We DO Need Another Hero

Two Men Enter. One Man Leaves: Does Labour need another hero? David Shearer's failure to pull the metaphorical sword from the stone bodes ill for his looming battle with the National Party's (and the nation's?) "monomythic" leader.

“WE DON’T NEED ANOTHER HERO” sings Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. It’s a curiously contradictory song because, if you listen to the lyrics, it soon becomes painfully clear that a hero is exactly what these captive children, “the last generation”, need: someone who does “know the way home”; someone who can lead them “beyond Thunderdome”.

Perhaps the popularity of the 1985 hit recording is attributable to the worldwide collapse in the public’s – and especially the young’s – faith in political leaders and political ideologies. This was, after all, an era dominated by the polarising figures of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, leaders who made it very clear that they would rather be dead than red and were quite willing to enlist the rest of us in proving the point. Mad Max was itself set in a post-nuclear-apocalypse world. In the eyes of many young people, heroes weren’t the solution – heroes were the problem.

And yet, as even the most cursory glance at the historical record makes clear, people not only need heroes but they are ready and willing to follow them. Indeed, modern political marketing is about little else. Just take a look at a professionally produced campaign ad. Note the camera angles, the lighting, the music, the symbolic references: the entire exercise is devoted to making the candidate look taller, wiser, braver, more patriotic, more heroic that his or her rivals.

The great American socialist, Eugene Victor Debs, warned his working-class followers against putting their faith in leaders:

I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands.

By the same token, however, Debs never came close to being elected President of the United States and his Socialist Party remained forever in the shadow of the Democratic Party.

Nor is it certain that Debs’ contention is even true. Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister, was hailed as a hero by his working-class followers as the world spiralled into financial ruin in 1929. But when, in 1931, bereft of ideas about how to stem the rising tide of unemployment, MacDonald threw in his lot with the Conservative Party and led a rump of Labour into a coalition “National” government, he was vehemently denounced as a traitor to both his country and his class.

The notion that a hero is someone who wields great physical and/or moral power in his own right, though widely held, is misconceived. A hero isn’t something that you are, it is something you become. Joseph Campbell, in his seminal 1949 work The Hero of a Thousand Faces, describes what he calls the “monomyth”, the narrative structure common to all hero tales:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Heroes succeed because they embody the virtues and have acquired the skills necessary to overcome or divert the forces their communities feel most threatened by. The hero is the distillation of collective aspiration, not its creator.

Local Hero: John Key is the distillation of New Zealanders' aspirations - not their creator.

John Key’s extraordinary success as a political leader owes a great deal to how closely his own career conforms to the heroic monomyth.

The story begins with John, an ordinary Kiwi joker with a head for figures, setting out on a risky journey into the fantastic world of high finance, where all but the hardiest and most cunning traders are eaten alive. Having mastered the magical art of making money, and acquired a vast fortune, John returns home from his adventures determined to put his hard-won skills to good use among his own people.

It is difficult to imagine a “hero” better suited to the needs of twenty-first century New Zealand. John Key’s very ordinariness confirms his “Everyman” status, and amplifies the potency of his success. The power he wields is not his own, but a weapon forged from the capacities inherent in every Kiwi: those mysterious qualities that allow New Zealanders to “punch above their weight”; that national essence which sanctions John Key’s followers’ vicarious participation in his personal and political success. He is Us, and We are Him. It’s why, until an even more emblematic hero comes along, John Key will remain invincible.

For a while, it looked as though Labour had found just such an emblem. David Shearer’s story, like John Key’s, begins with an ordinary bloke setting forth on a journey, during which he encounters all manner of monsters – from Somali warlords to murderous Israeli settlers – learning in the process the magic spells for opening the human heart to compassion, justice and reconciliation. He, too, returns to his people and, at the crucial moment, steps forward from the shadows to declare that he is the one destined to lay low the National Party usurper.

Except he hadn’t learned the spells, or, if he had, he could no longer remember them.

Forgotten Magic: What if the Once and Future King had grabbed the sword in the stone - and it hadn't budged?

It’s as if Arthur stepped up to the sword in the stone, gave it a confident tug – and nothing happened. Instead of a sword flashing in the sunlight above his head, proof positive that he was “rightwise King born of all England”, the weapon stays exactly where it is, and the hero, with an embarrassed shrug, picks up a guitar instead.

There are, of course, many variations on the classic hero tale. Instead of acquiring forbidden knowledge and inheriting mysterious powers, the hero is often required to overcome a series of obstacles and/or eliminate a host of adversaries before completing his quest. In doing so he blazes a trail and lays a path for those who follow after him. Think of the Labours of Heracles, or Theseus’s struggle with the Minotaur, or Luke Skywalker’s destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars.

Does Labour have another hero? And, if it does, can we assume that the first obstacles and adversaries he must overcome are all inside his own party?

