Woo Them, Or Lose Them.

Your Target Audience, Or Your Audience's Target? "Politics", if it means anything at all to the tens-of-thousands of young electoral abstainers, is generally construed as the sum of all their fears, and politicians, far from being regarded as the people they elect to do things for them, are seen as the people others elect to do things to them.

THE MANNER IN WHICH the Right took control of the Auckland University Students Association (AUSA) is really quite instructive.

From the late-1960s until the late-1980s, with some notable exceptions (the Green MP, Kevin Hague, being one of them) AUSA presidents, newspaper editors and executive members tended to hail from the Left. Then, as successive governments encouraged more and more foreign students to enrol at New Zealand’s universities, things began to change.

Given the New Zealand’s Left’s infatuation with all things “international”, one might assume that its candidates would be the first to reach out to this new and growing student constituency. But, one would be wrong. Their reputation for beer-swilling racist redneckery notwithstanding, the first student politicians to think of printing posters and pamphlets in the native tongues of Auckland’s foreign students hailed from the Right. In return for this rare gesture of welcome and recognition, foreign students consistently rewarded the Right’s candidates with a winning margin of votes.

The moral of this story is clear: “Never allow a new and growing political constituency to go unwooed. Because if you don’t woo ‘em, somebody else is bound to.”

IN THE LAST ELECTION just over three-and-a-quarter million New Zealanders were eligible to vote. On the day, however, only just over two-and-a-quarter million Kiwis actually made it to the polling booths. Or, to put it more precisely, only 69.6 percent of eligible voters participated in the 2011 General Election – one of the lowest turnouts on record.

Now, there will always be a hard-core of the more feckless sort of citizen who’ll just never be bothered taking their civic responsibilities seriously (a statistician friend of mine reckons the figure hovers somewhere around the six percent mark). There’s another group, however, whose refusal to enter the polling booth is a conscious political statement. These abstainers, and their  number has been growing steadily since the mid-1980s, have a blunt message for the political parties: “You don’t know me. You won’t help me. You don’t understand me. You can’t even speak my language.” A significant minority add: “You betrayed me.”

Overwhelmingly, these abstainers are young (18-25 years) poorly-educated and unskilled workers and beneficiaries, and most of them reside in electorates that, historically, have been Labour strongholds. “Politics”, if it means anything at all to these youngsters, is generally construed as the sum of all their fears, and “politicians”, far from being regarded as people they elect to do things for them, are seen as the people others elect to do things to them. They couldn’t tell you how they know, but they do know, and deep in their gut the knowledge festers like a malignant tumour: they are the ones who are being blamed; they are the ones who are being punished; for economic and social sins they can barely pronounce.

THESE YOUNGSTERS should be the apples of Labour’s eye. The ones for whom “Seddon and Savage”, James K. Baxter’s “Socialist Father”, returns in the poem Crossing Cook Strait. For, surely, these are “the angry poor” who are his nation? And surely it is their suffering, and the social and economic injustice which engenders it, that defines Labour’s “peril and purpose”?

They should be Labour’s people, but they are not. Indeed, it is the children of these young folk that Labour once again proposes to abandon by jettisoning its policy of increasing the incomes of beneficiary families.

That amounts to the purest political folly, because, given half a chance, this scapegoat generation, these angry thousands, possess the power to carry not only Labour, but this whole country into the future. The story of New Zealand’s tomorrow will be the story of how well, or how badly, Labour responds to the challenge of uplifting these alienated abstainers. Of how, or whether, a future left-wing government provides them with the education; the training; the housing; and, ultimately, the responsibility to keep our society whole.

And if the Left refuses to woo them? Then, be warned – somebody else will.

"Our Last Hope: Hitler" Nazi Party election poster from the early 1930s. In 1932 six million Germans were out of work. In that same year electoral support for the Nazis peaked at 37.2 percent .

This essay was originally published in The Dominion-Post, The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 13 April 2012.

Putting the Public In Their (Private) Place

Puffed-Up Political Popinjay: Associate Minister of Education, Craig Foss. The Member for Tukituki epitomises the National Party's almost reflexive antagonism towards urban culture and the free life of the mind which it promotes. Mr Foss's neoliberal ventriloquists are determined to dismantle the democratic and egalitarian education system set in place by the First Labour Government.

