liberation

Credit card scandal – why they spend our money

Last weekend's Sunday Star Times ran a story by Kim Knight entitled ‘Credit card scandal – why they spend our money’ which quoted me explaining the apparent increased propensity of New Zealand politicians to be misspending taxpayer money on themselves – i.e to be ‘troughing’, or rorting the system. The blog post below highlights what I was reported as saying and elaborates on my argument that parliamentarians are increasingly ‘career politicians’ largely divorced from any social constituency, and that this affects their orientation towards the remuneration possibilities offered by Parliament and Cabinet. Quite simply, professional politicians are more inclined to be interested in the personal financial rewards and perquisites that come from what they regard as a ‘career’ rather than a ‘duty’. Hence, with a focus on the material comforts and rewards of their ‘job’, it’s hardly surprising that all possible sources of payment are exploited by these ‘professionals’. [Read more below]

Excuses for ministerial misspending: [3] “It wasn’t my fault”

In attempting to explain away their ministerial credit card misspending, one of the most cowardly lines run by politicians has been to blame someone else and say ‘it wasn’t my fault’. Those being blamed by National and Labour ministers and ex-ministers include their own ministerial staff, Ministerial Services, and even the various hotels and vendors that ‘mistakenly’ put charges on the taxpayer credit cards. MP Chris Carter has become the epitome of the ‘it wasn’t my fault’ line. The MP’s current troubles partly stem from the perception that he has been quick to both minimise the seriousness of his misspending and to attempt to shift the blame on to other people. First, he has blamed his staff, saying, ‘My ministerial office was a very busy place. ... Small mistakes were perhaps inevitable, but never excusable’. Essentially Carter thinks that it’s not himself that should be sorry – it’s the staff that stuffed up and should apologise, and he’s not willing to excuse them himself. [Read more below]

Excuses for ministerial misspending: [2] “It was an innocent mistake”

In the current political finance scandal over ministerial credit card misspending, very frequently the offending politicians have claimed that their misspending was all ‘an innocent mistake’. This is especially the case when ministers explain their use of ministerial credit cards to pay for what were very obviously personal items. For example, Judith Tizard has explained that her use of her ministerial credit card for purchasing personal items was because she'd got the card mixed up with her personal one. This was also the case with Phil Heatley, earlier in the year. And Chris Carter claimed his spending was mistaken rather than dishonest. But is this really a legitimate excuse? [Read more below]

Excuses for ministerial misspending: [1] “It was within the rules”

The negative reaction against those ministers and ex-ministers who have been revealed as having misspent taxpayer money with their ministerial credit cards appears to be almost unanimous. This is a good thing – increasingly, the public is learning of the culture of entitlement and extravagance that exists within the Beehive, and hence the vast gulf between the politicians and the rest of us is becoming more obvious. Clearly, the media is doing a relatively good job of holding our representatives to account by exposing the dodgy political financial affairs of our ministers to the disinfectant of sunlight. Yet there are still some voices complaining about the scrutiny being applied to New Zealand’s elite. And although the objection to the scrutiny is mostly coming from the politicians themselves, it’s also coming from a number of outside commentators, party officials, academics, and Establishment types. In order to defend the ‘political class’, these voices are putting themselves up as apologists for the behaviour of our politicians. The following blog posts examine the numerous arguments of those apologists and politicians, and attempts to refute their justifications and excuses for the ministerial misspending. [Read more below]

The Bourgeois Bollinger Labour Party

The main problems that the political left has had with the New Zealand Labour Party in recent years are epitomized by ex-Labour Minister Judith Tizard. She personifies virtually all that was wrong with the Labour Party under Helen Clark’s leadership: arrogant, Establishment-oriented, economically neoliberal, and obsessed with identity politics. The fact that she and many Labour MPs appeared to morph so easily into being the New Establishment is now reflected in many of the revelations coming out of the ministerial credit card documents that have been released. There are just so many examples of the culture of entitlement and extravagance that pervades the ‘political class’, but the one that stands out as the best indictment of the bourgeois nature of the Labour Party is Tizard’s taxpayer-funded purchase of a $155 bottle of Bollinger bubbly. But she wasn’t the only one. As the 7000-document release is slowly processed by the media and public we’re finding out just how bourgeois the previous Labour administration was. [Read more below]

Key to Victory – Rob Eddy on United Future's 2008 campaign

 Sometimes the most interesting political parties provide the most boring and bland post-election self-analyses in post-election books – witness the latest Green and Maori party chapters – while the most boring parties can offer relatively interesting and insightful chapters. This is certainly the case with the chapter by Rob Eddy on United Future’s campaign in the new post-election book Key to Victory: The New Zealand General Election of 2008 edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts. Eddy writes candidly of the challenges and failures of this middle-of-the-road party, and concludes with a surprisingly honest and downbeat prediction about there being no future for United Future. [Read more below]

The Green Party list selection conflict

Green Party members and supporters have gone to extraordinary lengths to fight an internal battle against the leadership over the selection of the party list for next years general election. Advertisements have appeared in daily newspapers across the country today that seek to pressure a change in the constitution to ensure that the leadership follows its own claims to have a democratic list selection involving the votes of members. This raises some interesting questions about the state of internal Green Party politics and that of democracy in the organization. [Read more below]