liberation

Green Party to save capitalism

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.

Labour admits that public health has major problems

Labour are supposed to be the party of the public health system in New Zealand. They spent nearly a decade opposing what the 1990s National Government was doing to the health system, and Labour was supposedly going to fix it. They've now had about eight years to do so, but according to a Press report entitled Minister slams health system, Health Minister Pete Hodgson now admits the health system is riddled with problems. The article says that Hodgson has also 'described the health system as one where fiefdoms, traditions, egos and rituals abound'. Furthermore, research shows that as many as 1 in 8 patients experience adverse and unintended treatment injuries through the health service, and although this was brought to the Government's intention some time again, nothing has been done.

7/10 public rating of the Police

Police in New Zealand used to be relatively highly regarded, respected and trusted. But new research shows that the public now only give the police a performance rating of 68 out of 100, which isn't very impressive. Unsurprisingly, the groups that normally feel the heat of 'the force' rate them even lower - groups such as 18-25 year olds, younger Pacific Islanders, Maori, new migrants, and (strangely enough) Aucklanders. A media report on these findings puts a more positive spin on the report.

Housing completely unaffordable for most

A comprehensive new report on the affordability of housing in New Zealand says that the problem is getting worse, and that it is due to 'a massive failure of public policy', with the authors suggesting that the current Labour Government is constrained by its conventional ideology. The study shows that almost three-quarters of take-home pay is needed to service the mortgage on an average house in New Zealand - taking homeownership well out of the reach of most people. In fact in some areas, to afford the average home, the average wage earner would have to spend all their pay on mortgage payments.

The study - which you can read here - translates prices, wages and interest rates into the proportion of take-home pay needed to buy the average house. As a comparison with the 74% figure of payment needed, the authors say that in 2002, house ownership only required 40% of income. The most unaffordable places are Central Otago Lakes (where the average home requires payments of 104% of the average pay), and Auckland (92%) and then Northland (78%).

Maori identity - increasingly more complicated

Fewer New Zealanders of Maori descent see themselves simply as 'Maori', with a large proportion aware of their other ethnic identities. New census data on Maori has just been released - see the Statistics New Zealand report. The stats are interesting for a number of reasons, but in particular it is interesting that for the first time in 2006 the census differentiated between those that claim Maori descent and those that actually identify as Maori - and there is quite a gap between the two categories. Those claiming Maori descent number 644,000, but those identifying as 'Maori' number only 565,000. Furthermore, one in six Maori (102,000) aren't able to name which tribe they are descended from, suggesting that there is a significant break of ties between (urban) Maori and the traditional structures of Maoridom.

Also, of the 565,000 identifying as Maori, only about a half claim that Maori is their sole ethnicity, with the bulk of others claiming to also be pakeha (42%), Pacific (7%), Asian (1.5%) or 'New Zealander' (2.3%). Clearly, the concept of 'Being Maori' is becoming more complicated, and only a minority of New Zealanders of Maori descent see themselves simply as 'Maori'. The blending of 'races' is proceeding at full pace in New Zealand, and there is clearly a strong consciousness of this amongst Maori, with a huge proportion of them seeing beyond a 'black and white' identity.

Other important stats (highlighted by the Maori Party and the NZ Herald) include:

• The Maori population has increased by 30% in the past 15 years
• Maori are younger, are earning less, and have fewer formal qualifications than non-Maori
• The gap in the secondary and tertiary educational achievement for Maori versus non-Maori continues to grow

The housing boom - bad news for most

As almost everyone knows, there's been a housing price boom going on in NZ for quite some years now, which is why every second Listener magazine cover seems to be about how to improve the value of your home etc. Apparently the national median house price is now $335,000. Economists say the property boom has meant that 'New Zealanders are paying some of the world's highest house prices compared to our incomes and Auckland ranks alongside London as one of the world's most expensive housing markets.' According to the chief economist of Deutsche Bank in Auckland, the lack of affordability comes down to the low pay of the country. The negative effects of the housing boom have obviously been borne by the poor. [Read more below]