SEVEN YEARS AGO Craig Foss made his living manipulating money for Credit Suisse Financial Products. Before that he had, like his leader, John Key, been a currency trader. In 2005, after heaving Labour’s Rick Barker out of the provincial Hawke’s Bay electorate of Tukituki, he became a National Party MP. National had been odds-on favourite to take the seat, but everyone agrees Mr Foss worked tirelessly to make it a certainty.

He was perfectly cast for the role. The election of 2005 marked the first surge of the king conservative tide which would sweep away practically all Labour’s representation in the provinces and seriously erode much of its urban base. To the conservative voters of Tukituki Mr Foss’s jutting chin, porcine squint, and querulous pout communicated the confidence of the self-made man who understands the value of Pounds, Dollars and Euros – but very little else.

This lack of cultural depth was anything but a handicap in Tukituki, where the Clark Government’s intelligent social liberalism had long since outworn its welcome. Mr Foss may have spent much of his working life in the world's financial hubs, but his values remain firmly rooted in the socially conservative Hutt Valley suburbs of the 1960s and 70s, where he was raised.

BEING A TORY in the Hutt Valley of that era can't have been easy. Surrounded by one of the largest concentrations of industrial workers in New Zealand, the besieged defenders of free enterprise who triennially defied the Labour-voting hordes must have felt like political refugees. Their true home wasn’t the Hutt, seething with socialists, but out there – in the Heartland. In all those decent, hard-working provincial towns. In all those leafy city suburbs. That’s where “real Kiwis” lived, well-fenced against trouble-making trade-unionists, subversive secondary-school teachers and condescending academics.

It’s this almost reflexive antagonism to urban culture that turns most National Governments into dreary re-runs of The Heartland’s Revenge: a dull-witted drama punctuated by repeated acts of petty social vengeance. Think Murray McCully’s dismantling of MFAT; Paula Bennett’s axing of the Tertiary Assistance Grant; Steven Joyce’s sabotage of public transport; and Bill English’s pogrom against public servants. Most of all, think of the entire National Caucus’s hatred of education.

Nothing epitomises the Tory mind-set more completely than its attitude to learning. The essence of conservatism is its love of boundaries. People are supposed to stay where they are put: the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. Workers, Maori, women, children: each must remain in their allotted social space. The only legitimate vector of social mobility is wealth. Work, by itself, will not set you free: but work attached to bundles of cash just might. Of course, money is not the only source of freedom. The human mind, liberated from ignorance, prejudice and superstition, bestows upon its owner a very different sort of wealth. Education has the power to dissolve boundaries – which is why conservatives hate it with such passion.

Why else would National have withdrawn the funding that allowed schools and polytechnics to offer night classes? Why else would they, against the advice of their own experts, have introduced “National Standards”? Why else are they underfunding our universities and attempting to turn them into purely vocational degree factories? What else could explain their extraordinary contempt for public service broadcasting? Their enthusiasm for dumbed-down, commercially-driven programming? The free life of the mind is anathema to the National Party, and everything which contributes to that freedom must be destroyed.

But, how to end the free dissemination of knowledge without, at the same time, crippling the ability of the rich man in his castle to govern effectively? The answer is simple: ensure that only the wealthy get a good education. This will, of course, entail the destruction of the public education system put in place by the First Labour Government, whose 1939 “mission-statement”, penned by the then Secretary of Education, C.E. Beeby, at the behest of his Minister, Peter Fraser, required:

[T]hat every person, whatever the level of his academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right, as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted, and to the fullest extent of his powers.

The swiftest and most effective means of destroying such a system is simply to place it in the hands of private, profit-seeking businesses. Identifying the system’s weakest performers by using NCEA pass-rates and National Standards test results will allow private-sector investors to pinpoint the prime locations for National’s new, taxpayer-funded “Charter Schools”. The construction of these new institutions will offer further opportunity for private profit in the form of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs).

WHICH BRINGS US BACK to Mr Foss. At the end of last year John Key made the Member for Tukituki Minister of Commerce, Minister of Broadcasting, Associate Minister for ACC, and Associate Minister of Education. In was in this latter role that Mr Foss, on Tuesday 10 April, proudly announced the education sector’s first PPP.

Over the next 25 years, a private consortium called Learning Infrastructure Partners will construct, administer and maintain Hobsonville Point Primary School and Hobsonville Point College. At what cost to the taxpayer, and at what rate-of-return to Learning Infrastructure Partners, we are not being told. Such information, according to Mr Foss, is “commercially sensitive”.

