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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

In The Bonds Of Love We Meet

Ready To Work? The National Government's use of "Social Bonds" to reintegrate the mentally ill into the workforce will test the limits of the private sector's willingness to risk serious cash in attempting to resolve what the State long ago recognised as a knot of extremely complex and often intractable clinical conditions. How many corners will investors feel obliged to cut in order to protect their investment?

 

IMAGINE YOU’RE A SMALL EMPLOYER, and in need of an appropriately qualified and experienced assistant. You place an ad’ on Seek and, to your intense irritation, nothing happens. A not uncommon experience for small employers seeking qualified staff. New Zealand, it seems, has an overabundance of people without marketable skills, and a serious shortage of the sort of people small businesses need to become large ones.

 

Then, a week or so later, an e-mail arrives from an outfit calling itself the Employment Therapy Trust. Funded by the sale of Social Bonds to an impressive array of “good corporate citizens”, the Trust’s mandate is to facilitate the transition of mentally ill persons from state-supported living to productive work.

 

“The Trust is aware that your company is seeking the services of an appropriately qualified and experienced person”, the Trust’s e-mail observes. “We are confident that one of our current clients fulfils all of the requirements specified in your advertisement. Should you wish to discuss this offer further, or arrange an interview with our client, please do not hesitate to get in touch.”

 

What do you do? Your need for a capable assistant grows more urgent with every passing week, but the stigma of mental illness is very strong. How will your other employees react? Not to mention your customers? What if the “therapy” doesn’t work and the person becomes disruptive – dangerous even? There are a lot of factors to consider.

 

You decide to have a chat with someone from The Employment Therapy Trust.

 

What she tells you makes you wonder whether or not you’re in the right business.

 

The Trust is only a few months old, but already it has amassed working capital of around $5 million through the sale of special, government-issued, Social Bonds. Using this money, the Trust is offering Employers a substantial subsidy on the salary of any client hired for a period of not less than 90 days. Clients still in employment at the end of three months, the Trust’s representative informs you, are deemed by the Ministry of Health to have made a successful transition from welfare to work. If the Trust repeats this exercise to the extent specified in its contract with the Ministry, the holders of the Trust’s Social Bonds receive a generous dividend.

 

“Why only three months?” you ask the Trust’s representative. “Why not six months – or a year?”

 

She tells you that a period exceeding the specified three months would not only be too expensive for the Trust to subsidise, but that there was also considerable reluctance on the part of potential bondholders to support a longer transition period. Investors were fearful that the Trust’s clients might not be able to cope with a period of paid employment longer than 90 days.

 

“And the Government is prepared to wear this?” you ask, incredulously.

 

She explains that the Government’s priority is to reduce the cost to the taxpayer of supporting beneficiaries over the course of their whole lifetimes. The best way to do this, she says, is to come up with new ways of getting beneficiaries off the welfare rolls and keeping them off.

 

“That’s much easier to do”, she says, winking wickedly, “if the responsibility for helping beneficiaries transition from welfare to work is taken out of the hands of traditional service providers – public servants – and transferred to purpose-built private-sector providers like the Employment Therapy Trust.”

 

“Because once you’ve signed off a client as having held down a job for three months,” you respond, “that’s it. He’s cured. Off your hands.”

 

“And off the Government’s books!” she replies triumphantly.

 

“And everybody wins! The Government, by reducing the fiscal burden of long-term state dependency. The Trust, by keeping its contract. The Social Bond holders, by receiving a whacking great dollop of interest. The company, by filling its vacancy. And, hopefully, the client, through the multiple therapeutic benefits of re-joining the workforce!”

 

“That’s it exactly”, smiles the Trust’s representative.

 

You peruse, once again, the excellent CV she has handed you.

 

“And what happens if your client’s mental illness reasserts itself four or five months into his time with the company? What if his medication has to be increased and he’s no longer capable of doing the job?”

 

“Well,” she smiles, handing over her card, “you just give me a call. There’s plenty more where he came from!”

 

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 June 2015.

The Coefficients Of Despair: MSD's Plan To Rescue The Poor From Themselves.

