A Sorry State Of Affairs.

Apology Accepted? “I dropped the ball on Friday, I was too slow to be seen …The communications weren’t fast enough – including mine. I’m sorry for that.”– Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.

HOW OFTEN do politicians apologise? Sincerely apologise? Not offer voters the weasel words: “If my actions have offended anyone, then I apologise.” That’s the apology politicians offer when they don’t believe they’ve done anything to apologise for. The question is: how often does a politician offer voters an apology like this?

I dropped the ball on Friday, I was too slow to be seen …The communications weren’t fast enough – including mine. I’m sorry for that.

The politician speaking those words is Wayne Brown, the Mayor of New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. Justifiably criticised for his inadequate initial response to the torrential rainstorms that deluged his city on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 January 2023 (since described by meteorologists as a one-in-200-year weather event) Brown has publicly owned-up to his personal failings and said “I’m sorry.”

Not that Brown will receive the slightest positive acknowledgement from his many media critics for stepping-up and accepting his share of responsibility for the multiple failings of public agencies that occurred on the night of Auckland’s devastating rainstorm. The reasons for this are relatively straightforward: Brown is male. Brown is white. Brown is over the age of 65. Brown is also known to be openly contemptuous of journalists. And, most importantly, Brown defeated Efeso Collins, the mayoral candidate many (most?) Auckland journalists wanted to win.

Before examining Brown’s relationship with the news media in more depth, a word or two is needed concerning the shocking level of ageism to which he has been subjected from the very beginning of his campaign to become Auckland’s mayor.

It is remarkable how adept – and shameless – young and supposedly well-educated New Zealanders have proved to be at discriminating against their fellow citizens on the grounds of age. Journalists who would lavish barrels of ink on any person writing disparagingly about the personal appearance of a female politician, nevertheless feel free to dwell upon the ravages time has wrought upon the features of a “grumpy old man”.

That discrimination on the basis of age is outlawed in New Zealand cuts almost no ice with the sort of journalists who glibly describe Brown as “The Boomer King”. It is almost as if the journalists responsible for such ageist slurs are unable to recognise in themselves the same, deeply-ingrained, discriminatory impulses that they condemn so bitterly when manifested by racists, sexists and homophobes.

One can hardly avoid the conclusion that these ageists’ hatred for older human-beings is every bit as visceral as the racists’ hatred for people of colour, and the misogynists’ hatred of women. That they nevertheless feel free to express their prejudices openly is as worrying as it is shameful. Where is the Human Rights Commission when the “hate speech” it condemns so vigorously – and promptly – when directed at Māori, women, Muslims and the LGBTQI community is aimed, instead, at older New Zealanders?

The oddest thing of all about ageism is that every single person who indulges in it will one day (absent the worst sort of bad luck) grow old. How much racism would there be if every White person slowly became a Black person? How much misogyny, if every man turned gradually into a woman? When old age is humankind’s common destiny, ageism makes no sense at all.

The propensity of old age and guile to defeat youth and idealism, is also a common feature of human experience – especially in the field of politics. That Wayne Brown proved the accuracy of the aphorism, by soundly defeating his younger opponent, Efeso Collins, in the mayoralty race of 2022, did little to improve his already poor relationship with “progressive” Auckland journalists, many of them a whole generation younger than himself.

Jacinda Ardern’s “Politics of Kindness”, and her Government’s strong support for Māori and Pasifika, encouraged the Prime Minister’s generation to look forward to Collins becoming the Auckland super-city’s first Pasifika mayor. If Auckland voters had been willing to elect Labour-endorsed has-beens like Len Brown and Phil Goff, then surely, Efeso would be a shoe-in? That Aucklanders might elect a “grumpy old man” like Wayne Brown struck Ardern’s generation of activists as preposterous. They were confident that their assumptions about the nature of contemporary politics and the shape of Aotearoa’s political future were unassailable.

That Brown won the mayoral race easily – principally by applying basic electoral principles to the structuring of his campaign – threw into sharp relief the organisational deficiencies of a generation encouraged to accord bold declarations and positive intentions the same ontological status as actual achievements. As an engineer, Brown is only interested in what works. So instructed, his advisers told him to target only those Aucklanders with a proven track-record of participating in local government elections. These tended to be older, and considerably less tolerant of political dreams and visions, than the younger, typically non-voting, Aucklander.

As it became increasingly obvious that Brown’s pragmatic, non-ideological, “Mr Fix-It” pitch to the active Auckland electorate was going to overwhelm Collins, the active dislike of “progressives” – most particularly those located in the younger generations – grew. Among the least successful at hiding their animosity towards Brown were the city’s journalists – a failure that convinced the newly-elected Mayor that he would be better off not engaging with them.

