Democracy's Disappearing Hand

Our Dysfunctional Democracy: With barely a third of New Zealanders bothering to participate in the recent local government elections, the atrophying of our democratic institutions continues apace. At their current rate of decline, our democratic organs may soon be reduced to useless vestigial remnants, like the human tail-bone. Of interest only to political anatomists.

 

IF THE FUTURE is determined by the “invisible hand” of market forces, then what purpose does the democratic hand serve? With barely a third of New Zealanders bothering to participate in the recent local government elections, the answer would appear to be: “Not much.” At their current rate of decline, our democratic organs may soon be reduced to useless vestigial remnants, like the human tail-bone. Of interest only to political anatomists.

 

For more than 30 years we have been encouraged to look upon “politics” and “politicians” as not quite respectable. From the Reserve Bank Act to the Local Government Act, the ability of elected representatives to “meddle” too closely in the administration and delivery of “public goods” has been steadily whittled away. The setting of monetary policy and the efficient delivery of core civic amenities are matters best left to unelected experts. The days when any old butcher, baker, or candlestick-maker could run a city (let alone a country!) are long gone.

 

This “professionalization” of the formerly rather amateur enterprise of democratic government is what lies behind the explosive growth of what has come to be known as the “political class”. Like any group of specialists, these administrators and managers have been quick to spread the self-serving message that the increasingly complex business of modern “governance” (a word which has very little to do with the art of government by the way) has moved well beyond the competence of the average citizen.

 

Just how pervasive (not to say pernicious) this professionalisation has become is illustrated by the presence in practically every large local authority of a special unit devoted to “democratic services”. Its job? To advise and monitor (some unkind souls might say control) the conduct of their “governing body’s” elected representatives. Newly elected councillors are briefed on the “responsibilities” of their new “job” and familiarised with the Codes of Conduct and myriad legal constraints in which all of them are now well-and-truly entangled.

 

Nor should these responsibilities be taken lightly. Woe betide any council attempting to assert its democratic right to know better than its professional advisors. Just ask the people of Canterbury what happens to an elected body which the political class deems to be conducting its affairs “irresponsibly” or, even worse, “irrationally”. Central Government intervention, the sacking of elected councillors and their replacement by appointed commissioners, cannot be far behind.

 

The public has had little difficulty deciphering these messages. Even before the government sacked Ecan in 2010, it was clear to voters that the ability of their elected representatives to translate election promises into practical policies had been seriously compromised. Councils no longer seemed to own and/or control anything. Services that had once been provided by the Council itself were increasingly being contracted out to the private sector.

 

There was a time when, if the bus you took to work was consistently late, you simply picked up the phone and complained to your local councillor. He or she then raised the matter with the municipal transport manager, who, in turn, had a word in the ear of the route inspector and – ta-da! – the punctuality of your service was restored. Unfortunately, what the travelling public regarded as an eminently sensible and highly accountable public transport system was actually hopelessly inefficient. By contracting-out the service to privately-owned bus operators, said the experts, efficiency would be improved dramatically and the council could save millions of dollars. If your privately-owned service starts running late, however, don’t bother calling your local councillor. It’s no longer his problem.

 

Clearly, any candidate promising to do great things for his or her city in the twenty-first century is either naïve or dishonest. “Great things” may well be an excellent description of the achievements of past councils and mayors, but today’s local government politicians would be most unwise to offer the voters anything more than competence and a comprehensive understanding of how the system works. Perspiration counts for much more than inspiration in the neoliberal era. Perspiration and an unwavering adherence to the proposition that local government’s only legitimate role is to hold the ring while self-interested private-sector businesspeople unconsciously, but inevitably, make our cities better places in which to live.

 

That being the case, the argument for mass democratic participation in local elections becomes increasingly difficult to make. When the professionals from “democratic services” are able to transform our democratically-elected representatives into house-trained lap-dogs practically overnight. When even the mildest assertions of local government autonomy are met with central government threats to depose elected councillors and appoint commissioners. And when a council’s only acceptable objective is to facilitate the naked pursuit of commercial self-interest. What possible motivation could voters’ have for treating local government elections as anything other than an increasingly pointless political ritual? A vestigial remnant of the democratic hand that once built nations.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 11 October 2016.