Pre-Crime-Fighting: The Ministry for Social Development's interest in Preventive Risk Modelling, as a technique for identifying and rescuing vulnerable children before they grow up to become a burden on society, is strikingly reminiscent of the plot of the science-fiction movie Minority Report. Accusations of racial profiling are inevitable.

 

HOW LONG WILL IT BE, I wonder, before the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is accused of racial profiling? Given the statistical techniques currently being developed by the Ministry to identify “vulnerable” clients, such an accusation is practically inevitable.

 

In collaboration with the University of Auckland, the MSD is perfecting a technique for filtering out all but the worst offenders when it comes to deficient education, poor health, inadequate housing, a history of family violence and/or criminal offending. A filtering process relying upon such variables, however, cannot fail to generate a strong racial bias. In terms of the raw numbers, Pakeha will probably still predominate, but Maori and Pasifika will, almost certainly, find themselves significantly over-represented.

 

The MSD’s problem is that they cannot avoid using such controversial techniques for identifying vulnerable clients. Downside political risks notwithstanding, they are fundamental to the National Government’s new approach to managing New Zealand’s welfare system. Expressed in its simplest terms, this new approach is about identifying the individuals and families most likely to become a long-term drain of the state’s resources – and making sure that they don’t.

 

Serious criminal offending, for example, imposes colossal costs upon the state. A person convicted of murder, manslaughter, rape, child abuse, aggravated robbery and/or serious assault can expect to serve anything from 5 to 20 years in prison – at a minimum cost to the taxpayer of $100,000 per year. And that figure does not include the cost of repairing and rehabilitating the victims of criminal offending. The enormous expense of hospitalisation. The loss of productivity associated with the victims’ pain and suffering. All these social costs could be dramatically reduced if the people most likely to impose them could be rescued, early, from themselves.

 

One of the solutions, according to the MSD, may be found in the statistical technique known as “predictive risk modelling”. According to the Ministry’s own website, a ground-breaking piece of research undertaken by a project team, led by Professor Rhema Vaithianathan of the University of Auckland, has “developed a predictive risk model for children in a cohort who had contact with the benefit system before age two. These children accounted for 83% of all children for whom findings of substantiated maltreatment were recorded by age 5.”

 

The Ministry further reported that “predictive risk modelling had a fair, approaching good, power in predicting which of the young children having contact with the benefit system would be the subject of substantiated maltreatment by age five. This is similar to the predictive strength of mammograms for detecting breast cancer in the general population.”

 

Given the well-attested link between childhood abuse and serious criminal offending in later life, the possibilities arising out of Professor Vaithianathan’s and her team’s research are obvious. If predictive risk modelling (PRM) could identify with relative precision which children, in which families, were most likely to suffer abuse, appropriate “wrap-around” intervention by the MSD, the Police, Child Youth and Family, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Courts could ensure that the predicted abuse (and everything likely to flow from it in the future) never happened.

 

The popular culture reference you’re looking for here is the film Minority Report. Based on the novella by science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, the movie is set in a futuristic Washington DC, where a special “precrime” squad of police officers use “psychic technology” to arrest and convict murderers before they commit their crime.

 

Now, it would be quite unfair to suggest that PRM is in any way analogous to “psychic technology”, but it’s undeniable that the former’s widespread use in our social welfare system would give rise to just as many ethical questions as Philip K. Dick’s pre-crime-fighters.

 

In the section of the University of Auckland study relating to PRMs ethical ramifications, the Project Team drew the MSD’s attention to the dangers of the data arising from its application being misinterpreted:

 

“It must be acknowledged that some of the data and predictor variables used by the proposed model are highly likely to be misinterpreted by at least some audiences. The decision not to report coefficients in this report, for instance, was based in part upon the belief that the insignificant contribution those factors make to the power of the tool was outweighed by the likelihood of crude and misleading interpretations of that information given existing social prejudices and stereotypes.”

 

Which brings us back to our original question concerning racial profiling. It would be most surprising if the unwillingness of the Auckland academics to identify all the coefficients used in their predictive algorithms was not, at least in part, related to race as a predictive factor in the maltreatment of children. It would, however, be equally surprising if the prospect of Maori and Pasifika families being targeted for special “precrime” intervention on behalf of their infant offspring was not met with loud, sustained, and entirely justifiable protest.

