Differences between age groups have become relatively more important in New Zealand electoral behaviour. There is now a discernable political fracture between young and old, and for many commentators this age axis has become a significant factor in explaining modern New Zealand politics. [Read more below]
There is a myth that the Green Party is full of ‘youthful exuberance, reckless idealism and what might almost be called political gaiety’ says Chris Trotter in his latest Independent Financial Review column. This he states has always been a ‘mirage’, but that the situation is getting worse now that ‘the Greens have taken on a distinctly middle-aged appearance’. He points to the fact that the average age of those at the top of the party new list is 52 years. Shining a light on the newcomers to the list, Trotter shows the Greens to be angling for a more middle-class respectability. Apart from the normal Green candidate backgrounds of ‘Small business and teaching’, the apparent new stars come from ‘the not-for-profit and public sectors of the economy’. Ex-student politician (and supposedly ex-young Nat) Kevin Hague and Kennedy Graham (brother of former National Party attorney-general, Sir Douglas Graham) are ‘unlikely to attract a very big chunk of the youth vote’ but ‘will bring an aura of upper- middle-class respectability to the Greens’. Trotter says this could all be ‘fatal’ and laments the departure of Nandor Tanczos (to whom Russel Norman is no real match), which could mean that in the coming election ‘the party will struggle to cross the 5% MMP threshold’.
The Green Party is one of the more elusive parties when it comes to clarifying its social base, but in general the Greens are a party of middle class politicians and supporters. [Read more below]
Continue reading "[political party social bases] 7: Green Party" »
As would be expected, the Green Party has relationships with a number of ‘third party’ environmental groups such as the Royal New Zealand Forest and Bird Society, and Greenpeace. [Read more below]
The National Party has announced that it will not be endorsing any third party anti-Government advertising campaigns. Their announcement is mainly in response to the appearance of a marginal campaign group entitled 'Give NZ a Fair Go'. National’s statement is somewhat of a damp squid in the sense that National is simply announcing that they will be doing what they always do – which is not to endorse other interest groups or campaigns. Political parties generally don’t. But what the statement does point to is just how ultra careful and open the National Party are attempting to be. National’s campaign course is clearly all about safety. This year’s general election is their election to lose. So they won’t be taking any risks at all, and they’ll be doing everything they can to appear squeaky clean. No party – especially National – will want to be seen as being involved in anything untoward or covert. They’ll play the game by the book. And they’ll do their best to disassociate themselves from anyone seen as extremist. Instead of a bitter campaign – I think the parties will be falling over each other to be seen as nice. Negative advertising may actually play a more limited role than in other recent elections. I was briefly interviewed about this on Radio NZ National this morning. You can listen to the MP3 podcast of that here – I’m about half way through the item. For an alternative view read the Greens’ Russel Norman’s attempt to make logic fit his view that National will indeed be associating themselves with religious extremists. The post suggests that the Greens are stuck in 2005 and have failed to actually comprehend the huge damage that the Exclusive Brethren campaign had for National.
