liberation

The changing nature of ideological conflict in New Zealand electoral politics (1996-2008): The rush to the centre & the rise of post-materialist issues

To what extent does the left-right political dimension still structure political party competition in New Zealand politics? Where do the parties sit on that spectrum? What other political dimensions now underpin our electoral politics? This extensive blog post presents the findings of a regular survey of New Zealand political scientists about party ideological conflict that has been carried out for the three MMP general elections of 1996, 2002, and 2008. Explaining the results, and drawing on some previous blog posts, it argues that the left-right spectrum is of declining importance in New Zealand politics, and that ideological conflict is cohered to a greater degree by post-materialist issues. The major political parties in New Zealand now all agree on the basic post-Keynesian economic framework that dominates discourse and policy formation. No party fundamentally challenges the paradigm shift that occurred with the neoliberal revolution that occurred from 1984 onwards. All parties now agree, explicitly or implicitly, that the market is the best mechanism for generating wealth and distributing good and services. Within this ‘new policy consensus’ there is, of course, room for some limited discussion of when and where the state should intervene to correct market failure, but because there is essentially no debate of any substance around material/economic issues, what might be called ‘postmaterial issues’ now represent the arena for ideological and political conflict in parliamentary politics. Furthermore, within this post-reform era political conflict is underpinned by a strong pragmatism rather than principle. Some explanations are proposed for the rise of the new consensus, the decline of left-right conflict, and the increasing salience of societal issues in electoral competition. [Read more below]    

MSD social report 2009: Inequality increased in Labour's last year in office

The Ministry of Social Development has silently released its annual Social Report for 2009 – no doubt attempting to keep the findings under the radar. Likewise, the National Government has refrained from releasing a single press release on it (as yet). As always with the wealth of statistics in such reports, there is the good and the bad to be seized upon, and these things can be spun by the left and the right, and the various partisans in many different ways. I’ll leave Labour and National to give the positive spin on the current stats – and much of the negative material reflects poorly on the past Labour Government, for which the period of this report effectively covers. Instead, this blog post highlight some of the negative material that immediately sticks out from a browse of the report. There is one particular domain within the report that shows serious problems: ‘Economic Standard of Living’. Basically, since the last annual report – and thus during Labour’s last year in office – New Zealand became a less equal society, with increased inequality and greater poverty. [Read more below]

Labour’s 2008 election campaign

The Labour Party’s 2008 general election campaign strategy had two main flaws: its decision to campaign on the theme of trust (together with a general negativity), and its management of coalition party possibilities. Not only did these strategies fail to fire during the campaign, but instead backfired, contributing to Labour’s failure to remain a truly competitive player in the election. These are the issues that I focus on in the section on the Labour Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the eighth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about Labour that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

Political advertising in the 2008 NZ election

Which political parties had the best advertising in the last year’s general election? How come the Greens’ had such good advertising but did relatively poorly? What was wrong with Labour’s advertising? What was right about National’s advertising strategy? Did New Zealand First lose representation because of, or despite of, its election advertising and strategy? Did the Electoral Finance Act properly define and understand what a political advertisement is? Claire Robinson answers these questions in her chapter entitled ‘”Vote for me”’: Political Advertising’, published in Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the fifth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). [Read more below]

Helen Clark biography out soon

The long-awaited publication of Denis Welch’s biography of Helen Clark is almost over. Welch has just blogged to say that "Helen Clark: a Political Life" will be out in 16 days time – Friday 31 July. While I doubt that Welch’s bio will be critical enough for me, I do expect that it will be a highly intelligent and relatively critical account. It’d be an important book, especially because, as the publisher’s blurb argues, ‘Remarkably, no proper political biography of Helen Clark has been written before’. And a recent posting on Denis Welch’s great Opposable Thumb blog, foreshadows an insightful and interesting examination of contemporary New Zealand politics – he argues against this idea that the politics of Helen Clark and Labour are significantly different to that of National. [Read more below]

