Outdated Views? Andrea Vance On Sean Plunket.

Re-Platforming: In the eyes of senior Stuff journalist, Andrea Vance, Sean Plunket’s “dalliances with controversy make it easy to paint him as a two-dimensional character: a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.” Dear me! The scorn dripping from those words could fill a large spittoon! Regardless, Plunket’s new media product “The Platform” will soon be going head-to-head with his woke detractors.

IT’S ONE OF THOSE throwaway lines which, precisely because so little conscious thought was given to it, tells us so much. The author, Andrea Vance, is an experienced political journalist working for Stuff. The subject of Vance’s throwaway line, Sean Plunket, is an equally experienced journalist. It was in her recent story about Plunket’s soon-to-be-launched online media product “The Platform”, that Vance wrote: “Plunket’s dalliances with controversy make it easy to paint him as a two-dimensional character: a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.”

It’s hard to get past those first four words. The picture Vance is painting is of a dilettante: someone who flits from one inconsequential pursuit to another, taking nothing seriously. And, of course, the use of the word “dalliances” only compounds this impression. To “dally” with somebody it to treat them casually, offhandedly – almost as a plaything. Accordingly, a “dalliance” should be seen as the very opposite of a genuine commitment. It smacks of self-indulgence. A cure, perhaps, for boredom?

To dally with controversy, therefore, is to betray a thoroughly feckless character. Controversies are all about passion and commitment. Controversies are taken seriously. Indeed, a controversy is usefully defined as a dispute taken seriously by all sides. And yet, according to Vance, Plunket has only been playing with controversy: trifling with it, as a seducer trifles with the affections of an innocent maid.

In Vance’s eyes, this indifference to matters of genuine and serious concern distinguishes Plunket as a “two-dimensional character”. It reduces him to a cardboard cut-out, a promotional poster, a thing of printer’s ink and pixels – insubstantial. Or, which clearly amounts to the same thing as far as Vance is concerned: “a right-wing, shock-jock with outdated views on privilege and race.” Dear me! The scorn dripping from those words could fill a large spittoon!

As if the holding of right-wing views somehow renders a person less than three-dimensional. As if conservative thinkers from Aristotle to Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke to Carl Schmidt haven’t contributed enormously to Western political thought. As if Keith Holyoake, Jim Bolger and Bill English aren’t respected by New Zealanders of all political persuasions for their rough-hewn dignity and love of country. To hold right-wing views isn’t a sickness, It doesn’t make you a bad person. It merely denotes a preference for the familiar; a wariness of the new; and a deep-seated fear of sudden and unmandated change.

As for “shock-jocks”: well, that is the sort of broadcasting talent commercial radio producers are constantly searching for. People of energy and enthusiasm, with a way of communicating both qualities to the radio station’s listeners. And if they also have a talent for decoding the zeitgeist on air: for tapping into the audience’s anger and frustration; and giving voice to their hopes and their fears? Well, then they are worth their weight in gold – and usually get it. The more people a “shock-jock” glues to the station’s frequency, the more the advertisers are prepared to pay. That’s the business.

Perhaps Vance should have a word with the people who pay her salary: perhaps they could explain where all that money comes from.

The most important words, however, Vance saves for last. What really confirms Plunket’s lack of three dimensions are his “outdated views on privilege and race”. It is with these six words that Vance betrays both herself and her newspaper.

Who says Plunket’s views on privilege and race are “outdated”? According to whose measure? After all, his views on privilege and race correspond closely with those of Dr Martin Luther King. Is Vance asserting that Dr King’s view that people should not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character, is outdated? Is she suggesting that a poor white man has more in the way of privilege than Oprah Winfrey? Or that the privileges which flow from superior economic power and social status count for less than those attached to race, gender and sexuality?

The answer is Yes. Those who declare such views to be “outdated” are, indeed, making all of the claims listed above. This locates them among a relatively narrow section of the population: highly educated; paid well above the average; more than adequately housed; and enjoying all the “privileges” accruing to those who manage the bodies and shape the minds of their fellow citizens.

