. You could say he’s on my shoulder but also ever so slightly in my ear.

“Of course it was Savage and the first Labour Government that lifted New Zealand out of the depths of the Great Depression. Not by cutting taxes and services, but by investing in jobs, and building a social welfare safety net. They built the country’s first state home. And not long after these social reforms - New Zealand’s living standards were among some of the highest in the world. Not for the few, but for the many.

“The Finance Minister who supported Savage, Walter Nash, then led Labour’s second government as it continued to build our nation’s social welfare system, while advocating on the world stage for peace over war after World War 2.

“It was Norman Kirk and a Labour government who tilted the country towards a modern future with reforms of trade, health, the arts, and education. They worked hard to foster a renewed national identity and partnership with Maōri - all the while challenging global evil such as apartheid and nuclear testing.

“It was a fight David Lange continued, making New Zealand nuclear free, while also righting the wrongs of the past by legalising homosexuality, and fully abolishing the death penalty.

There are many facts embedded in the PM’s speech, but precious little truth.

It is certainly a fact that the Second Labour Government was led by Walter Nash, but to suggest that he was some sort of courageous pacifist visionary is very far from the truth.

Nash was 75 years old when he became Prime Minister in 1957 and was a notorious prevaricator and procrastinator. The two Labour Ministers who drove the Second Labour Government were Finance Minister, Arnold Nordmeyer, and the Trade & Industry Minister, Phil Holloway. Inspiring these two men was a third – the senior public servant and left-wing intellectual, Bill Sutch.

Knowing these things about the Second Labour Government, being able to put Nash and his colleagues into their proper historical context, offers the present-day member of the Labour Party a radically different perspective on the possibilities of social-democratic government. Sadly, Ardern did not want to share even a small measure of the truth about those three years. Her only concern was to establish her place in the line of succession.

Poor Norman Kirk fares little better. On the basis of the PM’s summary, the Third Labour Government could easily be presented as laying the groundwork for the Fourth. The truth is, of course, very different. Kirk was a nation-builder who, like his Australian counterpart, Gough Whitlam, was determined to extend and expand the Labour accomplishments of the 1930s and 40s. In other words, Kirk’s government represented the antithesis of Lange’s.

The Fourth Labour Government made New Zealand safe for neoliberalism by dismantling everything that the First, Second and Third Labour Government’s had built. Ardern’s impossibly brief sketch of the Fourth Labour Government, in which Lange champions the anti-nuclear policy, decriminalises homosexuality, and “finally” abolishes the death penalty comes perilously close to lying by omission.

Lange initially attempted to water-down the anti-nuclear policy, and then made sure he was as far from Wellington as possible when the critical decision to either admit or deny entry to a visiting US warship could no longer be put off. The decriminalisation of homosexuality was effected by a private members bill in the name of Fran Wilde on a conscience vote. It was not a government bill, and Lange had nothing to do with it. The big battle over the death penalty for murder had been won twenty-three years before Lange became PM. It was accomplished under a National Party government in 1961. All that the Fourth Labour Government abolished, thanks to Sir Geoffrey Palmer (not Lange) was the death penalty for treason in time of war.

Ardern’s reference to the Fourth Labour Government shows just how much of the truth can be obscured through the presentation of a few highly dubious “facts”. Had she been of a mind to speak honestly to her party, she could have explained to conference delegates that the reason so little has been accomplished on her watch is because the Fourth Labour Government quite consciously decided to disempower the state, and had carefully dismantled all the machinery that made it possible for previous Labour Governments to make New Zealand a better place.

It is entirely possible that Ardern approves of David Lange’s and Roger Douglas’s “reforms”. Certainly, neither she, nor her Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, have seen fit to roll back the neoliberal revolution which the Lange/Douglas partnership began. And that’s fine – just so long as she doesn’t then pretend to be one more gleaming crimson link in the long democratic-socialist chain that begins with Harry Holland in 1919!

The Labour Party does not like to be criticised and is fiercely protective of its leaders. Over the years it has discovered that the best form of defence is to personally attack all those who draw attention to its shortcomings. Crucial to the success of this strategy, however, is the fostering within its ranks of a pervasive political amnesia, and the encouragement a profound level of historical ignorance. The measure of these Labour apparatchiks’ success is that, to date, not one party member has dared to protest the Prime Minister’s grotesque misrepresentation of the Labour governments which preceded her own.

There is so much that the Labour Party could learn from its past. So much courage that could be drawn from the men and women who refused to be told that their plans were beyond the scope of practical politics. People who didn’t have to pretend to be radical reformers. A party that said “Let’s do this!” – and then did it.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 15 November 2022.

The Way We Used To Want It – And, Maybe, Still Do.

Representing Pakeha Racism: The important thing to remember about Rob Muldoon, and the racist policies with which his name is associated, is that he drew his power from the hundreds-of-thousands of anxious, angry, and yes – racist – Pakeha who voted for him, and that his most effective campaign slogan was:
“New Zealand the way YOU want it.”

GREEN MP TEANAU TUIONO hopes to introduce a Private Members Bill repealing the Citizenship [Western Samoa] Act 1982. The Act, introduced by the National Government of Rob Muldoon, and supported by the Labour Leader of the Opposition, Bill Rowling, prevented Samoans born between 1924 and 1949 from exercising the rights of New Zealand citizenship.

Had the legislation not been passed, the decision of the Privy Council (then New Zealand’s highest court) affirming the New Zealand citizenship of all Samoans born when New Zealand exercised a League of Nations “Mandate” (later becoming a United Nations “trusteeship”) over Samoa, would have stood, and tens-of-thousands of Samoans would have enjoyed free entry to New Zealand.

Yet to be drawn out of the Private Members Bill “lottery”, Tuiono’s proposed legislation would presumably restore the citizenship rights of Samoans born between 1924 and 1949. Obviously, this would encompass a much smaller group of people than was the case in 1982. Samoans born in 1949 would today be 73 years old – coincidentally the average life expectancy of a Samoan citizen.

In much the same way as the formal New Zealand Government apology for the notorious “Dawn Raids” of 1974-76, Tuiono’s PMB would stand as a marker of both condemnation and regret for the racist policies inflicted upon Pasifika by the New Zealand state.

Given that any legislation would, after 40 years, be almost entirely symbolic – i.e. only a handful of Samoans would be in a position to take advantage of their restored New Zealand citizenship – the Greens stand to lose very little by their endorsement of Tuiono’s gesture. Slightly more challenging for the Greens’ would be the following counterfactual.

