Whose Hands? It's not what's happening out on the political stage that we should worry about, but who is directing this theatre of the absurd from behind the scenes.
“THE WORLD”, said
Benjamin Disraeli, “is governed by very different personages from what is
imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” Just as well. Because the
poor players currently strutting and fretting their hour upon New Zealand’s
political stage clearly learned their craft in the Theatre of the Absurd. Incoherent
and disconnected posturing may now be de
rigueur, but even the most sophisticated audience grows weary of a play
without a plot.
If the players and
the play are mere distractions, however, and Mr Disraeli’s unseen personages,
operating behind the scenes, do truly govern the world; then this theatrical, National-led
government’s failure to develop either plot or character is of no real
consequence.
In fact, to discover
that there is nothing remotely resembling logic underpinning the Government’s
public statements comes as a huge relief. Some of us were developing the most acute
headaches trying to reconcile Education Minister, Hekia Parata’s, unwavering
commitment to placing teachers of the highest possible quality, possessing all
relevant qualifications, in every one of the nation’s public classrooms, with
her Associate Education Minister, John Banks’, advocacy of privately run “Partnership
Schools” staffed by unregistered teachers lacking even the rudiments of
professional training. Now that we know the Government’s education policy is supposed to be absurd, incoherent and
posturing, the pain grows less.
Behind the scenes,
of course, the personages who really call the shots are gearing up for the
incremental privatisation of New Zealand’s education system. Their logic is
impeccable. First: Make it easy for middle class people, with money, to
identify the public schools that are failing, so they can send their children
somewhere else. Second: Set up “Partnership Schools” next to these failing
schools and fill them up with the best and brightest children from the surrounding
neighbourhoods. Third: Expand the network of “Independent” schools to take
advantage of middle-class parents’ headlong flight from what they now regard as
a fatally compromised public system.
Not only do the Personages
get to clip the ticket all the way down the line, from the humblest early-childhood
education centre to the flashest secondary school, but they also
achieve their much larger purpose. The egalitarian and meritocratic public
education system, built up over more than a century by the parties of the Left,
can now be replaced with the sort of privately run, socially exclusive and
unashamedly elitist system New Zealand’s deeply unequal society so obviously
craves.
National
Standards, League Tables, Partnership Schools, Public-Private Partnerships. It seemed
to be nothing more than the politicians’ sound and fury. Now it all makes
perfect sense.
The Afghanistan
War’s sound and fury burst on to the stage last weekend in the most tragic
fashion. And, once again, there was no sense to be made of the on-stage
dialogue. The absurdity of the politicians was only matched by the opacity of
the Army’s top brass.
In each of the
nearly ten years New Zealand troops have been stationed in Afghanistan we have
been told that their only purpose was to help the Afghan people to help
themselves. In Bamiyan Province that involved Kiwis helping the local tribesmen
to build schools and medical clinics. Our Provincial Reconstruction Team was
lucky in its mission, we were told, because Bamiyan was one of the safest
places in that unhappy country.
Why then are our
soldiers dying? If, by our presence, we were supposed to make the country
safer, why has it become more dangerous?
Now that our
troops have become targets for Taliban forces supposedly reeling before the
American “surge”. Now our “reconstruction team” is expected to confront an
enemy capable of fighting highly-trained Kiwi infantry to a standstill. What
purpose is served by remaining?
The Prime Minister
and his Minister of Defence speak confidently about “restoring stability” to a
country that grows more unstable by the day. But, like that other tragic
military theatre of the absurd, the Western Front, no politician’s answer makes
the slightest sense. Back then, the Diggers sang: “We’re here because we’re
here, because we’re here, because we’re here.” The explanation for New
Zealand’s presence in Afghanistan seems to boil down to: “We’re there because
we’re there, because we’re there, because we’re there.”
“Oh, and to keep
our American and Australian friends happy”, add Mr Disraeli’s “very different personages’, in a loud stage
whisper, from behind the scenes.
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 August 2012.
