The Grapes Aren’t Sour – They’re Just Not The Centre-Left’s.

The Grapes Of Wrath: The resounding defeat of Efeso Collins is all it took for the Auckland centre-left (and its more combustible fellow-travellers) to denounce the entire electoral process as a rort, and to strongly insinuate that the victorious mayoral candidate, Wayne Brown, is lacking in democratic legitimacy. If this is not a case of sour grapes on the part of the losers, then it is difficult to imagine what a case of sour grapes might look like!

FOUR ELECTIONS IN A ROW the centre-left romped home with the Auckland mayoralty. Four elections of postal voting. Four elections in which the logistical management of the ballot was contracted out to the private sector. Four elections won by white, male politicians over the age of 55 years. Four elections of entirely satisfactory results – at least from the perspective of the centre-left.

One defeat, however, is all that it has taken for the centre-left (and its more combustible fellow-travellers) to denounce the entire electoral process as a rort, and to strongly insinuate that the victorious mayoral candidate, Wayne Brown, is lacking in democratic legitimacy. If this is not a case of sour grapes on the part of the losers, then it is difficult to imagine what a case of sour grapes might look like!

Let us begin with the most respectable of the losers’ complaints: the difficulty of keeping track of electors whose socio-economic status entails frequent changes of address. This is a perennial problem for the Electoral Commission (yes, that’s right, enrolment is the responsibility of the Electoral Commission, not private election services providers) letters arriving at addresses where the elector (or potential elector) is no longer in residence. Short of introducing a decidedly intrusive system of comprehensive citizen surveillance, however, it is difficult to see how this problem might be overcome.

Let us not forget that enrolling to vote (as opposed to actually casting a vote) is compulsory in New Zealand. It is the duty of every citizen to ensure that he or she is on the Electoral Roll. Fortunately, registering to vote in this country (unlike the USA) is extraordinarily easy. It can be done in a few minutes online, or at any Post Office. The only obstacle confronting those who move houses frequently from updating their details prior to the postal ballots being sent out is their own indifference to the electoral process.

As many commentators, confronted with the losers’ accusations of a “rigged” 2022 local government election, have noted, there’s not a lot that citizens, sufficiently motivated, cannot do. Music fans will jump online in an instant to secure tickets to the concerts of their favourite artists. Bargain hunters will queue for hours to get first crack at a big-box retailer’s discounted stock. Far less effort is required to enrol and vote in an election. All that’s required is the will.

The other loud complaint of the losers is that there were far too few ballot-boxes made available for those tardy electors seeking to deposit their ballot-papers. Given that upwards of 64,000 votes were successfully cast between sunrise and noon on Saturday, 8 October, this complaint lacks credibility. Further undermining the charge, is the fact that during the three-week-long voting period for local elections, there are ballot-boxes located every few hundred metres for the convenience of electors. They’re called post-boxes. Making it easier to vote was, precisely, why Postal Voting was introduced in 1989.

Yes, yes, yes! Younger voters don’t use post-boxes, don’t even know what they look like, and certainly wouldn’t know where to find one. Even so, sufficiently motivated young voters, ready and eager to participate in the democratic process, could always overcome their ignorance by summoning-up the courage to ask one of those hideous human-beings aged over 65 where the nearest post-box is located. Chances are they’d discover there’s one opposite the neighbourhood dairy, or located conveniently right outside their favourite café. But, that would require them to act as if they were members of a community made up of multiple ethnicities and generations – wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, no one’s yet managed to transform the volksgemeinschaft into an app instantly downloadable to the 18-25-year-old citizen’s smartphone.

The least respectable argument put forward by the Centre-left losers of the 2022 local government elections is that, somehow, the results represent ‘The Revenge of the Baby Boomers’. The claim, here, is that, somehow, everyone over the age of 55 in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, telepathically received the instruction to dash the hopes of their children and grandchildren by voting for Wayne Brown, Phil Mauger, and Jules Radich, instead of Efeso Collins, David Meates and Aaron Hawkins.

Secure in their obscenely overpriced homes, these Boomers experienced no difficulties in getting their voting papers. Indeed, some of them received more than one set. Some were – shock! horror! – multiple voters.

That’s right. If you own a rated (i.e. a taxed) property in any region, district or city, you are indeed entitled to vote for the body that struck the rate (i.e. imposed the tax). The principle upon which this entitlement is based is as old as democracy itself. It underpins every Westminster-style parliament. It even provided the key slogan of the American Revolution of 1776. “No taxation without representation!”