The decaying public health system and the role of the private sector

The Labour Party came to power partly on a campaign against what National had done to the public health system in New Zealand. Labour promised to fix it. But little has been done that ultimately fixes the problems from the patient's point of view. Recently the NZ Herald has been running a series of articles on the state of the heath sector - unsurprisingly it has been rather critical. It has concentrated on the dilemma of growing waiting lists, the unavailability of basic operations, the increased involvement of the private sector, and the wildly variable prospects of treatment in different areas. [Read much more below]

[political finance] Electoral Law horse trading and cartel building

Although the public know little about it, the Labour Party is doing the classic horse-trading over substantial amendments to the Electoral Act that the Government is about to introduce to Parliament. The changes, which could be passed under urgency to avoid widespread public debate, will award all the parties with legislation that suits their political interests. Essentially Labour is quietly building up a cartel of parties to support its moves, which are likely to involve significantly increased state funding for the parties, limits on donations to parties, and restrictions on third party political campaigning.

At the moment Labour is building up a majority - or 'cartel' - in the House by negotiating with NZ First, United Future, the Progressives and the Greens. They have left out the Maori Party, Act and National, who are feeling aggrieved, as the usual process for electoral alterations is to seek a broader cartel of parties so that they would all agree on the benefits. It is highly significant - and unusual - that none of the parties in the new cartel have been willing to talk to the media about the upcoming legislation and negotiations.

The behind-the-scene horse trading is likely to involve Labour buying off the small parties by considering changes to the allocation process for election advertising. The Electoral Commission currently includes Labour and National representatives in deciding how to dole out the cash, and it normally leads to highly contentious divisions of the state funding.  Meanwhile, the Auditor-General Kevin Brady has said he expects a sweeping review of parliamentary state funding. I imagine this is unlikely to happen, and if it does it will be merely be done in way to ensure that more funding rather than less is made available to the parties in Parliament.

[political finance] Rich and poor and electoral laws in Russia

Rigorous new electoral laws are helping the Russian state reduce opposition to the Vladimir Putin's ruling party, and critics say that such electoral laws merely represent part of a Kremlin campaign to crack down on dissent. Already two political parties have been suspended by the state. First the Nationalist Bolshevik Party was suspended. And the Guardian now reports that 'Russia's supreme court announced that it had liquidated the small Republican Party, claiming that it had violated electoral law by having too few members'. The Kremlin's new electoral law requires parties to have at least 50,000 members, which the Republican Party don't (although they have MP in the Duma).

Thanks to electoral laws and other non-competitive practices, there is now very little opposition to the Government. According to the Guardian, 'In theory, the opposition includes Russia's Communist party and the far-right Liberal Democratic party. In reality, they rarely if ever voice opposition to the Kremlin, observers point out.' In another recent article - Win, win - a journalist visits a Russian city for their elections and initially finds that there is seemingly 'a genuine choice between two different political parties', only to discover that both United Russia and Just Russia are pro-Kremlin, and voters have no real choice. The writer agrees with sceptics who complain that the state have invented the parties 'merely to take away votes from Russia's genuine opposition parties'.

Undoubtedly related to the Kremlin's unrivaled rule, the gap between rich and poor is still surging, alongside the growing prosperity. As reported here recently, Russia now has 53 billionaires, yet 20% of Russians are below the poverty line, and the new oil and gas wealth refuses to trickle down to the poor.