Andrea Vance is a member of this truly privileged group, and so, at one time, was Sean Plunket. So, why the sneering condescension? Why the scorn? The answer is to be found in the new priorities of the truly privileged; the people who actually run this society. They have determined that their interests are better served by fostering division and bitterness. Rather than see people promote a view of human-beings that unites them in a common quest for justice and equality, they would rather Blacks assailed Whites, women assailed men, gays assailed straights, trans assailed TERFS – and vice versa. In short, the “One Percent” have decided that their interests are better protected by corporations, universities and the mainstream news media all promoting the ideology of identity politics.

By setting his face against this new “Woke” establishment, Sean Plunket the conservative poses as large a threat to the status quo as Martyn Bradbury the radical. On the one hand stand those who question the necessity and morality of changes now deemed essential by persons no one elected. On the other, those who insist that such divisive policies will produce results diametrically opposed to their promoters’ intentions. Right and Left, joined in an “outdated” search for the common ground that makes rational politics possible. The place where both sides are willing to acknowledge and agree that, in the words of John F. Kennedy:

[I]n the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 21 September 2021.

The Political Economy Of Shock-Jockery.

Silenced: MediaWorks’ decision to take veteran journalist Sean Plunket off the air raises some very disturbing questions about the survival of political diversity in New Zealand.

LAST WEEK, Sean Plunket was awarded the DCM. Mere days after John Banks, standing-in for his fellow right-wing broadcaster, Peter Williams, was driven from Magic Talk Radio’s microphones, Plunket was abruptly advised that his services as the station’s “Magic Afternoons” host were no longer required. Magic Talk’s decision was made amidst the furore created by Banks’ failure to fight on-air racism with sufficient zeal, and the subsequent threats from its major advertisers to withdraw their support. Did the prospect of the right-wing contrarian’s imminent return prompt at least one of those major advertisers to issue Magic Talk’s proprietor, MediaWorks, with an ultimatum? Something along the lines of: “If Plunket stays, we go”?

Plunket’s position at Magic Talk was already somewhat precarious. In December of last year, the Broadcasting Standards Authority found against the veteran broadcaster for what it deemed to be his “offensive and harmful” comments to a spokesperson from Te Whānau ā Apanui – the Maori iwi manning Covid-19 check-points in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Magic Talk was reprimanded and fined $3,000 for Plunket’s breach of broadcasting standards. Already acutely sensitive to accusations of racism, their top shock-jock’s outspokenness was, almost certainly, top-of-mind among the station’s bosses – and advertisers.

MediaWorks’ decision to take Plunket off the air, if it stands, raises some very disturbing questions.

On the face of it, his fate appears to have been determined by the opinions he holds, which, if established, would constitute a clear case of discrimination on the grounds of political belief. If upheld by the Human Rights Commission, such a violation of a New Zealand citizen’s rights and freedoms, as set out in the Bill of Rights Act 1990, could end up costing his employer a great deal more than $3,000.

Presumably, a broadcaster in Plunket’s position, would argue that he was hired because of, not in spite of, his right-wing political beliefs. Having failed to enlarge its listenership by delivering a programme-mix tailored to the prejudices of centrist and left-leaning New Zealanders, MediaWorks (via Magic Talk) would be accused of re-orienting itself towards a much more conservative demographic. In this regard, Plunket’s right-wing contrarian style would have been exactly what they were looking for: a feature, not a bug. To take a person off-air for doing exactly what his employers’ business-plan required of him, seems just a tad unfair.

In its current form, however, it is difficult to imagine the Human Rights Commission wanting anything less than the responsibility for determining whether or not the rights and freedoms of a citizen in Plunket’s situation have been violated. Indeed, it is hard to avoid forming the impression that the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990 has become a source of considerable embarrassment to the Human Rights Commissioners responsible for its enforcement. In the current “woke” climate, the key sections of the Act are inconveniently uncompromising.

Section 13 of the Bill of Rights Act 1990, for example, guarantees to all New Zealanders freedom of thought: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.” Even more inconveniently, Section 14 grants them the freedom to express those opinions: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”

In the past, radio stations and television networks have guarded these rights and freedoms jealously. Indeed, there was a very strong tradition in both public and private broadcasting that “news and current-affairs” and “advertising” – like matter and anti-matter – should never be allowed to meet.