In the words of the Bartertown mob in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome: “Two men enter! One man leaves!”

Or, as Savannah Nix (more generously) declares in the movie’s closing sequence:

Still in all, every night we does the tell, so that we ‘member who we was and where we came from ... but most of all we ‘members the man that finded us, him that came the salvage. And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of them that are still out there. ‘Cause we knows there come a night, when they sees the distant light, and they’ll be comin’ home.

We DO need another hero.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

All Of Us? Reflections On The Trial Of Ewen Macdonald

Dark Journey: How many of us came away from the Macdonald trial concerned at how large the cancer growing in the nation's heartland has become ... and wondering how far it has spread?

“THE GUY FAMILY are all of us.” Or so the Manawatu Standard would have us believe. But they’re not. The Guys are a wealthy Manawatu farming family – so wealthy they could afford to pay their son, Scott, and their son-in-law, Ewen, $100,000 p.a. each to run the family business. So wealthy that the bitter struggle between Scott and Ewen for eventual control of the property provided a plausible motive for murder.

All of us simply don’t live in a world where Dad, or our father-in-law, has enough money coming in to pay us a six-figure salary for attaching suction-cups to cows’ teats and driving around on tractors. Most of us live in a world where years of schooling and training leave us earning considerably less than the 32-year-old cow cocky who left school at 16, went to work on a neighbouring farm, and somehow persuaded the boss’s daughter to marry him.

All of us were interested in the Shakespeare-in-Gumboots drama played out in a Wellington courtroom this past month for exactly the same reason that (nearly) all of us used to watch Dallas back in the 1980s. Not because JR and Bobby Ewing were like us, but because the privileged lives of those wealthy Texas ranchers were nothing like us. Dallas drew us into a world where money was power, and where both could be had for nothing more praiseworthy than being a father’s son, his daughter’s husband, or the parents of his grandchildren.

If that all sounds a little feudal, then award yourself full marks for historical perspicacity, and get used to it. Because in the trial of Ewen Macdonald we all caught a glimpse of the vicious, class-ridden and quasi-dynastic society New Zealand is becoming. A society in which we no longer make our own fortunes but attach ourselves to someone else’s. A society in which arrogance breeds resentment potent enough to burn down one house and vandalise another. A society in which men settle scores in the dark … with shotguns.

No, “all of us” are not like the Guys – nothing like. The more fascinating – and worrying – question is: “How many of us are like Ewen Macdonald?”

On the surface he was everything the “ordinary” Kiwi admires: taciturn, hard-working, quietly ambitious; the sort of guy who rubs along well with everyone; mans the barbecue at fundraisers; gets elected to the local school board of trustees.

But, below the surface? Ah, well, that’s a different story. Gordon McLauchlan still insists we’re a passionless people, but Gordon has always been wrong about that. What defines so many New Zealanders – especially Ewen – isn’t a lack of passion but a surfeit of repression. That sinister expression: “You’ll keep!”, sums it up nicely. For what can it possibly mean except: “You’ve wronged me, but I’m not going to confront you now. No, I’m going to bury your insult deep, wait until it putrefies, collect all the poison, pour it into your beer when you’re not looking, and then watch you drink it.”

Two Ewen Macdonalds: Ewen of the Day and Ewen of the Night.

This repression was revealed during the trial, where we encountered two Ewens. The bluff cow cocky that was Ewen of the Day, and the deeply disturbing criminal that was Ewen of the Night. The man on a “mission” who crept into his neighbours’ farms under cover of darkness and poached their livestock. The man who torched his brother-in-law’s house for a laugh. The man who, accompanied by his faithful “childlike” partner-in-crime, Callum Boe, (a name worthy of Harper Lee or William Faulkner!) took an axe to Scott’s wife Kylee’s nearly-finished dream-house and scrawled “bitch slapper fucking whore” on its shattered walls.

Ewen’s outstanding lawyer, Greg King, asked the Jury to accept that these were “crimes against property” not against people. Well, that may have been true of the $20,000 stags he shot in the dark and then buried. But surely the arson and the vandalism were crimes against people? Surely they were blows directed against Scott and Kylee?

How well Mr King understood the mind-set of the ladies and gentlemen of his jury. How clever he was to call the brutal slaying of Scott Guy a “whodunit”: to turn the trial into a parlour game; to invite the eleven jury members to sit back and enjoy the ride he was about to take them on. He understood equally clearly how vital it was , in an era when the world’s television screens seem to feature nothing but crime and forensic detection, that his ride should make them think only of CSI and never of Criminal Minds.

The very last thing the Defence wanted was for the Jury to use their imaginations. Under no circumstances should they be invited to follow the evidence down the dark staircase that led to Ewen of the Night’s state of mind.

Fortunately for Mr King we live in an age where only a tiny minority of the population has even the slightest grasp of the literary canon of their civilisation. A better read Jury, when told by Mr King that the quarrel between Scott and Ewen had been mended; that they’d become the best of friends; might have recalled Shakespeare’s famous line from Hamlet: “That one may smile and smile, and be a villain”.

