Policy Matters

Where do the Greens fit in?

2012-01-24T18:19:00.000+13:00

I’ve been asked this question by a reader. The Greens got my prize for the best campaign last year, and (more importantly) they got their best-ever result, with 14 MPs. But let’s look at where their strongest support is coming from: it’s most strongly (but not exclusively) middle-class urban electorates. The Greens’ shift to the centre under the new leadership obviously paid off last election. But their success was also partly due to Labour’s poor showing. The fact that many Green-party voters split their electorate vote with the local Labour candidate shows a degree of divided left loyalties, and that could swing Labour’s way on party votes in 2014 if Labour gives the right signals.

Russell Norman’s appeal to small business owners last year show how the Greens are now doing well with the urban knowledge workers and a certain type of petit-bourgeois self-employed or entrepreneurial class – those with slightly alternative ideas about capitalism, I guess. But they are not so favoured in the very wealthy or the very poor suburbs.

So, again, the sad story is that the three most successful parties will all be circling like sharks around a shrinking school of fish. The Greens did really poorly in the three low-income South Auckland electorates and they fared not very well in most Maori electorates. They don’t do well on traditional blue electorates, but they do do well on Labour’s traditional territory. Wellington Central stands out as the Greens’ best result (they got more party votes there than Labour); but Auckland Central performed well for them too, for instance.

Labour and the Greens appear to be stealing votes off one another, while the centre-right romps home to victory (for the time being). In as much as anything is really predictable in politics, this last excellent result for the Greens could be a high-tide mark. As Labour regains support, it will be partly at the Greens’ expense (though NZ First is bound to suffer too). I would be surprised if the Greens equal or better their 2011 party vote in 2014.

So, on hard-nosed electoral grounds, there is no point in the Greens sticking up for the poor and marginalized any longer, because the poor and marginalized are simply not responding to them – or simply not voting at all.

The party with the most to gain next time around, if their leader can get the tone right, is the Mana Party. There is a huge untapped pool of disfranchised voters in South Auckland and elsewhere, including the Maori rolls, that could help them take off next time. In my last post I was a bit dismissive of their 1% showing, but let’s wait and see if the three years ahead give them time to build up a better support base.

Heads, National wins – tails, Labour loses

2012-01-22T21:20:00.000+13:00

One big feature of the last election was the low voter turn-out. From an estimated eligible population of 3,276,000, the number enrolled was 3,070,847. That’s a 93.74% enrolment rate. But 2,257,336 votes were counted, or only 68.9% of the estimated eligible population. There were one million or more eligible citizens who did not vote. Enough silence to transform the political landscape (or not)!

Traditionally it’s thought that a low turn-out is bad news for Labour, and the last election reinforces that. Looking at the results for each general electorate, there is a negative correlation between the number of party votes for Labour by electorate and the total number of votes. This is particularly noticeable in South Auckland electorates (those who saved Labour’s arse in 2005!). In Maori electorates, the turnouts were consistently very low. Only 56.7% of people on the Maori rolls actually voted. People who otherwise might have voted Labour were the ones most likely not to vote at all.

Here’s another telling statistic: 762,897 people voted for a Labour candidate in their electorates; but only 614,964 gave Labour their party vote. Labour could have won close to 34% of the party vote if loyalties to local Labour candidates had been equal to loyalty to the party as a whole. So, even those who did get out and vote, and who were supportive of local Labour MPs, were often splitting their votes. Remember the debate about Labour’s election billboards?

It’s an easy bet that those one million non-voters are younger, poorer and more probably unemployed than the average New Zealander. Any Labour leader who can connect with those people could be on to a winner. But how likely is that? Consider the risks of trying to woo them, only to find that they still won’t vote, because they just can’t relate to the white faces on the TV screen. We are talking about cleaners, kitchen hands, check-out counter operators, and illiterate unemployed youth. Many of them who have jobs are working on election day and/or may not have thought about voting at all.

What’s the alternative, then? In marketing terms, National and Labour are competing for a shrinking demographic of voters: that is, the middle-class voters, and not the poorer non-voters about whom Labour has forgotten. Championing the rights of those at the losing end of the spectrum is no longer a viable electoral proposition for this Labour Party. The Mana Party tried to fill that gap, but it got them hardly any votes at all (one per cent!)