Labour's latest taxpayer-funded advertising

The Labour Party continues to exploit its taxpayer funded parliamentary resources for the purpose of blatant party political advertising. With leader Phil Goff doing so poorly in opinion polls, the party is dipping its hand into the public purse to try and improve his profile. The image on the right is the front section of a leaflet that is being dropped into letterboxes all over the country. It promotes "Brand Goff", which is incidentally rather bland - there's not a lot in the leaflet that couldn't also appear in a National "Brand Key" leaflet. His advertising slogan is: "Hard work. Inspiration. And a fierce belief in New Zealand." I'm sure that just about any politician could sign up to such a slogan. But added to the selling of Brand Goff is of course, "Brand Labour", along with its well proportioned party logo on the front. It's hard to believe that anyone could look at such an expensive leaflet and not think that it's basic party electioneering instead of carrying out any sort of parliamentary function. Of course, the leaflet does include a section professing to ask for public feedback, but this too is just a ruse to make it seem more parliamentary while also harvesting elector data for future political direct marketing. [See the full Labour Party leaflet below]

[NewLabour Party history] 4: Origins of the NLP

The NewLabour Party (NLP) was very much a ‘splinter party’, being formed from forces within the Labour Party. The fact that the Labour Party underwent such a transformation in the 1980s made it almost inevitable that some significant leftwing opposition, like the NLP, would emerge to challenge the Labour Government’s free market reforms. What was surprising was that it took so long to emerge. This blog post – in a series marking the 20th anniversary of the founding of the NLP – looks at the origins of the split, political forces emerging in resistance outside of Labour, and the rise of the NLP Jim Anderton. [Read more below].

[NewLabour Party history] 3: The New Zealand Labour Party

The origins of the NewLabour Party (NLP) are obviously closely linked to the history of the New Zealand Labour Party. Since, in a sense the NewLabour Party attempted to represent the continuation of the tradition of earlier Labour Party governments, examining the history of the Labour Party allows an insight into possible explanations for the later transformation of NewLabour. In many ways the history of the Labour Party provides a classic example of social democratic deradicalisation. Labour’s story contains both the confirmation of  social democracy’s deradicalisation trend and a partial explanation for that trend. This post continues the series on the history of the NLP, using research carried out on this political project back in 1995. [Read more below]

Labour continues to be the party of big money

The Labour Party received nearly $500,000 in donations of more than $10,000 in 2008 – significantly more than National, which declared a total of about $207,000. This is according to the figures just made public by the Electoral Comission (available here), and dealt with by an article in the Herald today (see: Artists feature in Labour's $500,000 list of election donations). It seems therefore that despite the common myth of the Labour Party being financially poor and the National Party being the party of big wealth, Labour is still just as much a big money party as National. After all Labour has been the biggest spending party for the last few general elections. And if you add up all the declared donations made to the Electoral Commission since it was made mandatory in 2006, you’ll find that Labour and National have received virtually the same amounts. My quick calculations (which I’ll check and update at some stage) show that over the 1996 to 2008 period, Labour has declared donations of about $5,321,000 and National has declared about 5,484,000.

Review of New Zealand politics in 2008

Every year the European Journal of Political Research publishes a political date yearbook which gives a review of politics in a number of western countries. I contribute the section on New Zealand to the journal – last year’s publication on New Zealand politics in 2007 can be read here. Below is the first draft of my review of New Zealand politics in 2008. It still requires a bit of abridging and editing, and as always I’m interested in feedback and suggestions, which you can leave in the comments section or email me (edwards.bryceATgmail.com). [Read more below]

Trotter: Labour is a ‘democracy-free-zone’ in crisis

Chris Trotter paints a very dark picture of the political health of the Labour Party in his From the Left column today. Not only has the Auckland Labour Party membership plummeted below 2,000, but the party is also now a ‘democracy-free-zone’ that is ‘at serious risk of imploding under the weight of its own extraordinary timidity’. In his column, entitled, 'Labour: Political Party or Cosy Club?', Trotter pays particular attention to the political nature of the new party president, Andrew Little, who he characterizes as a friend of business who is ‘as exciting as a wet week in August’. [Read more below]

Drinking liberally or problematically?