Clever Strategy vs Desperate Tactics: Hillary Clinton Allows Donald Trump To Survive The Second Presidential Debate.

He's Behind You! By declining numerous opportunities to take the “kill shot” against her Republican opponent, Clinton ensured that Donald Trump emerged from the debate with just enough credit to keep his candidacy alive. Had she comprehensively trounced Trump, it’s just possible that the Donald’s already fractured ego would have disintegrated completely, causing him to resign his candidacy. That is the last thing the Clinton Campaign wants.

 

THE SECOND US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE demonstrated brilliantly the difference between strategy and tactics. Hillary Clinton’s performance was all about the political needs of the next 30 days. Donald Trump was fighting for his life.

 

By declining numerous opportunities to take the “kill shot” against her Republican opponent, Clinton ensured that Trump emerged from the debate with just enough credit to keep his candidacy alive. Had she comprehensively trounced Trump, the panic in the Republican camp would only have gotten worse. The calls for Trump’s replacement would have become deafening, and it’s just possible that the Donald’s already fractured ego would have disintegrated completely.

 

This is the last thing the Clinton Campaign wants. Their strategic objective is to keep Trump in the race. They are confident that he has already done more than enough to lose the presidency. What they are hoping for now is that in the remaining 30 days of the campaign Trump will do enough to deliver the Senate – and maybe even the House of Representatives – to the Democratic Party.

 

Considerations of strategy were nowhere near the top of Trump’s mind. His campaign was bleeding copiously and unless he staunched the blood-flow it would very soon be dead. His only tactical option was to hurl everything he had at Clinton and hope that the sheer intensity of his assault would break him out of the rapidly tightening cordon of condemnation strangling his bid for the White House.

 

In this he was reasonably successful. His combative performance, aimed directly at his electoral base, was just enough to hold these white, male, working-class voters in place. It was also enough to remind even his most vociferous Republican detractors of how he got to be their party’s nominee. On the issue of Clinton’s insider status, and especially on the vexed question of her deleted e-mails, Trump’s gloves definitely connected with Hillary’s jaw.

 

But he did not knock her out. On the contrary, in the course of delivering his wild rhetorical blows, Trump unwittingly extended the Clinton Campaign’s strategic advantage. His threat to use the powers of the presidency to put Clinton “in jail” is without precedent in US political history, recalling the very worst excesses of the Nixon White House. The Democrats will undoubtedly offer up Trump’s threat as further proof of his utter unfitness for America’s highest office.

 

His repudiation of his vice-presidential running-mate’s, Mike Pence’s, statements about Syria will also rebound to the Democratic Party’s advantage. Trump’s eagerness to work with the Russians (ostensibly to “defeat Isis”) reinforces the growing concern among American voters that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will stop at nothing (not even hacking into the Democratic Party’s and Clinton’s confidential computer files) to prevent “Hawkish Hillary” from becoming President of the United States.

 

Between now and 8 November, Clinton’s campaign team will use Trump’s words to consolidate their candidate’s gains among disillusioned Republican and independent voters in the dozen or so “swing states” she must win to secure the 270 votes needed in the Electoral College. The Democratic Party’s strategic symphony, portraying Trump as a “clear and present danger” to the constitutional liberties of the American people, will build relentlessly to a crushing crescendo.

 

With CNN’s scientific poll of debate-watcher’s declaring Clinton the winner of the second presidential face-off by a margin of 23 percentage points (Clinton: 57 percent – Trump: 34 percent) Hillary’s victory march just got a whole lot louder.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 10 October 2016.

The Masculine Mystique: The True Nature Of Aaron Smith’s Transgression

The Masculinist Nightmare: In Homer's Odyssey the amorous enchantress, Circe, transforms Odysseus's lustful crew into swine. Mastery being the essence of masculinity, men are expected to demonstrate at all times that they are in control of both themselves and their lives. Aaron Smith's sin was his failure to control of his desires. As an All Black, the epitome of Kiwi masculinity, such a display of weakness was a kind of betrayal. He let the side down.