This is the sad fact of New Zealand society today, as we have become more diverse and more unequal. Those who most need to be heard are abandoned politically and economically by the major 'left' party – and they in turn are abandoning the ballot-box. They simply go un-represented politically, and their voices are silenced.

Like any major party, Labour has to straddle a wide social contradiction – in their case, between the need to capture the middle-class centre, and the lower-paid workers and the unemployed. If the priority is to gain office, Labour will be tempted to cater more to the former (who vote) and less to the latter (who don’t). But then Labour loses a very large potential support base (one that National has had no chance of winning) and has to compete with National on their common turf. Labour’s unearned reputation for being ‘socialist’ and ‘soft on welfare’, however, means it may only win that contest on those occasions when the middle class gets so fed up with National they decide it’s time for a change. That leaves Labour, like before, as the party of the exception, rather than the norm.

The worst possibility is that a demagogic far-right party hoovers up those unclaimed low-income voters… If that happens, I know whom to blame.

Maori seats: Why do they exist?

2012-01-17T15:51:00.000+13:00

Provision for originally four Māori seats was first made back in 1867. Until that time, eligibility for the male-only vote was then based exclusively upon property ownership, effectively disfranchising Māori men, as Māori land was mainly communally owned. It was pointed out in the House during the debate that Māori owned three quarters of the North Island at the time and paid a considerable sum in tax to the Crown, and yet lacked representation from among their own people. On the other hand, there was also opposition from parliamentarians due to their reservations about special measures for Māori. The initial legislation that created the four seats only extended for 5 years, however, as it was considered a temporary measure until such time as Māori lands were converted to individual titles (in itself a controversial policy) (Sorrenson 1986).

In 1876, the legislative provision for Māori seats was extended indefinitely, as MPs were afraid that amalgamation of the rolls would have an adverse effect on their electoral results. Māori voters could have swung marginal electorates. The Māori seats also survived the change to universal franchise and the removal of the property qualification in the 1890s. Later on, from the 1930s until the 1990s, they were an important part of the Labour Party’s electoral support thanks to a deal between Labour and the Ratana Church (Sorrenson 1986). As the bulk of Māori still lived rurally, the conservative National Party, on the other hand, may not have wanted to amalgamate the electoral rolls, as Māori were staunch Labour-voters in those days. Amalgamation would have cost them marginal seats.

The National Party’s submission to the Royal Commission on the Electoral System (1986) recommended abolition of the Māori seats. This was reiterated by the former leader of that party, Don Brash, in 2005. Under MMP (proportional representation, since 1996), the impact on National of amalgamation of the rolls would not now be as drastic as it would have been under the old FPP system – which relied entirely on local electoral pluralities.

The original allocation of four seats represented far less than the proportion of Māori in the population at large, and Māori would have had 14 or 15 seats on a population basis in 1867. But they remained at 4 until 1996. Under MMP their number has grown to 7. But (according to Janine Hayward) it is estimated that the present parliament has all together 20 Māori MPs.

The original allocation of four Māori representatives was under-representative numerically, and hence arguably tokenistic, if not discriminatory. Māori may have considered that they would be worse off politically with no Māori seats at all; even though one can also argue that the Māori seats effectively diluted and silenced real Māori political influence. Labour’s post-War electoral hold on them could actually have encouraged Labour to take Māori voters for granted; and anyway Labour spent most of the time from 1946 to 1996 in opposition, leaving Māori MPs with even less long-term influence on the executive.

Meanwhile, National’s weak polling in those electorates would have meant that party had even less political incentive to take heed of Māori.

We should not forget Māori efforts, especially in the nineteenth century, to create a parallel and autonomous indigenous parliament, due to long-standing grievances about colonisation and the effects of the British legal system. And so, while Māori resist the abolition of the Māori seats, we should not assume that they are entirely satisfied with their separate electoral system either. The 1986 Royal Commission reached the judgement that ‘the system of separate Māori representation has proved to be largely ineffective’ (p. 98). But, while the Commission believed that Māori representation would be better provided for under MMP, even with a common roll, it recommended retaining the Māori seats at least until after the adoption of MMP.