Let us suppose that Tuiono’s bill passes, and citizenship is restored to Samoans born between 1924 and 1949. Then, let us further suppose that a new legal case is mounted, and that the New Zealand Supreme Court ultimately determines that the Samoan descendants of the New Zealand citizens born between 1924 and 1949 are also New Zealand citizens. Suddenly the number of people affected by Tuiono’s legislation jumps from hardly any, to a just about all of Samoa’s population of roughly 200,000.

In these circumstances, the Greens would be faced with the same political dilemma as Labour’s Bill Rowling in 1982. Should they uphold the law and welcome 200,000 new citizens to Aotearoa-New Zealand, or, should they bow to the deafening racist clamour for closing the country’s borders to what would be, in effect, an entire Pacific nation?

Back in 1982, Rowling chose the second option. He calculated that Labour would sustain much less damage, electorally, by throwing in its lot with National, passing the legislation quashing the Privy Council’s judgement with all possible speed, and simply living with the loud moral objections of their Pasifika supporters and the increasingly vociferous anti-racist movements of the time.

As well as, it must be said, the loud objections of Labour’s own youth wing, whose president, Sean Fleigner, released a statement bitterly critical of his own party’s capitulation to the undisguised racism of Pakeha New Zealand. For this gutsy demonstration of moral fortitude, Sean and his fellow Dunedin radicals received a “visit” from the party’s dynamic young president, Jim Anderton, who, no doubt acting on Rowling’s instructions, warned them against any further gestures of public defiance which, in addition to being unsupported by all but a handful of party members, and therefore doomed to fail – were bloody embarrassing to the Leader.

Some young New Zealanders will be appalled at Labour’s open collaboration with the Rob Muldoon depicted in the 2021 television series about the Polynesian Panthers. The very same Rob Muldoon who set New Zealander against New Zealander by refusing to ban Apartheid-era South Africa’s Springbok Rugby team from touring New Zealand in July-August 1981. But, what appears outrageous with the benefit of 40 years hindsight, was almost always perceived very differently by the people living at the time.

The Privy Council’s bombshell decision had been handed down in September 1982 – barely twelve months after the civil strife that so shocked and dismayed New Zealanders the previous year. In a manner oddly foreshadowing contemporary New Zealanders’ determination to avoid any further lockdowns and just “live with” Covid-19, the Kiwis of 40 years ago wanted no more unpleasantness about racism, and were keen to put all the violent passions of 1981 behind them. Very few voters would have thanked Bill Rowling and Labour for dying in a ditch over the Citizenship [Western Samoa] Bill – and expecting them to do the same.

Labour’s concern for what was in the minds of its (overwhelmingly Pakeha) supporters was no less influential in March 1974 when Norman Kirk set in motion the policies that would culminate in Muldoon’s draconian Dawn Raids of 1976.

Kirk and his government were acutely aware of how deeply unpopular his decision to ban the scheduled 1973 tour of the Springboks was among Labour voters. While the Commonwealth Games held in Christchurch in January-February 1974 had given his government an enormous boost (which wouldn’t have been the case if the Springboks’ tour had gone ahead) Kirk was anxious to reaffirm Labour’s attachment to his country’s longstanding “White New Zealand” immigration policy. With the economy faltering, and mass unemployment threatening, sending the “Islanders” home appealed to his government as the least electorally damaging option.

Difficult though it may be to accept, such openly racist policy-making enjoyed solid bi-partisan support. Following Kirk’s death in August 1974, the anti-Pasifika feeling only intensified. Indeed, between September 1974 and November 1975, when Muldoon’s National Party decisively defeated the Labour Government, New Zealand shifted sharply to the right. Over the ensuing months, the New Zealand electorate expected – and was treated to – some of the most retrograde and vicious policy-making in New Zealand’s political history. The Dawn Raids were just one aspect of White New Zealand’s backlash.

Watching The Panthers television series, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Polynesian Panthers played a critical role in the Dawn Raids drama. The truth is they were never more than a minor irritant to the authorities. In spite of their name, they experienced nothing like the level of repression visited upon the Black Panther Party of the United States – most of whose leaders were either murdered by the Police and the FBI, or incarcerated for lengthy periods.

The Panthers’ obsessive focus on Muldoon unhelpfully obscures the fact that most New Zealanders were more than happy to limit Pasifika immigration. Politically, the Dawn Raids offered the public dramatic proof that the Government was “doing something”. Having demonstrated the requisite “hard line”, Muldoon quietly wound the theatrics down. By 1977 it was all over.

Herein lies the virtue of putting the Greens to the test of an historical counterfactual: to see whether they fully appreciate just how deeply racism remains embedded in the Pakeha population. Socially liberal New Zealanders have either forgotten, or been given the wrong information, about their country’s recent past. Much has changed since the mid-1970s and early 1980s – but an awful lot has remained the same.

It’s easy to say “sorry” when your apology can be made without political cost, and in the absence of a political leader capable of harnessing the popular resentments and prejudices it might inflame. 

The important thing to remember about Rob Muldoon, and the racist policies with which his name is associated, is that he drew his power from the hundreds-of-thousands of anxious, angry, and yes – racist – Pakeha who voted for him, and that his most effective campaign slogan was: “New Zealand the way YOU want it.”

White and Right.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 9 August 2022.

Birthday Wishes: The NZ Labour Party Is 105 Years Old.

Doers - Not Talkers: Today’s Labour Party is very good at talking: yesterday’s Labour Party was honoured and loved for what it did. A hijab isn’t a state house. Covid-19 isn’t Adolf Hitler. And, its name notwithstanding, a soft-centred neoliberal party isn’t a mass movement of the New Zealand working-class.

ON 7 JULY 1916 the New Zealand Labour Party came into formal existence. That decision was not made in the mining town of Blackball, on the South Island’s West Coast, but in Wellington. The number of New Zealanders who still believe that the Labour Party was formed by the radical coal-miners of Blackball would easily outnumber those who know the true circumstances of its birth. To be fair, Labour has done very little to dispel this historical myth. Even today you will find Labour MPs posing proudly before the fading slogans of the Blackball miners’ union hall. As if, by some strange historical osmosis, the genuine socialism of the men and women of 1908 could be absorbed into the neoliberal souls of twenty-first century Labour MPs.