 

MASCULINITY – can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Well, that’s half true. A world in which masculinity no longer dominated human affairs would probably be much improved. What went on in airport toilets between consenting adults would count for much less. And the ideas espoused by female candidates for high political office – rather than what they were wearing and how often they smiled – would count for much more.

 

New Zealand’s problems with masculinity are deeply embedded in its social and cultural history. New Zealand men are notorious for being overly repressed and emotionally unavailable: tightly-wound machines with an aversion to mechanics. Trained from birth to value self-reliance above all other virtues, their responses to vulnerability and complexity range from dismissive impatience to outright hostility. Their most prized quality is mastery. Mastery of what? Well, just about anything: the world’s highest mountain; the British Lions; women.

 

It’s why so many Kiwi males are furious with Aaron Smith. Not because he had sex in an airport toilet with someone who wasn’t his partner, but because he was willing to risk everything to do it. As an All Black, he was expected to master his lustful urges. Succumbing to temptation in the way he did marked him down as a man not in control of himself. Weak.

 

As something constructed and in need of constant maintenance, masculinity is forever being scrutinised and assessed by those who feel in need of its protection. For most Kiwi men, achieving All Black status represents something pretty close to perfection in the masculinity stakes. That Aaron Smith was willing to risk it all for a quick shag wasn’t just reckless and stupid, it devalued the currency of masculinity itself.

 

That the woman involved in the incident is accorded no real agency or consequence shows just how peripheral living, breathing, autonomous human females are to the construction of masculine identity. For so many men a woman is just one more thing to master, and all-too-often her presence at a man’s side is valued only for the indisputable proof it offers of his competitiveness in the masculinity stakes.

 

It’s why so many men turn nasty when “their” woman decides she no longer wishes to remain in the relationship. By walking away she is stripping him of one of the key proofs of his status as a “real” man – the ability to attract and “keep” a woman. Very little is more threatening to masculinity than a woman who refuses to devote her life to shoring-up her man’s identity. By forcing him to acknowledge her as something more than a mere adjunct to his ego, she is challenging him to move beyond the self-imposed limitations of masculinity and become fully human.

 

Many men accept their partner’s challenge to break out of the character armour in which they have encased themselves – and are better people for it. But, many men do not. The price of their failure is revealed in New Zealand’s shocking levels of domestic violence.

 

What happens in the domestic environment finds its reflection in the public domain – most particularly in men’s reaction to women who seek and attain political office. The ideology of masculinity is fundamentally hostile to the very notion of women exercising power over men. Such women are perceived as having abandoned their “natural” social role in much the same way as the woman who deserts her husband. Instantly, she becomes a “bitch” – someone who, by asserting her humanity has forfeited her right to be treated with the “courtesy” and “respect” reserved for women who accept the masculine code.

 

This masculinist viciousness was fully on display in the latter years of Helen Clark’s prime-ministership. No epithet was too vile to hurl at this woman who had crushed three National Party leaders in a row. Even more telling was the way in which Clark’s opponents sought to paint her as being both criminal and sinful – as if, by stepping away from her assigned role in the masculine universe, she had broken not only the laws of men, but of God.

 

Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House has elicited an equally overheated response from the white, working-class defenders of American masculinity. Writing in the October issue of The Atlantic, Peter Beinart, records of his astonishment at the unrestrained misogyny he encountered at the Republican National Convention in Ohio:

 

“Inside the hall, delegates repeatedly broke into chants of ‘Lock her up.’ Outside the hall, vendors sold campaign paraphernalia. As I walked around, I recorded the merchandise on display. Here’s a sampling: Black pin reading DON’T BE A PUSSY. VOTE FOR TRUMP IN 2016. Black-and-red pin reading TRUMP 2016: FINALLY SOMEONE WITH BALLS. White T-shirt reading TRUMP THAT BITCH. White T-shirt reading HILLARY SUCKS BUT NOT LIKE MONICA. Red pin reading LIFE’S A BITCH: DON’T VOTE FOR ONE … White pin advertising KFC HILLARY SPECIAL. 2 FAT THIGHS. 2 SMALL BREASTS … LEFT WING.”