The Labour Government has just unveiled its market-driven Emissions Trading Scheme, which has the support of other political parties such as National and the Greens. Increasingly it seems that all the parliamentary parties are ‘blue-green’ parties – combining concern for the environment with trivial market-based ‘non-solutions’ to the problems of climate change. [Read more below]
Continue reading "The Green-Labour-National carbon trading con" »
Which political figure reads a chapter of the Bible every day, opens all his speeches by blessing people with the word of his god, supports a feudal tyrant and voted for hard labour and longer sentences for offenders? Sound like Graham Capill, leader of the Christian Heritage? Actually it’s the politician described in the Listener as “Graham Capill with dreadlocks” – the Green Party’s Rasta MP, Nandor Tanczos. [Below is a article I wrote about Nandor Tanczos in early 2000 – I’ll try and update sometime in the future]
The Greens' market-based climate 'solutions' have received very little critique or analysis. Yet the party's policy is far from being principled or even terribly coherent. For example, the Greens often trumpet their sound-bite that 'polluters should pay', but the party's finer print shows that they are quite soft (by their own standards) on business and farmers (who actually make a fair portion of their voter base). In terms of farmers, they say 'we are not proposing that farming should cover the cost of all its emissions' - they single out sheep and beef farmers for a total exemption and suggest that dairy farmers should only pay for about 20% of their emissions. Furthermore, the party's greener-than-thou 'Climate Change Score Card' which ranked the parties in February, even contains false claims about their own policies. It suggested that the Greens are better than other parties because it would not let protectionism influence climate policy. The score card tested the parties on the measure that: 'NZ must pull its weight, even if trading partners don't'. However, in their 'Kicking the Carbon Habit' brochure, the Greens claim that 'industries who compete with companies in countries with no price on carbon, and whose survival would be at risk from higher energy prices, should be largely protected from this carbon price until their competitors also face a carbon price'. Is this sort of forked-tongue double-speak why the Greens are only on 4% in the latest poll?
Responses to the Labour Government’s 2007 Budget mostly fall into a left-right continuum – with critics voicing leftwing or pro-poor concerns, while its supporters use rightwing or pro-business arguments in its favour. Essentially, the left critics are Laila Harre, Matt McCarten, Susan St John, and Chris Trotter. The Budget supporters aren’t necessary all rightwing, but Jim Anderton, the CTU, EPMU, Jordan Carter, the NZ Institute, and Colin James have used rightwing, pro-business or economically-orthodox arguments in its support . [Read more detail below]
Continue reading "Responses to Budget: from left to right" »
The Green Party is fast shifting to the right, advocating market-based environment policies, and signalling its desire to consider going into a National-led coalition government. In this article republished from the Spark newspaper, I investigate this change. [Read more below]
More evidence has just come out of the housing crisis under Labour. Two reports - both partially funded by The Centre for Housing Research - quantify the size and scale of the housing and rental issues facing Auckland. And if you think that my continued use of the term ‘crisis’ is an exaggeration, then note that the Herard now describe it as ‘a housing crisis of massive proportions’. The Centre for Housing Research reports says that housing unafforability ‘was likely to increase the gap between socioeconomic groups, and had implications for community stability and wealth accumulation’. In general, they say that ‘Home ownership is assuming a more polarised social character’ under Labour. [Read more below]
Labour came to power promising to fix the electricity market, yet since 2000 power prices have gone up 40% in real terms. And over the last year, electricity prices have risen by 7% for consumers, and fallen by 6.5% for businesses. On top of this, it's recently been announced that Transpower are putting up their prices by 15%, and other energy retailers like Contact are about to raise their prices significantly. At the same time, power company profits are rising fast. The Dominion Post has reported that 'State-owned power company profits topped $300 million in six months, up $37.6 million on the previous half year'. [Read more below]
Continue reading "Power profits and prices soar as NZers shiver" »
Anti-smacking advocates in New Zealand have adopted an elite, lobbying-style of politics that has effectively killed any chance of successfully changing society's orientation to smacking kids. To this effect, Chris Trotter has written a very interesting opinion piece in the Sunday-Star Times arguing that the 'anti-smacking' private members bill should not be rammed through Parliament in the context of such widespread opposition in society. [The article does not currently appear to be online.] Trotter says that when something like 80% of New Zealanders oppose the bill, it's bad politics and bad law to push legislation through just because you have assembled a slight parliamentary majority in favour.
Trotter is probably right. The proponents of the bill have failed to convince New Zealanders. This is because the Greens and their allies never really attempted to focus their campaigns on ordinary people. Instead they have taken an elite political approach that epitomises modern activist politics - that of lobbying those in power rather than the public. Trotter suggests that previous agents of social change were about more participatory and democratic means: 'the anti-Vietnam War movement, the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-nuclear movement and gay-rights movement. As their names suggest, they were all exercises in mass democratic action - and took years.'