While it might sometimes appear that the Drinking Liberally political project has been hijacked in New Zealand by the Labour and Green parties for their own partisan purposes, it doesn’t have to be that way. In Dunedin we’re lucky enough to be starting our branch of the project (Tuesday 7pm, Velvet Underground), and hopefully we can be sure not to let its potential be siphoned off by politicians for their blatant permanent electioneering. If the project is to survive as a credible and useful project for the left, it needs to be protected from such partisan abuse and top down elitist speech making from MPs and party hacks. After all the Drinking Liberally project imported from the US is a potentially exciting development for politics in New Zealand – or at least for the small politerrati involved in activism, blogging, etc – as well as also for the search for new ways of ‘doing politics’. Yet there are a number of significant problems with the project – many relating to the highly contested definition of the term ‘liberal’. [Read more below]

Born to be mild? Or dare to be disobedient?

Whatever happened to student protest? This is the question asked in the latest edition of the University of Otago Magazine (‘A magazine for alumni and friends of the University of Otago’). Although there’s still occasional protest on campus, the article points out that these only tend to be about ‘student issues’ by ‘groups interested purely in their bank balances or banned substances’ and wider political issues are no longer up for challenge or championing. The last big ‘wider issue’ protests on campus were back in 1981 against the Springbok tour. It seems that while university students used to be in the forefront of demanding radical social change, they appear to be are increasingly conservative or apathetic. This blog post gives further details of the Otago Magazine article, and draws on a previous blog post on The rise of the young fogies to argue that amongst explanations for the depoliticisation of students, the dire state of the New Zealand left should play a big part. Any reluctance by students to be swept up in any cause should be situated in the general death of radical and anti-establishment politics. So while it might seem that the problem of student apathy and conservatism is partly due to an increase in selfishness and shallowness in youth, the left really need to take some of the blame for killing of the political passion of youth. [Read more below]

Axing the electoral & political finance review

Alongside axing the awful Electoral Finance Act (EFA), the new National Government has also axed the supposedly more credible electoral and political finance review, which included a so-called Expert Panel and Citizens’ Forum. This blog post examines what was behind the review, and why the exercise was always going to be more about window dressing than democracy. Although expert panels and citizens’ forums are not without merit, when compared to similar exercises carried out elsewhere, the planned Labour-Green model for New Zealand was designed to be incredibly weak and undemocratic. What’s more the process by which it was brought about was just as poor as the one that produced the EFA. The National Party campaigned on axing both of these, and is now well within its right to do that. [Read more below]

NZ 2008 election review: Jack Vowles

Prof Jack Vowles used to be New Zealand’s preeminent political sociologist, but has recently left the University of Auckland for the UK’s University of Exeter. He’s still analyzing New Zealand politics, however, and has written a review of ‘The 2008 General Election in New Zealand’ (to be published in an upcoming edition of Electoral Studies). You can download a PDF of the paper from his website. Vowles’ paper is a good solid descriptive account of last year’s election, but it also contains the following more analytical points. [Read more below].