Brown was right. The reaction of the New Zealand news media – especially those elements of it based in Auckland – was depressingly similar to the United States’ news media’s reaction to Donald Trump’s “impossible” presidential victory of 2016. Unable to accept that it was the political incompetence of “their” candidate that made a Trump victory possible, the American media instead abandoned completely its cherished principles of fairness and balance. Henceforth Trump was the enemy to whom no quarter should be given. Brown, who had also won on the votes of “deplorables” and, like Trump, held most journalists in contempt, would be treated as a reactionary interloper.

It should not be thought, however, that journalists were alone in their animosity towards Brown. Across the entire Auckland City bureaucracy similar misgivings were growing at the prospect of Mr Fix-It telling the Council’s highly-paid managers and professionals how to do their jobs. It would certainly explain why, when the deluge struck, and many of the Supercity’s bureaucrats failed to respond effectively to the emergency, their first instinct was to make the Mayor the scapegoat for what was clearly a system-wide failure. And why the first instinct of the city’s “progressive” journalists was to help them.

Hence Brown’s all-too-public frustration and anger at his inexplicable early exclusion from a number of crucial informational loops. That exclusion in no way excuses Brown’s failure to be seen and heard by Aucklanders as the floodwaters rose and the crisis deepened, but it most certainly does explain them.

And Brown, at least, has had the decency to say he’s sorry. It would be most unwise, however, to hold one’s breath in anticipation of Auckland’s anti-Brown journalists and bureaucrats doing the same.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 6 February 2023.

After The Deluge.

On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth.

Genesis 6:11-12

THE TORRENTIAL DOWNPOURS that dumped a record-breaking amount of rain on Auckland this anniversary weekend will reoccur with ever-increasing frequency. The planet’s atmosphere is warming, and since warm air carries more moisture the likelihood of such extreme weather events is similarly increased. New Zealanders are no longer entitled to write-off the sort of deluge that flooded much of Auckland on 27-28 January 2023 as a one-in-500-year event.

Not that New Zealanders are particularly receptive to the dire warnings of climatologists and meteorologists. With considerable justification, they demand to know what they are supposed to do about it. How, precisely, are the human-beings at the end of “atmospheric rivers” carrying mind-boggling quantities of water supposed to prevent them from dropping it on their heads? The air and ocean currents which determine New Zealand’s climate are not subject to the will of its human population – or their leaders.

Indeed, for those Aucklanders who lived through the events of Friday and Saturday, the power and indifference of the natural world was terrifyingly reiterated. Ours is a proud and headstrong species, but in the face of what one Aucklander described as “apocalyptic” precipitation, our arrogance is swiftly beaten down. The images of men and women wading through floodwaters chest deep, their faces frozen in a rictus of fear and uncertainty were biblical in their eloquence.

On Friday and Saturday the natural world also plunged Auckland into a fast-moving political crisis. In extremis, people turn towards those in authority for guidance and reassurance. Sadly, “Authority’s” response left much to be desired.

Auckland’s Mayor, Wayne Brown, who should have been all over the mainstream and social media, dispensing such information as he possessed, publicly ordering all the relevant Auckland Council bodies into action, and gathering what intelligence he could concerning the intensity and destructiveness of the weather “bomb” that was devastating his city, instead maintained an frustrating radio silence.

Hour after hour of torrential rain went by. Streets became rivers. Homes were flooded. Parks became lakes. Cars were abandoned. People drowned. It was not until 10:17pm, however, that Mayor Brown declared a local state of emergency – thereby allowing the Central Government to swing into action on behalf of Auckland’s citizens.

Those who were following the unfolding tragedy on Twitter were soon made aware of the rising fury of those Auckland City Councillors struggling to assist the flood’s victims. Members of Parliament, too, some of them Ministers of the Crown, were equally aghast. The equivalent of cheers went up on Twitter when the Minister of Transport and MP for Mt Roskill, Michael Wood, peremptorily ordered Waka Kotahi to get its shut-down website up-and-running and to post transport-related up-dates every half-hour.

The Minister’s rage was entirely justified as first the state highways in and out of Auckland, and then the domestic and international terminals of Auckland Airport, succumbed to the floodwaters. The city’s bus fleet struggled to carry its passengers out of the rising waters. In some of them the murky-brown flood-water sloshed back and forth along the access-aisle as alarmed passengers willed the vehicle forward. Private motor cars were quickly overwhelmed and abandoned. Citizen journalists captured eerie images of cars floating: their lights still glowing in the failing light; their windscreen wipers still thrashing ineffectually against the unceasing rain.

