Are New Zealand politicians overpaid? According to a new Massey University survey, Cabinet ministers are indeed grossly over-remunerated. Voters apparently think that ministers should be paid about $135,000 a year instead of receiving the $245,000+ salary they currently get. This blog post examines the detail of the survey, looks at some of the reasons that politicians are held in such low regard, and argues that MPs and ministers should only be paid the average wage. In effect serving in Parliament should be considered a representative honour and duty, not just a career, and therefore parliamentarians shouldn’t be treated as being above – and separate from – society via an extravagant pay packet and lifestyle. [Read more below]
The NewLabour Parry (NLP) was born out of a rejection of political expediency. The people who formed the party perceived the old Labour Party to have given up its social democratic principles and traditions and implemented policies for which it had no mandate. Therefore the early NLP party organisation placed a strong emphasis on the fact that it would not be tempted by the methods of expediency and that it would strongly guard its original principles. But Anderton and the NLP constituted a peculiar contradiction – they claimed to be principled; they rejected expediency, yet they also claimed to be pragmatic and attempted to reject an image of idealism and of being ideologues. [Read more below]
Banning party pills is just the latest clumsy and heavy-handed interference from the state that’ll ultimately be counterproductive. Unless there's an overwhelming societal consensus in favour of a ban on something, it’s highly problematic to unilaterally just outlaw something that’s disliked by the Government. After all, party pills are the fourth most widely used drug after alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. About 20% of NZers are said to use them – contributing to a $35m industry that has sold about 8m tablets. What this 20% of society puts into their bodies and how it parties should be a question of personal liberty and individual freedom. [Read more below]
It's been great that's there's been a widespread outcry about corporations spying on political activists. But it'd be ever better if there was a similar outcry about the state doing exactly the same thing - after all the Security Intelligence Service has a long history of spying on leftwing activist groups and individuals. And in recent years the power of the SIS has been extended, with the help of MPs from Labour, National, the Maori Party etc. Anyway, Reading the Maps has an excellent post about The spies nobody's talking about. This asks, if it's wrong to use public money to spy, then where does this leave the SIS?
A disturbing erosion of civil liberties is being promoted by a coalition of social conservative politicians, including the Maori Party. In an attempt to deal with gang problems in NZ, politicians want to use the blunt and authoritarian measure of banning people wearing gang colours in public. National MP Chester Borrows is promoting the bill in Parliament to outlaw this personal expression. He's being backed by idiot so-called liberals like Christchurch Mayor Garry Moore who has said he's behind the idea '150 per cent'. He wants to impose his own personal likes and dislikes on society: 'Gang patches are disgusting. All power to the police'.
All this follows on from Maori Party co-leader, Pita Sharples, whipping up anti-gang feeling. He wanted to look at all gang insignia being banned, and he threatened to name and shame gangs and their members. Such an approach is reminiscent of Deborah Coddington's publishing a book of the identities and details of convicted sex offenders. Disappointingly, Sharples has been cheered on by other Maori leaders such as Willie Jackson.
Throughout the western world there is a growing gulf between official political life and the general population. The latest example of this is found in a poll published by Stern magazine indicating substantial political alienation in Germany. For example:
* 82% of the German population believe 'no consideration is given to the interests of the people' by leaders. * 47% say elections are incapable of bringing about political change
According to a WSWS report on the poll, much of this alienation can be explained by the unprecedented re-division of wealth to favour the rich in recent years. They also point out the gulf between the people and the political class is reflected in recent party membership decline. The Christian Democrat Union membership has fallen by nearly a third since 1991 (to 561,000), and the Social Democratic Party membership has also fallen to 561,000 (from 755,000) but in much fewer years.
The Law Commission is to be applauded for wanting the law against sedition to be scraped. As the Commission says, the law goes against any democratic principles of free speech, and unfortunately the 4th Labour Government never got around - despite its intentions - to abolishing it.
Earlier this week, Tony Blair stated that 'policy cross-dressing is rampant and a feature of modern politics that will stay'. For anyone observing politics in UK, NZ, or anywhere he was essentially stating the obvious - but it was interesting to see him admitting it, if not celebrating it. If only Helen Clark and Don Brash were so honest! The Guardian ran a fairly good comment by left-Labourite Neal Lawson, in which he sums up the cross dress as being due to the all-party consensus on economic neoliberalism:
Ex-Liberal Democrat leader in the UK, Charles Kennedy, writes an interesting piece in the Guardian today about the erosion in the public's faith in the political process. In it he recants for helping to produce this situation by avoiding debate on the 'the big, divisive issues - particularly at election time'. Kennedy says that politicians such as himself are to blame for following focus groups and ruthlessly targeting swing voters in order to get elected. Instead of raising the 'real issues of strategic substance' and attempting to influence public debate these things, he says parties are only interested in 'vote winners'. I guess this is all part of Kennedy's campaign to win the Liberal Democrat leadership back, but it's nice to read his confession and it's stimulated a good discussion on the Guardian site.
Following on from other state attacks on civil liberties, such as when Paul Hopkinson was convicted of burning the national flag, a man has now been jailed for two months for publishing a "seditious" document and conspiring to commit wilful damage. An good article on WSWS argues, this conviction is particularly alarming, as the state has 'set a precedent for prosecuting and jailing others who publish similar material'. This is the first time in 64 years that anyone in New Zealand has faced a sedition charge.