What is not correct, however, is that any elector in New Zealand is permitted to vote more than once in the same contest. A wealthy Boomer may own six houses in Auckland, but he is not entitled to six votes. His representation on the body taxing his properties is secured by a single vote – in exactly the same way as the young renter’s representation. The Boomer’s holiday-home in Coromandel, being taxed, does entitle him to vote – once – in Coromandel. But only for the candidates standing in that locality. The notion that Auckland’s Boomer landlords were casting fistfuls of votes for Wayne Brown is risible. Proof only of how sorely needed civics classes are in our schools.

A powerful sense of entitlement does, however, lie at the heart of the 2022 losers’ sour grapes. Not the entitlement derived from democratic principle, but the sense of entitlement ingrained in political activists who believe themselves to be on the right (that is to say left) side of history. This certainty concerning their own ideological rectitude exists in inverse proportion to their knowledge of the actual nuts-and-bolts of historical and political agency.

Wayne, Phil and Jules didn’t win because they are jointly in control of some sort of bizarre Boomer hive-mind; they won because they had a more accurate fix than Efeso, David and Aaron on what the citizens of Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin, who were most likely to vote, wanted (and did not want) from their respective mayors and councils. The brutal fact of the matter is that the centre-left mayoral candidates in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin ran campaigns plagued by a conspicuous lack of one, or more, of the “Three Ms” – Money, Message, Machine. (Hat-tip to Mike Hutcheson.)

The proof of this contention is that Tory Whanau, the “Green” candidate for the Wellington mayoralty had the skills and the support to lay her hands on all three of the “Ms” – and she won the election hands-down. Tory found out what the over-55s wanted; but she also found out what the 18-25s, and all the other demographics, wanted; and then she offered it to them in a well-organised, positive, and successful campaign.

Democracy isn’t cheap, and it isn’t easy, but it is simple. Don’t insist that the voters be given what they don’t want. Build your footpaths where the people walk. Never, ever, be a sore loser. And, always remember: vox Populi, vox Dei.

The voice of the people, is the voice of God.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 13 October 2022.

Lessons For Labour – But Will It Heed Them?

Mr Fix-It: Wayne Brown’s “Fix Auckland” slogan chimed perfectly with his key demographics. They were less interested in ideological concerns than they were in sorting-out the council. They liked the fact that Brown was abrasive. They did not want a Mayor who suffered fools gladly and allowed himself to be bossed around by city bureaucrats.

THE LEFT have a whole lot of lessons to learn from their “shellacking” in Saturday’s local government elections. Sadly, the chances are high they’ll learn none of them. The response of the Auckland Left has been particularly infantile – and hypocritical. It was National Party activist Hamish Price who responded most effectively to the Woke Left’s horrified reaction to Wayne Brown’s decisive victory over Efeso Collins in the Auckland Mayoralty race, with the wickedly pithy tweet:

“In 2019 Auckland elected an old white guy as Mayor of Auckland against Person Of Colour John Tamihere. But that wasn’t racist because Phil Goff was backed by Labour.”

Not that the Right’s gleeful exposure of the Left’s ethical and political shortcomings will prevent the latter from blaming everyone but themselves for the defeats they have suffered across the country. In their sights are – in no particular order – the Baby Boomer Generation, the postal voting system, the political passivity of the poor, and the dysfunctional design of our democratic political system.

Political analysts will search in vain for evidence that the Left understands that its succession of defeats (Auckland, Rotorua, Whanganui, Christchurch, Dunedin) is attributable only in part to a nationwide turning away from the Labour Government and its policies – especially the deeply unpopular “Three Waters” project. Evidence that Saturday’s losers are coming to grips with their critical failure to master ad-man Mike Hutcheson’s “Three Ms” – Message, Money, Machine – has yet to surface.

In time, one hopes, the Left will come to understand that, in all four of the main centres, it was the winning candidates’ mastery of the Three Ms that delivered their victories.

Wayne Brown had all the money he needed to hone his campaign’s message: hiring specialists to test a variety of pitches on potential voters. These experts were also able to identify which demographics were the most likely to vote for his ideas. Guided by political “hired guns” Matthew Hooton and Ben Thomas (formerly “Exeltium”) Brown’s campaign maintained an impressively tight operational discipline.

