By Other Means: Eco-Terrorist Holds New Zealand Over A Barrel Of 1080 Poison.

New Zealand's Worst Nightmare: The threat to contaminate infant formula with pure 1080 poison is, indisputably, an act of eco-terrorism - and it's working. The dispatch of two letters and a few milligrams of 1080 has produced hugely disproportionate consequences. The asymmetry is striking.

 

NEW ZEALANDERS are angry. News that the country’s youngest and most vulnerable citizens are being treated as pawns in a dangerous game of political blackmail has been received with a mixture of fear, fury and frank disbelief. Many people simply refuse to believe that the threat to mix the deadly 1080 poison with infant formula is genuine. They have dismissed the whole shameful business as nothing more than a criminal hoax.

 

But it is not a hoax. A hoax is defined as a humorous or malicious deception. To perpetrate a hoax is to trick and/or deceive. But, at no point in this crisis has anyone been tricked or deceived. Someone sent a letter to Federated Farmers and Fonterra. Inside each letter was a small package containing what the sender claimed to be a mixture of 1080 poison and infant formula. Tests confirmed the sender’s claim. This was, indeed, a mixture of 1080 poison and infant formula. No trick. No deception. And no one at Federated Farmers or Fonterra was laughing.

 

What New Zealand is being subjected to is eco-terrorism – and it’s working. Already the person, or persons, behind this attempt to force the Government to stop using 1080 pesticide has cost “NZ Inc” as much as $20 million. A vast and ruinously expensive testing regime has been established. The importers of New Zealand infant formula have been contacted – with incalculable effect upon the nation’s reputation. Even more ominously, the moment the four-month-old crisis was officially acknowledged, the value of the NZ Dollar dipped sharply. The asymmetry of the situation is striking. The dispatch of two letters and a few milligrams of 1080 has produced hugely disproportionate consequences.

 

And it is far from over. The Eco-Terrorist sent his letters in November 2014. (The masculine pronoun is being used here, but the perpetrator could just as easily be female.) But the threat to set in motion the fatal contamination of New Zealand’s infant formula was post-dated to the end of March 2015. That deadline is still 18 days away. The assumption, therefore, must be that the Eco-Terrorist has spent the last four months devising a way of demonstrating to both the New Zealand Government and the importers of our infant formula, that he can introduce 1080 into the product at will. Indeed, the Prime Minister’s refusal to abandon 1080, coupled with his point-blank refusal to negotiate, more-or-less requires the Eco-Terrorist to make such a demonstration. If some proof of capability is not forthcoming, then the threat evaporates and the crisis is over.

 

The temptation is strong to dismiss the Eco-Terrorist as a “nutter”. This would be a mistake. What has been revealed over the past 72 hours is a carefully planned and executed terrorist attack on the New Zealand State. Indeed, the blackmail threat which the Eco-Terrorist has made falls squarely under the heading of “New Zealand’s worst nightmare”. As an exporter of high-quality food products this country has always been acutely vulnerable to any event – natural or human – which renders its exports unsaleable. The most terrifying “doomsday event” would be an outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease. But Poison-In-The-Baby-Formula comes a pretty close second. The potential for massive economic damage is frightening.

 

What sort of person could do this? Who should the authorities be looking for?

 

The key to identifying the Eco-Terrorist lies in tracking down the source of the pure 1080 that was mixed-in with the infant formula. Was the poison smuggled into the country from the United States? Was it stolen from the Whanganui factory that manufactures the 1080 pellets used by the Department of Conservation? Or, did it come from one of the small number of research facilities which, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hold small quantities of the chemical in their laboratories?

 

A consensus is forming that the most likely source of the poison is one of these research facilities. If so, then the profile of the Eco-Terrorist/s more-or-less writes itself. He would have a background in scientific research – quite possibly into 1080 itself – and that research, or the research of someone with whom they have worked closely, may have led him to the conclusion that the Government’s use of 1080 is environmentally and morally indefensible. That the Government has refused to be swayed by the international and domestic evidence of 1080’s toxicity, and simply over-ruled the objections of thousands of New Zealand citizens, may have driven him to the conclusion that only by imposing a crippling economic cost on its continued use can 1080 be banished from our shores.

