Purity And Power: Chris Trotter Critiques John Armstrong's Advice To The Greens.

Keep Your Eyes On The Prize: Mr Armstrong counsels the Greens to make the same Devil’s Bargain that he has been forced to accept. Right and wrong, good and evil, in the revised edition of the Armstrong political gospel, haven’t the slightest purchase in contemporary governance.

WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY COLUMN from John Armstrong! There have been many this year, but his latest (10/9/14) stands out because of the amoral cynicism underpinning the writer’s political analysis.

 

“The Greens face an old dilemma”, opines the NZ Herald’s Chief Political Commentator, “remain pure but powerless. Or go centrist and compromise and get things done.”

 

A dilemma? Only if you believe that remaining true to your ideals is in any sense disempowering.

 

But there is absolutely no historical warrant for the suggestion that strongly held beliefs lack power. In fact, history testifies to precisely the opposite conclusion.

 

“Here I stand!” Martin Luther told the Holy Roman Emperor, “I can do no other.” How different the history of Protestantism would have been if he had not. “Keep your eyes on the prize – hold on!”, sang the civil rights protesters in the face of the most appalling racial violence. How different the history of the United States would have been if they had decided to “go centrist and compromise and get things done.”

 

Why didn’t Armstrong remind his readers that although political movements like the Greens often have to wait many years to see their ideals accepted and their policies implemented, principled patience is almost always rewarded? He is, after all, a member of the generation that struggled to end New Zealand’s contacts with South Africa; withdraw its troops from Vietnam; end nuclear testing in the Pacific; and decriminalise homosexuality. With those (successful) examples before him, why did he feel the need to construct this false “remain pure”/ “get things done” dilemma for the Greens?

 

The answer almost certainly lies in the context of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics and the New Zealand public’s alarmingly blasé reaction to its contents. Armstrong, like many of his journalist colleagues, reacted with commendable outrage to Hager’s revelations. Like just about every other Kiwi with a conscience, he was appalled by the behaviour that had been exposed. His feelings of disgust were undoubtedly intensified as he reviewed his own experiences as a Press Gallery journalist and realised just how often and how ruthlessly he and his colleagues had been played.

 

The problem for Armstrong and others like him was that pretty close to a majority of the voting public found nothing very much to get upset about in Hager’s book. Their opinion of politicians was already so low that the revelations of Dirty Politics, if they were accepted at all, were taken as a vindication of their long held prejudices. No big deal.

 

What to do? Confronted with the seemingly indefatigable cynicism of their readers, how should Armstrong and other mainstream media commentators respond? Should they unload upon these morally inert electors the full weight of their journalistic scorn? Should they openly challenge their fitness to cast something as precious as a ballot? Seriously, if these “so what” National supporters are able to absorb, with apparent equanimity, the news that their democracy is riddled with political cancer, then can they even be called citizens?

 

It’s happened before, this unexpected and, therefore, shocking disjuncture between the judgement of journalists and the perceptions of their readers, listeners and viewers. The most famous example is the US news media’s reaction to the police riot that erupted at the Democratic Party Convention in 1968. Mayor Daley’s brutal Chicago cops not only billy-clubbed and maced and tear-gassed the young demonstrators outside the Convention, they also attacked Convention delegates, trashed one of the presidential candidates headquarters, and beat-up any journalist foolhardy enough to attempt to report their illegal rampage.

 

Outraged, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger of the New York Times, Katherine Graham, of the Washington Post and Newsweek and many other publishers joined with the heads of the major television networks in telegramming Mayor Daley and protesting that newsmen “were repeatedly singled out by policemen and repeatedly beaten … the obvious purpose was to discourage or prevent reporting of an important confrontation between police and demonstrators which the American public as a whole has a right to know about.”

 

But the American public didn’t want to know. In the words of historian, Godfrey Hodgson:

 

“Almost to a man, the journalists had been shocked by what the police did. To their astonishment, the polls showed that a large majority in the country were shocked by the demonstrators, and sympathetic to the police. Nine out of ten of the seventy-four thousand letters sent to Mayor Daley in the first two weeks after the convention, commended the police. And bumper stickers blossomed across the country: WE SUPPORT MAYOR DALEY AND HIS CHICAGO POLICE.”