Listening to Mr Foss being interviewed by Mary Wilson on Checkpoint and by Simon Mercep on Morning Report, I was moved to wonder by what measure the Associate Minister was deemed worthy of his $257,800 (excluding allowances) salary. So fatuous were his answers; so completely pre-scripted were his lines; that not even he could deliver them without a suppressed giggle. Over and over again, reading from the page of talking-points which no doubt lay on the desk in front of him, Mr Foss told Radio New Zealand’s listeners that this was:

A good deal all ‘round for the taxpayers, for the Government, for teachers, for boards of governors, for the pupils themselves.

Boards of “governors”? Surely that should have been “trustees”. New Zealand schools haven’t had boards of governors for more than a quarter-century. That our new Associate Minister of Education was so ignorant of his portfolio that he failed to correct the error did not surprise me. But who, in the Ministry of Education, could possibly have made such a slip? Could it have been someone who’d only just arrived from a place where schools still have boards of governors? Someone whose last job was managing her country’s education infrastructure and funding? Surely, the Minister’s talking points were drafted by that proud promoter of Charter Schools and PPPs; Sheffield’s own ambitious lass; and New Zealand’s brand new Secretary of Education: Lesley Longstone?

Ms Longstone is what’s known as a “change manager”. Her appointment is all the proof we need to convict this National Government of planning to dismantle New Zealand’s democratic and egalitarian system of public education – a system internationally acclaimed for its outstanding pedagogical successes.

Assisted by Treasury Secretary, Gabriel Makhlouf, Ms Longstone will continue to put the words of the neoliberal ideologues who still run this country into the mouths of puffed-up political popinjays like Mr Foss. Who will, in turn, continue to receive six times the median income for putting young New Zealanders in their place.

The place from which C.E. Beeby and Peter Fraser freed them, more than three-quarters-of-a-century ago.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

To Play The Queen

A Bold Move: The Green's appointment of Laila Harre as its Auckland-based Issues Director signals its intention to resist the tidal drag of Labour's rightward drift. It's an ideological flanking manoeuvre David Shearer will ignore at his peril.

THE APPOINTMENT OF LAILA HARRÉ as the Green Party’s Auckland-based Issues Director should be sending shivers down David Shearer’s spine. Henceforth, hundreds-of-thousands of former Alliance Party voters will no longer have to hum-and-haw about which left-wing party to support. Ms Harré, a former Alliance leader, is one of the Left’s most intelligent and articulate spokespeople. The clarity and radicalism of her thinking has been evident since her maiden speech to Parliament in 1996:

A government cannot both embrace the full force of globalisation and retain sovereignty over key economic decisions. A government cannot deliver a first class health and education service accessible to all regardless of wealth without a substantially more progressive income tax system. A government cannot deal with fundamental issues of biosecurity and ecological diversity by adopting a market model which will by definition subsume these needs to the perceived interests of foreign investors ….. These fundamental issues of difference between the Alliance and Labour must be resolved, and not simply disguised by clever packaging.

That the issues identified by Ms Harré sixteen years ago remain at the heart of contemporary political debate on the Left is proof of her analytical perspicacity. They certainly constitute the “fundamental issues of difference” that Labour and the Greens have yet to resolve.

Which brings us back to the shivers that should be running up Mr Shearer’s spine. Because, in just about every particular of Ms Harré’s 1996 challenge, the gap between Labour’s position and the Greens’ isn’t narrowing, it’s growing wider. Rather than increasing the progressivity of our income tax system, Mr Shearer intends to decrease it. And, far from attempting to free himself from the “embrace” of globalisation, Mr Shearer remains as committed as his predecessors to “free-trade” and “productive foreign investment”.

Mr Shearer’s principal policy advisers: His chief-of-staff, Stuart Nash; his policy consultant, John Pagani; and the Labour Right’s faction-leader, Trevor Mallard; would appear to have no intention of permitting either the Caucus, or the wider Labour Party organisation, to address these fundamental policy differences. Which can only mean that they intend to mask the ideological gulf separating Labour and the Greens with “clever packaging”.