This tradition was about more than the broadcasters’ attachment to liberal-democratic principles. Radio and television, no less than newspapers and magazines, pitch their product at different socio-economic segments of the media market. Among the many factors contributing to the profile of these “demographics” is ideological predisposition. Newstalk-ZB, for example, makes its profits out of an older, whiter, less credentialled, and generally more conservative demographic of listeners. Advertisers buy air-time for products and services tailored to fit this demographic profile. They want Mike Hosking’s audience: and, until very recently, that required them to, at the very least, tolerate Mike Hosking’s listeners’ less-than-woke political views.

It is very hard to believe that MediaWorks’ advertisers were unaware that Magic Talk Radio had pivoted right, away from RNZ National’s demographic and towards Newstalk-ZB’s. It is equally hard to credit that Sean Plunket and Peter Williams were not presented to them as powerful magnets for the folk who were missing Newstalk’s arch-conservative host, Leighton Smith. Surely, they would have understood what sort of political discussions their ad-breaks would be interrupting?

What are we looking at, then, when we see corporations threatening to pull their ads from programmes whose listeners come from the very demographics they are targeting? Are we witnessing an intra-corporate triumph of woke PR mavens over hard-working marketing grunts?

The answer is, almost certainly, “Yes”. Overwhelmingly, the graduates pouring out of this country’s “communications studies” courses and into corporate PR are young women who, for years, have been schooled in the uncompromising dogma of social radicalism – especially feminism and anti-racism. When they learn (via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook) the awful truth about the latest shock-jock’s racist outrage, their first instinct is the get their employers’ brand as far away from the perpetrators’ “toxicity” as possible. Failure to “get ahead of the problem”, their bosses are cautioned, will lead directly to consumer boycotts. The “Roastbusters” precedent will be cited. To date, their bosses have demonstrated little need for further persuasion.

This is politics – albeit of a particularly bizarre kind. Attempting to homogenise ideologically an irreducibly diverse market makes as little sense for capitalists as it does for political parties. Imagine what would happen to the National Party if it produced a policy programme that matched Labour’s in every respect. How would conservative voters respond? Either, they would pressure National MPs to force the abandonment of their party’s new centre-left orientation, or, if that proved impossible, they would begin casting about for a new party to champion their values and beliefs.

At some point in the near future, it will occur to senior corporate executives that what’s sauce for the woke goose might also be sauce for the aggressively right-wing gander. Take too many conservative voices off the air and eventually their fans will band together and announce a boycott of their own. At that point, corporate CEOs are going to have to do what politicians have always done: learn to count: “What is the volume of sales that we are likely to lose if the woke boycott us? Is it larger or smaller than the volume we will lose if conservative Kiwis stop buying our products?”

Similarly, how long will it be before one or more local (or overseas) capitalists grasp the possibilities of establishing a Fox News-type media entity right here in New Zealand, and using it to seize more-or-less the entire conservative demographic? How biddable will corporate leaders be if the size of its right-wing audience turns out to represent a clear plurality of the New Zealand population? Whose threats of boycott will count for more then: the Woke’s or the Right’s?

If the New Zealand news media persists in the folly of “cancelling” all those listeners, viewers and readers who fail to pass ideological muster, then we will see the emergence of our own version of Fox News – with all that entails for the health of our country and its democratic institutions. Who would lead it? Do we have a Hannity, or a Tucker Carlson, waiting out there in the wings? Where to start looking for a talented right-wing contrarian, boasting years of professional broadcasting experience, who is currently between jobs?

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 8 February 2021.

Protecting The TPP.

Democracy In Action: Anti-TPPA protester, Josie Butler, is prevented from presenting her "Dick of the Year" award to New Zealand's Chief TPPA Negotiator, MFAT's David Walker. It seems highly likely that the security personnel, seen here moving in on Ms Butler, were employees of the high-end security firm October Protection. According to the firm's website: "Many of our staff come from military, police, corrections and close protection backgrounds". What sort of “trade deal” have we signed-up to, when its explanatory roadshow requires the protection of former soldiers and policemen?

 

THE HEAVILY GUARDED Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) travelling roadshow came to Christchurch last week. The word “heavily” is used advisedly. According to the reportage of Josie Butler (who staged a peaceful protest at the event and was escorted from the auditorium) the roadshow was not only protected by upwards of 30 police officers, but also by 40 members of the New Zealand Defence Force. Ms Butler’s reportage further alleges that the roadshow had at least one other protector – its government appointed chairman, broadcaster Sean Plunket.