 

It was to be another six years before the resignation of President Richard Nixon finally convinced a majority of Americans that people in authority are not always worthy of their support; that, sometimes, the journalists are right.

 

And maybe that will happen here, too. Maybe, in the months ahead New Zealanders will find out just how deep the cancer has burrowed into the bones of the nation. But, in the meantime, the advertisers are not going to spend money purchasing time and space in media businesses that excoriate their customers. Like the American journalists of 1968, the New Zealand journalists of 2014 have little choice but to adjust their ethics to fit those of a majority which long ago forgot the meaning of the word.

 

And that is why, in today’s column, Mr Armstrong counsels the Greens to make the same Devil’s Bargain that he has been forced to accept. Right and wrong, good and evil, in the revised edition of Armstrong’s political gospel, haven’t the slightest purchase in contemporary governance. If you want to “get things done”, then compromise is the only game in town.

 

The only problem with that advice, John, is that once Russel Norman, Metiria Turei and the Greens start compromising, how will they know when to stop? Purity, once abandoned, is very hard to recover. And, if Dirty Politics has taught us anything at all, it is that power without purity is Democracy’s most dangerous enemy.

 

This essay was posted on Bowalley Road and The Daily Blog on Wednesday, 10 September 2014.

Winston Peters’ Choices Will Be Determined By The Electorate’s

Kingmaker Redux: Once again, opinion polls suggest that New Zealand's political future will be decided by the calculations of Winston Peters and the NZ First Party. Such an outcome would confirm that the overall trajectory of New Zealand politics remains rightward, not leftward.

 

OPINION POLLS can be very confusing. Less than a fortnight out from the General Election support for the National Party could be as low as 45 percent or as high as 54 percent – depending on which polling agency’s results you follow. There is, however, a way of simplifying this political confusion. By aggregating the support of those parties generally supportive of the status-quo, and those seeking change, it is actually pretty easy to work out whether the mood of the nation is one of conservative caution or forthright experimentation.

 

I well remember making this calculation in the run-up to the 1999 General Election and reaching the inescapable conclusion that the combined support of the Labour, Alliance and Green parties pointed consistently to a narrow majority of New Zealanders being in search of something new. The election result reflected the final weeks’ polling data with the left-wing Opposition parties together receiving 51.6 percent of the Party Vote.

 

Rather apprehensively, I repeated the exercise for this year’s election. Relying on the results of the opinion poll which came closest to predicting the result of the 2011 General Election, it is clear that the mood of the nation in 2014 is very different from 1999. Taken together, the votes of those parties clearly in favour of maintaining the economic and social status quo or of shifting it even further to the right (National, Act, United Future, Conservatives) amount to an impressive 53.1 percent. If the support for the more equivocal “conservative” parties (NZ First and the Maori Party) is added, that number increases to 60.3 percent.

 

If New Zealanders are in the market for economic and social change in 2014 it’s clear that a pretty solid majority do not want very much of it – and none at all if it’s radical change.

 

So, what will Winston do? Because, if the opinion polls are to be believed, it will once again be Winston Peters and his NZ First Party which plays the role of Kingmaker following 20 September.

 

The best chance we have of answering that question is, first, to analyse what Mr Peters says he will do; and then take a look at what he has done in the past.

 

What Mr Peters says he will do has not changed in seven elections. He will wait until the votes have been cast so he and his party can get a firm grip on what New Zealanders want. In other words, he will perform the same exercise that I have described above – but without the “assistance” of opinion polls. He will then make the best judgement he can about the overall mood of his fellow New Zealanders – and dispose of his support accordingly.

 

One of my most vivid memories as a political commentator is of Election Night 1996. I was part of TV3’s commentary panel and, as the vote count neared its conclusion, it was clear that the next prime minister of New Zealand would be chosen by Winston Peters.

