Chris Hipkins' Mistake.

First Rule Of Parliamentary Politics - Learn To Count! Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins (Centre) confers with Finance Minister, Grant Robertson, and Prime Minister Ardern. Hipkins' mistake - trusting the word of the National Party - is one he will be determined to avoid repeating.

IT WAS A MISTAKE: a serious mistake; a mistake born out of Labour’s naïve readiness to trust the National Opposition. It was, after all, the first sitting of the newly elected House of Representatives. Normally, an occasion for a little bit of pomp and circumstance, when Members of Parliament swear allegiance to the Sovereign, assume their seats, and elect one of their number Speaker of the House. Historically, a day of bi-partisan goodwill; a day for tradition; a day of calm before the House settles into its normal, adversarial, storms.

Not this day.

Clearly, when the Leader of the Opposition, Bill English, told a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery that “it’s not our job to make this place run for an incoming Government”, Labour’s new Leader of the House, Chris Hipkins, refused to take him seriously. Not even English’s parting shot: “we have no obligation to smooth [Labour’s] path. None whatsoever”, was explicit enough for Labour to take precautions against an Opposition ambush.

Not on the first day.

Not even when Simon Bridges, National’s “Shadow” Leader of the House, accused Labour of attempting to perpetrate an “unprecedented” erosion of the Opposition’s democratic rights, did Hipkins smell a rat. Why should he, when all he was proposing to do was implement a number of unanimously agreed changes to the rules governing the conduct and membership of Parliament’s select committees?

After all, these same amendments to Parliament’s “Standing Orders” – one of which limited the number of Select Committee members to 96 – had been recommended to the previous House of Representatives by no less a person than the man now proclaiming them to be a democratic outrage – Simon Bridges!

Obviously, this was all about the Opposition giving voice to their frustration. Opposition is never easy and the temptation to rhetorical over-statement is always very strong. English was simply talking tough – that is his job now. And Bridges? Well! Taking his cue from Bill, he was simply pumping-up the rhetoric to bursting point. Hell! Hipkins had done it himself often enough when seated on the Opposition Benches! All this fire and brimstone was being laid on for the benefit of National’s aggrieved voters, still smarting over the election outcome. There was no need for him, or anyone else on the Government’s side of the House, to get excited.

Except, there was.

With the Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Peters, and the Trade Minister, David Parker, both out of the country, and three more Government members absent from the Chamber, Hipkins was three votes shy of a majority on the Floor of the House. No matter, the only important business of the day was the election of Trevor Mallard as Speaker of the House, with National’s Anne Tolley as his deputy. All parties had been consulted, and all parties were agreed. The vote was a mere formality.

Until Bridges turned it into something else.

They say that the first and most important skill a politician is obliged to master is how to count. Bridges tallied-up the Government numbers and realised that the National Party had command of the Floor. Without a moment’s hesitation he pounced. If Labour wanted Mallard to be Speaker, then they would have to yield to the Opposition on the number of Select Committee members. Instead of 96, Bridges demanded 108. If Hipkins refused, then National would use its temporary command of the House to deny Mallard his heart’s desire – the Speaker’s Chair!

It was a scene of extraordinary drama. Bridges, his face contorted in a rictus of anthropoid belligerence, confronted the beseeching countenances of Hipkins and Finance Minister, Grant Robertson. The image will do him no harm – not among his caucus colleagues, anyway. With a single, ruthless stroke of parliamentary gamesmanship, Bridges has seized for himself the priceless mantle of National’s warrior knight.

But at what cost?

Hipkins made the mistake of believing that National would not stoop to turning the opening of Parliament into an ugly display of aggressive partisanship. It’s a mistake he will do everything in his power to avoid repeating.

Bridges, meanwhile, has signalled that National is ready to employ the tactics of the US Republican Party: obstruction without reason; obstruction without purpose; obstruction without end.

In the memorable words of Bette Davis in All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

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, 10 November 2017.

Settling The Stardust: The Grim Logic Behind National's Opposition Tactics.

Starting As They Mean To Finish: Simon Bridges' opening parliamentary gambit has made it more-or-less impossible for National’s period in opposition to be anything other than a bloody, no-holds-barred fight to the finish. Bill English had hinted that this might be the Opposition's game-plan when he told the NZ Herald that “it’s not our job to make this place run for an incoming Government […] we have no obligation to smooth [Labour’s] path. None whatsoever.”