The Politics of Bright Eyes

Bright Eyes is the alt-folk/country vehicle for American singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, who has recently been becoming the poster boy for a new generation of political activists and alternatives. Many of their songs are social commentaries on the state of affairs in modern America, sometimes dripping in sarcasm. Songs like the brilliant When the President Talks to God are scathing in their rebuke of their subjects. [Read more below]

Widening income gap due to Government benefit policy

Part of the reason that the gap between rich and poor keeps growing wider is that welfare benefits have been kept low or cut by successive National and Labour governments. Benefits payment levels were effectively frozen by the Fourth Labour Government, the Bolger National Government then cut benefits significantly - which Labour refuses to restore - but most significantly, all governments since the 1970s have insisted on tying benefit levels to inflation rates rather than to increases in wages. Research at the University of Auckland by Gerry Cotterell shows that the dole for a single adult 'has dropped from a recent peak of 45 per cent of the net average wage in 1986 to 28 per cent today'. The Herald reports that 'Welfare beneficiaries without children are now worse off in relation to the average worker than at any time in the past 26 years, and probably in the last 60 years'.

Red Flag flies in Auckland

The low-paid Unite union run by Matt McCarten has moved into new offices today on Queen Street in Auckland, from which the radical union will be flying red flags from - see their press release. Unite is an impressive and innovative model of unionism that hasn't really been seen much in New Zealand. It's the type of thing that the NZ left has long advocated, and is a refreshing contrast to most of moribund union movement. The Spark newspaper has had a fair bit of coverage and analysis of Unite - for example, see here, here, and here. In other union news, it's finally become public knowledge that CTU president is stepping down. Labourite AUS organiser, Helen Kelly, seems likely to replace Wilson (although Kelly is also keen to be the Wellington Central candidate for Labour in 2008).

[political finance] The farce of democracy on the Representation Commission

If you want an example of how electoral law and regulations are normally the result of party political self-interest (rather than fairness or democracy), look no further than how Labour and National continue the farce whereby they take seats on electoral agencies such as the Representation Commission - see this press release from Electoral Commission. After each census, this body meets to review and alter the electorate boundaries. National and Labour have made the rules such as that no other party is on the Commission. [Read more below]

Once were radicals

Ethnic-based politics continues to reveal itself as a dead-end for the liberation of Maori in New Zealand. In the article below, republished from the Spark newspaper, I argue that although the Maori Party is not yet three years old, it's already proved itself to be a conservative and centrist political force with little to do with progressive and working class politics. [Read more below]

Iraqi pessimism, despair and defiance

A new widespread opinion poll of Iraqis presents a damning judgment on the occupation of their country. When the poll was last carried out two years ago, 71% said things were good in their lives, but this has nearly halved to only 40%. Less than a fifth of the population has any confidence in the US and coalition occupation forces, with a small majority saying that attacks on the occupation forces are justified. Many more Iraqis think the situation is worse in their country than those that think things have improved since the US-led invasion. Two-thirds believe the reconstruction efforts have been ineffective. Read more at the BBC or Independent newspaper.

Regrets of the Statue Man

The Iraqi man who four years ago was broadcast around the world symbolically slamming a sledgehammer into the statue of Saddam Hussein now says he is filled with nothing but regret. According to a new TV documentary, Kadhim al-Jubouri says, 'I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.' He was previously held in Abu Ghraib, and says Saddam 'was like Stalin', yet to him, 'the occupation is proving to be worse'.

The anti-Establishment power of online video

Perhaps it's a bit mean, and maybe a bit anti-political, but I'm loving how 'new politics' can be a force for laughing at establishment politicians. The most recent hot political video on Youtube is the one of Hillary Clinton singing the US national anthem off-key not aware her microphone is on. It's been viewed over 1m times, compared to her official video blog which hardly rates in terms of views. You can read more on this and other such videos in this short article.

The disappearing Act

The Act party continues its decline as an organisational, electoral and ideological force. It's just had it's annual non-conference in Christchurch, whereby it has avoided the cost of a proper national conference by tacking on a closed-door meeting to a regional conference - see this report by John Armstrong (one of the few journalists to bother reporting on the party).