 

My fellow commentators did the political math (Labour + NZ First + Alliance = 51.6 percent of the Party Vote) and confidently predicted that Helen Clark would be the next prime minister. (Time magazine even put her face on their cover!) To my eyes, however, the performance of the Left – the agents of change – seemed woeful. In 1993 Labour and the Alliance had polled 52.9 percent of the popular vote between them. Three years later that number had fallen to just 38.3 percent of the Party Vote. The combined 1996 Party Vote of National, + Act + United NZ = 40.85 percent. And when the sub-MMP threshold 4.3 percent of the Party Vote won by the Christian Coalition was thrown into the equation, the support for the status-quo rose to 45.15 percent. It seemed obvious to me that NZ First’s 13.35 percent of the Party Vote was much more likely to end up with the parties of the Right than the Left – and I said so.

 

The crucial addition sum on Election Night 2014 will be Labour + Greens + Internet Mana. If it is greater than National + Conservative + Maori Party + United Future + Act, then I predict Mr Peters and NZ First will offer Confidence and Supply to Labour’s David Cunliffe and seat themselves on the cross-benches. If the reverse is true, then I suspect the negotiations between Mr Peters and John Key, though strenuous and lengthy, will result in the formation of a National-NZ First Government.

 

I make this prediction because I do not believe that in 2014 Mr Peters includes NZ First in the small-c conservative camp. Attributing the best possible intentions to the electorate’s choices, he will either attempt to moderate the excessive enthusiasm of Labour’s coalition partners; or to restrain, judiciously, the worst impulses of National’s.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 9 September 2014.

Putin - The Grand Master



I FOUND THIS little gem on Cameron Slater's Whaleoil blogsite (yes, yes, I know, but it's actually a really interesting place to visit!) and I just had to re-post it on Bowalley Road.

 

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Three’s Company: Labour-Greens-NZ First may just be the coalition New Zealanders are looking for.

Conservatively Radical: The leaders of the Labour-Greens-NZ First combo have just 11 days to campaign for a Government possessing the collective wisdom to distinguish necessary from unnecessary change, and the political courage to make it happen.

 

WITH LESS THAN A FORTNIGHT to go until Election Day, the broad outlines of the voters’ choice are becoming clear. Labour has refined its position to one of anticipating a tripartite arrangement with the Greens and NZ First. The National Party, unmoved by recent polls, is hoping the voters allow them to begin their third term with the same support partners as their first and second: Act, United Future and the Maori Party. John Key cannot, however, discount the possibility of having to enlarge his support combination by including Colin Craig’s Conservative Party.

 

Both of these configurations reflect the central political reality of this election campaign: that New Zealanders have become considerably more cautious and (small-c) conservative than they have been for many decades. If, for whatever reason, voters desert National in sufficient numbers to allow Labour, the Greens and NZ First to make a centre-left government, it is clear that it will be a coalition shorn of radical policy.

 

David Cunliffe is sending three important messages to the electorate. 1) That he considers NZ First indispensable to effecting a change of government. 2) By very publicly ruling out any kind of accommodation with either Internet-Mana or the Maori Party he is signalling that he understands “Middle New Zealand’s” current distaste for radical ideas. 3) He is inviting them to interpret his reaching-out to NZ First as proof of his moderate bona fides.

 

John Key faces a very different set of problems. On the right of New Zealand politics there is a growing impatience with what it scorns as “Labour-Lite” policies. In this context, Nicky Hager’s revelations concerning Judith Collins will have come as a Godsend to the Prime Minister. They have allowed him to temporarily spike the guns of Ms Collin’s and her Far-Right faction of the National Party caucus and reassured nervous National supporters that the Government is not about to embark on any Tea Party-like excursions into ideological extremism.

 

The downside of Hager’s disruption of the election campaign is the bleeding away of votes it has occasioned to National’s right-wing rivals.  Both NZ First and the Conservatives have benefited from these defections (the former more considerably than the latter) and this raises the very real possibility that Key, in order to remain in office, will be forced to make the sort of political concessions that could seriously destabilise his government.