Labour’s blatant misrepresentation of its own history continues. In a message to members and supporters, Labour’s deputy-leader, Kelvin Davis, celebrated the party’s 105th anniversary by sending out a self-congratulatory message featuring this extraordinary review of Labour’s past leaders:

I want to acknowledge all our leaders, past and present. From Michael Joseph Savage, who moved furniture into the first state house way back in 1937, to Peter Fraser who was involved in setting up the United Nations. From Norm Kirk who helped Aotearoa recommit to Te Tiriti, to David Lange who said no to nukes and yes to the rainbow community. From Helen Clark who helped us Kiwis save for tomorrow, to Jacinda Ardern who stood up to hate and stood up for our health.

It is difficult to know where to begin with this crude travesty of Labour’s history.

Perhaps the first thing to note is the author’s (who may, or may not, be Davis) utter contempt for historical accuracy. He or she has cynically gathered together a grab-bag of “progressive” causes and assigned them – almost at random – to the heroes of Labour’s past and present. Tragically, this travesty will pass unnoticed by the overwhelming majority of the message’s recipients. For all intents and purposes, their knowledge of Labour, and New Zealand, history is non-existent. As a political and ideological community, the Labour Party no longer possesses the human resources necessary to pass on the stories that shaped the labour movement. Those who might have performed this service are either dead, or they left the party in disgust years ago.

How well I remember the stories told to me by an elderly trade unionist and Labour Party member, the late Fred Rudkin. He would describe making his way to the Tramway Workers union hall on Saturday mornings to be thrilled by the spell-binding “shed oratory” of Bill Richards, Dunedin’s foremost union agitator. And how, during the 1951 Waterfront Dispute, he and his best mate told lies to the Police to keep safe the local leaders of the locked-out Watersiders Union. He recalled this youthful resistance to the quasi-fascist “Emergency Regulations” imposed by the National Prime Minister, Sid Holland, with undisguised pride. Like so many who recalled those years of struggle, Fred departed the Labour Party in 1989 to become a founding member of Jim Anderton’s NewLabour.

Fred Rudkin wouldn’t have known whether to laugh or cry at the words attributed to Kelvin Davis. His Mickey Savage was the Labour leader who (at fatal cost to his health) brought New Zealanders social security “from the cradle to the grave”. Mickey might have been there to help move the furniture into the first state house, but Fred knew that it was Jack Lee who made sure Labour’s state housing programme was a success. In the scandal arising out of Lee’s vicious attack on Savage in 1940, Fred was torn between these two great Labour heroes.

His memories of Peter Fraser, likewise, encompassed more than his contribution to the 1945 United Nations Conference in San Francisco. He could tell you about Fraser’s conduct at another conference. The Labour Conference where Fraser did all he could – up to and including breaching the constitution – to ensure that Lee, his principal rival for the leadership, was expelled from the party for penning the article that “drove Savage to his grave”. If I remember rightly, it was Fred who first quoted to me Lee’s description of Fraser’s smile: “like moonlight flitting across a tombstone”. He knew that Labour’s heroes, like all human-beings, were deeply flawed and far from faultless.

I well recall my first Labour Party conference. It was 1979 and David Lange was the object of considerable resentment for his conservative Methodist lay preacher’s attitude towards abortion. Five years later, that same David Lange – now Prime Minister – did his best to persuade the Labour Party conference to water-down its stance on nuclear disarmament, and was shot down in flames by the party president, Jim Anderton, for his trouble. Lange did support gay rights, but the bill he voted for in 1986 was Fran Wilde’s, not his. What’s more, it was a conscience vote. Most Labour MPs supported it, but it was not Labour’s bill.

The target of the most serious misrepresentation in the letter attributed to Kelvin Davis is Norman Kirk.

Far from helping “Aotearoa recommit to Te Tiriti”, Big Norm promulgated “New Zealand Day” as a replacement for “Waitangi Day”. His purpose was precisely the opposite of today’s Labour Party, whose support for “co-governance” would have left Kirk scratching his head in confusion. His “New Zealand Day” was a statement of national unity, just as his inspired gesture of taking the little Maori boy’s hand and leading him across the Treaty Ground was a statement of racial equality and amity – not tino rangatiratanga. The Waitangi Tribunal, brought into existence in 1975 – months after Kirk’s death – was the work of Matt Rata and Bill Rowling – not “Big Norm”.

If Davis did, indeed, write this grossly distorted version of Labour’s history, then he owes his party an apology. If, however, he signed it in ignorance, then the sin is almost as grievous. If Labour’s deputy-leader knows so little about his party that he cannot spot gross historical revisionism when he sees it, then it is pointless to expect Labour’s rank-and-file members to take the slightest interest in what their party once stood for, and the feats it accomplished, in the course of 105 years.

On the other hand, it’s probably for the best. Today’s Labour Party is very good at talking: yesterday’s Labour Party was honoured and loved for what it did. A hijab isn’t a state house. Covid-19 isn’t Adolf Hitler. And, its name notwithstanding, a soft-centred neoliberal party isn’t a mass movement of the New Zealand working-class.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 8 July 2021.

Jacinda 2.0 is "Licenced To Govern" - But Not By, Or For, Us.

Government By Permission:  That phrase: “a licence to govern” brings into sharp focus so much which has been unclear to the tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders who voted Labour-Green in confident expectation of ushering-in a period of much-needed, but long-delayed, change. It explains why – in spite of her outstanding communication skills and empathy – Jacinda Ardern finds it impossible to follow the examples of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk. 

WHAT HAS HAPPENED to Jacinda Ardern? What has become of the woman who promised to “transform” New Zealand through the “Politics of Kindness”? Where is the woman who forged a team of five million and coached it through the Covid-19 pandemic? Why is the woman who won 50.1 percent of the Party Vote refusing to respond to the needs of the poorest New Zealanders. What in the Blue Blazers is going on?

Contrast the present Labour Government’s refusal to give the poor a happy Christmas with this little vignette from Labour’s past.

“Shortly after his election as Labour Party leader in 1961, Arnold Nordmeyer was asked by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation to recall for its listeners ‘My Most Memorable Christmas’. He spoke movingly of the first Labour Government’s decision, in December 1935, to advance the equivalent of an extra week’s relief payment to all the unemployed as a “Christmas Bonus”. That single act of state generosity, he said, sent ripples of hope and goodwill through thousands of destitute families and hundreds of cash-strapped communities. By Christmas, its effects were evident across the whole of New Zealand.”