It seems that the party is a shadow of its former radical and robust self. Like every other party in Parliament it is currently obsessed with moderating itself and being 'more independent'. This means that it stands for little and attracts few voters, despite National moving well towards the centre in recent times. According to some - including those in the party - Act should be flourishing now that it has the rightwing space to itself. And Rodney Hide is still optimistic that it will benefit from National's ideological retreat. The problem is two-fold: 1) Act is also ideologically retreating into blandness and gimmickry, and 2) the tide has clearly gone out on New Right reforms. Neoliberalism has been both cemented in the new policy consensus of Labour and National, but also discredited within the eyes of the public, which means that very few want the Act-type agenda pushed further. So yet another party dies a sad and pathetic slow death with the usual situation of a party leader futilely languishing around for new ideas and a way forward but finding nothing but a focus on media stunts and attempts to keep an electorate seat.

[political finance] Party finance reform in the UK - more of the same

Party politics in the UK is about to undergo a 'radical overhaul' of its system of party finance, but the mechanisms used will be just 'more of the same'. These reforms could have significant influence on the NZ system, which in parallel shares many of the problems and weaknesses of the UK system and is also facing imminent reform. Some analysis of the proposed UK reforms is therefore of some importance to NZ - and shows that, as usual, reform is being directed in a way that will once again simply favour party hierarchies and make party politics even more divorced from civil society. [READ MORE BELOW]

Labour's attack on beneficiaries under fire

The Labour Government's rightwing Social Security Amendment Bill is coming into opposition from Christian social services providers, unions, and even the Treasury. The bill would implement a rigid sanctions-based regime for Work and Income to apply to beneficiaries to increase the pressure on them to seek work or education. The CTU's Ross Wilson says unions are apprehensive about the bill, Treasury has questioned whether the $100m expense is justified, and the Christian Council of Social Services says it would achieve little and that it would be better to work with beneficiaries rather than take a punitive approach.

Labour appears to be trying to quietly introduce a sanctions-based work-for-the-dole type system, no doubt in order to ward of criticisms from National that the Government is too soft on beneficiaries. Yet, National is also critical that Labour has done little consultation with the groups and communities affected.

[political finance] Another National Party misuse of state funds uncovered

It has been revealed that parliamentary state funding is paying for a National Party campaigning database. The National Party has paid at least $350,000 to an Australian company for a software system called Feedback, which gathers information on voters and their views. Part of the funding - $90,000 - has come from the 'Leaders Budget' in Parliament. John Key's chief of staff, Wayne Eagleson, says it's an appropriate use of taxpayers money because it helps MPs address constituents' concerns. Basically this means it allows the party to record information about hundreds of thousands of voters and then send niche marketing information to them to encourage them to vote for National - this is party political, not parliamentary.

Of course, details of such parliamentary spending on party political purposes don't usually come to light. After all the Parliamentary Service is effectively controlled by all the parliamentary parties (through their membership of the overseeing body the Parliamentary Services Commission) and therefore such payments are never made public. In fact the politicians has specifically made the Parliamentary Service exempt from the Official Information Act. In this case, the information has come from the Australian Electoral Commission which requires all companies to list any money received from political parties.

China strengthens private property rights

Although still officially a 'communist' country, private property has finally been legalised in China by the National People's Congress, which voted overwhelmingly for the pro-private property legislation. According to the Guardian, the private sector in fact now accounts for 65% of China's GNP. Both foreign and Chinese companies now pay tax of only 25%.

NZ censors more conservative than in Australia

The chief censor, Bill Hastings, says that the Australian classifications of films are more liberal than in NZ. He is concerned that where a NZ film has a R16 rating in Australia is would often have only an M rating.

The Politics of Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte was America's first black superstar and a pioneer in movies and film. Because he's just turned 80, the Guardian has a profile on him. Belafonte has clearly always committed to political activism, and has put the fight for civil rights ahead of his career. Unfortunately his radicalism was often blunted by working with people like Martin Luther King and the Kennedy's, but its sounds like he might be more radical these days. He denounces America's war in Iraq and has branded George Bush 'the world's greatest terrorist'. Today he has little time for the sham of political consensus, and likes to see himself as working 'outside the box' of conventional politics.