 

If he opts for NZ First, he will be obliged to anchor his government very firmly in the harbour of Mr Peter’s caring, paternalistic and overtly interventionist “one nation” conservatism. This will outrage his own neoliberal colleagues, strengthen the hand of Collins’s supporters, alienate Act and empower those Conservative MPs (we are assuming here that the Conservative Party crosses the 5 percent MMP threshold) excluded from Key’s political solar system.

 

On the other hand, if he throws in his lot with Colin Craig’s Conservatives he will have hitched his wagon to a new and untested band of political eccentrics and Tea Party-type “ultras” with the capacity to drag his hitherto unthreatening and predictable centre-right government into the ideological badlands. In the finely balanced Parliament both sides are expecting post-20 September, the Conservatives could very easily prove to be much more trouble than they’re worth. And, if they were seduced into making common-cause with the equally eccentric Ms Collins, the Conservatives could conceivably end up threatening the Prime Minister himself. Craig’s messiah complex is unmistakeable – and there can be only one!

 

Clearly, the potential for instability and ideological confusion is considerably greater on the right of New Zealand politics than it is on the left. Once Internet-Mana are excluded from the constellation of acceptable Opposition stars, what the electorate is presented with in a Labour-Greens-NZ First combination is a coalition government erected on two extremely solid foundation-stones: economic nationalism and environmentalism.

 

Popular antipathy to land sales to foreigners (almost certainly intensified by Act leader Jamie Whyte’s ill-considered intervention over the weekend) is reflected in the manifestoes of all three parties. Combine Labour, Green and NZ First pledges to put the heft of the state behind a major effort to improve the productivity of New Zealand Incorporated with the growing public concern about the health of New Zealand’s waterways because of “dirty dairying”, and the populist potential of the Labour-Green-NZ First policy agenda is readily apparent. All three parties will find themselves free to manoeuvre on extensive common ground.

 

David Cunliffe, Russel Norman, Metiria Turei and Winston Peters have just 11 days to convince a confused and jittery electorate that although a Labour-Greens-Internet-Mana combination may have represented an unmistakeable and unwarranted lurch to the Left, a Labour-Greens-NZ First combo could turn out to be something much more palatable.

 

All three parties must campaign hard for a Government possessing the collective wisdom to distinguish necessary from unnecessary change, and the political courage to make it happen.

 

This essay was posted on Bowalley Road  and The Daily Blog blogsites on Monday, 8 September 2014.

By Other Means: Bringing Down A Government, Or Keeping One In Power, No Longer Requires Tanks.

Coup D'état By Crowd: With the appeal to naked force no longer acceptable in a post-Cold War world, the United States and its allies were forced to develop new, less objectionable means of removing their enemies from power. Paradoxically, democracy became the only plausible means of preserving the global dictatorship of the United States' neoliberal ideology. Or, at least, it looked like democracy.

TOPPLING GOVERNMENTS in the twenty-first century, or installing them, is no longer the business of soldiers. It used to be, back in the days of the Cold War. Just think of Chile in 1973, or Argentina in 1976. Back then nobody much cared about the optics. So there were tanks on the streets. So a few thousand people “disappeared”. So what? They were commies. Nobody cared. Good riddance!

 

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, things changed. Lacking the Cold War justification of “resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” the United States and its allies were forced to develop a new way of making sure that their friends continued to acquire and/or retain power, while their enemies – unaccountably – suffered one set-back after another.

 

The Old Way Of Dealing With America's Enemies: Tanks roll through the streets of Santiago, Chile, 11 September 1973.

 

The first step was to make sure that even if their friends failed the political consequences would be minimal. There were to be no more elections like the Chilean election of 1970, in which the victory of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity coalition resulted in the introduction of genuine left-wing policies. The imposition around the world of the neoliberal “Washington Consensus” (which began with the arrival of the “Chicago Boys” in post-coup Chile) meant that even nominally “left-wing” parties could be relied upon to refrain from introducing measures calculated to inhibit or restrict the free operation of market forces.