And so Ewen Macdonald was acquitted. The Crown failed to make the Jury stare long enough into the abyss that was Ewen of Night, and Mr King, with extraordinary forensic flair, unplaited the circumstantial rope with which the Prosecution had hoped to hang the Defendant. The Guys will go on asking: “Who killed our son?” And the Macdonalds will ask themselves a very similar question. The little town of Feilding will close ranks and keep quiet. In rural communities you either follow the lead of the big landowners, or leave.

And all of us? What will we take away from the past four weeks? Some will recall Hamlet and King Lear. Others will think of Dallas and CSI. But how many, I wonder, will register how large the cancer growing in the heartland has become. How many will ask themselves if it has metastasized into New Zealand’s cities and suburbs. This all-consuming greed; this murderous impatience; this contradictory urge to both curry favour and cast down: the cancer that’s eating us alive.

How long must we go on muttering: “You’ll keep!” Waiting there in the darkness before sunrise; listening for the sound of the ute’s tyres on the gravel; cringing from the sudden glare of the headlights; feeling the weight of the shotgun in our hands?

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

MoBIE: Socialist Instrument Or Steven Joyce's Great White Whale?

Nemesis: Steven Joyce will be hoping that his "super-ministry" - MoBIE - does not prove to be his undoing, as the Great White Whale, Moby Dick, did for the obsessional Captain Ahab in Melville's famous novel.

IT’S HUGE, it’s “business facing” and, in the right hands, it could give Treasury a run for its money. What is it? The official designation is the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, but it’s called MoBIE (as in “Moby Dick”) for short. Will this new “super-ministry” become the critical driver of John Key’s Government’s economic plans; or will it turn out to be the Great White Whale that drags its creator, Steven Joyce, to the bottom? Interestingly, not everyone hoping for the latter is located on the Opposition side of the aisle.

There’s no doubt that the amalgamation of the Ministry of Economic Development, the Department of Labour, the Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the Department of Building and Housing is a high-risk gambit. Not only because the critical responsibilities of the former stand-alone ministries and departments are at real risk of being blurred, downgraded or even elided in the new structure, but also because Mr Joyce’s bureaucratic behemoth may simply prove to be too large, too complicated and too cumbersome to achieve its minister’s ambitious goals.

Officially, MoBIE’s purpose is to create a more efficient and effective Ministry focused on lifting overall productivity and supporting the growth of competitive businesses in order to create more jobs, paying higher wages, and boosting our standard of living. It is hoped that by grouping formerly discrete bureaucratic functions into a single structure businesses and companies will find it easier to access innovative ideas, markets, capital, skilled workers, resources, and the supporting public infrastructure.

“The Government has a comprehensive business growth agenda to assist business, and a single focused business-facing government ministry will further boost our momentum”, said Mr Joyce, in a statement announcing the creation of the new super-ministry on 15 March 2012.

The crucial question posed by MoBIE’s creation is: “What will fuel this new bureaucratic machine?” If the present government’s past behaviour is any guide, it will be fuelled by foreign capital.

What Mr Joyce appears to be offering overseas investors is a ministry to normalise and co-ordinate the sort of ad-hoc deal we saw struck between Mr Key’s Government and Warner Bros. over The Hobbit. In that deal New Zealand’s labour law was made fit for Warner Bros.’ purpose; the innovative prowess of Sir Peter Jackson and Weta Workshops buttressed, and New Zealand’s film industry jobs protected. MoBIE’s mission would appear to be to make that sort of one-off accommodation to the needs of both domestic and foreign capital routine.

If that is correct, then it’s easy to see why the NZ Council of Trade Unions has expressed its profound unease about MoBIE. CTU Secretary, Peter Conway, is concerned that: “plans to have a sole ‘business facing’ purpose for the Department responsible for safety at work, holidays, parental leave, minimum wages, and for wider workers’ employment conditions and rights poses great risks for the interests of the over two million New Zealanders who are in the workforce.” Unsurprisingly he drew the Government’s attention to the serious shortcomings exposed within the stand-alone Labour Department by the Pike River Disaster inquiry:

“Tragedies such as Pike River have shown that the Government is already struggling to provide adequate resourcing to the health and safety inspectorate, and to adequately carry out their health and safety functions.” How likely is it that the new “business-facing” MoBIE will turn around and become a “worker-facing” organisation?

The Labour Party’s opposition to MoBIE’s establishment is somewhat harder to fathom. In the hands of an unashamedly interventionist social-democrat (David Cunliffe take note!) MoBIE could become the dominant instrument of government policy, consigning Treasury to a distant second place. Fuelled by the capital reserves of the Cullen Fund and a state-run Kiwisaver, with powers to determine minimum wages and conditions, union rights, research funding, regional development and housing construction, MoBIE could swiftly take on the nation-building role of the 1930s Ministry of Works. Its capacity to create tens of thousands of jobs – principally by building new homes and upgrading New Zealand’s decaying infrastructure, would make MoBIE the most valuable tool in Labour’s workshop.