Do National's ideological compromises improve democracy?

The NZ Herald editorial today says that with National's moves to dump its market rents policy for state housing, it is buying into the new political consensus. The paper thinks that although the market-rents policy was principled and essentially more equitable, National is dumping it to avoid losing a debate on it in election year - 'Any policy, no matter how principled, is likely to be abandoned if it risks providing ammunition to opponents.' The Herald is slightly ambivalent about this pragmatic trend, but concludes that ideological compromise improves democracy, even though it reduces choice and principles in politics. Rather simplistically the Herald explains political pragmatism by saying 'the more confident a party becomes that it will win the next election, the more risk-averse it becomes'.

The paper also seems to be celebrating the growing consensus in politics as logical for both main parties:

Any policy with echoes of the 1990s is likely to be expunged from National's prospectus between now and the next election, much as Labour came to terms with the successful elements of monetarism and the market economy before its election in 1999.

Additionally, the editorial points out that the Labour Party's dumping of the market-rents policy has been masterful because the move has effectively done very little - if anything - for improving equality, yet it has silenced the lobby that has complained about poverty in NZ, and therefore the Government has had to do little else in this area. A very good point.

National Party U-turn on tax cuts

Bill English has been speaking out against tax cuts. He now says that National would not not introduce extensive tax cuts if it was in power now. He says tax cuts would merely contribute to inflation. As Michael Cullen correctly comments, National has now done a complete policy U-turn.

National now loves unions

The National Party has been on a charm offensive with the union movement, in a bid to draw a line between the old union-hating National Party and the new more sophisticated middle-of-the-road Key-English National Party - see Newsroom's Nats Try Softly Softy Approach With Unions.

As the article points out, the party under Brash had no real communication with unions and the previous spokesperson on Labour, Wayne Mapp, 'used to talk of union militancy and warned that "if you give unions powers they will use it"', but the new spokesperson promoted by John Key, Kate Wilkinson is at pains to have a constructive relationship with unions and promote National's supposedly more worker-friendly policies. National now says that it values unions and believes they have an important role in representing workers. According to the article, National says 'Unions could be important information conduits, play an important collaborative role, be influential in improving productivity and bring balance to bargaining powers.'

The CTU has confirmed the softer approach and says they are having 'very amicable' and ongoing discussions with National. The movement welcomes the change, but wants to see real policy change from National.

2008 NZ election to be fought on the environment

With the significantly narrowing differences between the political parties in Parliament, next year's election will be based around few political issues. Issues of race and the economy will be of decreasing importance in debate, as the parties agree on the issues more than ever. And although there is significant agreement on combating climate change, it is likely to be the key issue being fought over. Certainly in the UK, this is the central issue in politics at the moment. The Independent - as well as all the other UK papers - reports that global warming is clearly becoming the main battleground for the three main parties, with the leaders 'all placing unprecedented emphasis on the environment'. Gordon Brown has called for a 'new world order' to combat climate change, while the Tories have announced plans for 'pay as you burn' taxes on aviation to curb air travel. Labour's Peter Hain has even called for a ban on stand-by buttons on appliances. "Green speak" is raging across the political spectrum, but mostly amounts to the same banal 'clip-on environmentalism' seen in NZ.

Bono's project RED succeeds and fails

It is being reported that Bono's corporate 'radical' RED project - previously reported on here - has been been somewhat of a failure for the poor, even if it's been a huge success for the re-branding of the corporates involved. So far the 52m pound marketing campaign has only netted 9m pounds for the third world.

