liberation

Green MPs incur activist backlash

Within all political parties there is a tension between principle and pragmatism. A balance needs to be found between keeping to a party’s ideological beliefs and the more opportunistic pragmatism sometimes required to gain and keep power. Modern New Zealand political parties lean strongly towards the pragmatic side of the equation, and the Green Party is no exception. As the party has aged and changed its leadership it has become particularly keen to leave behind its principle-oriented way of doing politics, shift towards the centre of the political spectrum, and be seen as moderate and respectable rather than radical or purist. This development can be seen very clearly in the party leadership’s latest triumph of pragmatism over principle – the decision to support the draconian the Canterbury Earthquake Response & Recovery Act (CERRA) in Parliament. By voting for this landmark legislation, the Green MPs have incurred the wrath of the party’s more principled members and supporters. Usually the Green leadership is able to easily assert its pragmatism over the activist idealism, but that has definitely not happened this time. Instead, the grassroots Greens are in revolt, the leadership is being heavily censured, and there is even talk of the need for Russel Norman to step down as co-leader due to the political mismanagement and opportunism apparent in this latest debacle. [Read more below]

David Garrett and politician behaviour

One of the key trends in modern parliamentary politics is a fixation with the personal behaviour of our politicians. Partly this is driven by the perception – which is largely-correct – that politicians are increasingly untrustworthy and self-serving. It’s certainly healthy to have some focus and scrutiny applied politician behaviour, and the growing public mistrust of MPs is also apt. Yet unfortunately a number of negative consequences also arise from this increasing obsession with the foibles, flaws and misdemeanours of political personalities. Not only does it perpetuate the transfer of attention from political substance to the superficial, it also creates a demand for greater state or parliamentary control, regulation or monitoring of the personal lives and backgrounds of public representatives (or candidates for office). This could have all sorts of democratically unhealthy ramifications – such as turning the political milieu into an even more narrower bunch of professional politicians with bland and conventional backgrounds. [Read more below]

 

Cold war in the Act Party

The most recent scandalous revelation about MP David Garrett reflects just how dysfunctional and divided the Act Party has become. In a more healthy political party these type of ‘skeletons in the closet’ might exist, but they don’t normally come out, and if they do, they don’t normally reflect the level of deceit and irony that they do in this particular case. Currently the party is leaking like a kitchen sieve, and further revelations are likely to keep appearing, ensuring that the death spiral continues. Partly that’s because there is essentially a ‘cold war’ going on in the Act Party at the moment. I was interviewed about this yesterday on RNZ Checkpoint (audio here) and TVNZ News at 8 (story here). The blog post below is an elaboration on the points that I made. [Read more below]

 

Inequality in NZ: [6] NBR’s 2010 Rich List

When it comes to the massive private wealth in New Zealand, the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ is nearly dead. While New Zealanders once regarded an individual’s accumulation of enormous riches as somewhat unseemly or at least to be viewed with suspicion, with the rise of neoliberalism and the decline of our egalitarian ethos, unfortunately we are now more inclined to worship the rich. This adulation of the affluent is one of the key political agendas of the National Business Review in publishing the Rich List each year. The newspaper wants us to know about the ‘wealth creators’ and turn them into role models – despite the fact that these businesspeople are really ‘wealth stealers’ in that their vast profits come from other people’s toil. Nonetheless the NBR’s celebratory exercise is a useful project that allows us to gauge some important aspects of the ruling elite in New Zealand, and it unintentionally shines a bright light on the vast iniquitous grab of wealth and income in New Zealand society. [Read more below]

National’s ‘panic pants’ spin-doctors

Is the John Key-led National Government the most spin-doctored administration in New Zealand history? Probably. Is it also the most ideologically-cautious and pragmatic in recent history? Probably. And is there a connection between these two factors? Definitely. That’s the impression that you get from Matt Nippert’s recent NBR article about the Prime Minister’s Office. Entitled ‘Panic station: policy quashing on the ninth floor of the Beehive’, Nippert’s investigative article seeks to find out who’s running this government, and why John Key’s chief press secretary is known within the Beehive by the nickname ‘Captain Panic Pants’. Other spin-doctors running the show go by the names Hansel and Gretel. [Read more below]