 

There is something profoundly disturbing in the very notion that science possesses the power to predict who will – and who will not – inflict harm upon their fellow human-beings. That, somehow, a computer programme can winnow out from tens-of-thousands, the one family in which violence will be done to a child.

 

Because, even if we could be sure that the child identified through PRM was bound, in every case, to suffer abuse if some form of welfare intervention did not take place, there is another, deeper, question that must be confronted. If individual cases of abuse could be predicted and prevented, what incentive would there be to address the systemic causes of human tragedy?

 

If Maori and Pasifika appear more often than they should among the perpetrators of child abuse it is only because they appear more often than they should among all the other “coefficients” of dysfunction: illiteracy; the diseases of poverty and overcrowding; the psychological deterioration caused by long periods of unemployment; the mental disintegration associated with drug addiction. These pathologies are the symptoms of class as well as racial oppression. Capitalism and colonialism are “coefficients” too.

 

Let us leave the final word to another artefact of pop-culture. Perhaps the most surprising of all Elvis Presley’s hits is his extraordinary rendition of Scott Davis’s song, In The Ghetto. To those seeking to transform our social welfare system into something resembling science-fiction, I would strongly recommend Elvis’s poignant retelling of the story of a boy whose fate was sealed at birth: not by the choices he or his mamma made, but by the system that left them with so few:

 

And as her young man dies

On a cold and grey Chicago morning,

Another little baby child is born

In the Ghetto.

 

 

Video courtesy of YouTube

 

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 3 June 2015.

The Talented Mr Shaw

Fast Mover: It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of James Shaw’s (above) success. In Parliament for less than 8 months, and already he’s been elected Green Party co-leader on the first ballot. Then, lacking any semblance of an official party mandate, he single-handedly repositions his party: not to the Left; not to the Right; but with the assistance of a truly remarkable keynote address – well out in front.

 

JAMES SHAW, the Greens’ new co-leader, is a very talented man. That’s been obvious from the moment he delivered his maiden speech to Parliament at the end of last year. It’s even more obvious now. His keynote address to the Green Party AGM on Sunday contained some of the most impressive political rhetoric I have encountered in more than 30 years of writing about New Zealand politics.

 

Shaw’s address painted a picture of twenty-first century politics as ideologically inert, politically disconnected, and morally bereft.

 

“I am not a hero of free market capitalism,” Shaw told his audience, “because free market capitalism is dead. It has been dead for seven years ….. The reality of politics in the wake of the global financial crisis is that there is no longer a struggle between capitalism and socialism. What we have now is a hybrid model that takes some of the good but most of the bad elements of both systems.”

 

For more and more voters – especially young voters – Shaw’s vivid description matches exactly the sort of world they believe themselves to be living in.

 

“There is no name for this system”, Shaw continued. “Nobody speaks for it. Nobody voted for it. It happens in the spaces between speeches and elections. It happens behind closed doors or over dinner with lobbyists. We have a political economy of friendly deals and whispers. Of overnight polling and focus groups.”

 

What Shaw’s impressive phrase-making turns so adroitly to the Greens’ advantage is the twenty-first century electorate’s growing impatience with the rigid dichotomies of twentieth century politics. Increasingly, the Left versus Right characterisation of political life is leaving young people cold. Many youngsters would struggle to identify the difference between Left and Right. Many more no longer care.

 

Shaw gets this. “My opposition to our current, deliberately broken economic system is not ideological. It is moral. I oppose it because it is wrong.”

 

Wrong? Moral? Who talks like this? Certainly not Andrew Little’s current crop of speechwriters. Not John Key’s, either. (Although, that’s only because the Prime Minister’s political diction seeks, and in large measure receives, an entirely different emotional response.) But the Greens’ new co-leader does, and in language Barack Obama would be proud to call his own. Shaw’s next big test will be to demonstrate that, as well as the telling phrases and rolling cadences of his set-piece speeches, he can also deliver the short, sharp thrusts and verbal parries of Question Time.