 

If this is what American men were saying about Hillary before she so comprehensively trounced their masculinist avatar, Donald Trump, in the first debate, one can only imagine what they’re saying now. And God alone knows how they’ll cope if (or should that be ‘when’) she wins!

 

What a world of torment men consign themselves to in this hopeless quest to attain perfect masculinity. Their desire for women is matched only by their fear of becoming its slave. They are allowed to be tempted, but must never surrender to temptation on anything other than their own terms. And those terms must never include anything which undermines their standing in the eyes of other men. That was Aaron Smith’s true sin: not only to have allowed his desire for a woman to master him, but to have made the whole world privy to his weakness. He let the side down. Not just the All Black side, but the side to which every worshipper of masculinity belongs – and can only leave in disgrace.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Sunday, 9 October 2016.

Reducing Child Poverty Would Cost National Votes

Preserving The Gap: To placate a “base” already alarmed by their party’s Maori-friendly rhetoric, the National-led Government made it clear that it had no intention of matching its Maori-friendly words with Maori-friendly deeds. Not where it counted, anyway.

 

WHY WON’T John Key’s National Government commit to reducing child poverty by 10 percent? What is it that prevents the Prime Minister from accepting Children’s Commissioner Beecroft’s challenge? It’s puzzling.

 

As Leader of the Opposition, Key identified the growing “underclass” as one of New Zealand’s most pressing challenges. His highly publicised foray into McGeehan Close, one of the poorest streets in Prime Minister Helen Clark’s Mt Albert electorate, reinforced his message powerfully. Poverty was something National’s leader took very seriously.

 

Was it all yet another example of “just one of those things you say in opposition, and then forget about in government”? Only partly. If Key was to unseat Helen Clark’s government he had to convince tens-of-thousands of wavering Labour voters that it was “safe” to switch their allegiance to National.

 

Under Key’s predecessor, Don Brash, these voters were far from convinced. National in 2005 came across as too extreme; too ready to divide the country along the fault lines of class, gender and race. Key’s job (and he did it brilliantly) was to convince the electorate that National had learned the lessons of 2005. That it was now quite safe to change horses. The voters’ new mount was not about to carry them over a cliff.

 

Why, then, having won the 2008 General Election, did Key not use the powers of government to rectify the social conditions he had condemned so eloquently in Opposition? The answer, sadly, is because any serious attempt to address poverty and homelessness in New Zealand immediately inflames the inherent racial bias of the Pakeha electorate.

 

Remember Helen Clark’s first term policy of “closing the gaps” between Maori and Pakeha? Remember what happened to it?

 

National’s politicians understood how easily racist resentment against such policies might be inflamed. They were not about to risk a flanking attack by the Iwi/Kiwi die-hards of 2005. Key’s outreach to the Maori Party was already raising hackles on National’s right. He was not about to raise even more by unleashing a Kiwi version of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty”.

 

Quite the reverse, in fact. To placate a “base” already alarmed by their party’s Maori-friendly rhetoric, the National-led Government made it clear that it had no intention of matching its Maori-friendly words with Maori-friendly deeds. Not where it counted, anyway.

 

Geography is always the most inflammatory factor in social conflict. The proximity of poverty produces a toxic cocktail of responses within neighbouring communities. Considerations of property values, school zoning and crime rates not only generate policies aimed at excluding the poor, but also at keeping them bottled-up. Such discriminatory impulses are much easier to maintain and justify when poverty and ethnicity combine to form a single social threat.

 

The National Party has always understood this. It’s why it confined its state house construction within clearly-defined geographical, socio-economic and racial zones. It also explains the party’s unwillingness to allow the situation of those living inside these impoverished communities to improve at anything like the same rate as those living outside them. Far from closing the gaps, National’s priority has always been to keep them open.

