liberation

The Act Party loses its soul

Whenever a political party ceases to be relevant and loses its core reason to exist – effectively losing its ‘political soul’ – all manner of bizarre and dysfunctional personal behaviour arises and dominates the internal life of that organization. That’s what we’re currently seeing with the meltdown of the Act Party. For some time now within Act the focus on the ‘political’ has been replaced with that of the ‘personal’; what once was an intellectual powerhouse of the right with a coherent political goal and idealism has been transformed into a petty, personality-driven, feudal-like competition between ambitious and narcissistic individual egos. Instead of ideology, vision, and cohesion structuring such a party, we now see Act driven by desperation, bitter rivalries, free-flowing allegations, infighting and dirty tricks. Without a political soul, talented individuals in Act have been transformed into heavily flawed and unlikeable politicians. Without the dynamic of a higher-vision, the now extremely pragmatic Act has become an empty shell of a party, and what we’re seeing is the remnants bouncing around inside it. [Read more below]

Destiny Church’s Family Party splits up

Not only is the Destiny Church facing all sorts of internal ructions relating to its financial affairs and control, but the Christian political party that is an outgrowth of Brian Tamaki’s church - the Family Party - has just applied to cancel its registration with the Electoral Commission, and hence dissolve itself. The Family Party – one of three Christian-based parties that sought the party vote in the 2008 election – originally went under the name of 'Destiny New Zealand', until a major reconfiguration occurred prior to the 2008 general election. 

The Family party history

Centred on the evangelical and fundamentalist Destiny Church of televangelist, Brian Tamaki, the Family party was essentially a reconfigured and re-branded version of the Destiny New Zealand Christian political party that operated between 2003 and 2007. Tamaki and his church wound up the Destiny party in an attempt to create a larger Christian party that would incorporate the main Christian leaders from rival parties, including Gordon Copeland and Philip Field. Such a grand merger never eventuated, but the new party launched and registered in 2007, with Destiny Church’s Richard Lewis as leader and the deputy leadership taken by Paul Adams, a former United Future MP and pastor at the Pentecostal City Impact Church. The party concentrated its efforts on winning votes from Māori and Pacific voters, especially in South Auckland, but in the 2008 election won only 8,176 party votes (or 0.35 per cent of the total vote).

The deregistration process

The application to cancel the Family Party’s registration with the Electoral Commission is made under Part 4 of the Electoral Act 1993, and has been done so by the party’s secretary, Anne Williamson. The Electoral Commission says that anyone who wishes to comment on the application may do so by sending an email to email [email protected] by 5.00pm, Wednesday, 10 March 2010.

The Act Party – two factions fight for control

The Act Party’s divisions and future prospects are examined in Radio New Zealand National’s latest Focus on Politics programme by Catherine Hutton (which you can listen to or download here). I was interviewed for the programme, speaking about Act’s schisms and the recent damage to Act’s electoral brand. In the blog post below, I elaborate on what I spoke about on Focus on Politics. I argue that with the Act Party having now been in government for well over a year – a tumultuous year for the party – its annual conference is a chance for both party members and the leadership to draw up a balance sheet about Act’s successes and failures, to sort out the internal schisms that nearly split the party in 2009. Furthermore, the conference would allow the politicians to try and plot a way forward whereby the party might reverse its current popularity and credibility slump, but ultimately the future depends on who will triumph out of the two different factions in the Act – the pragmatists and the radicals. The history of another minor ‘flank’ party – the Alliance – also in coalition with a more conservative major party, is instructive in this regard. [Read more below]

National’s 2008 election campaign

The National Party’s 2008 general election campaign strategy was widely criticised for being conservative and uninspiring. There were three main integral elements that contributed to this blandness: an ideologically-centrist election platform, a relatively policy-free approach, and a general ultra-cautious attempt to avoid mistakes or cause offence to any voters. These are the issues that I focus on in the section on the National Party within my chapter entitled ‘Party Strategy and the 2008 Election’ which is part of the recently published book Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig). This blog post is the seventh of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book, and it constitutes the original draft section about National that I wrote for my chapter. Subsequently this draft was substantially reworked, edited, and condensed for the final book, so please see the published book for the final and ‘authoritative’ version. [Read more below]

