The year 2009 was a hectic one in New Zealand politics, partly because it was the first year of the new National Party Government’s term in office. At a general election in November of the previous year, National had ousted the Labour Party from its three-term tenure in office and formed a single-party minority government with support agreements with the Act Party, the Maori Party and United Future – all of whom gained ministerial roles outside the cabinet. In this first year, the new administration was both ideologically centrist and highly popular, being challenged only on difficult issues relating to the economic recession, political finance controversies over MPs’ expenses and various race relations questions. The following blog post examines these issues via a ‘Review of New Zealand politics in 2009’ which has just been published as a peer-reviewed journal article in the top political science periodical, the European Journal of Political Research (in the December 2010 edition). As well as looking at how the National Government fared in 2009, it also briefly analyses the main issues in politics (such as the economy, social issues, political finance scandals) and the changes in the other parliamentary political parties. [Read more below]
The question of who runs New Zealand is infrequently examined in the media (or even that much in our universities), but it obviously deserves the attention of anyone interested in understanding politics or wanting any kind of social change. Fortunately, for the last five years the Listener has been publishing its annual Power List in an attempt to do just this. Although it’s always more journalistic and celebratory than analytical and critical, the exercise does nonetheless always shine a light on the people involved in running New Zealand. And it indicates some significant trends. This year there has been some major changes to the list, partly representing the fact that the outgoing Labour Government’s favoured businesspeople, ‘thinkers’ and lobbyists are now out in the cold as a change of government brings about different influences, but also because the Listener probably wants to dazzle us with new faces that are supposedly wielding great undiscovered power. This blog post offers a critical summary of, and commentary on, the Listener’s list. [Read more below]
The most notable outcome of the 1993 general election for NZ First was the election of Tau Henare in the seat of Northern Maori. Henare had initially sought to stand for the Alliance in the seat – as he had become involved in politics through Alliance constituency party Mana Motuhake - but failed to be considered for the nomination over Matt Rata. Henare thus stood instead for NZ First. Being the great grandson of a former Reform party MP for the electorate Taurekareka (Tau) Henare (and also a nephew of Sir James Henare), Tau Henare hence had highly respected Maori surname and thus a very strong chance of winning the seat, no matter which party he represented. [Read more below]
The social cleavage of ethnicity has not been strongly politicised in New Zealand, apart from a significant tendency in the past for Maori to vote for the Labour Party and now for the Maori Party. And although the ethnic cleavage has been heavily overshadowed by the economic left-right dimension, in recent years – especially since the introduction of MMP – a number of political analysts point to the growing in significance that it has in party competition. [Read more below]
American academic, socialist organiser and general revolutionary symbol, Angela Davis has been in the country giving talks in Auckland and Wellington. Being in Dunedin, I wasn't able to make it to the talks, but have received a limited amount of feedback on the events. Her trip was sponsored and supported by various academic and ethnic-oriented groups such as Amokura, Nga Pae O Te Maramatanga, Va'aomanû Pasifika: Samoan Studies and Pacific Studies, Te Kawa a Maui: Maori Studies, and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University. What's more - the Maori Party provided security for her! While it's great to see these groups openly supporting a revolutionary in NZ, it's also kinda ironic for a number of reasons. [Read more below]
Liberals often despair over the state of race relations in New Zealand, viewing the masses as being particular backward on racism. But a recent comparative survey of countries shows that NZ is less bigoted than most other comparable nations. The survey found that in NZ, 3% of society would not like neighbours of a different race. This compared to 16% in Italy. Apparently we are second lowest (out of 23 countries) for racism, with only Sweden beating us (2.6%). On other issues NZers are similarly bigoted to other nations. When asked if they minded living next to a gay neighbour, the survey found 22% did. The countries with the highest homophobia were the macho and/or Roman Catholic countries such as Greece (26.8), the Republic of Ireland (27.5) Italy (28.7) and Portugal (25.6), although interestingly enough, it was Northern Ireland that easily came out on top, with 36% saying they did not want gay neighbours. In Sweden only 6% said they would object. There's more info in the Herald article, as well as commentaries by NoRightTurn and Kiwiblog.
Does ethnicity really exist? Certainly in the field of measuring ethnicity it is proving an increasingly fraught issue for the state. The fact that Statistics NZ has to keep changing the way that it measures ethnicity not only shows that ethnicity is an elastic and amorphous concept, but that it’s generally a highly problematic one which is quickly becoming an unhelpful way of understanding society. Prof Paul Spoonley has been critical of the creation of a new ethnic group called ‘New Zealander’. He calls into question how helpful and accurate such a new category is. Yet the category reflects the reality of how people perceive themselves ethnicly - 429,429 people (or 11.1% of the population) choose this group as their ethnicity in the last census. Raybon Kan has also written an excellent – but less humourous than usual – column in the SST, refuting the way that the state lumps some ethnicities together but not others. [Read more below]
