The Politics Of Distraction.

Keeping Their Eyes On The Road: The Coalition Government's re-election depends crucially on the dominant themes of the 2020 election remaining firmly rooted in the practical concerns of the majority. If, however, the National Party Opposition can wrench the electorate’s attention away from the Coalition’s bread-and-butter priorities, then everything will be made significantly more difficult for Labour, NZ First and the Greens.

2020’s GENERAL ELECTION will differ from 2017’s in one vital respect – it will not be about “the economy, stupid”. This poses serious problems for the Coalition Government. 

The unlikely pairing of Labour and NZ First would not have happened had the dominant themes of the 2017 election not been inequality, homelessness, child poverty and pollution. Fluid public concern surrounding these issues had congealed into a broad political consensus that “something must be done”. This, in turn, had led to a blurring of traditional electoral boundaries. It was this blurring effect which encouraged a party of the populist right to reach out to a party of the centre-left and, more surprising still, accept the participation of radical greens in a new government.

The re-election of this unlikely electoral alliance depends crucially on the dominant themes for 2020 remaining firmly rooted in the practical concerns of the majority. Is the gap between the rich and the poor widening or closing? Are people better housed than they were in 2017? Have first-home-buyers been given the hand-up they were promised? Has the percentage of kids living in poverty gone up or down? Are New Zealand’s rivers and lakes more – or less – swimmable?

Positive answers to these questions – and the absence of too many distracting alternatives – should turn the Coalition Government’s re-election into a slam-dunk. If, however, the National Party Opposition can wrench the electorate’s attention away from the Coalition’s bread-and-butter priorities, then everything will be made significantly more difficult for Labour, NZ First and the Greens.

Unfortunately for the governing parties, the 2020 election shows every sign of being defined by the politics of distraction.

For this, the governing parties have no one to blame but themselves. They were the ones who decided to put euthanasia, the legalisation of cannabis, the decriminalisation and liberalisation of abortion, and the reform of New Zealand’s justice system on the political agenda. All of these issues are distinguished by one over-riding political characteristic: their capacity to polarise the electorate. The very outcome which this curious, composite government should be straining every political sinew to avoid.

The National Party and its allies have lost little time in girding their loins for this fight – one much easier to win than a battle against consolidating the material gains of the voting public. Already, the conservative lobby-group, Family First, is pouring over the poll results supplied to it by Curia Research, the agency directed by National’s long-time pollster, David Farrar.

Family First have noted the white-heat generated by all aspects of the transgender issue and, thanks to Curia Research, now know how New Zealanders feel about some of the most sensitive questions associated with transgender politics. More importantly, Family First has hard evidence that the gulf between the attitudes of NZ First and Green Party voters is vast. The potential to destabilise the government by driving the transgender issue to the front of the electorate’s consciousness is, correspondingly, huge.

Curia’s data also makes clear how divided the centre-left’s electoral base is on the transgender issue. If the Right is able to goad the identity politicians of Labour and the Greens into displaying a series of extreme responses to the transgender issue, then the potential for alienating a significant number of socially conservative Labour supporters is considerable.

The likelihood of the activist left perceiving this danger is, however, remote. Of more significance to them will be the fact that upwards of a third of voters are happy to have transgender issues canvassed within New Zealand schools. They will, rightly, celebrate the sheer numerical dimensions of the tolerance and solidarity on display. Of less interest to these activists will be Curia’s finding that a clear majority of citizens are opposed to teaching children that their gender, far from being biologically fixed, can be changed.

The exploitation of the political sensitivities associated with the transgender issue will only be the first of many diversions as the politics of distraction unfolds between now and the general election. At most risk of electoral injury will be NZ First, whose deeply conservative electoral base will experience ever-increasing levels of personal and political unease as Labour and the Greens advance their ultra-liberal social agenda.

If, by 2020, National is able to convince NZ First supporters that Labour’s and the Green’s priorities are no longer theirs, then it will win.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 18 January 2019.

Lecretia's Legacy: A Matter Of Life And Death.

A Lover Of Life: It was a brave and deeply ethical thing that Lecretia Seales did. In a society that seems at times positively terrified of thinking seriously about anything, she invited us to shake off our more familiar roles as consumers, viewers, texters and takers of endless selfies, to become, if only for a little while, citizens.

 

LECRETIA SEALES has delivered into our hands a grim but important legacy. Though her bid to have assisted death declared legal by a judge of the High Court of New Zealand has failed; and though her tragic death has rendered the issues she raised moot; Lecretia has not been defeated.

 

What she sought, in bringing her case to court, was a clear statement of the legal principles relevant to assisted death and euthanasia, as well as a setting forth of all the legal impediments to realising those objectives. This she has achieved.

 

Judge Collins’ judgement has, quite correctly, declined Lecretia’s invitation to legislate from the Bench, and handed over the responsibility for resolving the stark challenges of euthanasia and medically assisted dying to the people of New Zealand through their elected representatives in Parliament.

 

The New Zealand constitution reserves to Parliament, as the ultimate distillation of the people’s will, the right to frame and fashion the laws that govern its citizens. Judge Collins was not about to overturn that core constitutional convention, and it is likely that Lecretia never seriously entertained the slightest hope that he would.

 

What this quiet and reportedly rather self-effacing woman did understand, however, was that by bringing her case to court she would focus the attention of the whole of New Zealand society upon her tragic circumstances and the means she sought to prevent them from obliterating the person that she was. Win or lose, she knew that her actions would require people to think about and, hopefully, come to a decision about the rights and wrongs of the legal changes she was proposing.

 

It was a brave and deeply ethical thing that Lecretia Seales did. In a society that seems at times positively terrified of thinking seriously about anything, she invited us to shake off our more familiar roles as consumers, viewers, texters and takers of endless selfies, to become, if only for a little while, citizens.

 

We have been asked to engage in a serious discussion about the meaning of life and the experience of death. To test our own feelings about when it might be acceptable to put aside the great commandment “Thou shalt not kill”, in favour of the even greater exhortation to “Love thy neighbour as thyself”.

 

For that is the calculation that Lecretia was forced, by her illness, to make. Which self are we being asked to cherish? Is it our healthy self; the self that showed the world the full extent of what it had to contribute? Or, are we being asked to cherish with equal care a damaged and agonised self; a self distorted by disease and pain? A self that presents only a bitter parody of person it used to be?

 

If a human-being, in full possession of her faculties, and facing the truth of her situation rationally and honestly, decides that she wishes to exercise control over the way she takes leave of this world, who dares claim the right to prevent her from doing so? In the past, the answer to that question was, God. It was a sin for anyone other than God to take a human life – even if that life was their own.

 

But New Zealanders decided long ago that, when it comes to persons determined to take their own lives, God’s wishes need not be considered. Suicide is legal. And, since that is the case, why should it be illegal for a doctor to facilitate his or her patient’s decision to end their life at a time of their own choosing?

 

Such is Lecretia’s legacy: the gift of choice. Either to accept the duty of formulating a citizen’s judgement on the weighty matter of voluntary euthanasia; or, to simply turn away and put off all consideration of life’s meaning until the moment that Death’s dark hand knocks loudly upon our door. Praying that when this dread summons finally comes, the person he carries off is still recognisable to both our loved ones and ourselves.

 

In that, too, Lecretia left us a powerful and enduring example.

 

This essay was posted simultaneously on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road blogsites on Saturday, 6 June 2015.