The precedent is there not only in our own Ministry of Works, but in the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). Brought into existence by Presidential decree in 1953, HEW became the principal architect and builder of America’s post-war welfare state, especially President Johnson’s “Great Society”. What made it work was the powerful common objectives of its component divisions. Until its demise in 1979 (when Education was calved-off to form a separate department) HEW oversaw the continuation and elaboration of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal”.

Infused with HEW’s sense of historic mission and reformist zeal, MoBIE could become the driver of twenty-first century social-democracy in New Zealand. The reason, perhaps, why not all of Mr Joyce’s cabinet colleagues are celebrating its birth.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 July 2012.

This Is New Zealand: Anna Stretton

Don't Let Them Eat Cake: After reading Fran O'Sullivan's summary of fashion designer, Annah Stretton's, thinking on New Zealand's social policies, I sincerely hope that she never becomes Prime Minister - not even for a day.

WHAT WAS FRAN O’SULLIVAN THINKING when she devoted her Weekend Herald column to the political thoughts of “fashion maven” Annah Stretton? Did she honestly believe she was doing the woman a favour by publicising her controversial opinions? Did Ms O’Sullivan really believe New Zealanders would be better off if the sharp-edged social policies promoted by this designer of expensive ladies’ frocks were given practical effect?

Personally, I was more disposed to believe that the veteran journalist had inwardly been so appalled by Ms Stretton’s comments that she decided to share them with an audience much larger than the Ernst & Young-sponsored “Dress For Success” event at which they were delivered.

“Oh, Christopher, you’re so naïve”, came the immediate response from a (now former) wearer of Stretton’s creations. “In the circles Fran O’Sullivan moves in nobody regards Stretton’s ideas as in any way odious or vicious. On the contrary, most of Fran’s friends probably subscribe wholeheartedly to Annah Stretton’s views.”

I thought about this for a moment and realised, with a sinking feeling, that she was right. You don’t have to look very long or listen very hard to discover Ms Stretton’s catch-phrases: “culture of entitlement”; “family unit of care”; the “absurdity” of universal, un-means-tested, superannuation; tripping merrily off the tongues of “successful” business-women all over New Zealand – especially in the provinces.

These ideas have been repeated so often by the solid citizens of Tauranga, Napier, Ashburton and, of course, in Ms Stretton’s home town of Morrinsville, that they’ve become a sort of right-wing catechism – something to be recited at the drop of a designer hat (or an Ernst & Young invitation). In such sealed social environments these proud adherents to the conservative faith will seldom, if ever, hear anything to contradict their prejudices.

Ms Stretton is fêted in the fashion magazines for her charity work. For example, the “Dress for Success” organisation, at whose fundraiser she was speaking, aims to help disadvantaged women back into the workforce by clothing them in “professional attire”. As if the solution to structural unemployment involved nothing more than offering these unfortunate proletarian frumps a good zooshing-up. While handing out their second-hand frocks and fashion tips, I wonder if Ms Stretton and her colleagues ever take a moment to listen to the young women they’re dressing-up. It would be nice to think that, just occasionally, social reality took a stroll down the catwalk.

Sadly, the maven’s manifesto suggests that, amongst all that frilly condescension, reality failed to secure a back-stage pass. To argue that the DPB should be capped at two children; that there be no automatic entitlement to National Super; that ACC should be privatised; and that no one under the age of 20 should be able to collect an unemployment benefit (sorry, “Job Seekers Allowance”);  is to identify oneself as someone without the faintest conception of what the consequences of such policies might look like.

The kindest excuse is that in promoting such hard-line measures, Ms Stretton was simply disbursing the ideological currency of her class. Readily exchangeable in provincial towns like Morrinsville and throughout our leafier city suburbs, but worthless on the mean streets of Otara and St Kilda.

Or, perhaps, I am once again displaying my naivety? Maybe Ms Stretton, Ms O’Sullivan, and their ilk know only too well what the effects of their “PM for a Day” prescriptions would be on those required to swallow them.

Of course there must be pain. How can these people be expected to learn if it doesn’t hurt? Tough love is what they need – not bleeding hearts!

Such is the language of social inequality: the merciless diction of those who have mastered the obscene stage directions of Neoliberalism’s theatre of cruelty.

The Weekend Herald is to be congratulated for publishing this snap-shot of the successful business entrepreneur’s world view. Now we know how the 1 percent think of, and speak about, the 99 percent of New Zealanders who could never afford (and after Ms O’Sullivan’s extraordinary column, probably shouldn’t be found dead wearing) an Annah Stretton creation.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Islam And Democracy

Representative Of The People: Egypt's new President, Mohammed Morsi, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been hailed as that country's first democratically elected leader. But early Islamic history manifested a strong impetus towards political representation and equality within the community of the faithful. The great hope of the so-called "Arab Spring" is that these traditions will undergo a powerful revival.