Alternatively, there’s the extraordinary interview conducted by David Frost with New Zealand’s newly-elected Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, early in 1973. About 3 minutes into the interview Kirk talks about the letter he received from a disabled woman, thanking him for the special Christmas payment he made to all social welfare beneficiaries in December of 1972, and telling him what the extra money had made possible. Here’s the link. 

Jacinda Ardern is rightly celebrated for her communication skills and for her demonstrations of empathy, but set her performances alongside Kirk’s in that interview and the huge gulf that separates the current Labour Government from its predecessor of 1972-75 is immediately apparent. Yes, the world has become a very different place, and the conduct of centre-left politics has changed dramatically. But human compassion and political authenticity are just as easy to spot in 2020 as they were in 1973. Something has been removed from our political leaders, something important. What is it? And who took it?

The answer – appropriately enough – lies in the turbulent history of the 1970s. At the heart of that history was Capitalism’s ruthless fightback against what its intellectual leaders regarded as the unwarranted, and increasingly uncontrollable, inflation of democratic expectations.

Capitalism’s problem, in a nutshell, was that too many people wanted – and were demanding – too much. Across the industrialised West, decade after decade of rising prosperity had freed ordinary people, especially young people, from the relentless pursuit of bread and butter. Having secured their freedom from raw material deprivation, people were seeking the freedom to become something more than an employee, more than a consumer. Working-class men; women of all classes; people of colour; gays and lesbians: all of these groups were demanding the right to be considered – and to become – fully human.

Nowhere is this phenomenon better described than in Ariel Dorfman’s seminal book on cultural imperialism – The Empire’s Old Clothes. In the first chapter of the book, Dorfman recalls being approached by a young woman from one of the shanty-towns that encircled Chile’s capital city, Santiago. Professor Dorfman, and some of his students, had come to help the shanty-dwellers repair the damage wrought by a recent flood.

“She came up to me and asked quite frankly if it was true that I thought people shouldn’t read photo-novels”, Dorfman writes – alluding to his crusade against the “industrial products of fiction.” Comics, soap operas, westerns, radio and TV sitcoms, love songs, films of violence: “you name it”, quipped Dorfman, “I had it under scrutiny.”

“So I stopped digging and answered her. It was true. I thought that photo-novels were a hazard to her health and her future.*

“She did not seem to feel any special need for purification. ‘Don’t do that to us, companerito,’ she said in a familiar, almost tender way. ‘Don’t take my dreams away from me.”

A few years later, about the same time David Frost was interviewing Norman Kirk, Dorfman was in the same shanty-town for the opening of a new community centre – one of the many thousands of collective initiatives funded by the socialist government of Salvador Allende – when he encountered the same woman:

“I didn’t recognize her at first, but she remembered me. She came up to me, just like that, and announced that I was right, that she didn’t read ‘trash’ anymore. Then she added a phrase which still haunts me. ‘Now, companero, we are dreaming reality.’”

For nearly 50 years now, this is the dream/nightmare that has driven the politics of the Capitalist West. How to prevent ordinary people from making their dreams real through collective action. Certainly, it is no accident that the “cure” for too many dreams began in Chile. After the USA had “made the economy scream”, and General Augusto Pinochet’s troops had gunned down Salvador Allende in his Presidential Palace, it was to Chile that the “Chicago Boys” – the followers of Milton Friedman – came to show the world how Capitalism could be kept safe from Democracy.

And the “lessons” from Chicago just kept coming. Across the Tasman, Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s government was deposed in a bloodless coup by his own Governor-General (and CIA asset) Sir John Kerr. Fortunately for ordinary New Zealanders, Norman Kirk’s untimely (and extremely convenient) demise in August 1974 obviated the need for such a dramatic intervention here. (Although the CIA did help out the National Party by facilitating the production of some killer campaign ads for the 1975 general election.) Then, of course, there was the plot to topple UK Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1976, and the final coup de grace against the very possibility of democratic socialism – the capital strike against the French socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand in 1981. If the Left ever wanted to govern again, then it would have to lower its sights – and its red flags.

Back in the 1980s, there was a story, probably apocryphal, about Mike Moore and the powerful Australian television series The Dismissal – which dramatized the sacking of Gough Whitlam’s Labor Government in 1975. According to the story, Moore was determined to remind his colleagues about the dangers that lay in wait for Labour governments.

What Moore wanted his colleagues to appreciate was the overwhelming power that could be brought to bear against a government that threatened the interests of the people who really mattered. How vital it was to keep business on your side. How much damage the news media could inflict upon a political leader it didn’t like. How dangerous senior public servants could be if their ministers refused to accept official advice. Most importantly, he wanted to remind them of the risks posed to labour governments by stubborn idealists: politicians who refused to be guided by principled pragmatism and common sense. So Moore sat all his caucus colleagues down and made them watch every one of The Dismissal’s six, hour-long, episodes.

Was Moore on to something? Had he drawn the correct lessons from the fall of so many democratic socialist politicians and governments? More importantly, had other centre-left politicians, in other countries, reached exactly the same conclusion? Is that why the world ended up with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder, Francois Hollande, Helen Clark and Kevin Rudd? Or, turning the question around, is that why the campaigns of genuine leftists like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders so consistently come to grief?

The beginnings of an answer may be found in the following passage, taken from a speech delivered to the prestigious Wellington Club on 3 November 2020 by the veteran political journalist, Colin James:

“With National weak, Jacinda Ardern has political space to push real reform. Will she? Can she? Will Grant Robertson? Can he?

“Grant Robertson has stuck to fiscal and monetary orthodoxy. Jacinda Ardern told me back in 2018 that earns Labour a ‘licence to govern’, that is, tolerance by business and other sceptics. That is a clue to their cautious mentality.”

A clue, says James. Surely it’s something a little more definitive than that? A key, perhaps? Yes, a key.

That phrase: “a licence to govern” brings into sharp focus so much which has been unclear to the tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders who voted Labour-Green in confident expectation of ushering-in a period of much-needed, but long-delayed, change. It explains why – in spite of her outstanding communication skills and empathy – Jacinda Ardern finds it impossible to follow the examples of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk. Those leaders believed the only “licence” a party needed to govern was the one given to them by the voters in a general election. Forty-eight years on from the Labour landslide of 1972; forty-eight years after that young shanty-dweller proudly informed Ariel Dorfman that she and her comrades were “dreaming reality”; Jacinda Ardern knows better. To drive a capitalist economy, it is first necessary to obtain a licence – from the capitalists.