The Greens are having none of it. Ms Harré’s appointment makes that clear. If Mr Shearer and his minions are signalling their intention to take Labour to the right; the Greens, by appointing a radical social-democrat as their Issues Director, have communicated their party’s strong disinclination to follow suit. More than this, the Greens are warning Labour that if it is no longer interested in the votes of the Auckland working-class, then they will gladly take them off their hands.

Ms Harré is not only a former Alliance leader and MP, but also a highly successful trade-union organiser. She masterminded the “Nurses Are Worth More” campaign of 2003-04, and was for four years the General Secretary of the National Distribution Union. In Auckland, where Labour’s organisation is weak (and where Mr Shearer and his allies have thrown their support behind organisational “reforms” which threaten to keep it that way) the Greens have installed a woman of proven organisational and motivational talent.

What we are witnessing is a fascinating historical reversal. Labour conquered power by first organising the working-class vote, and only then extending its reach into the educated middle-class and small proprietors. The Greens are expanding in the opposite direction: from their core base of support among the educated middle-class; to the small proprietor; to the working-class; and potentially to the much-despised “underclass” of beneficiaries and alienated youth.

Mr Shearer and his allies are, therefore, pursuing a potentially fatal strategy. By leading the party to the right they risk losing their working-class base, which, following the last election, is all that remains to them. The Labour leadership do not seem to appreciate that the Greens have already made off with the educated middle-class vote, and have won over a significant number of small proprietors. To leave their Auckland working-class flank exposed to Ms Harré’s organisational flair risks replicating here what has already occurred in Germany: the Greens supplanting Labour as the dominant left-wing party.

Labour members who would rather not see their party pushed into second place need to act swiftly and decisively. Not simply on the question of: “Who should be leading the party?” But on the more important question of: “How should the party be led?”

A crucial aspect of the Greens’ success as a political movement has been the open and transparent nature of its decision-making processes. In short, it’s commitment to democracy. If Labour’s membership wishes to make progress on those “fundamental issues of difference” between their party and the Greens, they must demonstrate an equally vigorous commitment to democratic values.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 10 April 2012.

Guard Duty: An Easter Story

The Tomb Was Empty

“THAT’S QUITE A STORY, Marcus Petronius.”

My sergeant was a big bear of a man in his early 40s. He’d been soldiering for more than fifteen years and still had ten to go. He was a true Roman; the son of a butcher from the Transtiberium district. It was a lineage he used to good advantage with raw recruits. “Never been afraid of blood and guts!”, he’d bellow. “Been around them all my life. So long as it’s not yours, you’ve nothing to fear from the contents of a man’s belly!”

That was Antonius Caedere – whom some called “The Rock”. Because he was a rock. The sort Rome’s enemies broke on. A man to put your back against when things got ugly. Solid, dependable: a real soldier.

“How did you come to be guarding a Jewish corpse in the first place? Last I heard you were on crucifixion duty.”

“That’s right, Sergeant. Up on Golgotha. Two thieves and a political – nothing special.”

“So, what happened?”

“Well, it’s hard to say. The Governor’s guard had beaten the political pretty bad. Some wag had even woven him a crown of thorns – called him “King of the Jews”.”

“Risky title, I would have thought.”

“Yes. I think it’s what got him killed. Some Jewish legend about the coming of a mighty king – the ‘Messiah’. You know what these people are like. Anyway, their High Priest, Caiaphas, thought it safer to be rid of him and handed him over to Pilate as an enemy of the Emperor.”

“An even more risky title. Did he die well?”

“He died quickly, I can tell you that. Cried out for his father, which was a little odd, because usually all they want are their mothers. Still, the two thieves were very much alive, so our job was far from done. The hours passed, the day was wearing away, when this wealthy Jewish fellow bustles up with a message from Pontius Pilate, no less. The duty officer reads the message, frowns, reads it again, and then orders Cassius and me to cut the dead political down and hand him over to this Jew for burial. When we’ve done this, the officer reads the message over again and orders us to go with the body and stand watch over the burial tomb until relieved.”

“You were absent without leave for two nights, Marcus Petronius. You and Cassius Gaius. Guarding the corpse of a dead Jewish political? Two nights, and no one relieved you?”

“Well now, that’s the thing. Someone did relieve us. An officer.”

“Who?”

“I didn’t recognise him, Sergeant. Neither did Cassius. Strange. I thought I knew all the officers in the Jerusalem garrison. Not this fellow, though. He was very tall, wore a white cloak that seemed to shimmer in the dark, and spoke so softly we could hardly hear him.”