 

The Eco-Terrorist’s concerns may have been further exacerbated by the pro-1080 stance of individuals and groups he had trusted to come out in opposition. The Commissioner for the Environment, Forest and Bird and the Greens have all, to the surprise and frustration of the anti-1080 lobby, publicly declared their support for the pesticide. This unexpected “betrayal” of the cause may have been the final straw. In the Eco-Terrorist’s mind, the Government’s stance will only be changed by “other means”.

 

It’s a truism of terrorism that a person who, under normal circumstances, could be relied upon to live a quiet, productive and thoroughly law-abiding life, may, given the right sequence of provocations, be transformed into a radically different being. The moment such a person is convinced that the ends he is now pursuing are both noble and necessary, then any means, no matter how heinous, which serve to bring those ends closer, are permissible. Once that particular mental Rubicon has been crossed, a human-being is capable of doing just about anything – with a clear conscience.

 

Even poisoning babies? Possibly. Although infant formula may have been targeted by the Eco-Terrorist on account of its already proven capacity to inflict massive damage to the New Zealand economy. Even so, there is a strong possibility that by drawing babies into the threat environment the Eco-Terrorist has inadvertently given the Police’s criminal profilers access to long-buried hurts, unacknowledged conflicts and deep psychological wounds.

 

Experts are already speculating that the “unsub” [unknown subject] may have lost a beloved pet to 1080 poisoning. Others insist that, because no parent could use babies as bargaining chips, the Eco-Terrorist must be childless. The image arises of an isolated, highly intelligent, but very lonely person, who masks his furious desire to strike back at the world (which he experiences as cruel and unresponsive) behind a passionate public commitment to protecting the natural environment.

 

So, how does this crisis end? Well, that depends on how successful the Eco-Terrorist is at evading apprehension, and whether or not he is able to keep on ramping-up the pressure.

 

We must all hope that, in the 18 days that remain before his post-dated cheque is due to be cashed, the authorities are able to identify and apprehend this criminally misguided individual. By bringing the public into the process, the senior political, bureaucratic, military, police and security personnel on ODESC – The Officials Committee for Domestic and External Security Co-ordination – now have 4.5 million pairs of eyes at their disposal.

 

Let us pray that 4.5 million is enough.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 12 March 2015.

Keeping Watch Over America's Lake.

America's Lake: Emerging from World War II as the undisputed hegemon of the Pacific, the United States has single-mindedly pursued its goal of permanently dominating the region. Since becoming a party to the UKUSA ("Five Eyes") Agreement of 1946, New Zealand has aligned itself, unreservedly, with all of the USA's key strategic objectives in its own "backyard" - the South Pacific.

 

THE PACIFIC OCEAN is singularly ill-named. It’s human history is as raddled with blood as any other. More so, perhaps, considering the extraordinary distances its peoples were obliged to travel in order to kill and plunder their neighbours.

 

The image of the South Pacific which Europeans nurture; of white beaches, swaying palms, and beaming islanders; is the distillation of half-a-millennium of unabashed conquest and exploitation. That this was made more palatable to both conquerors and conquered by the latter’s conversion to Christianity in no way diminishes the reality of Europe’s imperial intervention.

 

The complex and dynamic histories of Hawaii, Fiji, Tahiti, Tonga and Samoa remain mysterious even to the South Pacific’s unofficial “minders” – Australia and New Zealand. Only the most dedicated anthropologists and historians know their stories. The rest of us make do with the half-truths and platitudes of the travel brochures.

 

The endemic corruption of the South Pacific micro-states, so obvious to the sharp-eyed Kiwi tourist, is the inescapable legacy of these Spanish, Dutch, British, French, German and American colonial projects.

 

Co-opting local elites has always been the most effective means of governing people from a distance. The chiefly societies of the South Pacific were thus well-suited to the techniques of imperial governance. Win over the traditional rulers; convert the rest to Christian pacifism; and one’s logistical commitment need extend no further than a handful of colonial administrators dressed in tropical whites and carrying the occasional side-arm.

 

Unfortunately for the peoples of the South Pacific, their decolonisation (a far from complete process, by the way) coincided with the Cold War. The United States’ determination to transform the Pacific Ocean into an American lake (which had triggered its titanic struggle with the Japanese Empire in the early 1940s) was in no way diminished by emerging from World War II as the region’s undisputed hegemon.