The key demographic for Brown turned out to be the “Country Calendar Watchers”. These were the over-55 voters who still relied on radio and television for most of their information. The folk who tuned-in to Newstalk-ZB to hear what people like themselves (and Mike Hosking) were thinking and saying. They watched One News, and snuggled-in tight on Sunday evenings for the reassuring images of the decent, hard-working (mostly Pakeha) New Zealand cockies so beloved of “Country Calendar’s” producers.

Wayne Brown’s “Fix Auckland” slogan chimed perfectly with this key demographic. They were less interested in ideological concerns than they were in sorting-out the council. They liked the fact that Brown was abrasive. They did not want a Mayor who suffered fools gladly and allowed himself to be bossed around by city bureaucrats. They were in the political market for a disruptor: someone who could, in the words of Mark Zuckerberg, “move fast and break things”. That the candidate was also a civil engineer, with a reputation for repairing broken things, certainly did him no harm.

Brown did not have a “Machine” in the classic, feet-on-the-ground, Labour/National door-knocking tradition. He didn’t need one. He could reach his key demographic through Newstalk-ZB. Brown’s advertising spend on Auckland’s most popular radio station was all the “Machine” he needed. Historically, the over-55s are the citizens most likely to participate in local elections. They do not need to be “mobilised” – merely steered in the right direction. Carefully targeted social-media messaging added a sweet layer of icing to Brown’s cake.

The same turned out to be true, mutatis mutandis, of successful campaigns across the country. The Right was well-funded, well-prepared, and presented a message which those most likely to vote were eager to hear.

Even in Wellington, where the supposedly left-wing Tory Whanau rolled over both the incumbent, Andy Foster, and Labour’s Paul Eagle, the result owed as much to the candidate’s mastery of the Three Ms as it did to her ideology. Whanau is a superb communicator, whose message that Wellington needed a Green Mayor resonated energetically in the country’s greenest city – electorally-speaking. With sufficient money to sustain her campaign, all Whanau needed was a machine. No problem. Anyone living in or visiting Wellington could hardly miss Whanau’s ground-game. There were feet-on-the-ground in large numbers and plenty of youthful enthusiasm. The newly-elected Mayor told the media that the size of her win came as a surprise. It shouldn’t have.

It is the common theme linking these successes that should give Labour the most concern. Across the country there is a growing sense of disconnection and disempowerment. So much needs to be done, but the democratic transmission-belts that are supposed to carry the needs and wants of the citizenry to the individuals and entities charged with delivering them, no longer seem to work.

Plans are made, and decisions are taken, but not by citizens: not even by the representatives of citizens. At both the national and the local level, unelected and increasingly unaccountable bureaucrats appear to have taken charge. Everywhere, New Zealanders see evidence of centralisation. Everywhere the checks and balances of democracy are being discarded. Elected councillors are expected to act as rubber stamps. Citizens are the stampees.

Nowhere was this situation more vividly illustrated than in the actions of the Orwellian-named “Council Controlled Organisation”, Auckland Transport (AT). Without warning, AT’s CEO informed the users of Auckland’s rail network that its tracks were about to be torn up and re-laid. This would require a cessation of services – some as long as a year. Hugely disruptive of Aucklanders’ lives though it was, AT’s decision was conveyed to Auckland’s elected councillors only after it had been announced publicly. A peculiar way to demonstrate Council Control!

That the Chair of the AT Board, Adrienne Young-Cooper, upon learning of Wayne Brown’s landslide victory, thought it best to offer him her resignation, has been taken as a good omen by all those who voted for “Mr Fix-It” in hopes of instant action being taken. It also prompted the immediate question: Will the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, draw a similar message of the need for instant action from the results of the local government elections?

Interviewed by a typically over-excited John Campbell for the Q+A programme’s Local Elections Special on Sunday morning (9/10/22) the newly-elected Mayor of Nelson, National’s Nick Smith, maintained his equanimity in the face of remarks about his political longevity that bordered on the offensive. All of a piece, it would seem, with Campbell’s earlier observation that the Baby Boom generation was refusing to “go quietly”.

Smith took the gratuitous ageism in good part, countering with an observation or two of his own. If the Labour Government was wise, he said, it would interpret the Left’s defeats as evidence of the electorate having had enough of its policies. Identifying the Three Waters project specifically, he warned that it would be permitted to proceed only by a government with a “death wish”.

Ardern’s ministry has just twelve months to prove it is not suicidal.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 10 October 2022.