 

If Ms Butler’s description of the proceedings is accurate, then it is fair to say that Mr Plunket has opted for an alarmingly heavy-handed approach to chairing these gatherings. Participants are restricted to asking questions of the presenters and will be interrupted aggressively if they so much as attempt to contextualise their queries. Hecklers are summarily ejected.

 

What was presented to New Zealanders as an opportunity to participate in a free and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the TPP, is being experienced by those attendees not already convinced of the agreement’s benefits as little more than a crude propaganda exercise. Even worse, these meetings are alleged to have been conducted in a fashion that treats dissent as a hostile and potentially criminal act.

 

Given the strong public feeling which the TPP has aroused, the manner in which the  roadshow is conducted is very important. Negotiated in secret, and signed by the National Party-led Government without prior endorsement by the House of Representatives, the TPP has been presented to the people of New Zealand as a fait accompli. The most appropriate stance of the person chosen to chair the TPP roadshow is, therefore, one of democratic scepticism.

 

The case in favour of the TPP needs to be made in full acknowledgement of its inherently adversarial nature. After all, the roadshow is the first official occasion for the public’s direct participation in the TPP debate. Critics of the deal should, therefore, be encouraged by the Chair to make their case, and the government’s spokespeople required to answer their criticisms as well as their questions. If it is true that Mr Plunket’s formidable interrogative skills are not being used to probe and challenge the statements of the government’s representatives, but are, instead, being deployed against the TPP’s critics, then the democratic legitimacy of the roadshow is forfeit.

Certainly, Ms Butler’s description of the Christchurch roadshow makes a strong prima facie case for concern. In her report of the event she states that: “I went to the first security check point which was at the front driveway to the [Rydges] hotel. The guards asked for my ID, and whilst I was getting it out I noticed one of the guys had an army badge pinned to his lapel, I asked him if he was military and he confirmed that all security present today were army personnel.”

Constitutionally-speaking, this claim is particularly alarming. The only circumstances in which it is justifiable for the Civil Power to call upon the assistance of the Military Power are those in which there is a demonstrable threat to life and property. Historically, the involvement of the Military has been confined to helping out during natural disasters and, extremely rarely, to the quelling of widespread public disorder – like that following the 1932 Queen Street Riot. Nothing even remotely resembling such circumstances were present last Friday in Christchurch.

 

Urgent efforts must be made to confirm the accuracy of Ms Butler’s claim. And if it is confirmed that the NZDF was involved in providing security for the roadshow, then questions need to be asked. First, of the Defence Minister, and second, of the Police Minister. Did Gerry Brownlee know that the Military Power had been called upon to assist the Civil Power in Christchurch? If so, at whose instigation? Does Judith Collins know why the local Police were deemed unequal to the task of preventing disorder at Rydges Hotel?

 

Frankly, it would be a whole lot better for New Zealand if Ms Butler’s record of the Christchurch TPP roadshow turns out to be inaccurate. That Mr Plunket was, in fact, the soul of politeness and a stalwart facilitator of free speech and open debate. And that whoever Ms Butler spoke to about his military lapel badge turns out to have been pulling her leg about the  composition of the security detail. Because, if her version of events is proved correct, then New Zealand is in a world of trouble.

 

What sort of “trade deal” have we signed-up to, if its explanatory roadshow requires the protection of the armed forces? How good can it be, if those who attempt to criticise its content are cut off in mid-sentence?

 

Could it be that those who condemned the TPP as a threat to democracy were right all along?

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 15 March 2016.

 

UPDATE:

 

On Tuesday, 15 March the author received a call from Nick Bryant, Gerry Brownlee's media officer. He informed him that, having checked with both the NZDF and MFAT, the Minister was able to assure him that no serving military personnel were involved with providing security at the Christchurch TPPA roadshow event.

 

When contacted, Josie Butler strongly reiterated her claim that the security personnel hailed from the military. 

An appeal for assistance was issued over social media which quickly produced a link to a private security firm called  October Protection.