 

Unchallenged strategic control of the Pacific Ocean remained a post-war priority for the United States. For the newly independent South Pacific nations this could only mean their effective re-colonisation as biddable and unproblematic US protectorates – hermetically sealed against any form of Soviet and/or (God forbid!) Communist Chinese influence.

 

Crucial to this process was the unflinching co-operation of the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. America had a South Pacific toehold in Samoa, and had inherited the scattered islands of Micronesia from the Japanese at the end of World War II. Nevertheless, it rightly understood that the “management” of the South Pacific’s island states was a responsibility best “contracted out” to its English-speaking allies in the region.

 

Thus was born the “Pacific Way” – effectively a reconstitution of the ruling-through-elites strategy of Victorian colonialism. In practical terms, this policy of elite co-option ensured that graft, embezzlement, nepotism and political corruption swiftly became the norm in the island states. Not that anyone outside those states cared all that much. So long as the “Pacific Way” kept the Pacific nations “communist free”, the United States and its local enforcers were willing to turn a blind eye to their rulers’ excesses.

 

With the weakening and fall of the Soviet Union, and the rise of the neoliberal “Washington Consensus”, in the 1980s and 90s, the obvious shortcomings of the Pacific Way finally prompted the South Pacific’s English-speaking minders to attempt a clean-up and, if possible, a clear-out, of the island states’ corrupt governmental systems. Several coups-d’etat, civil wars and fiery riots later, the USA, Australia and New Zealand reluctantly concluded that stuffing the Pacific Way genie back inside its bottle could not be done.

 

What tipped the balance in favour of corruption was the United States’ policy of self-distraction in the Middle-East. In South Pacific terms, all the Global War on Terror achieved was the Peoples Republic of China moving in to fill the power vacuum created by Uncle Sam’s self-defeating desert excursions. The effects of the vast sums of money which the Chinese poured into the island states were as predictable as they were deliberate. Governance in the South Pacific rapidly defaulted to the highest bidder.

 

Do the English-speaking powers of the Pacific care? Well, yes, they do – but they’re not about to re-colonise the region. Not when they have the technology to observe and, if necessary, subvert every political and economic decision the morally compromised governments of the South Pacific attempt to make.

 

The full-spectrum surveillance capability of the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance means that not a single electronic mouse in the South Pacific can move without spy-bases bearing such cloak-and-dagger names as Jackknife, Stellar and Ironsand registering their every footfall.

 

Passport fraud, money-laundering, offshore tax havens, the surreptitious purchase of political and economic favours by foreign powers – none of it escapes the Anglo-Saxon panopticon.

 

That Kiwis continue to play such an important role in keeping the South Pacific safe for imperialism should not surprise us. We always have.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 10 March 2015.

Hang On Winston - Help Is On Its Way!

On A Roll: But Winston Peters only stands a chance of winning in Northland because he is, in his heart-of-hearts, a Nat – and Northland is a National seat. Accordingly, the bulk of his votes will come from the “nice” people of Kerikeri and Russell and all the other comfortable settlements of the North. But the winning margin in this contest, the votes of the desperate people living in dying towns like Kaitaia, have traditionally been cast for Labour. What will they get in return for shifting their support to NZ First?

 

I’M TRYING TO IMAGINE the discussions leading up to Andrew Little’s wink-wink-nod-nod-a-thon on Sunday’s Q+A. Assuming, of course, that Andrew’s not flying solo on this one: struggling manfully to predict the direction from which the next manic media assault is going to come; and just winging the whole Northland by-election shemozzle by making up Labour’s strategy as he goes along.

 

Wouldn’t surprise me. Following the Cunliffe debacle, very little that Labour does surprises me.

 

Still, I'd like to think that the Labour Party is led by people who “get” electoral politics. Hard-bitten old tuskers who don’t allow themselves to be distracted by ephemeral political theatrics. And who can’t be deflected from “The Big Picture” by the blandishments of a hyper-mediated present. It would be so much more reassuring for the Left if that were true.

 

Is it though? Rumour (or, at least, Matthew Hooton on Radio NZ National) has it that Labour and NZ First went halves on a poll of Northland voters. Supposedly, to find out which of them stood the best chance of taking the seat. Waste of money. Labour’s never going to take Northland off the Nats. Why? Because Northland’s about as close as you get in New Zealand to the American Deep South.