 

But demonstrating his mastery of political rhetoric was not the only show the talented Mr Shaw put on for the Green Party delegates on Sunday morning. From his 7:00am interview with Wallace Chapman on Radio New Zealand, to his 9:00am appearance on TVNZ’s Q+A, Shaw made it crystal clear that the days of the Greens being marooned, impotently, on Labour’s left flank are over.

 

Putting his policy money where is rhetorical mouth would be in just a few hours more, Shaw announced his intention to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with the National Party Government on climate change.

 

“I have been clear on the campaign trail that while I don’t support a formal coalition with National, I am very open to working with National where there is common cause. Let us build common cause on climate change.”

 

This is the cleverest sort of politics: not only does it break the Greens out of their “far-left” ghetto; but it also extends the hand of cooperation to the National-led Government. And here, again, Shaw demonstrates his assured grasp of the public’s rising frustration with politics-as-usual: “We should talk to each other rather than past each other, and agree on an ambitious target that New Zealanders can be proud off. New Zealanders want their politicians to work together, and act on common interest. Let’s find common interest on climate change. That is my challenge to John Key today.”

 

What can the Prime Minister do? If he accepts Shaw’s extended hand on the climate change issue: Shaw wins. If Key declines to accept the Greens’ challenge, then, again: Shaw wins. For National (and for Labour, too) this can only be a lose/lose proposition.

 

It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of Shaw’s success. In Parliament for less than 8 months, and already he’s been elected Green Party co-leader on the first ballot. Then, lacking any semblance of an official party mandate, he single-handedly repositions his party: not to the Left; not to the Right; but with the assistance of a truly remarkable keynote address – well out in front.

 

James Shaw has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about what he wants to achieve, and how to make it happen. Equally clearly, a majority of the Green Party are right behind him.

 

National should look to its laurels, and the Labour Party should watch its back.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 2 June 2015.

Bearing Honest Witness

An Honourable Dick: In the week of Campbell Live’s demise, Richard Harman’s (above) career-long refusal to “have” the politicians [by becoming a spin-doctor] should, surely, be taken as a vote of confidence in honest witnesses (i.e. good journalists) everywhere.

 

ANDREW DEAN, the twenty-something author of Roger, Ruth and Me, offered a particularly acute response to the TVNZ reporter who asked him if he intended to go into politics. Dean, who subtitled his book about growing up under the influence of Rogernomics and Ruthanasia, “Debts and Legacies”, thought about the question for a few moments and then replied: “I don’t think politics would have me.”

 

How right he was – and is. There are some people whose approach to the great issues of the day is so heterodox, so untethered to the usual ideological suspects, that in the unlikely event of them ever finding their way into “mainstream” politics, they would very quickly be chewed up and spat out. Sometimes the best you can hope to be is an honest witness.

 

Author of Roger, Ruth and Me, Andrew Dean: "I don't think politics would have me." 

 

In a week when memories of the events in Dean’s book (like Ruth Richardson’s “Mother of All Budgets”) have been at the top of many aging journalists’ minds, it was astonishing how little of substance the Leader of the Opposition had to say in response to Bill English’s effort.

 

Much of the blame for Labour’s woeful performance belongs to Andrew Little himself, but it is also true to say that he was not well served by his advisers. The people in the Leader of the Opposition’s Office should not have been taken by surprise by English’s token gestures towards child poverty. The parliamentary complex is a veritable vortex of rumour and gossip, and the capital city outside rustles with secrets like a hedgehog among autumn leaves. Opposition staffers should never be surprised by anything a government does – not if they (and their spies) are doing their job!

 

It’s difficult to imagine Helen Clark and her Chief-of-Staff, Heather Simpson, being surprised by the contents of a National Party Budget. Both women boasted extensive networks of friends, allies and informants, and seldom found themselves without a number to call. And, if the worst happened, and their networks couldn’t supply the needed information, they could always rely upon Clark’s excellent Press Secretary, the highly-experienced Press Gallery journalist, Mike Munro, to fill in the gaps.