 

The prospects for the poor in New Zealand took a significant turn for the worse when the terms “working-class”, “Maori” and “Pasifica” became more-or-less synonymous. At that point, the well-to-do’s age-old prejudices against the poor combined with the vicious racial stereotypes of New Zealand’s colonial heritage. The condition of the impoverished could now be explained-away by referencing their “poor choices” and the “dysfunctional cultures of violence” in which they were raised.

 

In the words of the urban historian, Dr Chris Harris:

 

“The unrelenting exclusion practiced by Pakeha society against Maori/Islander populations stands in marked contrast to the way that the state bent over backward to find people jobs and houses when the neck that wore the blue collar was white, back in the 1960s. In those days policy was all about capitalising the Family Benefit for a deposit on a house; these days it’s ‘How can we stop those people causing poverty by breeding?’ A complete double standard: ‘natalism’ for Pakeha families with 4 kids in the 1960s; Malthusianism for brown families with 4 kids in the 2010s.”

 

Combine that racist double standard with the electorally consolidating effects of soaring property prices, and the National Party’s indifference to child poverty makes a terrible kind of sense.

 

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, 7 October 2016.

Sins Of Omission: Why Phil Twyford's Most Recent Post Fails To Convince.

Revealing Statement: Why would Labour's housing spokesperson, Phil Twyford, begin his most recent blog post by listing the achievements of New Zealand’s five Labour governments – only to omit entirely any reference to the second and third? As if Walter Nash’s second Labour government of 1957-1960, and the Norman Kirk/ Bill Rowling-led third, which governed from 1972-1975, never existed. Or, if they did, left no achievements worth mentioning behind them.

 

AS ANY GOOD DETECTIVE will tell you, it’s what suspects “fail to mention when questioned” that gives them away. The subjects a person doesn’t want to talk about can tell you as much about them as the things they’re only too happy to discuss. It’s a forensic rule-of-thumb that can be applied with equal success to the utterances of politicians.
 

What, for example, can we deduce from the most recent posting (5/10/16) from Labour’s Housing Spokesperson, Phil Twyford, on the subject of his party’s “housing reform agenda”? Why would a Labour politician begin by listing the achievements of New Zealand’s five Labour governments – only to omit entirely any reference to the second and third?
 

This is what Twyford wrote:
 

“All Governments are defined by the big challenges and how they meet them. For the first Labour Government it was lifting people out of the poverty of the Depression, and dealing with a World War. For the fourth Labour Government, for better or worse, it was modernising and opening up the economy after nine years of Muldoon. For the fifth it was restoring sanity and decency to government and the economy after the nasty divisive 90s.”
 

Extraordinary! It’s as if Walter Nash’s second Labour government of 1957-1960, and the Norman Kirk/ Bill Rowling-led third, which governed from 1972-1975, never existed. Or, if they did, left no achievements worth mentioning behind them. These are serious and highly suggestive omissions. But before we examine them more closely, a word or two must be devoted to Twyford’s characterisation of the fourth Labour government.
 

Most damning of all is that ugly verbal shrug, “for better or worse”. It represents the very worst kind of moral abdication. Twyford is perfectly aware that for tens-of-thousands of Labour supporters the unleashing of Roger Douglas’s neoliberal revolution was an unmitigated disaster. Whole industries, along with the communities that depended on them, were devastated by “Rogernomics”. For those Maori New Zealanders employed in the nation’s processing and manufacturing sectors, the changes signalled the onset of chronic economic and social pain. Thirty years after the “modernising and opening up” of the New Zealand economy, the consequences of the fourth Labour government continue to blight Maori lives.
 

Twyford’s choice of the words “modernising” and “opening up” are also highly revealing. Both expressions are positive (especially when placed alongside their antonyms “antiquated” and “restricting”) and Twyford’s use of them can only be interpreted as a vote of confidence in the fourth Labour government’s actions.
 