WHAT WAS HE THINKING? When Simon Bridges pulled his little parliamentary stunt and extracted his procedural pound of flesh – what was he thinking? Was it no more than a spur-of-the-moment bluff? Did Labour’s Chris Hipkins give in too readily? What would have happened if the Government had been prepared to call his bluff? We’ll never know. We never do. History turns on such moments. The course our political leaders end up taking is always just one of an infinite number of alternatives they could have followed. But the courses chosen: the paths followed; they matter. You can put a ring around that, they matter a lot.

What Simon Bridges was thinking, probably, was that it was a risk worth taking. As the Shadow Leader of the House, he had given the Government his word that National would support Trevor Mallard’s bid to become Speaker, providing that, in return, his colleague, Anne Tolley, would be elected Deputy-Speaker. Labour had agreed. A deal had been struck. As an “honourable” Member of Parliament, Simon’s word should have been his bond. So, yes, his bold parliamentary gambit represented a huge breach of trust. It was risky. But the potential reward was worth it.

Welching on the Speaker deal. Slapping Labour’s face in front of the whole world. Making them look weak and incompetent by turning the first sitting of the House of Representative into a shambles and a farce – and coming out of it with a concession that promised many, many more opportunities to frustrate and humiliate the Government. These were all victories – his victories – and they would transform him into National’s warrior knight.

Bridges’ actions had achieved something else. Such an open and unconscionable breach of trust made it more-or-less impossible for National’s period in opposition to be anything other than a bloody, no-holds-barred fight to the finish. Bill English had hinted that this might, indeed, be National’s plan when he told the NZ Herald that “it’s not our job to make this place run for an incoming Government […] we have no obligation to smooth [Labour’s] path. None whatsoever.”

But like this? On the first day? Surely not.

Jacinda Ardern must now decide how her Labour-NZ First-Green government should respond to Bridges’ ambush. Like Barack Obama, she has come into office with an all-embracing programme of social, economic and cultural uplift. A programme in which she hoped the losing party would not only be willing to play the role of her government’s necessarily critical opposition, but also that of a patriotically constructive partner in the urgent task of national renewal. It is now very clear that this objective will only be achieved over the broken body of the National Party. With all hopes of collaboration and compromise dashed on the very first day, Jacinda’s new government is faced with the additional challenge of advancing its ambitious legislative programme in the face of the Opposition’s implacable and unrelenting resistance.

The most effective way for the National Opposition to resist Jacinda’s reforming government is by doing everything within its power to shatter its supporters’ faith in the political system’s capacity to deliver real change. The most terrifying sight the National Opposition has witnessed so far must surely have been the size and enthusiasm of the crowd of ordinary New Zealanders who gathered in Parliament Grounds to welcome the newly sworn-in Prime Minister and her Cabinet back from Government House. Bill English and his caucus would have observed all those expressions of hope and joy and realised that unless this new-found faith in politics – Jacinda’s “stardust” – was dispersed, and rapidly, then the new government’s lease on the Treasury Benches was likely to be a long one.

National is well aware that its own supporters’ understanding of politics is very different from that of Labour’s, the Greens’ and NZ First’s followers. National voters see politics as a purely instrumental activity: the means by which their interests and aspirations are secured and encouraged. Most of them are well aware of the fact that this can only be achieved at the expense of the less prosperous half of the New Zealand population – and most of them are quite okay with that. In their eyes, the poor and the marginalised have only themselves to blame for the multiple misfortunes which assail them. If you’re a loser in this society, it’s obviously because you haven’t tried hard enough to win!

It is this ruthlessly competitive approach to life and politics which allows them to respond to Simon Bridges parliamentary ambush with nothing but unalloyed admiration. Whatever it takes to win is fine by them. If their opponents label such tactics “dirty politics”, then they will simply shrug-off the accusation. “Dirty politics?”, they will chortle. “Is there any other kind?”

What was Simon Bridges thinking when he staged his parliamentary ambush? That it would not hurt his political career to be seen to be responding so unequivocally to the expectation of his party’s supporters that everything must be done to make politics appear tawdry and mean-spirited? That every stratagem which serves to make people despair of politics; and every act that causes them to turn away from politicians in disgust; will be heartily approved by National’s voters?

Those would certainly have been the thoughts of a young, ambitious leader-in-waiting, brashly confident that the National Opposition will retain the unwavering support of all those New Zealanders intent on recovering their lost social and economic ascendancy – no matter what it does.