But, securing the “tolerance of business and other sceptics” is not an easy thing to do. There are so many self-denying ordinances one has to offer-up: no capital gains tax; no wealth tax; no return to universal union membership; no restoration of the unconstrained right to strike; nothing to empower or embolden that reserve army of labour we call beneficiaries; nothing that might upset the business community, dairy farmers, or the fishing industry; and certainly nothing to combat climate change which in any way threatens the capitalists’ sacred right to make a profit. Nothing, in short, that could possibly upset the status-quo.

The most frustrating aspect of Jacinda’s “licence to govern” proposition is that in both historical and practical political terms she is, almost certainly, correct.

It is important to remember that both Ardern and Robertson were working in the Beehive during Helen Clark’s first term as Prime Minister. They would have heard the stories about the grim “Winter of Discontent” that followed the creation of the Labour-Alliance coalition government in the early summer of 1999. How the New Zealand capitalist class threatened to “put away their cheque-books” if there was even the slightest hint that some of the Alliance’s left-wing policies were about to be enacted. How the Finance Minister, Michael Cullen, had to abase himself before the nation’s “business leaders” at the Auckland Club. How Helen Clark felt obliged to swear that Laila Harré’s employer-funded child-care would only be introduced “over my dead body”.

The old Marxists may rail against Ardern’s and Labour’s “incrementalism” but when challenged to come up with an alternative strategy for operating safely under neoliberal capitalism, the system which, for nearly fifty years, has decreed anything more ambitious than piecemeal and largely inconsequential legislation verboten, they generally mutter something about “revolutionary action” and head for the bar.

They’re right, of course. Neoliberal Capitalism, by declaring democratic socialism and social-democracy out-of-bounds in the 1970s and 80s has, wittingly or unwittingly, left revolution as the only viable option. Not only when it comes to once again making it possible for the wretched of the earth to “dream reality”; but also when it comes to rescuing the only planet we know of in the entire universe where ordinary people’s dreams of becoming truly free and fully human can be realised.

* It would be interesting to know what Ariel Dorfman (who is still alive) makes of the sort of communications hardware and software that has become ubiquitous in twenty-first century societies. So much more powerful and compelling than the photo-novels and comics of the 1960s and 70s, our PCs, lap-tops, tablets and cellphones have made the corporations who manufacture and control them masters of the planet. The “industrial production of fiction” which Dorfman complained of back then seems quaint when compared to the scale of contemporary cultural imperialism’s reach and power. That capitalism has placed a portal to its material and imaginative production in virtually every hand on the planet should give us pause. Perhaps, like the young shanty-dweller, we will only be able to start “dreaming reality” when we throw the masters’ “trash” away?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 13 November 2020.

National's Going Gangbusters.

Criminal Enterprises: Gangs are not welfare institutions. Nor are they a substitute for the family their members never had. They are ruthless, violent, criminal money-making machines. That is all.

OKAY, first-things-first. Gangs exist for one purpose – and only one. They are a sure-fired, time-tested institution for making crime pay – and pay big. National is right to go after them, not only because most voters will cheer them on for doing so, but also because gangs injure individuals and damage society. Pushing any other kind of argument simply makes National’s job easier. “Look at the Left”, Simon Bridges will crow. “Soft on crime. The gangster’s best friend!”

In their essence, gangs are based on the notion that there is safety in numbers. This doesn’t just apply to violent conflict where, obviously, the more “soldiers” you bring to the fight the better chance you have of winning it. Safety in numbers also applies to practical criminal behaviour.

Hierarchy is the key. At the top, a handful of leaders, thoroughly insulated from actual offending, give orders to “patched” crime managers who, in their turn, send out wannabe gangsters to do the actual selling, thieving, hustling, whatever. All proceeds flow upwards. Those at the bottom get the least, those at the top the most. Patched membership of gangs is strictly rationed to preserve the organisation’s essential pyramidal structure.

A gang can only remain effective if its hierarchy is respected. Absolute loyalty is demanded and ruthlessly enforced. Among gang members and associates no person is more despised than the “nark”. This animosity is entirely rational. Nothing brings down those at the top of a gang hierarchy more effectively than an informer.

Keeping the hierarchy safe explains the aura of danger and violence that surrounds every effective criminal gang. It is a feature, not a bug, because without the ever-present threat of serious and/or fatal violence – against outsiders who would do it harm, and insiders who dare to flout its discipline, the gang would swiftly fall victim to its criminal competitors, or the Police.

Gangs are not welfare institutions. Nor are they a substitute for the family their members never had. They are ruthless, violent, criminal money-making machines. That is all.

National knows this. Its members and supporters see the effects of gang activity all the time. Small businesses and farmers fall victim to their depredations almost every day. Local professionals in the provinces see their effects everywhere. In their surgeries, if they’re doctors. In their classrooms, if they’re school principals. On the town streets, if they’re the local Police Sergeant. They talk about it grimly, over whiskies, at the local Rotary Club – and complain about it loudly to their local National Party MP.

In the major cities it’s even worse. These provide the most lucrative markets for criminal enterprise: for drugs; for stolen goods; for all those other things that “a guy’s gotta have” – but which the state forbids. The cost to metropolitan New Zealand of these gang activities is huge. The methamphetamine trade, in particular, destroys lives, careers, families, entire neighbourhoods. Its victims are responsible for an alarming percentage of serious theft and fraud. Inevitably, their moral, mental and physical deterioration imposes heavy burdens on our health and corrections systems. Those who see methamphetamine’s effects up-close: the resident doctors, nurses, police officers, probation officers and social workers who clean up its mess; despise the gangs who are the drug’s principal distributors. The gangsters also see the enormous harm caused by their offending – but they just don’t care.

So, if National knows this – and frames its policy accordingly – why don’t Labour and the Greens? What happens inside their caucuses when someone like Greg O’Connor, or Willie Jackson, or Stuart Nash stands up and tells them what the gangs are really like? Obviously, their caucus colleagues do not nod their heads and say: “Thanks guys, it’s always good to get the perspective of people with personal experience of the harm gangs do to individuals and communities. What we all need to do now is come up with an effective response.” It can only be supposed that a majority of Labour and Green MPs respond to the anti-gang attitudes of their “right-wing” colleagues with the stock answers of Sociology 101.