The present-day Māori Party (first elected to parliament in 2005) provides a strong Māori voice in parliament, and relies entirely on Māori seats (though they went from 5 seats to 3 in the 2011 election), and the recently-formed Mana Party holds one Māori seat. For such reasons alone, Māori would oppose the abolition of these seats for the time being. Māori seats may look like an unsatisfactory compromise for Māori – as well as looking like ‘special treatment’ from the point of view of many non-Māori – but New Zealand is far from giving up this unique constitutional provision at present, in spite of controversies about it. The National Party is hardly going to raise the issue of abolition again right now, as they are relying on support from the Māori Party to give them supply and confidence votes in the House.

References:

Royal Commission on the Electoral System (1986) Report of The Royal Commission on the Electoral System 1986: Towards a Better Democracy.

Sorrenson, M.P.K. (1986) A history of Māori representation in Parliament. Appendix B. Report of The Royal Commission on the Electoral System 1986: Towards a Better Democracy.

Controversies ahead for 2012

2012-01-15T10:46:00.000+13:00

In 2008, the post-election support agreement between the Māori Party and the National Party included an agreement ‘to establish a group to consider constitutional issues, including Māori representation’, to be led by the Deputy Prime Minister (Bill English) and the Minister of Māori Affairs (Pita Sharples, co-leader of the Māori Party). The terms of reference include, among other things, Māori representation in Parliament and local government, the constitutional role of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the possibility of a written constitution. The membership of a constitutional review advisory group has already been named, and the process should kick off during 2012, to report to Cabinet initially in 2013.

The structure of the review group and the reporting process suggest that it will all be carefully managed politically by the government of the day. Perhaps a more independent public body would have been preferable (but, speaking as a member of the public and an interested academic, I would say that, wouldn't I!). At this stage, however, this is only a process of informing, discussing and seeking people’s views. The questions of becoming a republic and changing the head of state, moreover, are not explicitly a part of the terms of reference, but there is no bar to their being discussed, and they are bound to be brought up anyway. We do have an enthusiastic republican movement in New Zealand, but, in my opinion, the controversial matters of Māori representation (and the separate electoral rolls) and the constitutional status of the Treaty do need to be resolved first, before we get into the full debate about republicanism, and so this step-by-step approach seems quite wise.

It is inconceivable, for instance, that we could adopt a written constitution without wide public debate and a referendum. But given some of the issues included in this present constitutional review, the debate could easily get heated. I'd watch this space, if I were you, as it could prove to be an interesting 'sleeper' issue for the coming year or more. And this process will have to go on alongside the Electoral Commission's review of the MMP system, now that voters have decided to retain it. Interesting times.

In future posts, if there's interest, I may cover more background on the Maori seats and the constitutional status of the Treaty.

More on the referendum

2011-12-14T10:46:00.000+13:00

Due to the dramatic differences in informal vote numbers across electorates - and hence a skewing of the distribution of Part B preferences - it's hazardous to draw exact conclusions from correlations across the different votes. Also, the figures I have are aggregates of electorates, not ballot-papers individually. I've done the maths anyway, but I won't cite figures, as they are not really precise. Keep in mind that you could vote, for instance, for FPP in Part B, and yet vote either for MMP or for change in Part A.

Overall, the percentage of an electorate's pro-MMP vote in Part A correlates almost one-to-one with informal votes in Part B. So those informal votes must be mostly pro-MMP voters.

Other correlations are weaker, but they suggest that:

1. The more pro-change votes in an electorate, the more votes in favour of both FPP and SM in Part B.

2. The more pro-MMP votes in an electorate, the more votes for STV in Part B.

3. PV seems to be evenly split between pro-MMP and pro-change voters who made any choice in Part B (once one takes out the Maori electorates which showed a strong preference for MMP but also gave PV the second place in Part B).

Points 1 & 2 are unsurprising. One might have expected that PV would correlate more strongly with the pro-change vote, but it was, after all, the least favored of the 4 alternatives.

As I argued in my previous post, the pro-change voters' preferences seem to be divided largely between the familiar (FPP) and the option pushed by the 'Vote for Change' lobby-group with Mr Key's support (SM).

It makes sense that pro-MMP voters, if they chose any alternative, would go for STV, as that is the most proportional of the four alternative systems.