IS MOHAMMED MORSI Egypt’s first democratically elected leader? Though many journalists are insisting he merits that distinction, it’s just possible the journalists may be wrong.

Among the first peoples to be conquered by the followers of the Prophet Mohammed, Seventh Century Egyptians discovered earlier than most that membership of the community of the faithful (the Ummah) conferred radical new rights. Among the most important of these was the right to elect representatives. These upright citizens (the Shura) were, in their turn, collectively charged with determining upon whose shoulders the responsibility for leading the peoples of Islam should fall.

The chosen one, known as the Caliph, was of necessity both a religious and political leader. Islam, unlike Christianity, draws no clear distinction between the things that belong to Caesar and the things that belongs to God. The Caliphate, at least in its original form, was, therefore, a proto-democratic republic of faith, ruled over by a person in whose supreme office the powers of President and Pope were combined. It’s at least arguable that, fourteen hundred years ago, Mr Morsi had a predecessor.

Given the political traditions of the era, it is hardly surprising that the Caliphate became the prize of a succession of dynasties. Even so, the core religious-political principle of the fundamental equality of all believers made possible the dazzling and extraordinarily tolerant culture of Islam’s “Golden Age” (750-1250 AD).

The Great Mosque of Cordoba, in Spain. In the islamic Golden Age (750-1250 AD) the best scientific minds were to be found in Egypt, Syria and Iraq.

Weakened by successive Christian assaults from the West (the Crusades) the Abbasid Caliphate was finally laid low in 1258 by the Mongol armies of Genghis Khan. The West, however, had reason to be grateful that before the beautiful cities, towering mosques and celebrated universities were destroyed, most of the scientific, mathematical, medical and philosophical achievements of Islamic civilisation had already, by fair means and foul, passed into the hands of Christendom.

Though the Caliphate would rise again under the Ottoman Turks, it would never again attain the extraordinary confidence and poise of Islam’s golden age. Hugely impressive (not to mention militarily dominant) though the Ottoman Caliphate may have been, there was something missing. That vital spark which had lit the fires of creation and inquiry for so long was, for some reason, no longer being struck.

Scholars of Islamic history called that missing spark ijtihad – the spirit of independent reasoning. Today, we’d call it critical thinking. The loss of confidence which followed the slaughter and devastation of the Mongols, combined with the authoritarian military-bureaucratic culture of the Ottomans, saw ijtihad replaced by taqlid – reliance on the tested, following established practice, deferring to the teachings of those who had come before.

At the same moment that the knowledge passed to Christendom began fostering the intellectual forces that would result in the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the Islamic world was beginning its slow but remorseless decline into insularity and orthodoxy.

The real question to be asked about the so-called “Arab Spring” is whether or not it signals a reaffirmation of the fundamental equality of all believers, and a rebirth of the democratic spirit of the shura? If so, then the world can hope that the spirit of independent thought, of ijtihad, will similarly be born again and the Islamic world will recapture the glories of its golden age.

But, if the revolts taking place across the Middle East end up being hijacked by the upholders of taqlid: if Mr Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood are only interested in the re-establishment of orthodoxy and the extinguishing of freedom, then spring will become winter and the Ummah will, once again, be robbed of the summer they deserve.

As we watch these events unfold across the Islamic world, we should resist the temptation to celebrate our historical escape from the clutches of taqlid. The global financial crisis harrowing the West may not mirror the mayhem of the Mongols, but all around us there is evidence of a very similar loss of confidence and intellectual agility.

Looking at our own caliphs, are we struck by their ability to engage in independent reasoning and creative thinking? Or have they, too, fallen victim to the false promises of orthodoxy?

What now lies before the West: a golden light, or gathering darkness? In the words of the Fifteenth Century Syrian scholar, Ahmad ibn Arabshah: “If the future is hidden, yet you should guess it from the past.”

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 29 June 2012.

Rio + 20

Fingers Not yet Burnt: Only when the global environmental crisis is perceived as a direct existential threat will humanity take the steps necessary to address it. By then, of course, it will be too late.

WHO NOW REMEMBERS the 1992 “Earth Summit” meeting in Rio? Am I right in recalling that Al Gore was present? And weren’t we represented by the National Party’s smartest-ever cabinet minister – Simon Upton? It was all very worthy, not to mention predictable: the rain forests were disappearing; indigenous peoples were threatened; more and more species were endangered. And, as if that wasn’t enough, the Summit’s “Climate Change Convention” warned humanity that fossil-fuel emissions were heating up the Earth’s atmosphere.