 

About three weeks ago, another highly-experienced journalist, Richard Harman, was delivering a speech to the NZ Fabian Society on the importance of effective political communication to electoral success. Like Mike Munro, Richard Harman was one of the Parliamentary Press Gallery’s “bigfeet”, a now dwindling breed of journalists who knew everyone and could find out just about anything. Indeed, the Labour Prime Minister, David Lange, included Harman among the “Three Dicks” (Richard Griffin of Radio New Zealand, Richard Long of The Dominion and Richard Harman of TVNZ) without whose cooperation no political message could be guaranteed to make it through to the voters. It would be interesting to know how many staff from the Leader of the Opposition’s Office turned out to hear Harman speak.

 

Harman, you can be sure, would never have left Andrew Little flicking over blank pages as he struggled to find anything remotely sensible to say in response to the Budget speech with which Bill English had just ambushed him. Interestingly, Harman, now back in the Gallery for his “Politik” blog, was one of the very few journalists to flag the possibility of English doing something interesting with social assistance in the Budget.

 

All of which raises the rather obvious question: “Why didn’t Little invite Harman to be Labour’s Communications Director?” After all, with his production company “Front Page” no longer producing The Nation, Harman was at something of a loose end.

 

The answer, probably, is that Labour knew Harman wouldn’t accept the position. The former TVNZ Political Editor is very much “old school” when it comes to crossing the line from journalism to spin-doctoring; arguing that by agreeing to spin for a political party, a journalist instantly devalues everything he or she has ever written on the subject of politics.

 

Which is, in its way, reassuring (even if Harman would easily have equalled Munro in terms of effectiveness!) It also takes us right back to the beginning of this discussion; to Andrew Dean’s shrewd observation that “I don't think politics would have me”.

 

In the week of Campbell Live’s demise, Richard Harman’s career-long refusal to “have” the politicians should, surely, be taken as a vote of confidence in honest witnesses (i.e. good journalists) everywhere.

 

A version of this essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 27 May 2015.

Re/Defining Neoliberalism

The March Of Neoliberalism: Not a coherent economic philosophy, but a fearsomely coherent political project. Its purpose: to use the coercive power of the state to thwart and/or reverse any and all attempts to empower the many at the expense of the few. Those who try to pass neoliberalism off as the crackpot economic "religion" of a handful of Act supporters, are simply attempting (like Tony Blair) to carve out a political space for themselves within the Neoliberal Settlement.

 

THE DEBATE which Matthew Hooton kicked off in earnest on Radio New Zealand this week is hotting-up. In dispute is that much-used, but imperfectly understood, political term: “Neoliberalism”.

 

Some, including economist, Brian Easton; former Finance Minister, Sir Michael Cullen; and Wellington blogger, Danyl McLauchlan; have claimed that John Key, and the government he leads, no longer fits the neoliberal description. They have not, however, moved as far down the revisionist road as Mr Hooton. His claim is that the Key Government has not only moved on from neoliberalism, but that it has also crossed the line into the full-blown leftism of that arch-socialist, Rob Muldoon.

 

Wellington-based academic, Jack Vowles, joined the fray a couple of days ago - posing the question: “Neoliberalism: Half-Full or Half-Empty?”

 

As Professor of Comparative Politics at Victoria, Jack’s purpose in entering this debate appears to be the rather dubious one of muddying the waters about what neoliberalism is – and is not. In its turn, this obfuscation seemed to be aimed at keeping open the political space currently occupied by what he calls “market pragmatists” – those particularly pusillanimous neoliberals known as Blairites.

 

Vowles’s case: that neoliberalism is a kind of economic religion, adhered to by a tiny number of extreme Hayekian economists, and only ever imperfectly applied in New Zealand, is, like most erroneous conclusions, based upon an erroneous premise.

 

Neoliberalism as never been, and is not, a coherent set of economic principles, the presence or absence of which in any given policy prescription determines the strength or weakness of its ideological credentials. Indeed, neoliberalism, far from being some sort of neo-classical economic crusade, is what it has always been: the fearsomely coherent political project of global capitalism’s ruling elites.

 

Its anti-state/free market propaganda notwithstanding, neoliberalism’s purpose has always been to use the coercive power of the state to thwart and/or reverse any and all attempts to empower the many at the expense of the few.