Mayor Brown insists that he was guided by the advice of his “professionals”, and that the moment they asked him to declare a state of emergency, a state of emergency was declared. He has further avowed that, as the person responsible for organising the city-wide response to what was fast-becoming a full-scale disaster, he did not have the luxury of delivering hands-on assistance at the ward and community-board level. Someone had to remain at the calm centre of the crisis.

All true, but a leader must also be seen to lead. He must be there – or, at least, his voice and image must be there – consoling, inspiring, thanking and guiding his city’s people. But, on that frightening Friday night, Brown wasn’t there. Very few Aucklanders will be prepared to swear – hand-on-heart – that, in the Great Auckland Flood of 2023, their Mayor did all that was expected of him. The response of Christchurch’s Mayor, Bob Parker, when Mother Nature shook his city to ruins in 2011, offers the people of New Zealand a particularly telling contrast.

Certainly, the country’s new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, did not need to be told that his place was in front of the electorally crucial voters of the nation’s largest city. Hitching a ride on an RNZAF Hercules transport, and then on an air-force helicopter, Hipkins was given a birds-eye view of the damage. But, even as he said all the right things and made all the right promises, the Labour Leader must have been asking himself whether the New Zealand state was up to a challenge of this magnitude.

New Zealand’s cities were founded and grew to their present size in the bounteous years before global warming was recognised as a problem. Their waste and stormwater infrastructure simply wasn’t built to cope with the sort of deluge that descended on Auckland.

“Flooding happens when stormwater can’t drain away fast enough”, writes James Fenwick in an opinion piece posted on the Newsroom website. “So what we need are bigger drains, larger stormwater pipes and stormwater systems that can deal with such extremes.” Except, as Fenwick notes: “The country’s stormwater drain system was designed for the climate we used to have – 50 or more years ago. What we need is a stormwater system designed for the climate we have now, and the one we’ll have in 50 years from now.”

Hipkins despair at being forced to confront even bigger challenges in managing New Zealand’s three waters (drinking, waste and storm) than the ones already on his plate is readily imagined. Also gnawing away at his confidence – as well, no doubt, as Christopher Luxon’s – will be the frightening conclusion that the highly-urbanised nation that is New Zealand is going to have to be rebuilt from top to bottom. Or, failing that, left to simply decline and decay for want of the billions-upon-billions of dollars needed to re-fit it.

After the deluge, the questions around climate change become even starker. This country’s contribution to global warming is infinitesimal – barely two-tenths of one percent. We could revert to the Stone Age tomorrow and not only would the rest of the world fail to notice or appreciate New Zealand’s sacrifice, but also – and much more ominously – those devastating atmospheric rivers would not stop turning warm air into disasters.

It would appear that the choice between rolling-back global warming, and seeking to mitigate its worst effects, is being made for us.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 30 January 2023.

Three Waters. Three Mayors. Three Cheers!

Three Wise Men: Who should pay for upgrading New Zealand's waste, storm and drinking water services? That is the $64 billion (at the very least!) question. The most obvious answer: and the one Mayor Wayne Brown in Auckland, Mayor Phil Mauger in Christchurch, and the Mayor of the Waimakariri District, Dan Gordon, reached for with plain, old-fashioned, common-sense, was that the state should pay.

THE THREE MAYOR’S proposed revision of Three Waters is timely, sensible, and ought to be accepted by the Labour Government. If Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues press on regardless, then the electorate will know just how little Three Waters has to do with securing an affordable upgrade of New Zealand’s water infrastructure, and how much the controversial scheme is now about mandating the co-governance of water.

Not that the Prime Minister will admit that co-governance is the driver of the proposed reforms. To do so would be to lay upon the table, for free and frank debate, the fraught issues of radical constitutional change, and the future of our democracy. Ms Ardern is, almost certainly, in possession of poll data indicating that any such debate would be lost by her Government – decisively.

No, the Prime Minister’s explanation for why the Three Waters project must proceed is already being aimed, unwaveringly, at the voter’s back-pocket. If Three Waters isn’t implemented, she is warning the electorate, council rates are going to go through the roof.

Caught in the grip of a serious cost-of-living crisis, citizens desperate to get their household budget under control will receive the PM’s message with relief. If Three Waters can prevent the average household’s rates bill from skyrocketing, then the average household will more than likely give “Jacinda” the big thumbs-up.