Election analysis from the left

There’s been very little insightful or interesting analysis of the New Zealand general election results from the left of the political spectrum. This is partly because much of the left is so strongly tied to either the Labour Party or the Greens – both losers in the election.  However, John Braddock’s socialist analysis is fairly solid. Writing on the World Socialist Website, Braddock’s article Labour government dumped in New Zealand elections is a hard-hitting explanation of Labour’s loss, which he explains as a clear ‘clear repudiation of Labour and its pro-business orientation by significant layers of the working class’. [Read more below]

Trotter on social democracy’s political degeneration

Chris Trotter is returning to form. After the death of his strangely beloved ‘social democratic’ Labour Government, he’s been in a much more reflective and insightful mood (rather than his previous phase of agit-prop defence of ‘lesser evilism’). In this week’s Independent Financial Review column he reflects on the political degeneration of what currently passes for social democracy. He shows how the Labour Party – and the much of the wider left in NZ politics – has a deeply problematic relationship with the New Zealand working class. Essentially Labour now sees workers as victims to manage rather than as a positive political force with the tremendous potential to change society. [Read more below]

Once were farmers… but now the political class are lawyers

When the 4th National Government came to power in 1990, the makeup of its Cabinet indicated that the National Party was still tied to its rural roots. Thirteen former farmers were appointed to the twenty-MP cabinet, together with a further three MPs from rural or provincial areas, while there was only one MP included from a metropolitan Auckland seat. The makeup of the new 5th National Government suggests that the party has qualitatively changed. In stark contrast to the old 1990s rural-based Bolger Cabinet, lawyers now outnumber farmers 8 to 2 in the Key Cabinet. [Read more below]

Issues in New Zealand politics in 2007

It might seem a bit odd to have a blog post about issues in NZ politics in 2007. But every year the European Journal of Political Research publishes a yearbook looking at what’s happened in the previous year in politics of 20+ western democracies. For the past decade or so, this has been written by Jack Vowles, but this year I’ve given it a go because Prof Vowles is no longer in the country. And the latest Political Data Yearbook (Volume 47, Issue 7-8, 2008) has just been published. You can read this in university libraries, and some universities will have online access to it here. But for those that can’t, below is the text that I submitted to the yearbook.  Although it pertains to last year, hopefully what I’ve written is actually a useful context for understanding the current election campaign. The extensive analysis includes discussion of all the major issues from an action-packed policy year involving the ‘anti-smacking’ law, the Electoral Finance Act, extensions and enhancements to KiwiSaver and Working for Families, the terrorism raids, scandals about Air NZ in the middle east, employment and politicisation in the public service, and the charging of Labour MP Phillip Field with corruption and bribery. There was also the rise of John Key and the attempted revitalization of Labour. I argue that although it appears contradictory, political consensus and conflict increased in tandem during 2007. [Read more below]

Labour’s foreign professional campaign links

The campaigns of New Zealand’s political parties are increasing run by PR and consultancy companies, and this reflects their increasingly similarities and electoral-professional nature. Related to this, David Fisher asks in the latest Listener: ‘Which New Zealand political party has undeclared links to a foreign-based political strategy firm that has been accused of underhand tactics?’ The answer isn’t National and Crosby Textor, but Labour and the ‘Washington-based strategy and technology experts Blue State Digital’. [Read more below]

The unions no longer love Labour

The historic and weakened relationship between trade unions and the New Zealand Labour Party is the subject of the cover article of this weeks’ Listener magazine.  Written by David Fisher, the article interviews a number of key unionists and Labour Party sources. He asks whether the unions still slavishly follow Labour? And ‘How does a revitalized union movement best represent its members?’ Fisher details how the union-party linkage used to be vital, but it’s been weakened, and now the linkage only really exists at an elite, non-organic level. He says, that ‘Born out of working men’s desire for political change 92 years ago, the Labour Party has all but severed those ties, turning its attention to middle class issues’. [read more below]

Business says to Labour: “go” but is indifferent towards National

The business community has lost confidence in the Labour Government, yet isn’t convinced that the National Party will carry out the necessary changes that they support. That’s the message from the Independent Financial Review’s triennial pre-election business survey.  In many ways it mirrors the Independent’s pre-election business survey that preceded Clark’s Labour Party coming to power in 1999. That survey of employers reported that they believed the National government should be voted out and that the Labour Party was then the preferred choice of business. [Read more below]