NZ politics now takes place in an elite way, in which single-issue campaigns are increasingly carried out in a disengaged way from society. It's a hierarchical and anti-democratic way of trying to push for social change. As Trotter, reminds proponents of the bill, 'You cannot legislate people into virtue... they can only be persuaded. And you have not persuaded them.' Of course, there are always exceptions - where there is an overwhelming and urgent case for a government to act against majority wishes to protect the rights of some citizens, but I don't believe this case falls anywhere near that.
The Green Party sees its role not just in terms of 'saving the planet' but also to save the capitalist system. In an insightful and perceptive blog posting, Green co-leader Russel Norman - who previously saw himself as some sort of anti-capitalist - now sees the Greens as playing the same role that earlier left parties - such as the First Labour Government in NZ - had in rescuing capitalism from decline and possible death. As with the first time round, when capitalism was under threat in the 1930s, Norman believes that the more natural defenders of capitalism - business and its political parties - are out of touch with what capitalism actually needs to survive. His posting is worth quoting at length. It gives a good indication of where the Greens are going, especially in terms of their wholehearted adoption of market solutions to environmental challenges:
It’s a funny position we find ourselves in. Just as the social democrats (Europe), labourists (UK, Oz, NZ) and new dealers (US) of the 1930s and 1940s had to save capitalism from its own destructive tendencies by introducing a range of modifications and interventions on the market system, so now the Green Parties of the world find ourselves in possibly a similar position. The best of the old social democrats like Michael Cullen are too locked in the old paradigm to understand it, and the sectional interests like the business roundtable and employers federation are too narrow to see it, but we have to intervene on the market system to place a price on resource use and pollution so that we can save the planet. And in the process we will quite possibly save the market system from its natural tendency to destroy or consume all resources leading to its own demise as well as the demise of the planet and all of us living on it.
The Greens have made their most explicit statements that they could go into a coalition government with the National Party. While no such deals are being considered, according to the Sunday Star-Times, Jeanette Fitzsimons says they want to 'leave the door open' for a blue-green coalition. Co-leader Russel Norman was equally enthusiastic about a shift in coalition policy:
Norman said any decision "will be based on policy and principle, we will look at policies and compare Labour and National... and see which one is less bad". If National had better sustainability policies than Labour "it would be unprincipled not to consider them", he said.
Norman justifies the new approach to National by saying that there is little to differentiate the parties' environmental policies - which is quite correct. The problem for the Greens is that having committed to playing the parliamentary game and wanting to be in a government, they're becoming hostage to that slippery slope. The thinking is that 'if Labour aren't actually so bad, and National aren't that different from Labour, then maybe National aren't so bad after all'. It all just shows that the Greens aren't really a leftwing party at all. Ultimately their future lies in the centre of the political spectrum, being left on some things, and right on others.
Interestingly, the party's other news items this week included Fitzsimons admitting that Helen Clark's policy of a carbon-neutral NZ was actually more radical than the Greens had ever proposed (which shows just how moderate and timid the Greens really are, even on their own raison d'etre), and the Greens now supporting tax cuts, and wanting a $1 billion to go to business, to encourage those businesses that are reducing their carbon emissions or doing other eco-friends things. They really are becoming the "eco-business party".
The Greens continue their vote chasing strategy of appealing to populist nationalism - most recently in condemning foreign investment in New Zealand. They are seemingly unhappy about foreign businesspeople making profits, when it could be (nicer?) New Zealand businesspeople making the profits.
UPDATE: The foreign investment figure used by the Greens ($16b) appears to hugely exaggerate the level of investment. According to Michael Cullen, this double counts foreign-owned assets sold to other foreign investors, and the figures is more like $4b. The same article points out that the Government has in many ways already tightened the rules on the sale of land to foreigners.
Over the weekend there’s been a number of stories about environmentalism and politics in New Zealand. Read more below about how the environmentalists are the new socialists, New Zealand’s environment is going downhill under present management, the Greens can see themselves working with National, and market solutions are still the favoured response to climate change.