All very important and urgent, but New Zealanders had other things on their minds back then. The effects of Ruth Richardson’s “Mother of All Budgets” and Jenny Shipley’s benefit cuts were all around them, and unemployment was only slowly coming off its 11 percent peak. For a great many people the survival of the planet came a poor second to the survival of themselves and their families.

Twenty years on and another Rio Summit is warning us that the condition of the planet’s wafer-thin biosphere, humanity’s incredibly delicate survival-suit, is deteriorating rapidly. And, again, the effects of a global economic crisis are dominating the headlines, banishing important environmental stories to the inside pages of our daily newspapers.

Do we care that global temperatures continue their relentless upward swing? Do we lament the extinction of entire species? Do we understand the dangers of out-of-control deforestation in the planet’s tropical zones? Of course we do. It’s just that we care about holding onto our jobs, paying our bills and looking after our kids a whole lot more.

As a species we are genetically programmed to recognise and repel immediate existential threats. The leopard in the long grass of the savannah; the firestorm swallowing up the forest; the cave bear rearing out of the darkness: these we can deal with. But the slow encroachment of the desert sands; the gradual decline in the river’s flow; the changing migration paths of woolly mammoths or caribou: these things proved more perplexing.

In the days before men drew lines on maps, people simply moved on to where the grass was greener, the rivers flowed more swiftly and the herds could be tracked and attacked in the same old ways. But today, one hundred millennia removed from our hunter-gatherer past, the human species numbers seven-thousand-millions, and moving on is not an option.

We must fight for our survival from where we are – and for most of us that means fighting in a city. It was only a few years ago that more than half of humanity ceased living in the countryside. If the planet is to be saved, it will be by people living in its urban environment.

The 2,400 representatives from Non-Governmental Organisations who attended the 1992 Rio Summit understood this very well. China and India were industrialising at break-neck speed and simply could not avoid drawing millions into the urban environments that manufacturing on a massive scale inevitably creates. They urged the developing countries’ governments to avoid the resource-depleting, pollution-generating automobile cultures of the West by prioritizing the provision of public transportation. Anyone attempting to navigate the streets of New Delhi or Shanghai will grasp how emphatically the world’s fastest-growing economies declined to heed their advice.

The determination of these economies to afford their consumers a Western life-style is entirely understandable, but it is also strip-mining Australia, Africa and South America of their natural resources, and sucking dry the world’s dwindling oil reserves. Unless the urban environment undergoes changes as dramatic as those which set this global environmental crisis in motion, its insatiable appetite, not only for minerals and fossil fuels, but simply for food and water, will crash the entire system of industrial civilisation.

The political representatives of late industrial capitalism seem incapable of understanding these existential threats. The only bears they’re willing to fight are those currently stalking Wall Street. It is to the representatives of enlightened humanity that we must, therefore, turn if the enemies of our common future are to be overcome: the Greens and those social-democratic parties still capable of stepping-up to the challenges of radical change.

Given New Zealand’s remoteness, and its relatively tiny population, the contribution we can make to saving the world will, necessarily, be limited. Perhaps the best gift we could offer our fellow human-beings is a positive example of the practical changes that need to be made.

The devastated city of Christchurch could play a vital role in this regard by modelling the sustainable urban environment the world needs to copy. There’d be a state-of-the-art public transportation system; ecologically intelligent architecture; urban gardens, self-sufficient small-scale energy generators connected to the national grid; water recycling schemes; and the conscious creation of resilient urban communities. (Hat-tip to Leanne Dalziel.)

The oft-quoted environmental slogan: “Think globally, act locally” could hardly be more relevant.

Let the future begin right here.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 26 June 2012.

The Journey: A Political Memoir - Posting No. 10

Members For The Distribution Workers Federation: By 1986, Trade unionists Larry Sutherland, Sonja Davies and Graham Kelly were moving steadily towards their parliamentary objectives. Observing their progress, the author, like so many Labour activists before him, posed the question: Why not me? The answer, as always, turned on exactly how much of his integrity he was prepared to sacrifice.

It was supposed to be a book about the birth of the NewLabour Party, but somewhere along the way it became the story of what led me into, and out of, the old Labour Party. In hopes of providing future political studies students with a glimpse of what it was like to be a left-wing Labour activist in the days of David Lange and Roger Douglas, I am publishing The Journey on Bowalley Road as a series of occasional postings. L.P. Hartley wrote: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” May these memoirs, written in 1989, serve, however poorly, as my personal passport.

Tuesday, 16 September 1986

ST PATRICK’S HALL is filling up with members of the Timaru Labour Party. I stand nervously at the entrance, trying to recognise the faces of those I have canvassed for support. Noelene Hanifin, Mike’s mother, is still locked up with the Timaru Labour Electorate Committee (LEC). Mike, Francesca and I cast worried glances at the door separating us from the meeting. We are all hoping that Alan Aldridge, the LEC Chairperson, will be able to head-off the supporters of the Timaru Labour Establishment and its redoubtable leader, Oliver Gavigan.