Use any means necessary – just so long as that bloody stardust settles!

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 9 November 2017.

Worse Than It Looked

Bringing Out The Worst: For reading the words of Yeb Sano, a Philippines' delegate to the Warsaw conference on Climate Change, into the parliamentary record, the Greens' co-leader, Russel Norman, elicited howls of outrage from the National Government's MPs. Their response is emblematic of the Right's growing contempt for science and the evidence-based reasoning that underpins it.

 

LAST WEEK’S UNCOUTH DISPLAY by National Party MPs revealed as much about its authors as its target – Dr Russel Norman. It spoke of a political mindset quite unable to distinguish occasions when rowdy interjection is appropriate, from those when it most emphatically is not. More than that, however, it exposed an unwillingness – now alarmingly widespread among conservative politicians – to accept the findings of empirical science.

 

The Green Party’s co-leader had risen to add his party’s response to a parliamentary statement expressing New Zealanders’ sympathy and support for the Filipino victims of Super-Typhoon Haiyan. In doing so he drew heavily on the comments of Yeb Sano, a member of the Philippines delegation to the international conference on climate change in Warsaw.

 

Speaking to his fellow delegates just hours before, Mr Sano had declared:

 

Passionate Advocacy: Climate Change Conference Delegate, Yeb Sano, spoke for the people of the super-typhoon-ravaged Philippines, demanding international action to curb anthropogenic global warming: "If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?”

 

“I speak for my delegation. But more than that, I speak for the countless people who will no longer be able to speak for themselves after perishing from the storm … We can take drastic action now to ensure that we prevent a future where super typhoons are a way of life.

 

“Because we refuse, as a nation, to accept a future where super typhoons like Haiyan become a fact of life. We refuse to accept that running away from storms, evacuating our families, suffering the devastation and misery, having to count our dead, become a way of life. We simply refuse to.”

 

Dr Norman’s intention in quoting extensively from Mr Sano’s speech was to draw his parliamentary colleagues attention to the fact that Super-Typhoon Haiyan wasn’t simply an Act of God but a terrifying example of what climate scientists call “anthropogenic global warming”. In other words, that it was a man-made disaster. And if the New Zealand Parliament was not to find itself expressing sorrow and support for the victims of climate change with ever-increasing frequency, then its members would have to respond to Mr Sano’s urgent plea for action.

 

Quoting a student hero of the Philippines’ long and bloody struggle for democracy, Mr Sano had challenged the Warsaw delegates:

 

“If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?”

 

A more mature National Party would have listened to the quoted words of this Filipino scientist in  respectful silence. Startled, perhaps, that a member of the House had moved beyond the platitudes that traditionally accompany such ritual expressions of sympathy, but willing, nevertheless, to at least try to understand why he was stepping beyond the norm.

 

But, because the words of scientists no longer command the respect of conservatives, the National Party members of the House (including at least one Cabinet Minister) began braying like tethered asses for Dr Norman to resume his seat. Such incivility has, sadly, become reflexive on the right of politics – especially when anyone attempts to engage its representatives in serious discussion about the consequences of anthropogenic global warming.

 

The contrast between these Tory “know-nothings” and “climate-change deniers” and the leading conservatives of fifty years ago is stark. The Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik in October 1957 had so shocked the United States that the Eisenhower Administration felt it had no option but to defy the ingrained religious obscurantism of huge swathes of the American Right and embark on a campaign to place science and its myriad applications (not least its military spin-offs) at the centre of American life. If science reigned to such obviously good effect in Red Russia, argued the President’s advisers, then it must also rule in the Land of the Free.

 

The debt we owe the extraordinary era of scientific competition between the USSR and the USA is huge. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine what the world of 2013 would look like had it never happened.

 

The vast expansion of scientific research and development did, however, bring with it an extremely worrying political problem. How to ensure that the revelations of science – the outcome of rational thought and disciplined experimentation – would be received by equally rational and disciplined politicians? If the findings of science contradicted the deeply-held prejudices of politicians, then which of the two – the scientist or the politician – would be required to step back?

 

In a 2012 article for The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza quoted Thomas Mann, of the Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, from their book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks:

 

“One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

 

Following last week’s uncouth display, it is clear that, when it comes to rational right-wing responses to anthropogenic global warming, it’s looking pretty bad here too.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 19 November 2013.