Having examined the “worse” side of Twyford’s “better or worse” dichotomy, we must also examine who had cause to experience Rogernomics as something “better” than the economic regime which preceded it. The financial and property speculators, asset-strippers and importers whose political contributions filled Labour’s coffers in the 1980s certainly had reason to sing the praises of the Rogernomics revolution. Curiously, Twyford seems less keen to solicit their support in 2016!
 

Twyford’s essentially positive assessment of the neoliberal policies of the fourth Labour government, coupled with his equally positive comments about the fifth, provide the explanation for his unwillingness to so much as mention the second and the third. Like the rest of his caucus colleagues, Twyford wants nothing to do with the nation-building policies of Labour leaders like Arnold Nordmeyer, Phil Holloway and Norman Kirk.
 

His aversion to the economic ideas of William Sutch and Wolfgang Rosenberg is even stronger. The whole notion of import substitution and state-led investment in new industries produces only synchronised eye-rolling among the current crop of Labour MPs. The party, under Helen Clark, may have restored “sanity and decency to government and the economy after the nasty divisive 90s” (although a great many people on the left of New Zealand politics would dispute Twyford’s rosy assessment!) but that does not mean Labour has the slightest intention of embracing the economic nationalist policies of the second and third Labour governments.
 

It is this refusal that makes Labour’s flagship housing policy – Kiwibuild – so disappointing. Were Labour committed to constructing 100,000 state houses over the next 10 years. If what was being proposed was a dedicated construction force, trained, paid and equipped by the state, and with the capacity to order construction materials in the volumes local and overseas suppliers require to reduce their prices (it currently costs $NZ1,300 per square metre to construct a home in New Zealand, compared to just $NZ600 per square metre in the United States!) then Kiwis could have some confidence in Labour’s promises to build affordable homes. But all Twyford is prepared to say is:
 

“Since the 1980s a generation have convinced themselves Government is not capable of doing anything right. That you can only trust the market. We are going to change that mindset. We are going to do it in partnership with the private sector – but we are going to build 100,000 affordable homes for first home buyers.”
 

Note that well: “first home buyers”. Note also the price of an affordable home in Auckland – approximately $600,000! Labour’s “partnership” with the private sector reduces Kiwibuild to little more than a giant welfare scheme for property developers – in whose pocket the party now so clearly nestles. John A. Lee, the Labour firebrand entrusted with Labour’s original state house construction programme, wouldn’t know whether to laugh … or cry!
 

It is not difficult, however, to imagine what a political detective might say:
 

“Philip Stoner Twyford, you are charged with hoodwinking the New Zealand electorate. You are not obliged to say anything (and, quite frankly, if this is best you can manage, you’d do better to keep your mouth shut) but your failure to acknowledge, when posting, the achievements of the second and third Labour governments, and your refusal to condemn the betrayals of the fourth, will certainly harm your defence in the High Court of History.”
 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 5 October 2016.

Sleepy Hobbits? Or, Something Worse?

At The Sign Of The Green Dragon: Have we really become “Sleepy Hobbits”? Or, something worse? The Scouring Of The Shire is, arguably, the most important chapter in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Far more than his thrilling depiction of the battles between Wizards, Orcs and Men, it shows how evil is born out of, and fed by, the fear and greed of ordinary, outwardly decent, individuals - even the Hobbits of the Shire.

 

ARE WE “SLEEPY HOBBITS” – or something worse? Certainly, it doesn’t sound very sinister. Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury’s description of the New Zealand electorate seems a lot more like gentle chiding than a full-blown assault. Kiwis are upbraided for their general failure to respond appropriately to the increasingly alarming news reaching their ears. Comparing them to the complacent patrons of Hobbiton’s Green Dragon, Martyn chastises New Zealanders for being much more interested in listening to gossip than hearing news.

 

Martyn’s characterisation acquires greater force, however, if his audience’s only reference point is Peter Jackson’s film version of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Apparently, growing concerns about the project’s burgeoning length required Jackson to leave out what is, in many respects, the most powerful chapter of the entire trilogy – The Scouring of the Shire.