When “Big Norm” Kirk promised to “Take the Bikes off the Bikies” in 1972, it wasn’t because he had heard the same sort of slogans repeated endlessly throughout his political career and thought it advisable to do the same. Forty-seven years ago, Kirk’s promise had the punch of the new. That’s because bikie gangs were new – as were the Maori gangs emerging from the rapidly growing provincial industrial towns and urban ghettoes. He couldn’t do it, of course. Putting an end to gangs wasn’t any easier then than it is now.

If overseas experience is any guide, there are two ways of dealing with gangs. The easiest way, adopted by Labour nemesis, Rob Muldoon, is for the government to buy them off. Let them do what they do, but always on the proviso that no “civilians” get hurt. Selling cannabis to their neighbours and their kids – that’s fine. But stay out of the city centres and the leafy suburbs – and stop providing the news media with lurid headlines. The Buy-Off has its merits as a solution, but in the end it is no match for criminal greed. Inevitably, the gangs re-emerge: bigger, better resourced and much more dangerous.

The hard way to beat the gangs is through solid, old-fashioned police work – aided whenever possible by augmented legal powers and the new technology required to make dedicated policing effective. That’s how the FBI brought down the New York Mafia. That, and by using the information obtained through advances in electronic surveillance to apprehend and then “flip” lower level gangsters: promising them immunity and a new identity in return for spilling the beans on the “wise guys” at the top of the hierarchy.

National appears to have chosen the hard way. Yes, forcing suspected gangsters to prove that they are not living off the proceeds of crime before accessing welfare payments is a tough policy. But these are tough guys. Tough – and smart. It always pays to remember that the individuals in question are criminals – well-versed in the art of ripping-off any system incautious enough to offer them something for nothing. Shorn of all its political bells and dog-whistles, National’s policy, by forcing gangsters to rely solely on the income derived from their offending, should make them easier to put away.

It’s not subtle, and it’s not pretty. But, you know what? It just might work.

This essay was posted simultaneously on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Thursday, 31 October 2019.

What If Jacinda Was Suddenly Taken From Us – Like “Big Norm”?

God Forbid - But, What If? Recalling Kirk’s death raises some troubling thoughts about New Zealand’s current prime-minister, Jacinda Ardern. God forfend that it should happen, but if she were to die, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the second year of her premiership – how would she be remembered?

ON SATURDAY, 31 August, it will be 45 years to the day since Norman Kirk died. He was no age at all, just 51, and although he died in hospital, hardly any New Zealanders were aware that his reasons for being there were likely to prove fatal.

That’s why the shock of his passing was so devastating. For a brief moment it brought the whole country together. Bosses and trade union leaders stood side-by-side to pay their respects. RSA men wept alongside long-haired hippies. Pakeha and Maori mourned according to their own traditions, but, as always, the Maori did so in ways that both enriched and enlarged the moment of national grief. For the first time, the Maori proverb: Kua hinga te totara i te wao nui a Tane – A Totara has fallen in the forest of Tane, imprinted itself upon the cultural consciousness of the Pakeha nation.

The tragedy of “Big Norm’s” passing was by no means contained within his homeland’s borders. Upon hearing the news in faraway Tanzania, its President, Julius Nyerere, burst into tears. In Beijing the Chinese premier, Chou Enlai, bowed three times before Kirk’s photograph in solemn acknowledgement of his worth. Australia’s Gough Whitlam hastened across the Tasman to stand by his casket.

Though few were willing, or able, to articulate exactly what it might be; the feeling that something vitally important to the country’s future would now be left undone was palpable. Long before he was buried amidst rain and an all-enveloping mist (as befitted a rangatira of such great mana) the myth of Norman Kirk and his all-too-brief prime-ministership was sending its taproots down deep into the nation’s collective memory.

Recalling Kirk’s death raises some troubling thoughts about New Zealand’s current prime-minister, Jacinda Ardern. God forfend that it should happen, but if she were to die, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the second year of her premiership – how would she be remembered?

Only the most churlish (and dishonest) of observers would suggest that the death of “Jacinda” would inspire anything less than a truly massive outpouring of national grief. The public’s sense of shock and bereavement would be every bit as great as that which greeted Kirk’s demise. Indeed, it would, almost certainly, be greater. Young New Zealanders, in particular, would feel that they had lost not only a personal friend, but a generational champion. Jacinda’s defining quality of empathy would be reflected many times over in the over-brimming emotions of the nation’s stricken youth.

The parallels would not end there. As a living Prime Minister, Kirk had towered above his political contemporaries. The NZ Labour Party contained no one within its parliamentary ranks who could hold a candle to “The Boss”. His eventual successor, the intelligent and thoroughly decent Wallace “Bill” Rowling, was never able to escape Kirk’s huge shadow. The only political leader of any substance left upon the national stage following Kirk’s departure, was the Leader of the Opposition, Rob Muldoon. Everyone who understood the politics of the day grasped immediately that he was the man who, in just 15 months, would be leading the country. The moment Big Norm’s heart stopped beating, Labour became a dead man walking. Without Jacinda, Labour would, similarly, be transformed instantly into a zombie party.

The Myth of Jacinda, like Kirk’s, would swell rapidly to epic proportions. “If only Grant Robertson, Winston Peters and James Shaw had let Jacinda be Jacinda!”, would be the cry that went up from her bereft followers, “Instead of always coming up with reasons why everything she wanted to do couldn’t be done. If only she had been allowed to spend the money needed to end child poverty and homelessness. If only all those men hadn’t prevented her from making Climate Change – as she had promised – the Nuclear-Free Moment of her generation. Jacinda knew what had to be done – why wasn’t she empowered to simply forge ahead and do it?”

Like Kirk before her, a Jacinda taken from her people many years before her time, would rapidly become the righteous receptacle for an ever-increasing multitude of what-ifs and might-have-beens.

Nearly always, the counterfactuals swirling around Kirk posit an alternative future in which all of the Third Labour Government’s reforms – NZ Superannuation in particular – bear healthy fruit and prosper. Hardly ever do those who ask “What if?” raise the possibility that, even in the New Zealand where a healthy Norman Kirk contests the 1975 general election, a rampantly populist Rob Muldoon might still have delivered a knockout blow against the big man’s government. What if the  widely-held assumption that “Big Norm” would have defeated Muldoon easily is dead wrong? What if, as is demonstrably happening to Jacinda as she approaches the second anniversary of her prime-ministership, the gloss had well-and-truly come off Kirk?