“And he relieved you? An officer relieved a couple of privates?”

“It’s hard to explain, Sergeant. He didn’t seem to be alone. Both Cassius and I got the impression that there were others present, in the shadows. Though we couldn’t really see them – it was so dark.”

“And what did this ‘officer’ say?”

“He just said they had come for the one who was in the tomb. He smiled at us. It was the uncanniest thing. I remember exchanging glances with Cassius – and the rest is just a blur. Cassius said there was a blinding light, but I think it was just the rising sun shining through the leaves. Because it was morning, Sergeant, and the great round stone that we’d rolled into its slot at the mouth of the tomb was lying in pieces on the ground – like a broken egg. And the tomb gaped wide – like an open wound. And Sergeant, it was empty.”

“Like I said, quite a story. And you know I’d have the hide off you both if I hadn’t heard a very similar story not two hours ago from a member of the Sanhedrin. He left me gold in return for my – for our – silence in this matter. So, we’ll say no more about it – ever. And if anyone asks what happened to the political, you tell them that his followers came in the night and stole his body away. Is that clear Marcus Petronius?”

“As the risen sun, Sergeant.”

This short story was originally published in The Otago Daily Times, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald and The Greymouth Star of Thursday, 5 March 2012.

Clifton's Notes

John Key's Bodyguard? Jane Clifton's latest Listener column uses this week's One News/Colmar-Brunton poll to paint a picture of an electorate grown weary of big ideas and convinced that, in a world of economic woe, life under the National-led Government is about as good as it gets. Especially since none of the other parties could do any better. As spin goes - it's pretty good.

JANE CLIFTON’S ANALYSIS of the latest One News/Colmar-Brunton poll (The Listener, April 14-20, 2012, pp. 12-13) makes fascinating reading. Like me, The Listener’s political columnist is astonished that the National Government appears to have sustained no damage:

It’s as if the whole of this year, with its unending stream of mini-scandals and unpopular announcements, never happened.

But, rather than question the credibility of the poll, Ms Clifton questions us – the people.

The poll’s lack of responsiveness to such carry-on is a total mystery – unless you consider that people might be beginning to have a different relationship with both politicians and the media. As in, perhaps they are just filtering out the argy-bargy, and the strongest, bossiest prognostications, because they no longer trust any sort of absolutism.

Who would have thought that Jane (Wot, me an intellectual? Geddaway wif ya!) Clifton would end up putting such a smooth, post-modernist spin on her analysis? This is nothing less than Jean Francois Lyotard’s “incredulity towards meta-narratives” translated into Wadestown dinner-party-speak.

Thrown in for good measure is an impressive little riff on the political impact of globalisation:

[V]oters may now be viewing domestic political noise in the light of wider global realities, and this could be making them more sanguine about the brush fires.

Only a few years ago we were gazing longingly at Ireland’s economic prowess, and now we see the Celtic Tiger declawed and practically auctioning its stripes to stay afloat. That has to have an impact on how we view stringencies here.

Ms Clifton’s voter is nothing if not sophisticated. Grown incredulous of “absolutist” meta-narratives, she is reassessing her expectations of politics and politicians in the light of dramatically re-ordered global realities. This paragon of civic responsibility understands that:

Not just now, but for the foreseeable future, our normal economic reckoning has had to change, and perhaps it’s political noises about that stuff that we’re listening for, while screening out the rhetoric and theatre.

John Key is blessed indeed to have such a journalistic bodyguard. Because, if we carefully dig into Ms Clifton’s analysis, what we find is a core proposition of confidence and satisfaction. Apparently, Mr Key’s National Party-led administration is about as good as it gets these days:

Do we really think Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First would be able to govern without making similar or equivalent cuts and trade-offs?

Austerity, lowered expectations, a default cynicism towards anything smacking of “rhetoric and theatre”: this, according to Ms Clifton, is the new black of political discourse. Get used to it.

Democracy itself: the whole notion of an engaged citizenry holding their rulers to account, dissolves before our eyes in Ms Clifton’s clever prose:

It’s possible a lot of people now see politicians’ squabbles rather in the way they view Kim Kardashian’s bottom – as something to contemplate to pass the time in a supermarket checkout queue, but not as any useful pointer to character or competence.