Timaru, long a Labour stronghold, fell to the National Party in the 1985 by-election. The meeting in St Patrick’s Hall has been called to select the Party’s candidate for the 1987 General Election. I have decided to seek the nomination.

My three-piece suit and trim haircut belie the feelings of hostility I now harbour towards the Government that I am, quite unrealistically, attempting to join. It was not always so.

*   *   *   *   *

SINCE THE BEGINNING of the year, a new expression has crept into Labour party conversation: “constructive engagement”. It began as a Sean Fleigner witticism. Constructive Engagement was the term coined by the Reagan Administration to describe the United States’ relationship with the South African apartheid regime. Sean drew the analogy with Fran Wilde’s insistence that the left-wing of Labour’s caucus must seek to work with the cabinet and attempt to guide them towards a more acceptable set of policies. I have used the expression in my contributions to the National Business Review. Now it has become respectable.

Other influences have been at work throughout 1986. Stan Rodger’s Labour relations Bill is in the process of being drafted and nervous trade unionists are working frantically behind the scenes to ensure that their traditional rights are not legislated out of existence.

Rob Campbell has floated the concept of an Australian-style “Accord” between the FOL and the Government.

Throughout the country, left-wing activists have been pouring their energies into local body elections. In Wellington and Dunedin (the most vociferous centres of anti-Government agitation) impressive gains will be made by the Labour Party in terms of representation on their city councils.

Everywhere, the energy and intensity of 1985 has been channelled into “constructive” party work. And at the controls of the machine sits Margaret Wilson and her coterie. The influence she exercises, by virtue of her impeccable credentials with the Women’s and Affiliates’ Councils (the two most influential bodies within the party) is impressive.


The secret of her success rests upon a chameleon-like gift for blending into her environment. In front of the Women’s Council she is the very image of a 1980s socialist feminist. Speaking to the Affiliates’, she takes on the guise of a concerned lecturer in industrial law, wrestling with the awesome difficulties of the Labour Relations Bill. At the regional conferences Margaret is full of encouragement. At Annual Conference, the stern guardian of the Government’s ratings. Wilson controls the party in a way Anderton never did. The party is hers and she is the Government’s greatest asset. Colin James, Editor of the National Business Review, will dub her “Politician of the Year”.

*   *   *   *   *

I HAVE EXPERIENCED her skill at close quarters. As an office-holder in Campbell’s Distribution Workers’ Federation, I have observed the manoeuvrings of Graham Kelly, Sonja Davies and Larry Sutherland (all of whom have close connections with the DWF) as they moved steadily towards their parliamentary objectives. Why not Chris Trotter MP? It is the lure that traps the most determined of dissidents. That siren-song of power. In the office of Tony Timms, the party’s general secretary, Margaret Wilson sizes me up:

“You seem presentable enough,” she laughs, “and possess no obvious vices.”

“Those Timaru bastards are all mad.” Timms leans forward across the desk. “They write to me at least once a week! We have to have a decent candidate.”

To those reaching towards the sunlight of political office, such talk is the purest of all fertilisers. On the Third Floor of Fraser House, in the heart of the nation’s capital, I am already beginning to succumb; pretty speeches about the compatibility of Rogernomics and social-democracy trip off my tongue. Timms and Wilson beam encouragement: candidates for selection have little to gain by writing embarrassing anti-government articles for the National Business Review.

*   *   *   *   *

NOW I HAD  a selection meeting to address. There was no earthly chance of me winning: in the end I simply could not stick to the script. One foray into the Timaru electorate, one evening of reciting the party line, had been enough. My friends looked at me askance; was this really Chris Trotter talking earnestly about the need for “realism”, about inflation “tracking down”? Francesca hardly recognised me. I hardly recognised myself.

A new script would have to be written. On August 25 a letter was distributed to 500 party members throughout the Timaru electorate. In the letter I accused the Labour caucus of “riding roughshod over practically every principle the Labour Party stands for.” A surprising number of Timaru people had welcomed this broadside from the Dunedin “democratic socialist”; the local party faithful, however, were appalled.

The outrage was not restricted to Timaru. News of my attack upon the Government had been carried in all the metropolitan newspapers. Labour MPs in marginal seats were furious. I was to confront some of them at the annual conference, held in Wellington between 29 August and 1 September 1986.

*   *   *   *   *

THE AFFILIATES’ COUNCIL met prior to the conference. Peter Cullen, secretary of the Wellington Hotel and Hospital Workers’ Union, drew me aside.

“Look Chris,” he said, “we’ve put you down as our third preference for Industrial Rep’. When our delegates read that bilge you wrote in the candidate’s biographies they just about threw up. We weren’t going to vote for you at all until we read about that letter you sent out in Timaru.”

“No worries, Peter,” I reassured him, “I didn’t deserve any better for that shit. I’m just glad I came to my senses in time.”