 

The second step was to devise a whole new repertoire of non-military methods for bringing a government down. Essentially this involved using the core freedoms enshrined in all democratic states: freedom of speech; freedom of the press; and the freedom to assemble peacefully for a redress of grievances; not to advance democracy but to create a simulacrum of it. What appeared to the world to be a spontaneous uprising of the people against a corrupt and dictatorial regime, would, in fact, be the culmination of months, even years, of careful planning by teams of operatives (spies?) inserted into the target country by the United States and its allies.

 

The classic examples of this new technique of “coup d’état by crowd” were the so-called “colour revolutions” that brought down the democratically elected governments of Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. (In the case of the latter, twice!) The Americans spent millions of dollars in these countries establishing political organisations, founding newspapers, setting up radio and television stations, and creating websites – all of which were then used to recruit thousands of perfectly genuine followers (usually young, middle-class university students) who would then be led onto the streets to confront the government.

 

These ostensibly peaceful protests were almost always carefully stage-managed to ensure that the authorities, goaded to breaking-point by a tiny, well-trained and well-paid “hard-core” fraction of the crowd, would over-react and start beating the protesters indiscriminately. Graphic examples of this state violence would then be broadcast around the world (often via social media) and, inevitably, the size of the protests would grow and the demands of the protesters would escalate.

 

The critical demand of these “people’s movements” would be the holding of new elections. This was especially so when the “revolution’s” precipitating event was an election whose result was disputed (as in Serbia in 2000). One of the key methods employed to make the claims of a “stolen” election plausible was the publication of bogus opinion polls. The government’s enemies – both foreign and domestic – would fabricate polls showing massive disapproval of the governing party and correspondingly massive support for its challengers. When the ballot boxes disgorged a radically different result the immediate response of the government’s enemies was that the election had been “stolen”. Gravely concerned, the US, UK and European Union would immediately lend their voices to the call for fresh elections.

 

The New Way: Kiev, Ukraine, January 2014.

 

Sometimes, of course, these tactics spooked the government under attack into doing the subversives’ work for them. Informed by his own (and the Russian’s) intelligence agencies that the US was active behind the scenes, building and funding his liberal opposition, the Serbian strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, panicked and stole the election for real. Perfect!

 

Interestingly, the process works just as well in reverse.

 

If there’s a government the powers that be, domestically and/or internationally, wish to keep in office, then exactly the same funds will be lavished on exactly the same hidden persuaders. Social media will be skilfully and extensively employed, not to attack the incumbent government, but to undermine and smear its political opponents. Opinion polls will consistently demonstrate the government’s overwhelming popularity. Sympathetic journalists will disparage any suggestion of widespread popular discontent with the status quo. Political activists and parties evincing just a little too much passion and/or promising just a little too much in the way of genuine, as opposed to purely cosmetic, reforms will suddenly find all manner of things going wrong. They’ll hear strange clicking sounds on their landlines. Their computers may be hacked or stolen. The controls of their leader’s car may suddenly malfunction, sending him tumbling down a bank.

 

And nary a tank in sight.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 5 September 2014.

Democracy As Self Defence

The Shot Heard Round The World: The Battle of Lexington, 19 April 1775, marked the opening of hostilities between the American colonies and the British Crown. Looking back through history, it is clear that the impulse to distribute political power more widely through society has almost always been defensive. People seldom risk life, limb or livelihood when none of these precious things are in any way endangered.

THERE ARE HOARDINGS EVERYWHERE at the moment, some intact, others bearing the evidence of anonymous electors’ wit – or lack of it. A great many commercial billboards are also being turned to political purposes.

 

A number of these have recently begun to carry the messages of a group calling themselves The Opinion Partnership. To date, only three members of the OP have publicly identified themselves. The first is Wellington businessman, John Third. The second, Owen Jennings, is a former President of Federated Farmers who, between 1996 and 2002, sat in the Act Party caucus. The third man (if I may borrow Graham Greene’s famous characterisation) is propaganda maestro, John Ansell, whose in/famous Iwi/Kiwi billboards very nearly won Dr Don Brash the 2005 General Election.