 

According to its website: 

October Protection is a Christchurch based security and protection company with branches in Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown, Dunedin and associates throughout New Zealand. We provide industry-leading hospitality security, along with VIP transport, helicopter services, secure event, travel and accommodation packages New Zealand wide ….. Many of our staff come from military, police, corrections and close protection backgrounds and their experience is diverse and extensive, providing October Protection with a vast array of specialist skills.

 

It would seem that both Josie Butler and the Minister were telling the truth.

 

This Update is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

The Glutton Seagulls: Thoughts On A Friday Afternoon In March.

Discovered instead the glutton seagulls squabbling over crusts - James K. Baxter.

 

LISTENING TO RADIO LIVE, this bloke’s telling Willie Jackson what he’d do to the Aussies awaiting execution in Indonesia.

 

“I’d kill ‘em. Yeah, just shoot ‘em. No problem with that at all.”

 

And I’m thinking, what the hell has happened to us. When did we turn into this sort of country?

 

Because it’s everywhere. This viciousness. This absence of civility. This lack of love. What James K. Baxter called “the crushed herb of grief at another’s pain”.

 

God! Just imagine what our right-wing shock-jocks would make of James K. if he suddenly reappeared to point his prophetic finger at the greasy excrescences who have somehow floated to the top of “God’s own country”.

 

Hell, Baxter was an angry man in the 1960s and 70s. The 60s and 70s! When kids could go to Varsity for free. When a young couple could buy their first house at 25 with a 3 percent State Advances loan. When fewer than 5,000 people were unemployed.

 

In his poem, Crossing Cook Strait, Baxter has “Seddon and Savage, the socialist father” raging:

 

I  walked forth gladly to find the angry poor

Who are my nation; discovered instead

The glutton seagulls squabbling over crusts

And policies made and broken behind locked doors.

 

The glutton seagulls, oh yes, they’re still with us. Still squabbling over crusts. They’ve grown obscenely fat over the intervening years. Too fat now to fly. But just you watch them strutting around their enormous piles of crusts. Running furiously at anyone who comes close. Screeching insults. Their angry voices drowning out the songs of the gentle. The warnings of the wise. Eleanor Catton. Nicky Hager.

 

“Kill ‘em all! I’ve got no problem with that.”

 

I was at Radio Live on Election Night as the seagulls racked up yet another win for gluttony. Saw the Seagull-in-Chief on the TV monitor, his vast wings outstretched in a billious benediction. How the flock screeched. And why not? Their crusts were safe for “Three more years! Three more years!”

 

Sean Plunket, wearing the sort of grin more usually found on the face of a wolf who's finally caught up with his exhausted prey, asked me how I was feeling.

 

All I could think of was James K Baxter’s lines from Pig Island Letters:

 

The man who talks to the masters of Pig Island

About the love they dread

Plaits ropes of sand, yet I was born among them

And will lie one day with their dead.

 

I rode home in a taxi as the skies unleashed sweeping showers of Spring rain across Auckland.

 

Like tears, I thought. Like tears.

 

This essay was posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Friday, 6 March 2015.

Eleanor Catton And The Sociocultural Logic Of Kiwi Neoliberalism.

Brains, Beauty and Balls: Eleanor Catton's uncompromising assault on New Zealand's neoliberal regime pushed all of the Right's political panic-buttons. Shock-jock Sean Plunket verbally slapped her down with the accusation of being both a "traitor" and "an ungrateful hua". Such over-the-top responses have vividly exposed the crude "sociocultural logic" of New Zealand's unique iteration of the neoliberal project.

 

ELEANOR CATTON was always going to be trouble. With her fine-china good-looks, transparent intelligence and uncharacteristic (for a Kiwi) articulateness, she was a political reprimand just waiting to happen. One had only to read her books or hear her speak to know that the same intuitive grasp of the human condition which secured her the Man Booker Prize was never going to let her line-up alongside the vacuous celebrities that accessorise the power brokers of the Right.

 

Catton’s beauty is a significant factor in the current controversy. No matter how unfair, a regular set of human features confers a very special kind of power upon those fortunate enough to possess them. In a culture saturated with advertising imagery, beauty has come to enjoy a mutually reinforcing relationship with authority. In a nutshell: beauty is believed, therefore, beauty sells. It also carries a potent sexual charge. Like it or not, messages, of whatever kind, have a much better chance of making it through our defences when they’re delivered by George Clooney or Scarlet Johansson.