 

Northland’s Pakeha voters might elect a Social Creditor like old Vern Cracknell, who took Hobson (as the northern half of the seat used to be called) back in 1966. And they’ll certainly give Winston Peters and NZ First a serious sniff. But Labour? Not a chance. Not while most of Northland’s Maori voters keep themselves off the General Electoral Roll.

 

Just drive North for a few hundred miles. You’ll pass through toothless, stubble-cheeked towns exhaling a cancerous death-rattle. Boarded-up shops. Takeaway joints. Pubs that look like sheds. WINZ offices. These are the brown towns. Hopeless. Jobless. Joyless. And then, suddenly, you’re in Kerikeri or Russell. Busy shops. Prestige Brands. Cafes with outdoor seating. Ladies with lap-dogs. Gentlemen in Panama hats. Boats. Beamers. Batches. Apartheid without the pass laws. The New Zealand dream gone dark.

 

So Labour should have saved its money. Taking the seat was a non-starter. Which could (should?) have meant handing the whole thing over to NZ First– with an additional promise to make Willow-Jean Prime’s feisty little campaign skirmishers available to Winston for the duration.

 

Short-term tactics rather than long-term strategy? For sure. But that’s pretty much what contemporary politics is about. For Labour, it would have been a case of “all care, but no responsibility”. If Winston won, it would only be because Labour got in behind him. If he lost? Hey! Nothing to do with the Left!

 

So, why didn’t they do it? When they knew Winston was standing, why didn’t they instruct Willow-Jean not to forward her nomination? Because, once it was in, the by-election could only be a lose/lose proposition for Labour. If Winston won, it would be in spite of Labour. If he lost, it would be because of Labour.

 

Presumably, Andrew and his advisers (if he has advisers) understood that. Presumably, they were after a much bigger and more worthy prize than Northland. Like Government in 2017. Presumably some hard-bitten old tuskers sat Andrew down and asked him some very hard-edged questions.

 

“What happens to NZ First’s numbers if Winston takes Northland? Do they go up? Or down?”

 

“And if they go up, how much of the increase will come from the Nats? And how much of it will be at Labour’s expense?”

 

“You say you want the party to be at 35 percent by the end of the year? How’s that going to happen with Winston hogging the spotlight?”

 

“You want to pull 150,000 votes off Key’s 2014 tally? Where do you think those 150,000 wavering Tories are going to end up if Winston recovers his reputation as a political giant-killer?”

 

“We thought you understood, Andrew, that winning in 2017 only happens over the battered and bleeding bodies of the Greens and NZ First.”

 

“If you want the corporates to resume stuffing money in the party’s war-chest, then Labour needs to be seen as the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the Opposition valley.”

 

“What does handing Northland to Winston on a plate make us look like, Andrew?”

 

“It makes us look like the stupidest sons-of-bitches in the valley!”

 

The political objectives of participating in a by-election may be strictly tactical, entirely strategic, or a mixture of both. Whatever the motivation/s, a political party needs to weigh the consequences of its participation very carefully. This was especially true of Northland.

 

From a purely tactical standpoint, Labour’s stance on the by-election was a no-brainer. Stand aside and see if Winston can take it.

 

Viewed strategically, however, Labour’s choices were very clear in Northland. The by-election was an excellent opportunity to compare and contrast Labour’s political objectives with those of NZ First.

 

Winston only stands a chance of winning in Northland because he is, in his heart-of-hearts, a Nat – and Northland is a National seat. Accordingly, the bulk of his votes will come from the “nice” people of Kerikeri and Russell and all the other comfortable settlements of the North. But the winning margin in this contest, the votes of the desperate people living in dying towns like Kaitaia and Kaikohe, have traditionally been cast for Labour.

 

In an MMP environment, Labour’s long-term strategic advantage will not be secured by suggesting that the interests of the deprived and the desperate can be served by any other party. This by-election offered an opportunity to reiterate the historic message that things won’t change for the better in the brown towns of Northland until there’s a Labour Government in Wellington. A NZ First MP for Northland may make National work a little harder for its parliamentary majority, but he is unlikely to say or do anything that puts at risk the support of the reactionary cockies and conservative businessmen who have made it such a safe seat for the Right.