 

It is only when Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam return home that the universal impact of Sauron’s bid for absolute power strikes them. With a rising sense of outrage, and horror, they see that their beloved Shire has been transformed into what Tolkien clearly wants his readers to recognise as an industrial wasteland. Worse still, the Hobbits themselves are in the process of being industrialised. The sturdy peasants and artisans of the trilogy’s opening chapters, along with their aristocratic masters, are on the point of being turned into proletarians. They have been driven from their hobbit-holes and herded into barracks. Trees have been cut down. The old flour mill belches black smoke.

 

Not everyone, however, believes this to be a bad thing.

 

“This country wants waking up and setting to rights … and Sharkey’s going to do it; and make it hard, if you drive him to it. You need a bigger Boss. And you’ll get one before the year is out if there’s any more trouble. Then you’ll learn a thing or two, you little rat folk.”

 

Even some hobbits have succumbed to the new order. Ted Sandyman, the miller, scoffs at Sam’s anguish at the Shire’s obliterated beauty:

 

“Don’t ‘ee like it, Sam? … But you always was soft. I thought you’d gone off in one o’ them ships you used to prattle about, sailing, sailing. What d’you come back for? We’ve work to do in the Shire now.”

 

Given the way Jackson behaved when his “independent contractors” made a bid for better wages and conditions, it is, perhaps, unsurprising that he decided to keep The Scouring of the Shire out of his movie.

 

Tolkien makes it clear that tyranny warrants only one response from those it oppresses: rebellion and revolt. Led by the four veterans of the War of the Ring, the Hobbits rise up against “Sharkey”, the new “Boss”, and overthrow his new order. More importantly, they follow the disease to its source – the Wizard Saruman, whose magic, corrupted by Sauron, has wrought so much havoc, even in the Shire.

 

It is only in Jackson’s movie that the Hobbits (with the obvious exceptions of Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam) are portrayed as sleepy and complacent. The film version, similarly, misrepresents the Shire itself. According to Jackson, it is a happy (if utterly powerless) Utopia from which brave souls, very occasionally, venture out, but into which nothing untoward – excepting, briefly, Sauron’s Black Riders – ever venture in.

 

Tolkien’s fantasy is much more realistic. His Shire is not overthrown by rampaging Orcs, but by the fear and greed of its own inhabitants. As the steadfast Farmer Cotton explains to Frodo:

 

“It all began with Pimple, as we call him … and it began as soon as you’d gone off, Mr Frodo. He’d funny ideas, had Pimple. Seems he wanted to own everything himself, and then order other folk about. It soon came out that he already did own a sight more than was good for him; and he was always grabbing more, though where he got the money was a mystery: mills and malt-houses and inns, and farms, and leaf-plantations. He’d already bought Sandyman’s mill before he came to Bag End, seemingly.”

 

If that doesn’t remind New Zealanders of the fate of their own beautiful country, then Martyn’s right, we really have become “Sleepy Hobbits”! Or, maybe, something even worse. Could it be that we, too, have fallen victim to our own Pimples, our own Ted Sandymans? That far too many of us have allowed ourselves to be ordered around by the Shirrifs? The Boss? By Sharkey?

 

We must hope not. Because in our own case – in our own Shire – we cannot rely upon four returning heroes to put things right. “Raising the Shire” is something we will have to do on our own. Forging our own swords. Stringing our own bows. Summoning our own neighbours. Only when we have fashioned our own horns and bugles will we, like Tolkien’s Hobbits in revolt, be able to send their clarion blasts echoing across New Zealand’s fields, towns and cities:

 

Awake! Awake! Fear, Fire, Foes! Awake!

Fire, Foes! Awake!

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 4 October 2016.

Watching Without Love: The Ominous Implications Of "Hobson's Pledge".

Massive Resistance: The people behind Hobson's Pledge do not appear to have given any thought to what would happen to New Zealand if their programme was implemented in full. Can they really be so naïve as to believe that the nation's bicultural heritage could be legislatively dismantled without tipping the country into the most bitter civil strife since the land wars of the 1860s?