What the average household almost certainly doesn’t realise is that the Prime Minister is spinning them a yarn. Providing the nation with clean drinking water, dealing with its stormwater, and getting rid of its waste water, is already costly, and cannot help getting costlier. Three Waters, or no Three Waters, there’s a mighty big bill coming New Zealand’s way – and, for better or for worse, New Zealanders will have to pay it.

But, how will they pay it? That is the $64 billion (at the very least!) question. The most obvious answer: and the one Mayor Wayne Brown in Auckland, Mayor Phil Mauger in Christchurch, and the Mayor of the Waimakariri District, Dan Gordon, reached for with plain, old-fashioned, common-sense, was that the state should pay.

Nothing can borrow money more cheaply than a solvent, sovereign state. Why? Because states, unlike people, corporations, and even banks, are immortal. There was a time when investors thought of municipalities in the much the same way. If nation states weren’t going anywhere, then neither were their cities and towns. But then New York City went bust, and international investors had to think again.

States, too, thought it advisable to impose strict limits on their borrowing. That’s why, for the last 40 years, successive Finance Ministers have forced local government to borrow the money it needed on the open market. The problem with this “solution” is that a city’s credit-card is maxed-out a lot faster than a state’s. Ditto, its rate-payers’ willingness to pay more and more and more. The present government has heaped scorn and derision on local authorities for their failure to adequately manage municipal infrastructure. Unfair. Those responsible for starving a person, are not really entitled to then complain about their victim’s weakness!

The Three Waters project, with its four “entities” and their hideously complex financial and governance structures, was the Government’s answer to local government’s maxed-out credit cards. The water entities could borrow the money that New Zealand’s cities, towns and districts could no longer access.

There was, however, a catch. According to the international credit-rating agencies, the four entities had to be protected from politics. International investors do not like politics – it’s messy and destabilising. If the cost of drinking, storm and wastewater management rose sharply, said the credit-raters, then the entities responsible had to be protected from every kind of consumer backlash. Whatever else these big beasts might be – they won’t be in any way democratically accountable.

Small wonder, then, that iwi authorities, and the co-governance faction of the Labour Government, were so keen to hitch a ride on the Three Waters bus!

Labour’s big mistake was letting them climb on board. Because, by doing so, it turned the Three Waters project into the hottest of political hot potatoes. And what don’t international investors like? That’s right: putting their money into political hot potatoes.

If this government has a lick of sense, it will greet the Three Mayor’s solution to Three Waters with three cheers.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 4 November 2022.

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.

An Unvarnished, Straight-Talking Working-Class Man?

Unrepentant Scrapper: Any normal candidate would have run a mile from Guy Williams – rightly fearing the humiliation the comedian would be straining every muscle to inflict upon his hapless victim. But, Leo Molloy is not a normal candidate. The former jockey, qualified veterinarian, highly successful businessman, restauranteur and philanthropist backed himself to beat his woke young interlocutor into a soft-cocked hat.

SINCE NOVEMBER 2016, one of the big unknowns of New Zealand politics has been: Could Trumpism happen here? Over the past week in Auckland there have been strong indications that the answer is: Yes, it could. We even have a name. New Zealand’s Donald Trump may turn out to be the independent candidate for the Auckland mayoralty, Leo Molloy.

Molloy’s tactics on the hustings, and their similarity to those employed by Trump in his quest for the Republican nomination, have been commented upon since the mayoral campaign began to pick up speed. His most serious challenger from the right, former Heart of the City boss, Viv Beck, he has dismissed as “Vanilla Viv”. Former Far North District Council Mayor, Wayne Brown, now falling back in the Curia/Ratepayers Alliance poll, is dismissed by Molloy as “The Walking Dead” – subsequently amended to the even more insulting “Shuffling Dead”.

The problem for Molloy’s opponents, as it was for Trump’s, is that these jibes make audiences laugh. Political aspirants on the stump can survive many things, but the derisive laughter of those whose votes they are soliciting is, generally speaking, not one of them. Molloy’s wicked sense of humour and unrestrained tongue are dangerous weapons.

Until last week, however, Molloy’s Trumpian stump tactics have gone unnoticed by all but the most dedicated followers of local government politics. The latest Curia/Ratepayers Alliance poll showed the Labour/Green endorsed Efeso Collins edging ahead of Molloy – a trend which powerfully reinforced the argument of the Auckland Right that the only sensible strategy was for the unserious jokester, Molloy, to withdraw in favour of the moderate and exceedingly serious Viv Beck.