NZ's War on Terror continues

NZ's military participation in the US War on Terror is set to continue for many more years. The Labour Government has just announced that they will spend a further $30m keeping about 130 NZ troops in Afghanistan for at least another year. Echoing George Bush's slogan that it will be a war without end, Helen Clark says she envisages the troops will be there beyond next year as well. [Read more below]

Pragmatic National to ditch market-based rent policy

National leader John Key has announced that he wants his party to abandon its policy of market-related rents for state houses before the next election, saying 'I don't favour a move back to market-related rents, and I don't think the party will support a move back to market-related rents'. Partly justifying the move, Key said that re-imposing market rents was likely to be more expensive in the long run. But as former housing minister John Luxton says, the party still has the political belief in the correctness of the policy, but that they lost the argument with the public a long time ago, and is therefore giving in to pragmatism. He is quite right in saying, 'I think it takes another thing off the agenda that Labour will use their firepower to suggest there's a marked difference' between the parties. Additionally, National is signalling that it would build even more state houses than Labour has.

Conservative decline

Conservatism appears to be on the wane in the US - particularly the Christian right. According to Will Hutton, writing recently in the Observer, there has been a swing in the cultural pendulum, and conservative christianity is falling out of favour in terms of politics, and secular America is reasserting itself. Those that think that conservative Christians are going to far in imposing their religious values on the country now amount to 49% - up from 45% about a year ago. Indicative of this, a recent best-selling book is creating a stir. "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris 'ridicules religion and ruthlessly exposes the inadequacies of the Bible' by pointing out the parts of the book that advocate stoning and slavery etc. As Hutton also points out, it's indicative that the current Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination - Rudi Giuliani - is a three-time married man who goes on gay rights parades.

The state and fate of Cuba

As the Cuban revolution gets closer to celebrating its 50th year, and the wave of progressive change continues to sweep Latin America, there is more focus on the precarious triumphs of the country. On Saturday the Guardian ran an article by an ex-CIA officer based in Latin America who reminds us of the unjust dirty methods that the US has used to fight against Cuba. He says that 'No country has suffered terrorism as long and consistently as Cuba' and that the cost of the US's economic warfare has been more than US$80b to the small island.

And a few weeks ago, there was another good opinion piece that challenged the idea that the Cuban revolution would fall when Castro dies. Apparently the Cuban economy is doing very well, growing by about 12% annually. A recent Gallup poll found very high satisfaction rates amongst Cubans for the island's socialised health and education services.

946 billionaires prosper, with their wealth up 35%

It's been a bumper year for the world elite, according to the latest Forbes magazine publication of their billionaires list. Steve Forbes says 'This is the richest year ever in human history. Never in history has there been such a notable advance'. What he means by this, is that the total number of billionaires - who qualify in US dollar terms - has jumped in one single year from 793 to 946, and their combined wealth has exploded by 35% to US$3.5 trillion. According to Forbes co-editor Luisa Kroll says 'It's just been kind of an extraordinary year for markets worldwide'. According to the Guardian, this has all occurred 'on the back of rising property prices, commodities and stock markets'.

Some interesting trends are apparent in the latest list. First, Asia continues it elite growth. India has added a further 14 billionaires to the list, taking their total to 36 - now ahead of Japan's 24. China has added 14, and together with Hong Kong, 'communist' China now has 41 billionaires. Free-market Russia, however, now has 53, putting it in second place after Germany. The US is still far in the lead with 415 billionaires, but proportionally it keeps falling.

At the top of the list is still Bill Gates with $56b, then Warren Buffett with $52b. Third place, however, goes to Carlos Slim Helu, the Mexican telecom entrepreneur, who has gained $19b in one single year to take his wealth to $49b. According to Forbes magazine he is despised and mistrusted in Mexico, where massive poverty means that annual per capita income is less than $6,800. According to a WSWS commentary, 'the entire list stink of parasitism, corruption and outright gangsterism. That is the state of the global rich today'.

Idiocy and feminism on Working Women's Day

Feminism in NZ - and elsewhere - has had a strong tendency to degenerate into non-political and highly personal issues at the expense of any real struggle for women's liberation. After all, the leading creed is 'the personal is political', which originally had some significant meaning, but eventually just became an excuse for navel-gazing and the drift away from progressive politics. Around the time of International Working Women's Day - March 8 - some of these absurdities normally surface. It's not often the feminists deal with this tendency, but in the UK Guardian, Zoe Williams is outraged that 'a day that once stood for women's liberties has been hijacked by yoga, spices and animals in art'. She says This is idiocy, not feminism. In NZ, the day tomorrow will inevitably be somewhat more political than usual due to the recent police rape cases.