National’s policy vagueness – learnt from Labour

One of the main observations and complaints made about the Opposition National Party in recent months has been that it is not releasing policy and is incredibly vague about what it will do if it comes into government this year. These are fair questions and challenges to National, but... [Read more below]

[party membership] 6: The Labour Party

The New Zealand Labour Party has gone from apparently having one of the largest per capita memberships of any Labour Party in the Western world, to now possibly one of the smallest whilst in government. The story of the party’s membership is that of incredible decline. [Read more below]

[party membership] 3: The class mass party

The establishment of the Labour Party in 1916 heralded the arrival of a new form of party organisation, the class mass party, which would eventually characterise all parties in New Zealand. [Read more below]

Matt McCarten - a right bastard

According to the latest Metro magazine (May 2008), Matt McCarten is one of “Auckland’s Toughest Bastards”. In fact he's rated 8 out of 10 for his bastardry. And as if to reinforce this, McCarten’s most recent Herald on Sunday column is a prime example of just how ruthless he can be to those that that cross him and the cause of workers in NZ. [Read more below].

[political party social bases] 4: Labour Party

For nearly half a century the Labour Party was solidly a party of the working class. Established in 1916 as the political wing of the trade union movement, it aimed to increase ‘the visible, physical presence in Parliament of representatives of the working class’ (Gustafson, 1989: p.211). It now functions to give a presense in Parliament for politicians from the middle classes and to formulate and market policies that are attractive to voters from all classes and income groups. [Read more below]

[Third parties] 8: The decline of party linkages

Throughout the twentieth century it was commonplace for New Zealand’s political parties to be backed by various organised sections of New Zealand society (now often termed ‘third parties’). Parties parties were heavily anchored in societal organisations such as interest groups, community organisations and businesses. Towards the end of the century there was a blurring of this support, and these days societal organisations that might be expected to be on friendly terms with National can be found on good terms with Labour, and vice versa. But more than anything, such institutional-party relations have withered. [Read more below]

[Third parties] 1: Labour’s links

The Electoral Finance Act and the recent debate about political finance in New Zealand has brought attention to the links that political parties are said to have to a number of ‘third parties’. This post looks in extensive detail at the Labour Party’s various societal third party linkages over its history. It shows that the Labour Party's organic links to civil society have eroded, and its legendary relationship with trade unions barely exists anymore in any meaningful sense [Read more below]

Blackball: a revolutionary tradition stolen by Labour

The Labour Party has successfully appropriated the revolutionary tradition of Blackball on the West Coast of New Zealand, and sadly they continue to subvert it for their anti-worker agenda. This political theft was dealt with by Chris Trotter in his column on Friday. Trotter correctly points out that all the ‘Cabinet Ministers and high-ranking trade union officials’ who turned up in Blackball for the recent centenary celebrations of the historic 1908 strike were there ‘to celebrate the myth of Blackball, not the reality’. And the reality is that the miners’ illegal strike had little in common with the reformist Labour Party that emerged a few years later – in fact, according to Trotter, the new moderate party represented the repudiation of the insurgency and militancy of Blackball [Read more below]

[political finance] Glenngate 3: Mike Williams’ corporate deals

In 2005, Labour Party President and chief-fundraiser Mike Williams was gloating in the media about Labour's new billionaire financial friend Owen Glenn. Three years later he was handing in his resignation due to his public deception about a political loan from Glenn. Not only has the ‘Glenngate’ scandal raised some fascinating issues about Labour and political finance but also about Mike Williams’ role in helping keep Labour operating as a ‘corporate party’. [Read more below]