In 1974-75 a great many New Zealanders were frightened and angry. Frightened by the power of the trade unions; by New Zealand’s growing indebtedness; by inflation eating away at the purchasing power of their salaries and pensions; by hippies and protesters calling the shots at home (hadn’t they persuaded Kirk to cancel the 1973 Springbok Tour?) and by Third World nations defeating the United States, and pushing up the price of oil, abroad. Young people, women and Maori had forgotten their place. Many of the old certainties were under serious challenge – along with the authority figures who defended them. Conservative working-class voters, no less than National’s traditional middle-class supporters, were looking for a strong leader: someone prepared to give them New Zealand the way they wanted it.

Who’s to say that, under a first-past-the-post electoral system, that fear and anger would not have been enough to overpower even Norman Kirk’s hopeful visions of the future?

We shall never know. Forty-five years on, Kirk’s might-have-beens, like the lustre of the man himself, are still sufficiently tantalising to inspire us. Courage. Vision. A principled refusal to step back when confronted with the concentrated malice of the Powers-That-Be. These remain the sacred political talismans handed down by the Labour Prime Minister who died on Saturday, 31st August 1974.

All nations need a mythologised Totara to shelter under.

Even after it has fallen.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 29 August 2019.

Jacinda's Library

A Long Time Ago, In A Parallel Universe Far, Far Away: The political journalist scratched his head in confusion. Only then did he notice the name of the building: ‘The Jacinda Ardern Presidential Library and Public Resource Centre’. Making his way inside to the information desk, he asked the librarian for an explanation.

SOME COSMOLOGISTS SAY that ours is but one of an infinite number of universes. It’s a wild thought, because, if they exist, this infinity of parallel universes grants us an infinity of parallel lives. Whatever we can imagine ourselves doing has already been done, is happening right now, or will be done at some point in the future, in one of these alternate worlds. In this universe we may be powerless paupers, but elsewhere – in at least one of these parallel universes – we are kings.

How’s that for a comforting thought the next time you’re feeling down?

The idea that there are other worlds, adjacent to this one, is far from new. In the myths and legends of many cultures we find tales of people who left their homes on hum-drum errands, only to encounter mysterious beings who, in the twinkling of an eye, transported them to places of wonder and enchantment. When they return home, time itself seems to have been stretched and twisted. By their reckoning, their absences can only have lasted a few hours, but in the country they left behind, many years have passed. Loved ones have died, or grown old, and our baffled heroes pass, unrecognised, down streets that did not exist when they set out – only a day before.

All very Einsteinian (or should that be Schrodingerian?) but rest easy, there is a purpose to all this esoteric speculation.

Nowhere is the experience of contingency stronger than in the realm of politics. Politicians and political activists may live in this universe, but their heads and hearts are filled with the multiple worlds that could exist – if only the voters; the proletariat; the national community; were courageous enough to bring them into existence.

This multiplicity of possible worlds is often expressed in the musings of what are called “counterfactual” historians. How often have we heard someone pose the question – “What if?”

What if the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s car had turned down another street in Sarajevo – instead of the one where his assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was eating his lunch?

What if JFK had toured Dallas in a standard – instead of an open-topped – presidential limousine?

What if Roger Douglas had been hit by a Wellington trolley-bus on his way to Parliament in 1983?

Whenever questions like these are posed, we sense the presence of alternate pasts: histories of worlds that might have been – but never were.

So now, arriving at the crux of the matter, I intend to pose a question of my own. A question which, simply by being asked, raises before us that shimmering membrane which separates the world as it is, from the world as it might be. A world that, even now, could break through the web of contingency – but only if the leaders of the Labour-NZ First-Green Government can find the courage to change course.

It has been nearly 40 years since the imaginations of New Zealanders hungry for change have been seized so forcefully by an incoming prime minister and government. The last time the thin membrane separating the parallel worlds of political reality and political aspiration shimmered so brightly was in 1972.

The difference between now and then, however, is that Norman Kirk and the Third Labour Government actually attempted that most dangerous of all political manoeuvres: the merging of “what is” with “what could be”. Kirk made a wonderful start, but like so many other political leaders who have attempted the manoeuvre, it proved too much for him. With his death, the two worlds straightaway began to disentangle themselves. On election night 1975, the once bright membrane shimmered faintly – and went dark.

At this point, I feel duty-bound to explain the enormous difference between attempting to bring into being that which has never before existed – which his immensely difficult – and allowing the ideas and practices of the past to break through into the present.

The relative ease with which this can be accomplished was demonstrated by the prime ministers and governments that followed Kirk’s. Political and economic concepts that many believed dead and buried passed effortlessly from the world of “what was” and into the world of “what is”. Once inside this world, the world of the present, these ghost concepts began to transform it. More rapidly than many believed possible “now” began to look like “then”. Mass unemployment returned. Inequality grew by leaps and bounds. Homelessness became commonplace. The streets filled with beggars. New Zealand soldiers went off to fight in other people’s wars.

The ghosts of the past are easily summoned. The angels of the future require considerably more persuasion.

What then should Jacinda and her government do?

I will answer that question with a story.

It concerns a political journalist who, in fulfilling some hum-drum errand, found himself in the company of a mysterious band of revellers who insisted that he accompany them to a marvellous party.

He awoke the next morning in a deserted mansion shaded by tall macrocarpa trees and enclosed by a tumble-down and ivy-covered wall. Pushing open the rusted front gates, he stumbled into the streets of a city that seemed greatly changed.

What has become of all the cars? He wondered. And why is the Tino Rangatiratanga flag flying above the library?

When he put these questions to a passer-by, the person looked at him strangely.

“That the flag of the Aotearoan Republic, stranger, and has been these last 25 years.”

The journalist scratched his head in confusion. Only then did he notice the name of the building: ‘The Jacinda Ardern Presidential Library and Public Resource Centre’. Making his way inside to the information desk, he asked the librarian for an explanation.

“It’s named after the Prime Minister who ushered-in the Republic back in 2022 – after the uprising.”

“Uprising? What uprising?”

The librarian shook his head in disbelief.

“What uprising? Where have you been for the past quarter-century? When Jacinda and her coalition introduced what was soon being called “The Rollback”, the neoliberals did everything they could to prevent it from happening. When a crazed junior staffer from the Treasury attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister in the Beehive Theatrette, hundreds of thousands turned out to demand the passage of her government’s reforms. The protesters, led by rangatahi, stormed Parliament and proclaimed the Bi-Cultural Republic of Aotearoa. With the neoliberals ousted, and Jacinda elected President, the real changes began. Aotearoa rapidly became a beacon for equality, freedom and ecological wisdom across the whole world.”

