liberation

[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]

A return to blogging

After taking a month off from blogging to concentrate on higher priorities, I'm back this week. [Read more below]