Maori electorates were more in favour of PV than the nation as a whole, probably because it delivers 12 Maori seats. If they chose to go on the Maori roll, then presumably they like the idea of more Maori seats.

The Referendum on the Electoral System

2011-12-12T18:27:00.000+13:00

Not only did NZers vote to stay with the MMP status quo, but they were not widely committed to indicating preferences among the alternatives. Of those who did pick an alternative, FPP (the most familiar one) got the most votes, but still well short of a majority, even of valid votes.

The alternative that was pushed by the pro-change lobbyists, Supplementary Member (SM), came in second – or third, if you include ‘no vote’ as a valid option in Part B.

So, the ‘Vote for Change’ lobby was defeated on all counts.

Many voters found it too hard to work out which alternative they preferred, and either left Part B blank or went for the familiar old FPP. Many who favoured MMP may not have wanted to put forward any alternative. We should not conclude that all informal votes were due to lack of knowledge.

Much of the voting was conditioned by what we know (or knew) and are used to. Voters were not really able to weigh up the pros and cons of the five alternatives, especially the unfamiliar ones (SM, STV and PV). If we’d all had perfect knowledge, STV would have done much better, as it is the most proportional, and the pro-MMP result suggests a popular preference for proportionality.

There are some interesting demographic trends in the support for MMP and its alternatives.

Maori electorates are the strongest in support of MMP, along with lower SES electorates. Rural conservative electorates were the biggest supporters of change, especially to FPP.

The message about SM as an alternative was most likely to influence conservative urban electorates, especially in Auckland, but not the rural ones. The right’s dissatisfaction with MMP was thus split between traditional FPP and the half-way house of SM.

Other centre-right voters, especially in the cities, were content with MMP, because many who voted for National this year also voted to keep it. So it was bad timing for the pro-change lobby, and probably a misjudgement on Mr Key’s part to push for SM. Change would have required a much stronger sentiment among centre-right voters that MMP was not delivering the goods for them.

Finally, Epsom voters are somewhat inclined to do what Mr Key wants them to do. Not only did they take the hint about Mr Banks, but they were also the most in favour of SM. Love thy neighbour?

For supporting statistics etc, see the post below.

Referendum facts and figures

2011-12-12T18:21:00.000+13:00

Part A of the Referendum asked if we should keep the MMP system or change to an alternative.

57.8% of valid votes were in favour of keeping MMP. That compares well with the 53.9% in favour of MMP in the 1993 run-off referendum against FPP.

By far the strongest support in favour of MMP in 2011 came from the seven Maori electorates, ranging from 85.5% in Waiariki to 78.9% in Te Tai Tonga. That was closely followed by Mangere (76.7%). Urban, traditionally Labour-held seats tended to be the strongest supporters of MMP, after the Maori seats.

But support for MMP was also strong in some urban blue electorates. Hamilton East was 59.4% in favour of MMP, but was won by National on party vote (51.4%) and candidate vote (8,275 majority). Botany favoured MMP by 55.4% (slightly below the overall result), but National scored 61.1% party vote there, and the National candidate has a 10,741 majority.

By contrast, the strongest support for changing the voting system came from rural and traditionally National-held seats. Clutha-Southland topped the change vote with 55.4% in favour of change.

Ground-zero for MMP politics, the Epsom electorate, was marginally in favour of MMP (50.1% voting to keep it). In Ohariu, 62.0% voted to keep MMP, above the national average. So the pressure on those electorates has not turned their voters against MMP.

Part B of the referendum asked which of 4 alternative voting systems you would choose if there were a change of electoral system.

There is a compellingly strong statistical correlation (0.96) between the percentage of votes in favour of MMP in each electorate and the percentage of informal votes in Part B. Those in favour of MMP were clearly less likely to indicate a preference for any alternative – though some may have thought they weren’t supposed to. So, Waiariki voters returned 48.9% informal votes in Part B, but only 2.2% in Part A.

In Part B, 33.14% of votes nation-wide were informal, and this figure is higher than the percentage of votes in favour of the front-running alternative (FPP) which got 31.19%.