 

For Labour’s Northland supporters, without whose votes Winston Peters’ cannot hope to win the seat, this by-election promises little beyond the satisfaction of giving John Key a bloody nose. For the labourers repairing the electorate’s roads and bridges; the shop assistants selling tourists luxury merchandise; the over-stretched nurses and teachers struggling with the effects of poverty and neglect; National’s defeat is unlikely to bring them, or the people they serve, anything more substantial than schadenfreude.

 

So, Andrew, were these the sorts of issues that you and your advisers talked about before you went on Q+A? And, if they were, why couldn’t the party come up with something better than:

 

“In the end, by-elections are a referendum on the government of the day. If Northlanders feel they’ve been neglected and they can’t get their roads fixed and those sorts of things then they’re going to have to think about how they cast their vote in a way that sends a message to Government.”

 

Did it not occur to you that, with these words, you were delivering an even more important message to your own supporters? That any help that makes its way to Northland between now and 2017 is going to arrive gift-wrapped in NZ First Black – not Labour Red.

POSTSCRIPT: Anyone doubting the political impact of Andrew Little's wink-and-a-nod towards NZ First should read Curwen Ares Rolinson's triumphalist posting on The Daily Blog.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 9 March 2015.

The Glutton Seagulls: Thoughts On A Friday Afternoon In March.

Discovered instead the glutton seagulls squabbling over crusts - James K. Baxter.

 

LISTENING TO RADIO LIVE, this bloke’s telling Willie Jackson what he’d do to the Aussies awaiting execution in Indonesia.

 

“I’d kill ‘em. Yeah, just shoot ‘em. No problem with that at all.”

 

And I’m thinking, what the hell has happened to us. When did we turn into this sort of country?

 

Because it’s everywhere. This viciousness. This absence of civility. This lack of love. What James K. Baxter called “the crushed herb of grief at another’s pain”.

 

God! Just imagine what our right-wing shock-jocks would make of James K. if he suddenly reappeared to point his prophetic finger at the greasy excrescences who have somehow floated to the top of “God’s own country”.

 

Hell, Baxter was an angry man in the 1960s and 70s. The 60s and 70s! When kids could go to Varsity for free. When a young couple could buy their first house at 25 with a 3 percent State Advances loan. When fewer than 5,000 people were unemployed.

 

In his poem, Crossing Cook Strait, Baxter has “Seddon and Savage, the socialist father” raging:

 

I  walked forth gladly to find the angry poor

Who are my nation; discovered instead

The glutton seagulls squabbling over crusts

And policies made and broken behind locked doors.

 

The glutton seagulls, oh yes, they’re still with us. Still squabbling over crusts. They’ve grown obscenely fat over the intervening years. Too fat now to fly. But just you watch them strutting around their enormous piles of crusts. Running furiously at anyone who comes close. Screeching insults. Their angry voices drowning out the songs of the gentle. The warnings of the wise. Eleanor Catton. Nicky Hager.

 

“Kill ‘em all! I’ve got no problem with that.”

 

I was at Radio Live on Election Night as the seagulls racked up yet another win for gluttony. Saw the Seagull-in-Chief on the TV monitor, his vast wings outstretched in a billious benediction. How the flock screeched. And why not? Their crusts were safe for “Three more years! Three more years!”

 

Sean Plunket, wearing the sort of grin more usually found on the face of a wolf who's finally caught up with his exhausted prey, asked me how I was feeling.

 

All I could think of was James K Baxter’s lines from Pig Island Letters:

 

The man who talks to the masters of Pig Island

About the love they dread

Plaits ropes of sand, yet I was born among them

And will lie one day with their dead.

 

I rode home in a taxi as the skies unleashed sweeping showers of Spring rain across Auckland.

 

Like tears, I thought. Like tears.

 

This essay was posted on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road on Friday, 6 March 2015.

Rally Against The TPPA

 

 

A Public Service Announcement from the  Bowalley Road blogsite.

 

Bitter-Sweet - "Mandolin Orange"

 

 

IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD them before, this is to introduce you to Mandolin Orange. Hailing from the backwoods of North Carolina, Andrew Marlin (guitar and mandolin) and Emily Frantz (violin and guitar) offer yet more evidence of the growing strength of the Americana genre. The hugely talented duo sing about the past and present of the American South with that bitter-sweet mixture of longing and fulfilment that characterises so many of the genre's folk, bluegrass and alt-country blendings. Enjoy.