Labour's shameful slum housing

A glimpse into the shameful state of the government's provision of housing is provided by the investigative reporting of David Fisher in the latest Listener magazine. Fisher's article, 'Lodges of last resort' reports on the 'shameful secret' of 'squalid, crowded lodges' for beneficiaries in a South Auckland cul de sac. Apparently, 'almost a 1000 people live in a cluster of buildings that was once the Mangere hospital for the insane and intellectually handicapped, closed in 1994' but now operating as 'privately owned boarding houses' that the Housing New Zealand Corporation refers people to. After viewing the accompanying article photos, it's easy to see that 'Entire families - some with up to four children - live in rooms little more than three metres by four metres that were originally designed for single patients'. Fisher says that due to a lack of state houses, 'Housing NZ in Counties Manukau has a staff member to find homes in the private sector for those wanting state houses. The state-housing provider has simply run out of homes'. Housing Minister Maryan Street 'says it is not her problem - or Housing NZ's fault. The responsibility instead lies with the National Party for selling off state houses, and with local councils, which are legally responsible for boarding houses'. Massey University senior lecturer in social policy, Mike O'Brien, perceptively comments that, 'The language shift, used by first National and then the current Labour-led government, has taken social policy from a safety net for all to a focus on individuals and individual responsibility'.

David Cunliffe - the first health minister to favour private health insurance

Rising Labour Party Cabinet Minister, David Cunliffe, is New Zealand's 'first health minister to favour private health insurance', according to the profile on him in the latest Listener by David Fisher. This fact is indicative of how neoliberal the modern Labour Party is. What's more, key players like Cunliffe are pushing the party even further to the right - according to the Listener, 'Behind the scenes, he is a prime driver in Labour's economic policy.' Unsurprisingly, Cunliffe 'has long advocated private-public partnerships for infrastructure works', and he appears to be getting his way, with the Labour Government making more and more noises about contracting the private sector to carry out public work. Cunliffe says,'only in partnership with the business and community sectors can Government truly be effective'. As well as talking about his 'centrist tendencies', the article deals thoroughly with the issue of whether Cunliffe is actually arrogant - as both his colleagues and opponents allege - or merely highly-confident. The profile provides a fairly full picture of the politician. Cunliffe graduating with an honours degree in Politics from Otago, after which he worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Wellington, Canberra and Washington DC, then studied at Harvard University, before becoming a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in New Zealand. His partner, Karen Price (also ex-MFAT) is a environmental lawyer and partner in the law firm Minter Ellison. They now live in a $2 million house in Ponsonby, despite the fact that Cunliffe is a Labour MP for a West Auckland electorate. The Listener profile sums him up very nicely with this one sentence: 'Cunliffe is the new wave of "Third Way" Labour politicians: well-educated, wealthy and perhaps more comfortable among big business than in a working men's club'.

[political finance] Glenngate 2: The politics of Owen Glenn

Political parties can be judged by who their known financial backers are. The Labour Party’s biggest financial contributor is the low-profile billionaire Owen Glenn. So just who is Owen Glenn? And what does his rightwing political beliefs say about his choice to back the Labour Party? [Read more below]

[political finance] Glenngate 1: Summary of the scandal

The dust has now settled on the Owen Glenn political finance scandal, which means it’s probably an appropriate time to make some observations and conclusions about Glenn and his involvement with political parties in New Zealand. Future posts will show how this political finance scandal illustrates that the Labour Party is every bit as much of a corporate-sponsored party as National is, and that Labour is hypocritical and self-serving when it comes to the issue of political finance and regulation. This post is the first of five about ‘Glenngate’. This first post attempts to provide a summary of what actually occurred. [Read more below]

[political finance] EPMU and Labour

A Labour Party-affiliated trade union, the EPMU, Is attempting to register as a ‘third party’ under the Electoral Finance Act (EFA), even though it isn’t required to and isn’t necessarily eligible to. This raises some interesting questions about the relationship between unions and the Labour Party, and about further problems with the EFA. [Read more below]