Let’s look, then, at the valid votes only for Part B. As a percentage of valid votes, 46.7% voted for FPP as the favoured alternative. The strongest support for FPP came from rural South Island electorates, beginning with Clutha-Southland (58.1%). The lowest support for FPP came from urban electorates, with no obvious bias towards either National or Labour strongholds. The lowest were Wellington Central (24.5%) and Auckland Central (32.3%). Epsom voters gave relatively low support for FPP (33.2% of valid votes).

While the Maori seats led the vote in favour of retaining MMP, for their valid votes in Part B the most popular alternative was FPP. All but one Maori seat gave higher rates of valid votes for FPP than the national average – but then they also had high rates of informal votes, in the 40s.

Supplementary Member (SM) ran second among the alternatives. It had been promoted by the ‘Vote for Change’ lobby-group with the support of Mr Key. It got 16.14% of all votes nation-wide, and 24.1% of valid votes. Looking only at the valid votes, the six electorates that returned the strongest support for SM were all blue-ribbon Auckland electorates, with Epsom at the top (35.9%). Maori and South Auckland electorates gave the lowest support for SM.

The strongest support for STV was in Wellington Central, with 37.9% of valid votes. Wellington Central was also the least in favour of FPP. Note that STV is used there in local body elections.

Preferential voting (PV) got the strongest support in the 10 Maori and South Auckland electorates, with Waiariki at the top again giving PV 23.4% of valid votes. But these electorates had high levels of informal votes (over 40%), and their valid votes for FPP were higher (45.7 to 51.6%) than for any other alternative. PV got the lowest vote overall.

Data source: Electoral Commission

How defeat can focus the mind

2011-12-11T18:24:00.001+13:00

An oft-noted trend in contemporary democracies is a steady decline in political-party membership numbers. One possible cause of this is the risk-aversion of party elites, and their desire to control things from the top. Members feel irrelevant, and they drop out.

Setting the example for inclusive party rules, though, is the Green Party, which can genuinely boast more democratic internal processes. That gave them two strong co-leaders and a well-supported campaign – and their best result ever. The Maori Party too are well known for 'going back to their people'.

It looks like Labour is taking this idea on board, and there have been very well attended meetings around the country at which the contenders for leader and deputy leader have set out their visions for the party, for the country, and of course for the next election. The winner could one day be our next PM, so that could explain the bigger-than-expected turn-out. Defeat may not be so discouraging to members if they are invited to participate in the future of the party.

Only the caucus get to vote for the party leader under Labour's rules, of course, and this will happen on Tuesday. It's a tough choice for Labour MPs (who are now rather fewer in number), as the candidates are all excellent in their own ways.

But this more open leadership selection process has been a success for Labour. While there are risks associated with revealing internal rivalry, the process has generated considerable media attention for Labour, plus pre-selection public feedback on the candidates, and simultaneously reinvigorating membership interest and involvement. What could have been demoralizing defeat can thus be turned into an opportunity to gather up support again.

There can be no doubt that Labour has to do things differently in future, or suffer humiliation again in 2014. The recent round of party leadership meetings may actually indicate an intention to become, internally, a more democratic and open party. Now, that would be a change all on its own.

Leadership change is about to happen no matter what. But then there is the complicated question of credible policies and narratives about NZ and its future that would be powerful enough to bring disaffected former Labour voters back into the fold - or to inspire young people who have never voted. Anyone who can motivate a good portion of those who abstained last month could be on a winning streak.

What a difference a cuppa makes!

2011-12-06T20:46:00.000+13:00

The National/Act agreement makes policy concessions in favor of the Act agenda that far outweigh the degree of policy-compromise necessary to achieve that party's support. After all, Act is a one-man band. And when you add the policy concessions to Banks's ministerial posts, he walks away with apparently huge prizes. One seat weighed up against 60 did not need to tip the scales that far to the right.

Or, what's really going on is that Key has invited Banks in as a Trojan Horse. The apparent concessions to Act on policy are off-manifesto wish-lists that National already had, and Key can sign up to them and then write it off to that 'weird' system called MMP.

Statutory public-spending cap; charter schools; lighter regulation; tougher welfare; ACC booted out of workers' comp altogether.

Is this Banks's wish list or is it Key's, or a combination of both?

A quick tea break in Epsom was all it took.

Where to now for Labour?