Guy Debord, who gave us “The Society of the Spectacle” would no doubt feel vindicated by Ms Clifton’s description of the vacuity of contemporary political life. Way back in 1967 he observed: “The spectacle presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned. Its sole message is: ‘What appears is good; what is good appears.’ The passive acceptance it demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.”

And isn’t that the entire purpose behind Ms Clifton’s treatment of the One News/Colmar-Brunton poll? Our unquestioning acceptance of its findings is secured by making us collaborators in our own compliance. In the world Ms Clifton has constructed, Kiwis are no longer interested in big explanations or big solutions; because it’s a jungle out there, economically, and we’re doing better than most; and, anyway, nobody could run things any better; because all political parties are really the same; and that’s why more than half of us are sticking with the devil we know.

But let’s just examine that One News/Colmar-Brunton poll for a moment. As presented on people’s screens it is already a highly misleading document. For a start, where is the information about how many people were contacted by the pollster, and of those how many consented to being questioned? It’s not there. Nor is the number of respondents who said they didn’t know, or were uncertain, about who to vote for. Or, those who declared they wouldn’t vote at all. What we see on our screens are the rounded-up levels of support for each party after the “Undecideds” and “Won’t Votes” are dropped out.

We are told by Colmar-Brunton that their raw data is massaged to ensure it accurately reflects the gender, ethnic and residential contours of the population – presumably based on Census data that is now at least 6 years out-of-date. What we are not told is that Colmar-Brunton makes no allowance for the distribution of household income in New Zealand.

Turnout for the 2011 General Election, at 74.21 percent of registered voters, and 69.6 percent of eligible voters, was one of the lowest on record. Did Colmar-Brunton ever draw our attention to the possibility that between 25-30 percent of New Zealand voters might abstain from voting altogether? Did they draw any conclusions as to the likely impact of such a high abstention rate on the final result? No, they didn’t. And, apparently, TVNZ didn’t ask.

Only in the last line of her column does Ms Clifton draw attention to the fact that the polls are not always accurate predictors of electoral outcomes:

Or, as Jim Bolger said in 1993 when he unexpectedly almost lost the election. ‘Bugger the pollsters’.

And even here, she gives herself away. Because for those of us on the Left of New Zealand politics; those who’d been involved with the Alliance; those who’d watched the growth of New Zealand First; there was nothing unexpected about the closeness of the 1993 result. Indeed we were absolutely gobsmacked that any prime minister, after presiding over swingeing budget-cuts and spiralling unemployment figures, could possibly have given credence to opinion polls telling him he was going to win at a canter.

Far from existing in the best of all possible post-modernist worlds, New Zealand in 2012 is seething with anger and frustration. And by no means all of it is directed at John Key’s government. Many voters are just as fed up with the Labour Party and its seeming incapacity to either understand their aspirations, or articulate their rage. If any group has a 51 percent share at the moment it is surely the group that's crying: “A plague on all your houses!”

Ms Clifton will have none of that, however. And really, how could she? When was she last locked-out of her workplace? When did the bank last foreclose on her home? When was the last time she went hungry so her children could eat?

When the pollsters and the networks start asking those questions, Jane, write us another column. And, when you can answer them yourself, perhaps you’ll understand why so many of us remain sceptical of their “snap-shots”.

Not everybody lives in Wadestown.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

From Cock-Up To Conspiracy

The Minister Is Not Amused: Determined to proceed with defamation actions against Trevor Mallard, Andrew Little and Radio New Zealand, Judith Collins is but one of many National Party grandees caught up in the unedifying, fratricidal political scandal arising from the inadvertent release of 6,700 ACC files to National Party activist, Bronwyn Pullar.

A HARRIED EMPLOYEE of the Accident Compensation Corporation, attempts to focus on the next complaint. It’s already past six o’clock and she is worrying about her family. She texted her husband an hour ago that she was going to be running late, and would he pick up something for tea, but he hasn’t replied. She’s worried about her nine year-old daughter – it’s more than three hours since school got out and there’s nobody at home but her.

Damn these bloody complaints! More and more of them every day and the Corporation’s already seriously understaffed. She skim-reads the e-mail from Bronwyn Pullar, her fingers fly over the keyboard, calling up the requested information from the Corporation’s complex data management system. Her cell-phone beeps twice. She picks it up. It’s her husband. He’s also stuck at work. Dammit, dammit, dammit! She hits send.

