liberation

No heresy here – the Golden Compass reviewed

Imagine the cinematic release of The Golden Compass being accompanied by a direct marketing strategy to sell the film to critically minded, libertarian-loving atheists. Picture meeting halls of humanist, rationalists and anti-authoritarian activists lapping up well selected snippets from this fantasy movie. [Read more of John Moore’s guest film review 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'

[political finance] Anti-Labour website shut down

ePolitics meets political finance in the case of Andrew Moore’s Don’t Vote Labour website being shut down after the Electoral Commission informed Moore that he stood to be fined up to $10,000 if he continued to publish it without providing his personal details. In stark contrast, the Commission has also publicly stated that political party websites don’t necessarily need to comply with the same rules. The shutting down of this anti-Labour website is the first case under the EFA that shows just how ridiculous and anti-democratic the EFA is. [Read more below]

No to western sanctions

A guest blog post by John Moore on the issue of sanctions argues that much of the New Zealand left make a bad call when they demand the boycott of oppressed third world countries such as Burma/Myanmar. [Read more below]

Minto continues the campaign against an unjust Sth Africa

John Minto is to be congratulated for his continued fight against the ongoing injustice occurring in South Africa. He is now refusing to accept the South African Government's highest honour for foreigners because he is ‘deeply dismayed’ with that government and the social and economic conditions of South Africa. In his Open Letter to the President of South Africa the Unite union organizer and social justice activist says it would be hypocritical to accept the Companion of O R Tambo Award from a government he's so highly critical of. Minto correctly points out (in a phrase reminiscent of Animal Farm) that, ‘The faces at the top have changed from white to black but the substance of change is an illusion’. Furthermore, he argues out that when in 1981 'we protested and marched into police batons and barbed wire here in the struggle against apartheid, we were not fighting for a small black elite to become millionaires’. And in two short sentences, Minto sums up the reality of recent history in South Africa: 'It seems the entire economic structure which underpinned apartheid is essentially unchanged. Oppression based on race has morphed seamlessly into oppression based on economic circumstance'. In a world of vacuous 'celebrity' and when all kinds of people, including on the left, seem to fall over themselves to grab awards, Minto's refusal is a breath of fresh air.

[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] “Money doesn’t talk”

The latest Listener magazine business column by David W Young deals with the issue of the ‘influence of big business on politics’ and the question of to what extent business donations influence parties and governments - see Money doesn't talk. Young argues (along very similar lines to previous posts on this blog) that business influence on politics occurs through a number of mechanisms, but that political finance is not a significant cause of this influence. Young is also kind enough to refer to me in his column! [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Laurence Simmons

The editor of Speaking Truth to Power (Auckland University Press, 2007), Laurence Simmons has performed a huge service to both politics and the left in New Zealand by putting together his book about the decline of the life of ideas in this country. He argues that ‘Not all intellectuals are academics, and not all academics are intellectuals’ [Read more below]

The politics of Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008)

Renowned Maori poet and 'activist artist' Hone Tuwhare was buried today in Northland, after dying last week aged 85. He's being appropriately remembered in many obituaries for his poetry - after all his collection of poems, No Ordinary Sun became one of the most widely read in New Zealand literary history. But it’s also worth saying a bit about his politics. [Read more below]

The politics of Rage Against the Machine

The highly political metal-rap band Rage Against the Machine (RATM) has just played the Big Day Out in Auckland. Unfortunately this performance showed that their politics still have a lot more bombast than substance, which is disappointing because RATM continue to be one of the most successful political artists of modern times. Fortunately, at the Big Day out, the band’s guitarist Tom Morello also played his own set of acoustic political music under his alter ego moniker of the Nightwatchman, and this turned out to be much more sophisticated and relevant. [Read more]

[NZ intellectuals] Roger Horrocks

Emeritus Professor Roger Horrocks contributes an insightful and reflective essay on ‘A short history of “the New Zealand intellectual”’ to Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (edited by Laurence Simmon, 2007, Auckland: AUP). In this, Horrocks deals with being chided for being “ivory tower”, he details the reality of the university common-room discussions and debates, he explains why the media doesn’t contribute to ‘the public sphere’, and he criticises the current Labour Government for continuing the neoliberal model of media [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Chris Trotter’s ‘power of speaking truth’