2011-11-30T21:35:00.000+13:00

While the Labour party caucus agonizes over a new leader, it's worth remembering the old saying: "structure follows strategy." Too often people see a change of leader and a reorganization as a solution. But if you haven't worked out what the strategic problem was to begin with, the restructuring may be futile and misguided. (Haven't we all been 'restructured' for no apparent reason!?)

While it may be right for Phil Goff to stand down now and avoid a messy coup, the leadership change may be bungled if people aren't asking the right questions. It's not about internal factions – or it shouldn't be.

Any political party needs a coherent, positive, aspirational message. Too many of Labour's messages were negative ("stop asset sales") or mixed (expand WFF to beneficiaries, but work longer till you get Super). This suggests poor strategic thinking.

Two negative vox-pop comments that I heard about Labour around the campaign really stood out for me:

1. "Socialism is a luxury we can't afford". It's a very long time since Labour was genuinely socialist, so Labour needs to shake off that perception. (But since when was socialism "luxurious" anyway?) Furthermore, Labour has to deal with this contradiction between being seen as "soft" on people deemed "unable to make it for themselves" by voters more in the centre, and being too mean and "neo-liberal" by those on the left. Labour's mixed messages stem from this ideological and factional contradiction.

2. "I don't like National's policies, but I don't want Labour to win." Voter sentiment doesn't come much more difficult than that - from the perspective of the losers. How does Labour turn the voters' dislike of National's policies into a desire for a change to Labour? Renewed leadership is a part of that strategy, but the right strategic messages and policies must be worked out first.

My suggestion is that Labour quickly steal the adjective "aspirational". Let's (us Kiwis) aspire to something more hopeful and full of opportunity. Labour already possesses many of the policies and basic words and ideas that would launch such a strategy. But I suggest that Labour needs to do some soul-searching about this strategic issue BEFORE they choose a new leader. Otherwise it's all just introspective factional stuff, lacking in political strategic thinking.

Get the strategic message right, and then choose the most convincing face to front it.

Winners and losers

2011-11-27T17:24:00.001+13:00

Winners, in alphabetical order:

Act: John Banks won Epsom.

Greens: Since 1999, the Green party vote has gone like this: 5.2, 7, 5.3, 6.7, and has shot up to 10.6 this time. That's a big win for them. But will it fall back once Labour support begins to rebuild? In my eyes, the Greens ran the best campaign too.

Labour: Excluding their final broadcast (only because I was in it), Labour ran the second best campaign. Trouble was, the people just weren't ready for change. But they did win Wigram and Te Tai Tonga.

Mana: Won Te Tai Tokerau, and that's about all.

Maori: Not much you can say there on the winning side, except that they remain at John Key's disposal.

National: Winners in the obvious sense of being back in office. But their party vote jumped from 44.9 to 48. Perhaps 2% of that was cannibalised from Act, but 47.99% (to be more exact) is the highest party vote ever under MMP for any party.

NZ First: Winners in the obvious sense that they are back in the House with 6.8% party vote. That figure, however, is not anywhere near their best (13.3 in 1996, and 10.4 in 2002). And, to get there this time, Peters exploited an own-goal by Key and Banks over tea.

United Future: Dunne won Ohariu.

Losers, in alphabetical order:

Act: A huge loss from 3.7 to 1.1% party vote, and consequent reduction from 5 MPs to 1. They were lucky to avoid oblivion.

Greens: Hard to find a sense in which they lost. It's normal for the Greens to register higher in pre-election opinion polls than on the day, so any disappointment that they didn't get more votes needs to be kept in perspective.

Labour: Their worst result ever under MMP. It can only be up from here.

Mana: Failed to get more than one MP.

Maori: Down from 5 MPs to 3, and more than a third of their party vote lost. The split with Harawira has been very damaging.

National: If you were hoping they'd govern alone, then you may feel it as a loss. Opinion polls were over-rating National consistently, and that's a topic for discussion in itself.

NZ First: They had nothing to lose!

United Future: Narrowly avoided utter defeat this time, but how long can Dunne keep hold of his seat?

So the real winners on the night were National and the Greens. If there were the equivalent of 'man of the match', I'd award it to the Greens - though we'd have to rename it 'persons of the match'.