Could’ve happened like that – couldn’t it? The unauthorised release of more than 6,700 ACC client records is much more likely to be the result of a simple cock-up than a deep and dark conspiracy – isn’t it? And if that cock-up had sent those 6,700 records to anyone but Ms Pullar’s computer, wouldn’t they, almost certainly, have been sent back to ACC by the person who received them, accompanied by a strong recommendation that the Corporation upgrade the security of its database?

Of course they would. But, they weren’t. And Ms Pullar was on a mission. Ms Pullar had been trying to get the ACC to do something to upgrade the security of its database for years – to no avail. So, when 6,700 unauthorised files arrived in her In-Box, Ms Pullar: ex-National Party activist; friend of Cabinet Ministers; former corporate communications manager; and long-time client of ACC, following a severe road accident; required no assistance in recognising the huge, bureaucracy-shifting lever that had serendipitously fallen into her lap. Nor would she have hesitated to contact her close friend, supporter, PR maven and National Party insider, Michelle Boag.

And its right about here that things begin to turn very murky. So murky, in fact, that its easier to believe that what we’re witnessing is the unfolding of a fully-fledged political conspiracy, rather than a simple bureaucratic cock-up. Because somewhere between ACC headquarters and the Beehive, somebody decided that the actions of the person who alerted the news media to the unauthorised release of 6,700 ACC records – and those of her “support person” – should be placed in the public domain.

Just think about that for a moment. Because what we’re looking at now isn’t the easy-to-make, hard-to-forgive error of a harried and momentarily distracted civil servant. No. What we’re looking at now is a cold-blooded act of political demolition. An act fraught with multiple and serious political consequences – up to and including the resignation of a hard-working and widely respected member of the National Party-led government. Whoever released the details of Ms Pullar’s and Ms Boag’s interactions with the ACC must have understood that it could lead the news media straight to Nick Smith’s door.

Clearly alarmed at the potential damage this information could inflict on the National Party, Ms Boag contacts the Minister responsible for ACC, Judith Collins, and informs her of her own and Bronwyn Pullar’s involvement in the case. Ms Collins immediately passes on Ms Boag’s communication to the ACC Board Chair, and to its CEO.

In very short order the names of Ms Pullar and Ms Boag appear in the news-media. As feared, a letter written by Dr Smith, on Ms Pullar’s behalf, whilst he was the Minister for ACC, is released and he is forced to resign.

The National Party is thrown into considerable confusion. No one seems to know whether the leaking of the information concerning Ms Pullar’s use of the 6,700 inadvertently released client files (by now the subject of both a Privacy Commission inquiry and a Police investigation) and the subsequent exposure of Ms Pullar’s and Ms Boag’s identities (also the subject of a Privacy Commission inquiry), are part of a single conspiracy, or whether multiple conspirators are at work.

Speculation, fanned to red-hot levels of intensity by the parliamentary opposition parties and an odd assortment of left- and right-wing bloggers, advances the idea that what the country is witnessing is a “faction-fight” to secure the post-2014 succession. According to this version of events, National’s leader, John Key, has decided not to seek a third prime-ministerial term, and his two most likely successors, Judith Collins and Stephen Joyce, are vying with one another for the title of heir apparent.

More leaks, followed by counter-leaks, have exposed to public view an alarming and hitherto unacknowledged world of political cronyism and influence-peddling. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the original, almost certainly inadvertent, bureaucratic snafu, this whole affair has now become a single, unedifying, fratricidal, mess.

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

Lies, Damn Lies, and Mainstream Media Polling.

Petrifying Effect: The constant overstatement of National's electoral support in mainstream media polls risks sending the Government's opponents into a "spiral of silence". Like the legendary Medusa, just looking at them may be enough to paralyse our will to resist the Right's on-going domination of the political discourse.

HERE WE GO AGAIN, the One News/Colmar-Brunton poll is out and, already, the network’s “journalists” are treating it as holy writ. Absolutely undeterred by the extraordinary discrepancy between the mainstream media’s poll-driven predictions and the actual election result, TVNZ and its partners in “churnalism” are once again assuming these polls provide a deadly accurate snap-shot of the public mood.