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

The left is generally far too quick to toss around the term fascist at its enemies, which usually displays the left's ignorance of what the term actually means. Nonetheless, here's an interesting (and long) argument by Naomi Wolf on why the US appears to be moving through the following ten steps towards fascism: 1 Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy; 2 Create a gulag; 3 Develop a thug caste; 4 Set up an internal surveillance system; 5 Harass citizens' groups; 6 Engage in arbitrary detention and release; 7 Target key individuals; 8 Control the press; 9 Dissent equals treason; and 10 Suspend the rule of law. See: Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

Political journalism is just about dead. In New Zealand we have very little informative and critical journalism to help us see what lies below the world of surface appearances (especially with the ongoing cuts in journalism). That's why it worth trying to see the fascinating documentary series entitled The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom by Adam Curtis, which has just screened on the BBC in the UK. This three-party series explores the dominant anti-collective ideology that views human beings as selfish, mistrustful, isolated individuals and which has been incredibly influential on politics and general life in the west since the end of the cold war. [Read more below].

Conservative decline

Conservatism appears to be on the wane in the US - particularly the Christian right. According to Will Hutton, writing recently in the Observer, there has been a swing in the cultural pendulum, and conservative christianity is falling out of favour in terms of politics, and secular America is reasserting itself. Those that think that conservative Christians are going to far in imposing their religious values on the country now amount to 49% - up from 45% about a year ago. Indicative of this, a recent best-selling book is creating a stir. "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris 'ridicules religion and ruthlessly exposes the inadequacies of the Bible' by pointing out the parts of the book that advocate stoning and slavery etc. As Hutton also points out, it's indicative that the current Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination - Rudi Giuliani - is a three-time married man who goes on gay rights parades.

Religious tolerance vs respect

A National Statement on Religious Diversity is currently being drafted. Apparently some religious participants are demanding more than mere religious tolerance from NZ society - they want 'respect'. It's all a bit laughable really, but this is an area where free speech could be curtailed. I totally agree with Kiwiblog that 'tolerance' is the appropriate term, that no religion deserves automatic respect, and secularists need to keep on eye on such developments.

Milton Friedman – The Supply-sider moves into deficit

There’s been a lot of tributes to the departed intellectual godfather of the “free market”, Milton Friedman. But as the Guardian’s chief economist points out, while ‘policy makers pay lip service to Friedman's ideas, they behave like Keynesians’ because Friedmanite policies were tried and failed. Read more below:

UK Conservatives tilt left; voters get cynical

The Conservative Party in the UK continue their attempts to outflank New Labour in the political centre by updating their social policy. Greg Clark, a shadow minister and confidant of David Cameron, is calling on the Tories to make poverty and inequality central issues and ditch the party's 'out of date' ideas about welfare. He wants the party to be less influenced by the old ideas of Winston Churchill and listen more to the liberal Guardian newspaper's leader social commentator. Meanwhile, former Tory Chairman and marketing guru, Lord Saatchi, has published a pamphlet entitled In Praise of Ideology, in which he says people are losing faith in politics because there is so little difference between the parties: 'The pragmatism of the centre ground turns politics into a commodity market - because pragmatism leads to opportunism, which leads to cynicism.' He says that the failure of young people to vote is a rational reaction, and we now have a 'super-cynical electorate' precisely because of the search for the centre ground.

The good ol' conservatives

Chris Trotter’s latest column sings the praises of good ol’ conservatives like Jim Bolger. But instead of recalling the Bolger days of the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act, benefit cuts, and engineered mass unemployment, Trotter only seems to remember National joining Labour’s bicultural consensus and negotiating the treaty settlements. He seems to be asking ‘Where have all those kind, compassionate National Party members gone?’ Read more below:

77% of EU citizens disapprove of Bush

The Economist reports that a survey of European public opinion revealed rising disapproval of George Bush's handling of international affairs. The survey, conducted by the German Marshall Fund, found that 77% of European Union citizens disapproved of the American president, up from 56% four years ago.

Tory terrorists?

On the Guardian website, Brenden O'Neill argues that radical political Islamists sound a lot like Daily Mail-reading Little Englanders. O'Neill correctly points out that 'both are suspicious of modernity, both view the masses as lazy and vulgar, and both wish to turn the clock back to simpler, more humble times.' A very interesting opinion piece, with a lot of good debate to follow it.