A Comedy of Errors

2011-11-17T11:24:00.002+13:00

Act I

The year after Don Brash lost the 2005 election for National, Nicky Hager’s book The Hollow Men was published. That book was based on a large quantity of documents, including emails, that had been passed on to Hager, apparently by insiders. The evidence revealed the back-room activities of politicians, including their relations with strategic communications firm Crosby/Textor.

Brash tried to divert attention from the contents of the book by accusing someone of having ‘stolen’ the emails, and a complaint was laid with the Police.

But Brash resigned as leader of the National Party very soon after the publication of The Hollow Men, probably because the evidence presented in it was accurate and damning.

And after three years of investigations, no charges were ever laid, probably because there was no evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.

Nicky Hager later revealed on Radio NZ that, under Key, the National Party had rehired Crosby/Textor. Crosby then sued Hager for defamation, but the case was unsuccessful. So Hager’s evidence has been tested against the law and found to be robust.

Act II

Don Brash and John Banks have recently staged a take-over coup of the ACT Party, presumably so that they can run it as a right-of-centre off-shoot of the National Party and help the government push through some more policies that will favour the rich.

Brash and Banks have both proven to be, in their different ways, political liabilities due to their propensity to make embarrassing comments.

The present tea-party taping scandal continues this whole tradition. The PM has tried to suppress the contents of the tapes by referring the matter to the Police, and to distract attention by making it look like reporters are the bad guys here because they allegedly use tabloid tactics and won’t back off.

Suddenly Key wants the 2011 campaign to be about ‘the issues that matter to New Zealanders’, and no longer about what a nice guy and a good leader he is.

To some extent this shutting-down approach is working for a good portion of Key’s support base, as they see the taping as an illegal invasion of his privacy. The fact that (in my opinion) the conversation was neither illegally taped nor inherently private seems not to have sunk in yet. But I would be willing to bet that no criminal charges will ever be laid for this.

Hager’s book, in 2006, revealed a lot about the behind-the-scenes real world of politics. It is highly likely that the tea-party tape also gives us a peek into that Machiavellian world. That would explain the desperate efforts to suppress it.

But Winston Peters tried the blame-the-media approach in 2008, and it didn’t work for him. It will soon wear thin for Key too. Sooner or later, he has to face the facts.

The winners in the present scandal may be NZ First and United Future, as voters unhappy with a one-party National government under a now-tarnished Key look to alternative centrist parties. The loser could of course be ACT, whose future in Parliament now looks very perilous.

Surely National must lose some votes from the events of the last few days. And they only have their leader to blame, as he helped orchestrate the tea-break. Many potential supporters will be so confused and disgusted that they may not turn out to vote at all. A majority in the House for National looks increasingly less likely.

I don’t see Labour or the Greens gaining much out of this electorally. The Greens had their own scandal to deal with – and they dealt with it swiftly and honestly. Labour wanted to debate the merits of different policies, and this week has distracted from all that. Goff may gain some political capital from this week, but I doubt that it will amount to much.

The manipulation of the Epsom voters and the cup-of-tea meeting have turned out to be bad news all round. In the end, democracy is the loser.

Let’s talk about policy (A Tui billboard idea?)

2011-11-16T09:37:00.000+13:00

I’m taking a proverbial cup of tea, amid the fuss about tape-recordings and billboard-defacings, to take stock of the different directions in which the two major parties would take us in a post-election future.

The Labour Party kicked off its election campaign by trying to focus on policy substance – as well as its historical heritage – and to avoid a personality-based face-off with Mr Key which they knew they wouldn’t win.

National seemed to be happier to let the persona of their leader carry them along, until things got derailed, but they have also released a lengthy list of policies. Many of those ideas got drowned out when they were launched, thanks to the tea-break incident. But their latest welfare policies got some air-time – even though they are only marginal changes, the moral impact of which will far outweigh any budgetary savings.

The odds are in favour of National being in a position to lead the next government, possibly on a govern-alone basis. But their policy planks do suggest that, further down the track, they want to move on with more deregulation, deeper asset sales and more private-sector involvement (e.g. in ACC’s motor-vehicle and off-the-job claims), and seeking a third term to gain a mandate for that.