Video courtesy of YouTube.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Employing Representatives: How Limiting MPs Pay Rises Increases The Democratic Deficit.

Representatives NOT Employees: The steady reduction in the status of our Members of Parliament: from democratically elected representatives to "our employees in Wellington" reflects New Zealanders increasing disengagement from the political process. Seriously, how much power do employees have in this country?

 

“WHAT HAPPENS NOW?” The newly elected Member for Manuwera, Phil Amos, still not quite believing that his days as a secondary-school teacher were over, had rung the Leader of the Opposition, Arnold Nordmeyer, for guidance.

 

“Well,” said Nordy, “we’ll probably have a Caucus meeting sometime in February. [The conversation was taking place in November.] And since the Nats don’t like to call the House together too early – far too many farmers in their Caucus, with far too much to do – things won’t get really busy around here until about the middle of the year.”

 

“What am I supposed to do until then?”, Phil responded plaintively.

 

The Labour Leader chuckled. “My advice, Phil, is to talk to as many people as possible, and just use the time to get to know your electorate.”

 

Phil Amos: MP for Manurewa 1963-1975

 

That’s the way it was for a brand new MP, in a brand new seat, back in 1963.

 

Fifty years ago New Zealanders held very different expectations of their Members of Parliament. Very few people in 1963 would have considered it either appropriate, or accurate, to refer to Members of Parliament as “our employees in Wellington”. Most voters understood that they had elected a representative: someone whose duty it was to reflect, protect and defend the interests of their electorate.

 

The idea that one’s MP is nothing more than a glorified civil servant: a person expected to turn up for work every day, do their “job”, and collect their (excessive) pay, is a much more recent notion.

 

In 1963, Parliament was still a deeply respected institution: a place through which awestruck school-children were led by school-teachers and guides who informed them, solemnly, that this was where the country’s laws were made.

 

Democracy, itself, was still a highly-valued and hard-won achievement in 1963. Hardly surprising when, just twenty years earlier, a significant number of MPs, Phil Amos among them, had been fighting in North Africa, Italy and throughout the Pacific for its survival.

 

Perhaps that explains why communities informed, in 1963, that their Member of Parliament was coming for a visit felt both pleased and honoured.

 

How was that respect so comprehensively forfeited?

 

Partly, it was the work of the Baby-Boom Generation. Shaped by decades of post-war affluence and the dramatic technological innovations that had fuelled it, the Baby-Boomers  aggressively challenged the conservative moral and political assumptions of their parent’s and grandparents’ generations. Artists, movie directors, television producers and songwriters grew increasingly impatient with yesterday’s values: the times they were a changing.

 

And those changing times were stoking the fears of bankers and businessmen, who were rapidly coming round to the view that democracy was getting out of hand. Politicians were responding to the demands of workers, women, blacks and gays in ways that threatened capitalism’s long-term profitability.

 

Their solution, which in New Zealand went by the name of Rogernomics, was to take as many of the important economic decisions as possible out of politicians’ hands and give them to bankers and businessmen. But, to make this solution work, it would be necessary to turn a whole generation of politicians into liars and cheats. Telling the voters that they were being stripped of the power that had made the post-war era such a levelling experience for the rich and the powerful was, obviously, out of the question. They would have to be tricked into giving it up.

 

The people who copped the blame were, of course, the politicians. Many of these were guilty-as-charged – but some were not. It was important, therefore, to foster the notion that politics was an entirely disreputable profession, to which only entirely disreputable people were attracted. Populist media personalities insisted that, because no politician could be trusted, it was necessary for them and their readers/listeners/viewers to keep politicians on the shortest possible leash.

 

Members of Parliament were, accordingly, re-branded as the voters’ “employees”. Every aspect of their lives was subjected to the closest media scrutiny, and any failings ruthlessly exposed. Inevitably, as the public was increasingly persuaded that all politics are “dirty politics”, politicians felt obliged to surrender what remained of their ancient rights and privileges as political representatives, and to embrace, instead, the democratically empty role of political employee.

 

Many will cheer the Prime Minister’s decision to align their “employees’” pay rises with their own. Fewer will ask whose interests Mr Key is representing.

 

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, 6 March 2015.