Communist manifestoon

Check out this application of new politics to spread the ideas of Karl Marx: the Communist Manifestoon - which is Marx and Engel's manifesto being read out over the splicing and editing together of retro Disney et al's children's cartoons. Quite effective and funny.

Police non-credibility

Posters around Wellington today 'advertise' a career in the NZ Police, saying that it's a way to hear 'great rape stories'. Such political activity no doubt reflects a widespread and increasing distrust of police in the wake of the recent acquittal of the three accused police rapists. [Read more below]

The "Maori National Party" or the "National Maori Party"

It appears to be becoming common wisdom that both the Greens and the Maori Party are now centrist parties, vying to be power brokers between Labour and National after the next election. This is today's story in the Herald anyway. Certainly the Maori Party has done a lot recently to position itself to work with National, and National are doing likewise. Last week John Key even said that if National-friendly Maori voters don't want to vote for National in the Maori seats, he would like them to vote for the Maori Party. That's quite an endorsement. As John Armstrong wrote recently, there's actually many areas where the interests of the Maori and National parties intersect: 'welfare reform, iwi-based delivery of social services, reviewing the treaty settlement process, and promoting Maori business enterprise'.

Add to this, Tariana Turia recent statements that her party is neither left nor right, but kaupapa and tikanga-driven, and you'll see the ideological trajectory that the party is on. Certainly the party's recent advocacy of work-for-the-dole - together with their immigration and law and order campaigns, and their courting of the corrupt Philip Field - should be a fairly solid signal that the party is not a left one. Meanwhile Labour is letting its grip on the Maori vote weaken, which opens the way for National to co-opt the Maori Party as a coalition partner.

NZ workers lowly paid - OECD

New Zealand workers are paid nearly 12% less than in other OECD countries. According to the latest OECD report, NZ workers are in the bottom third of developed countries. Compared to Australia, for example, the average net (i.e. take-home) pay is only three-quarters of what Australian workers get. Furthermore, the cost of employing NZ workers is less for employers here because the 'tax wedge' part of the employment costs that goes in taxes to the government is unusually low - bettered only by the employers situation in Korea and Mexico.

NZ's foreign policy - silence, cynicism and complicity

The War on Terror struggles onwards towards defeat. Tariq Ali has written an excellent piece on the tragedy of Afghanistan, reminding us that 'It is much better for regime-change to come from below even if this means a long wait as in South Africa, Indonesia or Chile. Occupations disrupt the possibilities of organic change and create a much bigger mess than existed before'. In Iraq, elite US commanders say they 'face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat'.

But NZ's prime minister continues to abstain on these issues. Lately she has been flatly refusing to state the government's position on the ongoing occupation of Iraq - as discussed in this WSWS article. Once an opponent of the US military intervention in Vietnam, Clark now says, we shouldn't 'get involved in a debate about what other countries should do with their troops'. And now she's going to meet with US President George Bush. Clark says that the talks will not talk about the US's illegal wars of aggression, despite the Iraq occupation currently being the biggest issue in international affairs. NoRightTurn says that Clark will be 'Shaking hands with a torturer', and 'Any decent person would refuse to meet' with Bush.

If any further indication is needed of the Labour Government's foreign policy, note that it has quietly resumed military ties with Indonesia, to the astonishment of human rights groups.

The greening of the USA

Is environmentalism intrinsically leftwing? Are Americans more environmentally ignorant than other nationalities? The answer seems to be "no" according to two recent reports in the Economist and the Guardian. [Read more below]

Labour and farmers in NZ

Farmers in NZ are normally seen as being influential over National Governments, but ignored by Labour ones. This is no longer the case, and there have been numerous examples of where this Labour Government has been unusually farmer friendly. The old division of National Party = farmers and business, and Labour Party = workers and poor, is long gone. Chris Trotter reflects on such issues in his latest Dominion Post column. He says that when you think of the typical NZ farmer, think of Enron rather than Fred Dagg. Farms are increasingly the preserve of the very rich.