Continue reading "Another green weekend (but turning blue)" »
With the Stern report being published in the UK and Al Gore’s documentary screening everywhere, there’s been mass media coverage of climate change and a strong political consensus developing about how to tackle global warming. Every newspaper I open has something about it. And some of it is a bit irritating – especially the constant ethical and glib lecturing on what 'we have to give up to save the planet'. It seems that the near universal agreement is that the answer all lies in rationing consumption. In contrast, I’m more inclined to see the need for massive investment in efficient and clean energy supplies as a solution.
Yet despite the big issues concerned, there has been an effort to close down discussion and protect the developing (and suffocating) new consensus. This is disappointing, as the issue could open opportunities to make the world a better place regardless of global warming. But I’m watching out for any progressive intelligent discussions that dissent from the emerging consensus on tackling climate change – and you can read about these below:
Continue reading "The emerging conservative consensus on climate change" »
Labour announced their new environmental vision at their annual conference in the weekend, which was heralded as ambitious but lacked substance. As the Dominion Post’s Tracey Watkins correctly pointed out, this was ‘clearly a bid to head off National’s own attempts to “green” itself’. National has continued to develop its internal and influential Bluegreens group, especially as MP Nick Smith believes that Green voters are easiest to win from their competitors. In line with this, Ruth Berry has written a good feature on National’s move to the centre, which as with their British Conservative counterparts, involves a significant emphasis on environmentalism. It seems that everyone wants to be green, and environmental politics is probably where the consensus amongst NZ parties is strongest.
Not coincidentally, the Green Party has been moving to the right in recent times, and according to Watkins, they are currently in the process of giving away their leftwing tag and rebranding themselves as a potential ally to either of the main parties.
Have the Green Party joined NZ First in their anti-Asian immigration bandwagon? The new Green co-leader, Russel Norman - although an immigrant himself - has warned against further immigration, in this case saying that Chinese labour 'threatens wages'. This nationalist stance, couched in concern for 'working conditions', naively and perhaps unthinkingly pushes the Greens once more further to the right.
The Green Party's parochialist "Buy NZ Made" campaign might now be extended to a "Buy NZ Owned" campaign - whereby overseas made products would be promoted if the company is owned by a New Zealand businessperson. Although the Dominion Post think this might have the late Rod Donald turning in his grave, such a move is actually the logic of the Greens' nationalism. It's a short shift from the Greens' belief in trying to keep out products made by foreign workers to trying to protect NZ capitalists wherever they make their products. As David Farrar points out, 'Yes, you can get your products made in an overseas sweatshop, but so long as the company selling them is NZ owned, this may now qualify.'
Green Party members sneer at New Zealanders who don't "get" tino rangatiratanga, which makes them feel virtuous and superior. So says Chris Trotter on his Dominion Post column this week. And he's probably right. Trotter says the Greens have a strategy of competing with the Maori Party for the "honour the Treaty" constituency, which is a mere tiny fraction of society. They have an elitist orientation to politics which means that don't understand Jim Anderton's 1980s advice to Trotter, to 'Always build your footpaths where the people walk.' Obviously there's always a tension for political parties between leading and following, but if, as Trotter suggests, your party has contempt for a public that just doesn't 'get' your separatist ethnic politics, then you'll never really build anything significant. The problem for the Greens is that they lurch between populism and elitism.
I will be no huge surprise that Ian Ewen-Street, the ex-Green MP has jumped ship to the National Party. This move shows once again that there are many in the Greens that are politically not so distant from National. Ewen-Street doesn't apparently have any significant disagreements with the Greens, but has just moved out of total pragmatism, believing that environmentalism can be furthered faster with National. Never a particularly talented MP, the conservative Ewen-Street was chosen by the party to appeal to farmers and middle-class voters that would appreciate a less radical-looking and sounding candidate.
Meanwhile the Greens have launched their latest attempt to win over business support, with The Real Bottom Line - a newsletter 'for businesses and people interested in a sustainable economy'.