 

That is why the Right becomes more than usually incensed when it is challenged by good-looking opponents. They know that their messages will reach the public unfiltered, and that their audience will not be distracted by bad hair or crooked teeth. It’s been that way since (at least) 1960, when the handsome, tanned and supremely confident John F. Kennedy easily overcame the jowly pallor and five o’clock shadow of a perspiring Richard Nixon in the first televised presidential debate. (Interestingly, those listening to the debate on the radio gave the victory to Nixon.)

 

The other great sin the Right could lay at Catton’s door is the near faultless diction of an upper-middle-class girl raised in the comfort and security of a loving academic family. Accents are an instant indicator of one’s social origins and a usually reliable guide to one’s place in society’s pecking-order. Deploying cut-glass vowels has always been an excellent way of putting the lower orders at a disadvantage. Under no circumstances, however, should they be deployed against members of one’s own class!

 

The third strike against Catton was her possession of a rich vocabulary and the wit to deploy it with jarring political accuracy. In other words, she was an intellectual. Even worse, she obviously felt no special obligation to hide her intellectual brilliance under a bushel.

 

The Right loathes intellectuals. The life of the mind offers little to those who place their faith in tradition and prejudice. Conservatives are, consequently, the natural enemies of critical thinking and evidence-based decision-making. A young, attractive, well-spoken and intellectual woman speaking truth to power will always be a cause for concern on the Right. But, when that woman is also an internationally celebrated Man Booker Prize winner, ‘concern’ doesn’t nearly cover it.

 

One suspects that to the lengthening list of her sins Catton’s critics were especially keen to add the sin of deceitfulness. How could someone from such a good family; so well-spoken and accomplished academically; the winner of a prestigious international literary prize; turn out to be a bloody leftie ?! Did the NZ Herald know about these “progressive” tendencies when they advanced her as a New Zealander of the Year? Surely not! And did Creative New Zealand know, when they were doling out all those grants to the little minx, that she was going to turn up at the Greens’ campaign launch and endorse them? One certainly hopes not.

 

And then, of course, there was Catton’s use of the term “neoliberal” to describe the governments of New Zealand, Canada and the UK.

 

It is one of the peculiar quirks of neoliberalism that its adherents not only vehemently deny that they are neoliberals, but also insist that neoliberalism itself only exists in the minds of economically illiterate leftists. Their denial is born of their need not to be thought of as ideologues. The neoliberal project is, above all else, an effort to have the market regarded as a natural phenomenon  – no more amenable to human intervention than the weather. Their great objective is to have their highly contentious ideas accepted, finally, as simple common-sense, thus becoming the unremarked wallpaper of twenty-first century life. This cannot happen if people are encouraged to view them as the ideologically-driven zealots they truly are.

 

It is here that Catton’s gender, her beauty, diction and intellectual prowess become entangled in what the Australian sociologist, Professor Raewyn Connell, describes as “an embedded masculinity politics in the neoliberal project”.

 

“With a few exceptions”, writes Connell in Understanding Neoliberalism, “neoliberal leadership is composed of men. It’s treasured figure, ‘the entrepreneur,’ is culturally coded masculine. Its assault on the welfare state redistributes income from women to men and imposes more unpaid work on women as carers for the young, the old, and the sick. Its attack on ‘political correctness’ and its rollback of affirmative action specifically undermine the gains of feminism. In such ways, neoliberalism from the 1980s on offered middle-class men an indirect but effective solution to the delegitimation of patriarchy and the threat of real gender equality.”

 

The particular venom of the Right’s reaction to Catton’s criticism of John Key’s “neoliberal” government – exemplified by Sean Plunket’s vicious verbal backhanders: “traitor” and “ungrateful hua” – derives from the very special character of the “masculinity politics” embedded in the New Zealand neoliberal project.

 

As a political phenomenon, competing for power in democratic states, neoliberalism is constantly in search of viable electoral vectors. Under John Key, the vector selected is the overwhelmingly male, determinedly anti-intellectual, painfully inarticulate, culturally moronic and sports-mad portion of the New Zealand population. The part that reacts with frightening emotional fury against everything Eleanor Catton stands for. Theirs is the militant egalitarianism of the “ordinary bloke” who would instantly identify in Catton’s unblemished features, rounded vowels and polysyllabic vocabulary the absolute embodiment of an “up-herself middle-class bitch”.