 

LET US SUPPOSE, purely for the sake of argument, that Hobson’s Pledge speaks for the majority of New Zealanders. That Captain Hobson’s famous response to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, “Now we are one people”, continues to reflect the bedrock of the Pakeha electorate’s understanding of New Zealand’s essential character.

 

Let’s further suppose that Hobson’s Pledge achieves all of its objectives. That, in an orgy of majoritarian recklessness, Parliament repeals every piece of “race-based” legislation. Affirmative action programmes are discontinued. All references to the Treaty of Waitangi and its “principles” are expunged from the statute books. Iwi representation on Crown entities is ended. Special Maori representation on local and regional councils disappears. And, finally, the Maori seats, a feature of New Zealand’s electoral landscape since 1867, are abolished.

 

Now let’s try to imagine what would be happening across New Zealand as this majoritarian assault on New Zealand’s bicultural heritage was taking place?

 

Because, rather surprisingly, no such imaginative exercise appears to have been part of Hobson’s Pledge’s deliberations. It’s as though its members believe that the implementation of its programme could be introduced without anyone, Maori or Pakeha, making any serious attempt to prevent it. Even though nearly all the people whose faces appear on the Hobson’s Pledge website look old enough to remember the 1981 Springbok Tour, how to handle the inevitable public opposition to their programme is not explained.

 

This is either a manifestation of Hobson’s Pledge’s political naivety, or evidence of a much darker purpose. If a general election delivers a majority committed to enacting Hobson Pledge’s programme, then public acceptance, and acquiescence, is simply taken for granted. It will be the law of the land, and the rule of law must be upheld. At any cost.

 

New Zealand has already been given a glimpse of how high that cost might be. On 5 May 2004, the streets of Wellington were filled with Maori protesting at the imminent passage of the foreshore and seabed legislation. Estimates of the demonstration’s size vary, but there were certainly enough angry activists on the streets that day to have trashed New Zealand’s capital – if the word had been given. That the word was not given is due, in no small part, to the existence of the Maori Seats, and to the opportunity they offered Tariana Turia and her confederates for lawful and peaceful redress.

 

Consider the response of the late Sir Paul Holmes to the images of that historic hikoi: “No New Zealander, frankly, could have watched proceedings today without a sense of pride, without being gripped by the heart, could have watched it without love.”

 

Would ‘pride’ and ‘love’ be the watchwords on the day a New Zealand parliamentary majority prepared to relegate the status of the Treaty of Waitangi to “a simple nullity”? To outlaw special Maori representation? To abolish the Maori seats? Or, would the streets of the nation’s capital, and every other city in the country, be filled with tens-of-thousands of angry citizens? Not all would be Maori, alongside the tangata whenua there would be an equal number of equally distraught young New Zealanders: all of them as determined as their Maori brothers and sisters to prevent the extinguishing of Aotearoa’s bicultural dream.

 

Those New Zealanders old enough to remember the clearing of Bastion Point in May 1978 will also recall just how far the operation stretched the coercive forces available to the Crown. Hundreds of Police and NZ Army personnel were required to ensure that the removal of just a handful of protesters was accomplished without serious injury or loss of life. This country simply does not possess the resources to enforce the passage of Hobson’s Pledge’s programme without resort to deadly force. To make it happen, the state would have to order police and soldiers to kill their fellow citizens.

 

Would they do it? Would police officers use deadly force on crowds that, in a nation this small, are bound to contain friends and relatives? Can the old kupapa tribes who still make up a large part of the NZ Defence Force, still be relied upon to kill their fellow Maori in large numbers – for the Crown? And, if they can, where would that leave us? Could we still call ourselves one people?

 

Hobson’s Pledge has forgotten that Captain’s Hobson’s words were uttered in the act of solemnising an agreement that bound together two peoples. Maori at Waitangi did not agree to hand over their lands, forests and fisheries and simply disappear. But that, in the end, is what Hobson’s Pledge is asking them to do – without a fight.

 

The Settler Government of the 1860s asked Maori to do the same. They refused then, and they refuse now. And, in this century, Pakeha can’t call on 12,000 imperial British troops to make it happen.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 4 October 2016.