“And Simon Bridges?”, asked the journalist, hardly able to believe what he was hearing.

“Bridges! That rogue! Hah! He fled to Australia – still there as far as I know.”

“And Jacinda? Is she still alive?”

“Still alive! Where have you been! Jacinda Ardern is Secretary-General of the United Nations!”

Wide-eyed, the journalist, had only one more question.

“So, who’s running the country now?”

“Why, President Swarbrick, of course. She’s halfway through her second term. In two years’ time, the presidency will pass back to the Tangata Whenua. Most people are picking Pania Newton to succeed Chloe.”

The journalist, thanked the librarian and, plucking a free map of the city from the counter, headed off in what had, only the day before, been the direction of his home.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 23 August 2019.

That Seventies Show.

Compare And Contrast: One of the reasons so many powerful forces combined to oust the Third Labour Government was its obvious determination to move beyond progressive rhetoric and embrace progressive action. When assessing the behaviour of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her team, it so often appears that they believe progressive rhetoric and progressive action to be one and the same. That to say it, is to do it. If only politics were that simple!

JACINDA ARDERN HAILS her government as the most committed to delivering progressive change since the mid-1970s. In other words, since the Third Labour Government of Norman Kirk and Bill Rowling (1972-1975). Before assessing whether or not the Prime Minister’s claim is true, it is worth considering what on earth possessed her to make it. What would make the leader of this Labour caucus – so very different from the caucus Norman Kirk presided over in the heady days following the 1972 election – so eager to assert her government’s close kinship with the Labour Party of the early 1970s?

Part of the answer must surely lie in the deep political impression which the Third Labour Government left upon those who were there at the time. Among left-leaning Baby Boomers, in particular, Norman Kirk and his government still elicit strong emotions. After twelve long years of National Party rule, its palpable political energy jolted the country awake in a way that was entirely new to a generation which had almost given up on the idea that conventional politics could usher-in genuine change.

It makes sense for Labour’s campaign strategists to associate Ardern with Kirk. The Baby Boomers are conscientious voters. If they can be persuaded to see Jacinda as the re-incarnation of “Big Norm”, then those who remember the tragic fate of his government will want to do everything they can to ensure that hers does not share it. Kirk died in office, and Labour was thrown out after a single three-year term. Over the years, many members of the Baby Boom generation have asked themselves: How might New Zealand have fared if Kirk had lived and Labour had won a second term? Encouraging these voters to hope that, somehow, re-electing Jacinda will show them, isn’t a completely stupid idea.

The other, slightly scarier, explanation is that Jacinda and those around her actually believe they are presiding over a government every bit as progressive as Kirk’s and Rowling’s. With so few of her key advisers and most trusted colleagues being old enough to have experienced the Kirk years (such people would need to have been born around, or before, 1955, making them 60+) it will be difficult for them to grasp just how radical was the political disjuncture between the New Zealand that existed before 1972, and the New Zealand that came after.

One of the reasons so many powerful forces combined to oust the Third Labour Government was its obvious determination to move beyond progressive rhetoric and embrace progressive action. When assessing the behaviour of Jacinda and her team, it so often appears that they believe progressive rhetoric and progressive action to be one and the same. That to say it, is to do it. If only politics were that simple!

If Jacinda’s coalition government really was the progressive equal of Kirk’s, then it would have behaved very differently in the 100 days following its formation. Kirk, like his counterpart across the Tasman, Gough Whitlam, wasted no time in announcing a complete withdrawal of troops from Vietnam; abolishing compulsory military training; and recognising the People’s Republic of China. These were all commitments he had made while in opposition, and he lost no time fulfilling them in government. The equivalent moves by Jacinda would have been to withdraw New Zealand from the Trans-Pacific Partnership; order an immediate halt to all oil and gas exploration; and repatriate immediately all New Zealand military personnel serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jacinda’s supporters will, of course, object that two out of three ain’t bad. Except, her government’s oil and gas announcement is a post-dated cheque, not a decision with immediate effect. Similarly, with Iraq and Afghanistan. In deference to our “very, very, very good friends” New Zealand’s withdrawal has been staggered over three years. The less said about the TPPA (sorry, the CPTPPA!) the better.

And this, of course, is the fundamental difference between the Kirk/Rowling Government and Jacinda’s. Such decisions as the PM and her colleagues have made all tend toward the tentative, small steps of the preternaturally cautious. Entirely lacking is the bold, unequivocal gestures that distinguished the Third Labour Government. Kirk’s decision to send a frigate to the French nuclear testing ground at Mururoa. His cancellation of the 1973 Springbok Tour. Labour’s bold steps in public broadcasting. It’s economy-transforming superannuation scheme. Bill Rowling’s green-lighting of Matt Rata’s revolutionary Waitangi Tribunal. Kirk’s Government didn’t have to call itself “transformational” – it simply got on with the job of transforming New Zealand.

Perhaps the greatest contrast between these two governments, however, lies in the field of housing. The Third Labour Government’s record here is outstanding. In just three years many thousands of houses were constructed and/or financed by the state. The housing shortage, which loomed as the 70s began, was answered by Kirk and his ministers as emphatically as Michael Joseph Savage and John A. Lee responded to the housing crisis of the 1930s. Kirk’s Government built houses for Kiwis. Jacinda’s has given them KiwiBuild – which is not quite the same thing.

In one respect, however, Jacinda’s government is comparable to Kirk's. Not in the policy sense, but in terms of its heterogenous political composition. The Labour Party of the 1970s was a very broad church, encompassing everyone from rabid anti-communists, to American-style liberals, to avowed socialists. Jacinda’s coalition encompasses a very similar political assortment. From the social conservatives and economic radicals in NZ First, to the social liberals in Labour and the Greens. (Direct descendants of the ground-breaking Values Party, also an artefact of 1972.)

And yet, even here, the comparison falters. Norman Kirk bestrode his party like a colossus. He kept a copy of Labour’s manifesto at his elbow in Cabinet meetings – and woe betide the minister who attempted to deviate from it. Jacinda does not command her government in anything like the same way. What she does is front it. Spectacularly well, it must be said, but only in the way that a ‘method’ actor is spectacularly good. She has the same instinct for the camera; the same ability to deliver her lines with gut-wrenching conviction.

“Big Norm” wrote his own.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 27 June 2019.