And just in case you think I’m being unfair, let me quote from one of the mainstream pollsters prime defenders, the US-based political scientist, Rob Salmond, who, on the eve of the 2011 election, alerted his Pundit readers to the fact that: “There have been 57 polls released this year by the five firms we follow, and all 57 of them estimated National would win the seats to govern alone. Fifty of those also estimated that National had an absolute majority of the votes, too.” Mr Salmond’s own prediction – based on his “Poll-of-Polls” – was that the National Party would receive 52 percent of the Party Vote.

The actual election result was very different from that predicted by Mr Salmond and the five firms he followed. Far from winning enough seats to govern alone, the National Party was forced to rely upon the support and/or co-operation of the Act, United Future and Maori parties. Far from securing the predicted absolute electoral majority, National received 47.3 percent of the Party Vote.

Even in the final fortnight of the campaign, when public interest in politics was presumably at its peak, the most influential of the mainstream media polls, Colmar-Brunton, still gave National 50 percent of the Party Vote – a result only just inside the agency’s margin of error. Curiously, Colmar-Brunton’s and the other mainstream pollsters’ predictions for the remaining political parties were much closer to the actual result – although none of them accurately predicted the electoral success of NZ First.

Those of us who’d hoped the Horizon Poll (whose results diverged wildly from the “five firms”’ polls) had discovered a more reliable methodology for sampling public opinion in New Zealand were similarly disappointed. Horizon correctly predicted NZ First’s return to parliament but was well astray of reality in most of its other predictions.

Which leaves those of us with an interest in New Zealand politics facing a big problem. How to get a fix on the true level of National Party support? If practically all of the “reputable” polling firms are consistently at least 3 percentage points north of National’s actual numbers, how can the electorate avoid being sucked into what political scientists call “the spiral of silence”? How do we prevent the media-driven perception of overwhelming support for one political party, or bloc, from silencing the existing and potential supporters of the “losing” side, and thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The historically very low voter turnout for the 2011 election may be a reflection of this “spiral of silence”. Is it realistic to suggest that a whole year of the “five firms” telling voters – in 57 separate polls no less! – that not only was National going to win, but win well enough to govern alone, had absolutely no effect on the final outcome? Isn’t it more likely that that tens-of-thousands of demoralised Labour voters, convinced that their party had already lost, simply could not see the point of visiting a polling-booth?

Let’s consider the counterfactual: that the mainstream pollsters, in 57 separate polls, showed National attracting between 46-49 percent of the Party Vote, and NZ First consistently cresting the 5 percent MMP threshold. Wouldn’t this have energised the electorate? Wouldn’t it have persuaded Labour supporters that, on election day, every vote was going to count? Wouldn’t that have lifted the turnout – and quite possibly produced a National Party defeat?

I think it might.

Which brings us back to the latest One News/Colmar-Brunton poll showing National on 51 percent. In the wake of at least a fortnight’s worth of bad political news, shouldn’t the producer of TVNZ’s Q+A programme, Tim Watkin, have used his blog to express just one or two tiny reservations about the poll? Don’t be silly! Mr Watkin (who is living proof of Upton Sinclair’s famous quip that “it is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”) responded to the poll’s results as if they had been handed down to him on stone tablets from Mt Sinai.

“The latest One News-Colmar Brunton poll is a kick in the pants for Labour. After a ministerial resignation and a fortnight where the whiff of cronyism was never far from National, the governing party can still command more than 50 percent in the polls. That's astounding.”

Yes, that’s right, Mr Watkin, it is “astounding” – as in “so surprisingly impressive as to stun or overwhelm”. But not, apparently, so surprising as to cause you to look back at Colmar-Brunton’s results, note their past failures, and raise even the slightest doubt as to their reliability. Instead, and so very predictably, you used the results to put the boot into Labour; describing them as “a kick in the pants”; and adding, just in case your readers missed the point, that: “even a damaged National Party that looks as wounded as it ever has still looks more attractive to most voters than [Labour] does.”

So, there it is, all you Labour supporters. There’s nothing you can do to dent the National Party juggernaut. Change your leader, change your policies, change your lucky underpants if you feel the need – nobody gives a damn. Because none of it will do you a blind bit of good. John Key is God’s anointed. He’s invincible. You don’t believe me? Then gaze upon this: Colmar-Brunton’s poll-generated Gorgon; TVNZ’s statistical Medusa.

And be turned to stone.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.