 

As Professor David Harvey notes in his A Brief History of Neoliberalism:

“Redistributive effects and increasing social inequality have in fact been such a persistent feature of neoliberalisation as to be regarded as structural to the whole project. Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, after careful reconstruction of the data, have concluded that neoliberalisation was from the very beginning a project to achieve the restoration of class power.”

 

It is no accident that neoliberalism’s origins, as a politically effective force, may be traced to the economic, social and political upheavals of the 1970s. This was, after all, the decade in which the power of the capitalist ruling classes came under maximum pressure: the decade in which both individual capitalists and the principal organs of capitalist power (especially in the USA and the UK) commenced their still-advancing counter-offensive against the unnerving encroachments of social-democratic redistribution and reform.

 

It also explains why, in practical terms, neoliberalism has always been a more-or-less constant set of political and economic objectives rather than a coherent philosophy. The whole point of neoliberalism is to have the coercive powers of the state deployed to the exclusive advantage of the elites. This may be seen not only in the largely successful campaigns to reduce the influence of organised labour, but also in the ongoing efforts of neoliberal regimes to decouple the regulatory and administrative powers of the state from those sectors of the economy that the forces of social-democracy had once been powerful enough to wrench from private hands.

 

Vowles’s plaintive cry, that not all of the defining features of a neoliberal regime are in and of themselves bad, misses the point entirely. Of course trade liberalisation can be seen “a good thing” – but not when it’s used to gut the domestic manufacturing sector and eliminate the social milieu out of which strong social-democratic values grow. Relieving the pressure on income tax to meet all of the state’s fiscal needs may, similarly, be a good thing, but not when a deeply regressive goods and services tax is imposed on the working-class to fill the fiscal hole created by easing the “burden” of progressive taxation on the wealthy.

 

Why is Vowles unable to see this? Primarily, because he is desperate to avoid acknowledging both the Neoliberal Revolution, and the Neoliberal Settlement which it enabled, as the central political (and, increasingly, cultural) realities of our time. Were he ever to accept that neoliberalism will manoeuvre swiftly and decisively (principally through its enablers in the news media) to thwart “the alternatives that do exist to promote [a] more inclusive and egalitarian society”, then all his talk of “responsible economic management” and of not taxing and spending “without any apparent constraints” would stand revealed for what it is: mealy-mouthed Blairite blather.

 

It is, however, in the midst of all his Third Way apologetics that Vowles let’s slip the very insight he’s trying so hard to pretend he has not had. It’s when he declares: “The implicit alternative to neoliberalism implied by many on the left is simply not feasible in the 21st century.”

 

This is the crucial admission, and the crucial explanation for why Vowles and his Blairite comrades are so keen to reduce neoliberalism to something only a handful of Act supporters take seriously. What Vowles is really saying is that the Left’s alternatives are not feasible while the Neoliberal Settlement endures. And if that is true, then the only possible programme for a genuine left-wing party is the one committed to challenging that settlement head-on and reclaiming the coercive powers of the state for the many, from the few. (The sort of coercive powers that John Key’s indisputably neoliberal National Party refuses to deploy even in the name of ensuring that working people are not seriously injured or killed on the job!)

 

I have followed Jack Volwes’s highly successful career in political science for more than quarter of a century. His scholarship in dissecting the crucial general elections of the 1990s – not to mention the arrival of MMP – always possessed the reassuring feel of work undertaken by a man comfortable in his own radical skin.

 

What happened, I wonder, to the Jack Vowles who seemed to see, in the epic struggle between Labour and the Alliance, the acting out of the urgent mission to make left-wing policies “feasible in the 21st century”? When did it become okay for the Professor to put down the opponents of neoliberalism as inhabitants of a political ghetto, communicators of despair, weakeners of their own cause?

 

Was it about the same time, Jack, that you decided that if neoliberalism could not be beaten, then it could, God forgive you, be joined?

 

This essay was posted simultaneously on The Daily Blog and Bowalley Road of Saturday, 30 May 2015.

Making Connections: Why, Instead Of Looking Tired, Labour Needs To Get Emotional.