Efeso Collins could be defeated, the Auckland Right insisted, but only if the numerically superior mass of conservative voters were united behind a single viable candidate. Conservative pundits further suggested that nationwide success for the Right in 2023 was contingent upon it ripping Auckland from the Left’s grasp in 2022. The time had come for all those who, in this fatally overcrowded field, could not hope to defeat Collins, to swing their supporters behind Ms Beck – the candidate most favoured by the Communities and Residents group and the National Party.

But the broadcast of TV3’s “New Zealand Tonight” on the evening of Thursday, 14 July 2022, threw all the sensible plans of the Auckland Right into the air. Comedian Guy Williams had persuaded Molloy to join him on one of his trademark forays into televised journalistic anarchy and questionable taste. The result is generally agreed to have been a gamechanger.

Any normal candidate would have run a mile from such a proposal – rightly fearing the ridicule and humiliation Williams would be straining every comedic muscle to inflict upon his hapless victim. But, Molloy is not a normal candidate. The former jockey, qualified veterinarian, highly successful businessman, restauranteur and philanthropist backed himself to beat his young woke interlocutor into a soft-cocked hat.

What unfolded was an magical moment of gonzo television. Using the sort of language generally confined to male locker-rooms, Molloy soon had Williams hanging on the ropes of his own boxing ring. It was vulgar, disreputable and extremely funny. Between them, Williams and Molloy carved out a decorum -free-zone that threw into sharp relief the po-faced puritanism of the contemporary mainstream news media. Within hours of being released by TV3, the Williams/Molloy encounter was all over social-media. The usual woke commissars were, unsurprisingly, outraged, but thousands more were delighted.

It was Oscar Wilde who quipped: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” Molloy’s thinking clearly runs along similar lines. In a single stroke he had transformed an extremely dull mayoral contest into something everybody was talking about. And, as Molloy quipped to Williams: “As long as people are talking about me, I’m winning.”

What his opponents will be fearing is that the sort of bloke (Molloy’s pitch was unashamedly masculinist) who would normally not even bother to open his voting papers when they arrived in the mail, will now be sufficiently motivated to tear open the envelope and triumphantly place a tick beside Molloy’s name.

Will this bloke be highly educated? No. Will he be a member of the Professional-Managerial Class? No. Will he be culturally sensitive? No. Will he have anything much in common with the sort of people who run the Labour Party and the Greens? He will not.

Most likely the bloke who responds positively to the Williams/Molloy encounter will be one of the 63 percent of registered voters who declined to participate in the 2019 Auckland elections. A working-class man who long ago became convinced that the sort of people who control his city have absolutely no idea, and even less interest, in how he, and people like him, feel about the way their city is run. Someone who likes hearing a politician who swears like he does; despises the same people he does; and patently does not give a flying-fuck who knows it.

This bloke will cast a vote for Leo Molloy in the same spirit that so many disillusioned American workers cast a vote for Donald Trump: because, if it works, he will have delivered a very forceful one-fingered salute to the Powers That Be.

The $64,000 Question is, of course: “Will it work?” Much depends upon the size of that angry male vote. If the “New Zealand Tonight” segment induces even ten percent of those who abstained from voting in 2019 to back Molloy with their ballot-papers in 2022, then he will be Supercity Auckland’s Third mayor. More importantly, if the next Curia/Ratepayers Alliance poll shows him leaping into the lead, then Auckland’s committed right-wing voters will not need to be told to swing their votes in behind him. They will be well aware that if Labour loses Auckland, then its chances of holding the rest of New Zealand are wafer thin.

With that grim prospect in mind, Labour and the Greens must take great care to avoid giving the impression that they consider Molloy and his supporters to be “a basket of deplorables”. They need to understand that the more habitual Labour voters learn about Molloy and the causes he believes in – which will surprise many – the more their kneejerk loyalty to Collins will be tested.

It should not be forgotten that the reason Trump made it across the line in 2016 was because he embraced many of the policies that American workers had for decades been begging the Democratic Party to implement. Owing nothing to the Republican Party grandees, Trump possessed a political flexibility unmatched by former GOP nominees. It is worth recalling that it was not the American Left that nixed NAFTA, but the standard-bearer of the American Right.

Swearing like a trooper, and having no patience whatsoever for wokeness, does not ipso facto make you a fascist. On the contrary, it just might convince a winning number of currently disillusioned Labour voters that, like them, you are simply an unvarnished, straight-talking working-class man – someone worthy of their support.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 18 July 2022.