National’s U-turns; Labour’s disorientation

There’s no doubt that National’s latest announcement that it’s adopting Labour’s interest-free student loans is a policy U-turn. In fact it’s just one more chapter in a whole series of U-turns. National’s been ‘swallowing dead rats’ for the last few years on: KiwiSaver, Working for Families, industrial relations, Treaty claims, retention of the Maori Seats (in the short-term), anti-nuclear policy, non-market rents, the Cullen Superannuation Fund, four weeks annual leave, among others. Meanwhile, Labour and its partisan bloggers don’t know how to deal with National’s shift to the centre. [Read more below]

Key’s law & order: 'Labour Party policy with a blue ribbon'

Justice Minister Annette King has provided the most accurate and concise analysis of John Key’s newly announced law and order policy for National by labeling it as ‘Labour’s policies with a blue ribbon’. The opening election campaign speeches by Key and Helen Clark have indeed shown just how bland and similar the two main parties are. Furthermore, they’ve reiterated what was argued on this blog in August last year – Law & order: the new political battleground - that law and order issues are shaping up to be one of the main areas of political debate in New Zealand due to the decline of economic differences in the parliamentary parties. [Read more below]

Kiwisaver and inequality

Labour's KiwiSaver will increase inequality and benefit the wealthy, according to the research and analysis of Professor John Gibson of the Management School at Waikato University. According to a report in the Herald, Gibson says that whereas NZ Super helped to ‘equalise lifetime incomes’ KiwiSaver will do the opposite. Apparently 45% of the working-age population earn below $30,000, but that group will only get 15% of KiwiSaver tax incentives. In contrast, the 11% of the the working-age population earning $70,000+ will receive 18% of the tax incentives. Interestingly, although the pro-National Kiwiblog supports KiwiSaver, it also agrees with this analysis and points out that essentially ‘Cullen has given CEOs who earn $1 million a year a $17,640 tax reduction’. See also John Minto’s earlier Press column entitled KiwiSaver opens way to privatisation of national super, which makes a similar argument. Minto says that because ‘Higher levels of savings attract higher government subsidies and higher returns for retirement… the benefits through KiwiSaver will be accrued to higher-income earners’. See also, this Press report on the maddening bureaucracy and poor customer service related to KiwiSaver: Woman's KiwiSaver experience 'a complete nightmare'

[who runs new zealand?] Religious charities

Should religion be deemed a charitable cause? And should the state subsidise religious proselytisation? These are questions asked by an article in the Listener this week. The argument put forward is that there are very wealthy and powerful religious charities in New Zealand that profit from their tax-exempt status. And the Government is about to make it even easier for such not-for-profit groups to collect greater funds. This is the first blog post of many in a series examining the contemporary Establishment in this country. [Read more below]

[political finance] Listener: ‘One law for MPs Bill’ is ‘blatantly unfair’

This week’s Listener editorial brands Labour’s Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill as the ‘One law for MPs Bill’, and strongly criticizes the proposed legislation for being ‘blatantly unfair’. The editorial says that despite the bill’s tedious title, and combined with the ‘anti-democratic’ Electoral Finance Bill, it will have a profound impact on elections by allowing incumbent political parties and MPs to have a huge advantage over any challengers. Essentially the ruling parties will face different spending rules to any challengers and will effectively have a ‘legalised advantage’. The Government is criticized for trying to rush through the legislation, and concludes that ‘the public deserve better’.

“It’s a Bitter Way with Labour” by Chris Knox

Chris Knox must be having a laugh. He’s just been commissioned and paid to write and perform a lightweight party political jingle for the Labour Party entitled “It’s a Better Way with Labour”. Knowing that Chris has some sort of decent political background, I’m hoping that he’s pulled the wool over the Government's eyes, and is about to publicly release the real version: “It’s a Bitter Way with Labour”. [Read more below]

[political finance] NZ’s biggest election funding problem gets worse

The misuse of parliamentary funds by political parties is the biggest political finance problem in New Zealand. Yet the Government has just increased this funding by $1.7m and has decided to relax the rules on how the parties can misuse the money. It’s a shame therefore that most of the current debate on political finance focuses simply on the (draconian) Electoral Finance Bill, while this more serious issue of 'backdoor state funding of parties' is totally marginalized from the debate. [Read more below]