“If Rick barker makes it on to the Exec, our votes will go to you. If he doesn’t, it’ll be him and Kelly.”

It’s a tricky situation. Campbell has sanctioned my nomination for Industrial Representative on the New Zealand Council of the party in an attempt to block the election of Pat Kelly. (Campbell and Kelly have been at daggers drawn since the partial privatisation of the Bank of New Zealand, a move Campbell facilitated.)  In my “candidate days” I had looked like a safe bet, but now, unbeknown to Campbell, and in response to his conversion to Rogernomics, I have switched my allegiance to his arch-rival.

The decision is not difficult to make. I seek out Rick Barker (National Secretary of the Hotel and Hospital Workers Union) and convey to him my determination to withdraw in his favour if he fails in his bid for the Executive. By doing this I hope to swing my votes in Kelly’s direction.

*   *   *   *   *

THE WELLINGTON Hotel and Hospital Workers Union hall in Marion Street is overflowing with what the news media are describing as “The Broad Left’. I am a little sceptical. It seems that half the delegates to conference are packed into this great cavern of a room in the heart of Wellington’s red-light district. And from the ministerial LTDs parked outside, one must draw the conclusion that the “Broad Left” is a very loose definition indeed.

Peter Cullen chairs the meeting, flanked by Jim Anderton and  Pat Kelly. We are witnessing the birth of the Economic Policy Network – a loose coalition of Labour Party dissidents, trade unionists and left-wing economists. The atmosphere is boisterous and good-humoured. Even on the Left, it seems, the energy is now controlled and “constructively engaged”. The next general election is just twelve months away and the entire party is carefully tidying away the debris of past conflicts. The conference slogan: “The Future is Ours”, is obviously being interpreted in different ways.

Rob Campbell glowers darkly over the proceedings, keeping his own counsel. There will be precious few votes for him from the Left this year, his lobbying campaign will focus on the Centre and Right of Conference. A little further down the hall stands Phil Goff. Perhaps he is recalling the days when he, too, called himself a socialist?

The PSA’s economist, Peter Harris, launches into a lengthy lecture on the failings of the Government’s economic policies. The speeches that follow are passionate but unfocused. I find it difficult to concentrate. Someone asks me to sing The Red Flag. The audience struggles through the chorus, but the verses I sing alone. The “Broad Left” has yet to learn the words.

*   *   *   *   * 

BARKER’S BID falls just short of victory. The rumour mills of the Women’s Council have done their work well and Ruth Dyson pips him at the post. I am waiting in the queue of speakers at the front of the auditorium. Barker is just behind me. “You made a deal – now stick to it!” I tell myself.

I move across the stage to Tony Timms and inform him of my withdrawal. Wilson, seated next to him, swivels round in her chair and glares at me.

“Don’t tell me, tell the returning officer!” Timms snaps back.

“Why?” Is all Wilson allows herself by way of comment.

Burly Geoff Braybrooke, is clearly enjoying the drama. As he announces my withdrawal, all hell breaks loose among the delegates from the Distribution Workers’ Federation.

“Point of Order! Point of Order!” Larry Sutherland cannot believe what he has heard. “Chris Trotter is standing for Industrial Rep!”

“Not any more,” Braybrooke chuckles, “he’s just told me he’s withdrawn.”

Campbell lunges up the aisles to the DWF delegation.

“Where’s Trotter!”, he snarls.

Francesca, feigning innocence, waves airily in the direction of the exit. Campbell, dressed like a street-fighter in leather jacket and jeans, lopes off in pursuit. Down at the front of the hall, resuming my place in the queue, I breathe a large sigh of relief.

Kelly wins the election for Industrial rep by a mere 16 votes. Campbell is livid.

*   *   *   *   * 

IT IS the Labour Party’s seventieth anniversary. The social in the old Wellington Town Hall that evening is a celebration of the party’s longevity. The events of the day are beginning to take their toll. Sick at heart, I survey the revellers. Just what is the Labour Party in 1986? Certainly not the party that was formed in 1916. I feel estranged, forsaken, alone. My own union is barely speaking to me. Pat Kelly is strangely aloof. Annette King, MP for Horowhenua, bails me up and lambasts me for the Timaru letter. A deep sense of loathing congeals in the pit of my stomach. “At the Timaru selection”, I tell myself, “I will tell the truth about this party.”

*   *   *   *   * 

MINE WAS THE second-to-last speech of the evening: “Tonight,” I begin, “we will talk of what Labour was, and of what Labour has become. It is a tale of two cities: it is the story of Jerusalem, the City of Hope; and of Babylon, the City of despair.”


All nervousness falls away as I lift up the banner of dissent once more. I have passed the test, will remain myself: “I shall not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem … in New Zealand’s green and pleasant land.”

The nomination went to Gary Clarke, a local lawyer. He lost.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.