Fifth Time Lucky? After trying, and failing, four times to make an emotional connection with the electorate, perhaps Labour should look for a leader who got himself re-elected to Parliament the old-fashioned way - by raising heaps of cash and then persuading "mainstream" New Zealanders to vote for him. Napier MP, Stuart Nash (above) addresses a provincial business audience.

 

THE LATEST ROY MORGAN POLL has cast a deep pall of gloom over all three Opposition parties. Among Labour supporters, however, a growing sense of utter futility is palpable. Support for the party has crashed back to the abysmal figures of Election Night. Barely a quarter of the adult population is willing to identify Labour as their first electoral choice.
 

The corollary to Opposition gloom is, of course, Government elation. And, with the Roy Morgan poll showing National on 54 percent, who can blame its MPs and supporters for breaking out the bubbly? Remember, this latest poll was conducted when Amanda Bailey’s ponytail was dominating the headlines. Did it damage the Prime Minister’s reputation? (As so many of John Key’s enemies were hoping.) Not appreciably. “Teflon John” continues to shine.
 

At around the same time as Roy Morgan’s callers were working the phones, Sir Michael Cullen and the NZ Fabian Society were attempting to rally Labour’s dejected troops with a presentation entitled, rather hopefully, “Destination: Next Progressive Majority.” Arriving at that destination, says Sir Michael, will depend on whether Labour is able to re-present itself as the party of Choice, Aspiration, Responsibility and National Pride.
 

For that re-presentation to work, Sir Michael stresses, Labour must re-connect emotionally with the electorate. “Policies can be a means to this”, says the former Labour Finance Minister, “but rarely the most important means.” In saying this, Sir Michael is echoing the  advice of Lynton Crosby – the man who, earlier this month, won the UK General Election for the Conservative Party. Policy matters, says Crosby, only inasmuch as it expresses the less tangible and more visceral reasons for supporting one political party over another.
 

“This is Key’s huge strength”, Sir Michael observes, “he has enormous emotional connection with voters. The sloppy language we like to make fun of is the language most people speak, not like University lecturers like Helen, Steve and I. The casualness to turn things aside, not important, at the end of the day.”
 

It is National’s huge strength, as well, because there is no other politician in the Government’s ranks who connects with the ordinary Kiwi voter in the manner of John Key.
 

And it is here, on the question of leadership, that Sir Michael’s otherwise sober and sensible analysis falters.
 

In order to sell a Labour Party based on Choice, Aspiration, Responsibility and National Pride; a credible, likeable (and because, historically, Labour is coming off such a low base) a frankly inspirational leader is required. Someone with a personality powerful enough to rekindle the love Labour lost in the 1980s and 90s – and only fleetingly recovered in the early noughties. Someone capable of sparking-up the old flame. And, more than this, someone fresh and fascinating enough to attract and hold the attention of Generations X, Y and Z. Someone to warrant a selfie – and a vote.
 

Does this sound like Andrew Little? Does it sound like anyone in Labour’s post-2014 caucus? If the answer is “No”, then, even with Sir Michael’s sage advice, the party’s in a pretty pickle. It has tried, four times, to pick a winner: twice by the judgement of the Caucus alone; twice according to the judgement of the whole party. Every single one of them failed to fire. And whoever heard of fifth time lucky?
 

Something has to be done, however, or, like Sir Keith Holyoake, the New Zealand political leader he so closely resembles, the Prime Minister will lead his party to its fourth consecutive election victory.
 

To prevent that from happening, Labour is going to have to take a leaf out of the campaign maestro’s, Lynton Crosby’s, playbook. It is going to have to learn to listen to its pollsters and heed their focus groups. Not to discover what the public wants, and then give it back to them as Labour Party policy; but to learn which lines of argument work, and which don’t. Democratic politics is not about giving the people what they want, it’s about persuading the people that they want what you want. “When in doubt”, says Lynton Crosby, “stand for something!” And then, he might have added, convince a majority of voters to stand with you.
 

If Labour can’t find a leader to do that for them, then, for God’s sake, let them hire a campaign manager who can!
 

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, 29 May 2015.