 

Like the Exclusive Brethren Church before them, The Opinion Partnership hopes to secure a National Party victory by undermining public support for the Greens and Labour. Their repeated claim, that 30 percent of a Labour-led Cabinet will be made up of Green Party ministers, is intended to frighten all those otherwise conservative voters thinking of giving the Greens their Party Vote into thinking again.

 

Though entirely negative in its conception, and in spite of the fact that many of the Partnership’s claims concerning the Greens are as outlandish as they are false, no one possessing the slightest commitment to democracy would deny their right to design and display these scarifying political messages. Indeed, the Opinion Partnership offers us an excellent example of the democratic impulse at work.

 

Looking back through history, it is clear that the impulse to distribute political power more widely through society has almost always been defensive. People seldom risk life, limb or livelihood when none of these precious things are in any way endangered. It is only when, in the words of the American Declaration of Independence, “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism”, that it becomes their right, and their duty, “to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

 

The wealthy Virginia planter, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote those words, was no doubt thinking of the efforts of the British Crown to render more efficient and self-supporting the colonial operation it had just expended vast quantities of blood and treasure defending against the depredations of the French and their Native American allies.

 

There are other examples.

 

The Peasants Revolt of 1381, which still, 633 years after it began, remains the greatest uprising of the common people of England against their social, economic and political masters, was kindled by the imposition of a crippling “Poll Tax”. Only after the crowds of angry tenant farmers began to gather did the defrocked priest, John Ball, confront them with the revolutionary question: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”

 



The Peasants Revolt of 1381: The greatest uprising of the common people of England.

 

Like so many who have come before them, Messrs Third, Jennings and Ansell are responding to what they regard as a threat to their rights and freedoms. In the manner of the American colonists (and their present-day imitators in the US Tea Party movement) they are asking their fellow citizens to “provide new Guards for their future security”. No matter how misplaced their fears of a Labour-Green Government may be, it is their right to do so.

 

Much more to be feared are those within whom the democratic impulse no longer stirs. I am referring here to those New Zealanders whose comfortable stake in the status quo impels them to risk nothing at all. They will cast their votes on Election Day without the slightest regard to the growing body of evidence pointing to “a long train of abuses and usurpations”. Like the loyal subjects of King George III, whom the rebellious colonists labelled “Tories”, they have no interest in overthrowing anybody. That’s because they understand, as did the King and his lords in 1381, that poverty and profit cannot be separated except at great cost to themselves.

 

To those Kiwis living in poverty, The Opinion Partnership also has a message – although not, perhaps, the one they intended. Yes, Mr Ansell’s billboards are an appeal to the judgement of his fellow citizens, but they are also a reminder that the citizens’ judgement possesses power. That, in the end, democracy is about defending ourselves – by voting.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 5 September 2014.

The Race Is On: Will Enough New Zealanders Believe Nicky Hager And Reject John Key?

No More Mr Nice Guy: In terms of sheer explanatory power Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, is without precedent in New Zealand's political history. That's why the Right is doing everything within its power to discredit it. If it succeeds, National will retain power. If it fails, New Zealand will have a new government.

 

WE ARE IN A RACE. It’s a race between those wilfully ignorant and deliberately spiteful New Zealanders who make up such an alarmingly large fraction of National’s electoral base, and that steadily growing percentage of the electorate who understand that the shocking revelations contained in Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, require an electoral response. If the latter overtakes the former by 20 September, New Zealand can breathe a mighty sigh of relief. If not, then the next three years are likely to be ugly – very ugly.
 

Just how real and significant this race is was brought home to me by an article posted on the Stuff website. Headlined “Voters Divided Over Who Plays Dirtiest” it quoted an elderly Taranaki woman who had been sent a copy of Hager’s book. When asked for her opinion of Dirty Politics she replied:
 

“I think it’s disgusting. It doesn’t surprise me at all from the author. He’s just a communist and that’s just the way he is. He’s just trying to unsettle the National Party.”
 