Chris Trotter wrote a review of Speaking Truth to Power (edited by Laurence Simmons, AUP: 2007) in a March edition of the Independent Financial Review. In the review (entitled ‘The power of speaking truth’) he salutes the all those individual and isolated intellectuals 'kicking against the pricks'. He also takes issue with the idea that New Zealand’s anti-intellectualism is deeply ingrained, instead arguing that it’s a ‘prejudice requiring constant maintenance and reinforcement’ by rightwing forces. [Read more below]

National tries to be squeaky clean; the Greens want to believe otherwise

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.

[NZ intellectuals] Mark Broatch’s ‘Smart thinking’

Is the Sunday Star-Times New Zealand’s most intellectual newspaper? Certainly the paper ran a very good review last year of Laurence Simmons’ Speaking Truth to Power. Written by Mark Broatch, the article entitled Smart thinking allows for an insightful examination of the NZ personality. And it must be one of the few times that a newspaper article mentions both Antonio Gramsci and Fred Dagg. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Belich, Waring, and Walker

The least interesting interviews in Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (edited by Laurence Simmons, 2007, Auckland: AUP) are with the liberal rather than the leftwing participants. But it’s still worth pointing out that in their interviews James Belich says NZ and Australia didn’t actually become nations until 1901, Marilyn Waring claims to have nothing good to say about academic management, and Ranginui Walker defends biculturalism. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Bruce Jesson

Not only was the late Bruce Jesson (1944-1999) one of New Zealand’s most important leftwing intellectuals, he was also deeply concerned with this country’s anti-intellectualism together with the ideological poverty of the political left. Therefore Laurence Simmon’s Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (2007, Auckland: AUP) constitutes, in many ways, a fulfillment of Jesson’s pleas for the left to take seriously this defect. Fittingly the book is also dedicated to Jesson (as well as Michael King), and contains a very good examination of Jesson’s approach to these issues, written by retired professor of Political Studies, Andrew Sharp. In this, Sharp spells out Jesson’s frustration with the ‘mindless activism’ of the NZ left, his despair with the state of the media, and his love-hate relationship with NZ politics. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Nicky Hager

Nicky Hager is described in Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand as ‘a freelance intellectual, a commentator, a writer, a book-reviewer, a speech-maker, [existing] outside an institution’. In his interview in this book (edited by Laurence Simmons, 2007, Auckland: AUP) it becomes apparent that Hager is one of the most important and incisive ‘organic intellectuals’ that we’ve currently got. His chapter is probably the most interesting in the book. Among many other things, Hager explains how Helen Clark spends a lot of her time ‘doing things which I despise and think stupid’; why ‘we have a government that could do good things but it’s cautious and visionless and nervous and going nowhere’; why MMP is killing the social movements; why the ‘debate on Maori sovereignty or Maori rights is now a no-go zone’, and why political protestors are an important part of public intellectualism. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Brian Easton

New Zealand’s most well known economic commentator is neither an academic, a journalist, nor a financial sector representative, but instead ‘an independent scholar’. Brian Easton was interviewed for the new publication Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand (edited by Laurence Simmons, 2007, Auckland: AUP), and spoke of why he thinks that blogs have now overtaken the mainstream media as the most important vehicles of political information and opinion to the public, why NZ shouldn't be a bicultural nation, why the country is very nervous of having proper debates, and how the role of the intellectual is to be sceptical of everything. [Read more below]

[NZ intellectuals] Jane Kelsey

Jane Kelsey is probably the most important leftwing academic in New Zealand today. Her published criticisms and records of the implementation of neoliberalism in New Zealand remain the definitive accounts of that time. So her views on intellectualism in NZ are bound to be of interest. In her interview chapter in the new publication Speaking Truth to Power: Public Intellectuals Rethink New Zealand, edited by Laurence Simmons (2007, Auckland: AUP), Kelsey argues that NZ used to have a much more intellectual culture, that the Labour Government is philosophically empty, obsessed with managerialism, and hostile to criticism, and that there is currently a small revival in intellectualism and dissent. [Read more below]