 

Catton was wrong to invoke New Zealand’s 'tall-poppy syndrome' as the explanation for her personal cultural Calvary. A much more appropriate term has been coined by the South Korean sociologist, Jesook Song. Eleanor Catton is a victim of the “sociocultural logic” of Kiwi neoliberalism.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 2 February 2015.

Sean's Going To Need A Bigger Stake (To Destroy Winston Peters)

In the Role of Van Helsing: Like so many of his colleagues in the news media, broadcaster Sean Plunket would like to be the one who finally drives a stake into the heart of Winston Peters. But, in spite of the veteran journalist's best efforts in this month's Metro, the NZ First leader remains undead.

SEAN PLUNKET is a formidable broadcaster whose inquisitorial ferociousness is sorely missed by listeners to Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report. Predictably, state radio’s loss has been commercial broadcasting’s gain. Not only did Mr Plunket secure a berth at TV3’s The Nation, but he’s about to become the weekday-morning talk-back host at Newstalk-ZB Wellington.

It is not, however, in his guise as broadcaster that I take issue with the redoubtable Mr Plunket, but as author of the "Windy City Struggles" column in Metro magazine.

In an essay entitled "Dealing with Winnie" our Windy City Struggler argues forcefully that Winston Peters and the NZ First Party should not, under any circumstances, be permitted to ever again cross the parliamentary threshold.

To this end, Mr Plunket calls upon both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to very publicly rule out NZ First and its leader as potential coalition partners. Or, in his own colourful language:

"For a stake to be truly driven through the heart of this political vampire, Key must again deny Peters a seat at the post-election dealing table [and] Goff should do the same."

Vampire? That’s pretty strong stuff. On what evidence does Mr Plunket accuse Mr Peters of sucking the life-blood out of his country?

The answer, frankly, is – not a lot.

The first indictment against Mr Peters is rather peculiar. As best as I can judge, he is accused of seducing the Parliamentary Press Gallery (of which Mr Plunket was once a member).

"I became party to a general journalistic infatuation that lasted some years," writes Mr Plunket, "as Peters used his charm and guile to grab headlines and keep the scandal-hungry media desperate for his next revelation."

I’m sorry, Sean? You’re complaining that Winston got the measure of the Gallery and shamelessly exploited their willingness to be fed stories – rather than go out and find the stories themselves? Well, forgive me, but I can’t help thinking you’ve addressed the indictment to the wrong party!

The second indictment against the NZ First leader is that, on occasion, he has been guilty of rhetorical exaggeration.

Whoa there big fella!

If failing to present only the unembellished facts to the electorate is henceforth to be classed as a political crime, then I’m afraid every single Member of Parliament – from the Prime Minister to the lowliest back-bencher – will have to join Mr Peters in the dock.

The third, and by far the most serious, indictment against Mr Peters is that he "knowingly provided false or misleading information on a return of pecuniary interest". More precisely, that he failed to properly account for "a $100,000 donation from Owen Glen".

Mr Plunket states that this judgement was delivered against Mr Peters following "a marathon inquiry by Parliament’s privileges committee".

Had it been delivered by a Court of Law this would, indeed, have constituted a serious blow to Mr Peters’ reputation. But, it was not. Parliament’s privileges committee is a political tribunal and it’s findings are not always the fruit of dispassionate legal judgement. Indeed, there are occasions when its decisions appear to have been arrived at via the most ruthless Machiavellian calculation.

And isn’t it strange that Mr Plunket neglected to inform his readers that politically independent investigations by the Auditor-General and the Serious Fraud Office both found that Mr Peters had no case to answer?

Mr Plunket’s indictments should likewise be rejected.

The Court of Public Opinion might, however, care to consider a related charge:

That, in the interests of securing a National Party victory in the 2008 General Election, unscrupulous journalists did wilfully conspire with divers Members of Parliament to blacken the character of the Hon. Winston Peters and his NZ First Party. And that, to preserve the present Government in office, both groups are preparing to do so again.

What National, Act – and I’m sure Mr Plunket – understand is that the day Mr Peters re-enters the House of Representatives, is the day Mr Key departs the Beehive.

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 7 January 2011.