The Green-Labour-National carbon trading con

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]

No Left turn: 'any student of politics or history should read' it

The conservative Dominion Post newspaper commissioned the rightwing National Party activist David Farrar (of Kiwiblog) to review Chris Trotter's leftwing No Left Turn history, and the result is an almost ecstatic endorsement of the book, with Farrar proclaiming that it's a book that 'any student of politics or history should read', and that it's 'one of those books which you find hard to put down'. [Read more below]

No Left Turn: 'helping us understand the world we live in'

Leftwing journalist Nicky Hager has reviewed fellow leftwing journalist Chris Trotter's No Left Turn and concludes that it's 'an excellent, readable, thought-provoking book'. This review published in the Listener - see Power & the people - concentrates on how No Left Turn is a history book with great relevance for understanding modern New Zealand politics. [Read more below]

No Left Turn: 'fervent, thorough, and idiosyncratic'

Chris Trotter's No Right Turn is approvingly described in the latest University of Otago's Critic magazine as 'a fervent, thorough, and idiosyncratic account' of NZ history. Not so much a review, as a springboard for dealing with the state of the NZ left and the union movement, Writing left-handed by Matthew Littlewood interviews leftists Trotter, Brian Roper and Matt McCarten about past and present politics. [Read more below]

No Left Turn: a defence of the new ‘distorters of history’

A critical review of Chris Trotter's book No Left Turn, by guest blogger John Moore.

A class-centred historical analysis is a rare thing in New Zealand today. The clash of classes that dominated much of this young nation’s 20th Century political landscape seems to have been discarded by most contemporary political commentators and academics to the dustbin of history. Chris Trotter is therefore to be commended for trying to do justice to the history of the working class movement in this country with his tome, No Left Turn. But he is also to be challenged for his defence of the new ‘distorters of history’. [Read more below]

Law & order – the new political battleground

Law and order issues are shaping up to be one of the main areas of political debate in New Zealand. Despite little differences between the parliamentary parties, increasingly they all stress how socially conservative they are on such issues. Labour in particular, is ditching any policies that smack of liberalism and has now begun to assert its socially conservative side in order to fend off National’s law and order campaigns. So today we see the Labour’s announcement of Tougher rules to smash gangs and Increased coercive powers for police. The reason for this resurgence of political conflict on these ‘social issues’ can be explained by the decline of economic differences in the parliamentary parties. [Read more below]

Child abuse - a product of 23 years of neoliberalism

Amongst all the outrage of the moment about child abuse, there's at least two voices putting some sort of decent leftwing explanation forward: John Minto and Chris Trotter. Both columnists argue that child abuse in this country is an affect of 20+ years or Labour and National's neoliberalism. Minto's column in today's Christchurch Press calmly and rationally explains how prior to Labour's economic reforms 'Child-abuse deaths for Maori were on a par with the rest of New Zealand... [But] A few years later it spiralled out of control. For the period 1991 to 2000 the figures were 0.67 [per 100,000] for non-Maori but 2.40 for Maori' when Maori unemployment peaked at 26%. Unsurprisingly, the dysfunctional families that resulted produced dysfunctional behaviour such as child abuse. Trotter also discusses the anomie and alienation that resulted from a New Zealand that now lacks social solidarity. He says 'Locate on a map of New Zealand those communities where "Rogernomics" and "Ruthanasia" bit hardest, and you will discover an alarming correspondence with the communities experiencing domestic violence, child abuse, gang affiliations and crime at their worst.' Both Trotter and Minto advocate a change in economic priorities. Minto goes further, and suggests 'The statistics relating to child abuse should be carved into slabs of granite along with the names of those who drove these families into poverty' - namely Labour, National and all their fellow travellers.