Remember, this woman had a copy of the book. She’d been given the opportunity to absorb its contents – to form an opinion. We must, therefore, hope that her stated view that Hager is “just a communist” whose only purpose in writing Dirty Politics was “to unsettle the National Party” means that she felt under no obligation to actually read the book. Because the alternative explanation, that she had read it and that this was her considered response, is just too depressing to contemplate.
 

The elderly voter’s response does, however, demonstrate how important it has been for politicians and mainstream journalists of both the Left and the Right to demonise Nicky Hager.
 

Ever since the publication of his first book, Secret Power, in 1996, people in both the parliamentary arena and the mainstream news media have been conscious of the enormous challenge his internationally celebrated investigative journalism poses to both institutions. It’s why they have so relentlessly attacked his credibility. Politicians and journalists, alike, understood that Secret Power and its successors exposed not only the misdeeds of legislators from both sides of the House, but also the consistent failure of mainstream reporters to uncover the stories that have made Hager’s reputation.
 

Nowhere was the undermining and diminishing priorities of this parliamentary-media nexus more in evidence than following the release of Hager’s fifth book, Other People’s Wars. A work of extraordinary thoroughness, born of superlative investigative skills, this book exposed the moral, military and diplomatic failings of both Labour and National in Iraq and Afghanistan. In doing so it also exposed (in the manner of collateral damage) the cover provided to successive governments by New Zealand’s largely uninterested and easily reassured news media.
 

It is this potent cocktail of political fear and professional jealousy that has produced a public image of Hager so frighteningly negative that a little old lady in Taranaki felt justified in dismissing Dirty Politics without reading it. Ever since 1996, the unrelenting hostility of politicians – amplified and uncorrected by journalists who should have known better – has very effectively inoculated a depressingly large number of New Zealanders against anything and everything Hager might have to say.
 

They had help. Ever since the publication of Hager’s second book, Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-Environmental PR Campaign, he has been the sworn enemy of the powerful public relations firms which play such an important role in rendering the most distasteful government and/or corporate policies more or less palatable to the general public. The representatives of these firms – like the man who appeared on television the night Dirty Politics was released, telling New Zealand there was “nothing in it” – have never lost an opportunity whether in public or behind the scenes to attack both Hager’s credibility and his character.
 

I well remember crossing swords with a young journalist in the Green Room at TVNZ after she blithely dismissed Hager as an inveterate conspiracy theorist and looney lefty. I asked her if she had read any of his books. She Hadn’t. I asked her if she was aware he had won international prizes for investigative journalism. She wasn’t. It hadn’t stopped her from casually defaming him, however. It never does. When John Key dismissed Dirty Politics as the work of “a screaming left-wing conspiracy theorist”, he knew there would be many thousands of Kiwis who would accept his characterisation without experiencing the slightest pang of doubt.
 

Will it be enough? That is the question upon which the result of this General Election now hinges. Is Dirty Politics strong enough to defeat the Right’s inoculating slanders? The evidence, to date, suggests that it just might be. The Colmar Brunton polling agency reports that the number of New Zealanders who believe the “suggestions” contained in Hager’s book has shot up 13 percentage points since the question was first asked of voters on the 14-15 August. Back then just 28 percent said they believed him. By the 27 August, however, the number was 41 percent.
 

It is its power to convince that is making Dirty Politics so influential. It’s as if all the warnings Hager asked us to take from his earlier books have been vindicated. Indeed, in this latest description of the way political power is wielded in New Zealand the themes of all his previous work have flowed together into an overwhelming torrent of evidence. In Dirty Politics we see them all: the security agencies; the public relations firms; the politicians; the journalists. And, of course, that latest manifestation of the will to power – the right-wing bloggers. In terms of sheer explanatory power Hager’s book is without precedent in our political history. It’s why the Right is doing everything within its power to discredit it.
 

The race is on.
 

This essay was posted on the Daily Blog and Bowalley Road blogsites on Wednesday, 3 September 2014.