Labour implements work-for-the-dole

First the Maori Party announce a work-for-the-dole policy, then National re-adopts it, and now Labour are actually implementing it. The Government is quietly bringing introducing a work-for-the-dole scheme with the passage of the Social Security Amendment Bill. The unemployed will have their benefits cut in half if they refuse to carry out any part of their agreement which could include unpaid community work. More than ever before, the parliamentary parties are adopting each other's policies. And as with many other such agreed policies, they don't actually work.

The contradictions of Red China Inc.

This week China has it's annual session of the National People's Congress, where the leadership gathers to deal with the contradictions of the Communist Party running a huge capitalist country - see this week's New Statesman article. They say that the CP 'struggles to find the words to explain its policies without telling the truth - that it has abandoned ideology, replacing it with a mixture of nationalism, expediency and the determination to remain in power. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has just pronounced that 'China is and will remain in the primary stage of socialism for a long time.' [Read more below]

The Politics of Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder, the veteran American musician and man behind the popularity of the Buena Vista Social Club, has a new CD out: My Name Is Buddy. Reminiscent of 2005's Chavez Ravine, it apparently deals with workers who fled the Midwest of the US in the 1930s. The characters, according to Cooder, are 'Lefty, a left-wing mouse who's looking for a socialist utopia; blind Tom Toad, who has lost his religious faith, but is 'looking for a way out of darkness'; and Buddy himself, who 'being a cat, is looking for his next meal'. There's a Guardian interview with Cooder here.

According to the profile, Cooder has always been very political, and one of his first recordings was 'How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?'. And today he hates commercial and conventional music and politics. He was fined US$25,000 for breaking the reactionary blockade on Cuba. According to the Guardian article, Cooder is equally critical of both mainstream political parties in the US, saying 'Never mind the "RepubliKlans" - the Democrats today are "a bunch of cowards, chickenshit"'. He even criticises the role of Bill Clinton: 'he also ushered in the era of Nafta, the North American Free Trade Area, which made Juarez, Mexico, the murder capital of the world, with women raped for their pay cheques. That was another nail in the coffin of workers' lives.' Despite all his cynicalism, he's not a political defeatist: 'You can't just dismiss the world.... You have to say, "Well, I'm in it. Now I have to make sense of it."'

Is the future of politics female?

Women are increasingly holding power in politics - being elected as MPs, presidents and prime ministers around the world. The Inter-Parliamentary Union's latest study of gender proportions in Parliament says that the proportion of women politicians has jumped from 11% to nearly 17%. NZ is one of the more advanced nations in this respect, with 33% of the Parliament composed of women (40 out of 121 MPs). Sadly, our Pacific Island neighbours have the lowest proportion in the world - about 3%. In contrast, Rwanda and Sweden have nearly 50%.

A recent article in the UK's Sunday Times posed the question of whether the future is female. It noted that alongside women either being president or presiding over parliaments in NZ, Germany, Chile, and Finland, there's a decent chance that the next leaders of the US and France will also be women. They say that this is part of 'a decades-long process of post-war empowerment', and many feminists are excited by the prospects of women running the world. Women now preside over 35 of the world's parliaments.

While it's a good thing that there is increasing equality of opportunity, it still seems to be a bad idea to prefer a candidate over other because of their gender. From a progressive or leftwing point of view, the track record of female leaders isn't exactly much better than that of their male counterparts, and I've got no great desire to live under the rule of awful past leaders/warmongers like Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher (to say nothing of Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark). To me the political programme of the candidate will always be the central measure. And on that issue, George W Bush has been one of the worst for women. See, for example, the New Statesman article, Bush's war on women.