liberation

Political corruption in New Zealand

Transparency International has once again ranked New Zealand at number one in the world for its lack of corruption. Its corruption perception rating is 9.3 out of 10 (down slightly from 9.4 in 2009), suggesting that the public sector and politics is free of the type of financial dishonesty, bribery, fraud and sleaze that is more commonly found in other western liberal democracies such as Italy, Spain and France. Certainly New Zealand politics has not traditionally been characterised by political corruption scandals. Yet over the last decade there have been a quickly growing number of high profile controversies relating to political money – especially in terms of politician behaviour and electioneering. Thus, an apparent paradox exists whereby New Zealand has experienced an explosion of political finance scandals over recent years, yet the Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) suggests New Zealand is relatively immune from corruption. What is the truth? Do the scandals that have recently dominated domestic politics fall outside the definition of political corruption? Is there more sound and fury than substance in these scandals? Or is the TI CPI missing out on the measurement of the increasing appearance of corruption? I’m currently doing some research on these issues, and this blog post is a chance to briefly raise some of the issues involved. [Read more below]

 

Matt McCarten for Mana – the return of the left

Matt McCarten’s candidacy in the Mana by-election is one of the most promising developments on the New Zealand left for many years. Not only does this mean that the by-election just became much more interesting, McCarten’s campaign has much wider political ramifications – for example, it could be the launching pad for a new party to fill the gaping big hole on the left of the political spectrum in New Zealand. This blog post looks at why McCarten is standing in the election, whether he could actually win the seat, who might support him, and what it all means for Labour and the Greens. [Read more below]

 

‘We are not for the Hobbit workers, and we are not against them’ – Labour Party

The industrial dispute over the filming of the The Hobbit in New Zealand is a long way from reaching the status of seminal political events in New Zealand history such as the 1951 waterfront lockout or the 1981 anti-Springbok tour. But it’s certainly got some similarities. As with those highly important events that divided the country, the Labour Party has been highly pragmatic in its attempts to keep its distance lest any actions or statements of principle have any possibility of damaging its electoral popularity. So just as in 1951, when Labour Party leader Walter Nash declared that ‘We are not for the waterside workers, and we are not against them’, again in 2010 Labour is essentially saying the same thing, desperately avoiding having to take the side of the workers against the torrent of the campaign against them. [Read more below]

 

Chris Carter and the state of the Labour Party

In the extraordinary breakdown of the relationship between MP Chris Carter and the Labour Party all the participants have come out of it looking rather pathetic. Certainly no players in this latest parliamentary soap opera appeared to be operating along lines of principle – instead, they have all proved themselves to be rather self-serving and without principle. Thus, the whole affair has been a good case study of the state of the modern Labour Party as well as wider parliamentary politics in New Zealand. Rather than being about the big issues in politics, the dispute seemed remarkably pitiful and personal. Indeed, it is extraordinary that what has mostly been a rather trivial affair has resulted in history making whereby Carter has become the first ever MP to be expelled from both the parliamentary Labour caucus and the wider Labour Party. And yet it’s still not clear exactly what his crime was, apart from being a dissenting party member who acted like most maneuvering politicians, using subterfuge and plotting in an attempt to further their own ends. Frankly, Chris Carter’s beef with his party was simply about his mistreatment by the leadership, and the leadership’s beef with him was that he had become an embarrassment and a media distraction – which is not exactly ‘meaningful politics’. Yet, despite all this ‘real-politicking’, there is actually a deeper ideological issue involved. Carter’s expulsion can be seen as a signal of Phil Goff’s strong desire to expunge all elements from the party that in the public’s mind represent the ‘bad old days’ of the Helen Clark Labour Government. It seems that Chris Carter personifies the socially liberal, nanny-state politics and arrogance that saw Labour turfed out of office, and therefore he had to be marginalised from the new-look Labour Party. I spoke about some of this on TVNZ News recently – watch the interview here – and this blog post elaborates on some of my arguments. [Read more below]