Hence the importance of keeping the ACT party in Parliament for that long-term job – and hence the extraordinary contortions being made to keep the tea-party tapes suppressed. (It may be that the most incriminating evidence on those tapes comes from Banks’ mouth.) It would be safe to assume that there are wealthy individuals backing Brash and Banks to lead policy debates, as a minor partner, on the right flank in future, if they can survive the next two elections. But that may mean dumping Brash as leader.

If you haven’t already, now is a good time to read Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men, as many of the protagonists in that scandalous story are back (Joyce, McCully, Brash, Key) and they mean business. That book gives an insight into how they work in the back room.

Labour, on the other hand, not only has some distinctive policies compared to National, but, if they are to govern in the foreseeable future (not likely this time, maybe next), it is almost certainly going to require an arrangement with the Greens – and hence substantial policy and office-sharing accommodations for green ideas. A red-green centre-left coalition offers quite different options from their opponents.

As for the Maori Party – still the major indigenous voice – depending on the numbers, there is a danger that they could become a spoiled poodle for a resurgent right, and so they may need to break off the leash altogether and show some teeth after this election. Or will they become one of those centre parties who (to mix metaphors) get into bed with whomever has the most seats – and so run the risk of death by a thousand cuts?

Beneath all the fuss about tapes and billboards, there are always interesting issues of real substance. But, if the Herald on Sunday releases a transcript of the tape this coming Sunday, the final week of the campaign will be dominated by one issue.

Tea-Party-Gate Pt II

2011-11-15T10:09:00.000+13:00

The Tea-Party conversation was not a ‘private communication.’ Anyone who is having a conversation on camera in front of the nation’s media is not having a private conversation. So, in my opinion, the taping of the conversation was not illegal.

There may nevertheless be good ethical reasons for keeping it private. But there is also merit in the opinions of those who are saying that the PM should permit the release of the tapes now, just to end the speculation.

A mood-swing in the campaign has now been precipitated by John (‘I’m relaxed about that’) Key’s loss of cool over the Tea-party tapes, his absurd allusion to ‘News of the World tactics’, and his complaint to the Police. To some, his stand may look principled, but the complaint to the Police is – let’s face it – a way of suppressing the revelation of the tape’s contents, at least until after the Election.

At the PM’s press conference on the matter, when a reporter asked if he knew that the tape had got into the hands of other media, Mr Key – visibly caught off guard and uncomfortable – said he was ‘not aware of that.’ But 3 News was later asking Dr Brash pointed questions about whether Mr Banks supports him as ACT Party leader.

Dr Brash has said in reference to the recording: ‘I’m not fussed actually’ – but we can be fairly sure that he actually is.

Aside from speculating about what’s in the recording, though, the PM’s over-the-top reactions to it have already undermined his own campaign. It’s not just the distraction of an issue that he has beaten up and that is now out of his control, but it’s also the lingering whiff of something rotten.

Tea-Party-Gate

2011-11-13T21:23:00.002+13:00

To release, or not to release the Tea-Party tapes?

The political junkies and the bloggers say yes. But John Key seems not to be his usual ‘relaxed’ self on this occasion, and his office refused permission to publish the recording, and now he has laid a complaint with the Police.

One video recording of the meeting shows a black pouch on the café table. If that was the microphone, concealed inside that pouch, then that is circumstantial evidence that the reporters recorded the conversation deliberately. The Herald, however, claims it was left there inadvertently. But, there was a conspicuous black pouch merely inches from the elbows of both men, so, while the microphone itself was concealed, the pouch was in full view, and it could have been inspected and removed.

Even if the recording was deliberate, the PM’s comparison of this with the scandalous tactics of the UK’s News of the World tabloid is really not credible. NoW went much further than that – including secretive hacking into private phone messages of victims of crimes, and using corrupt police officers.

I'm no lawyer, but, as the PM has now laid a complaint with the Police, let’s check up on what the law says. S 216B of the Crimes Act says: ‘every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years who intentionally intercepts any private communication by means of an interception device.’

Now, the microphone probably fits the description of ‘an interception device.’ There is debate, however, about whether the recording was made intentionally, but there’s little I can add to that question.

The real problem for the prosecution would possibly be in establishing that the tea-party conversation was a ‘private communication.’

S 216A defines ‘Private communication’ as ‘a communication (whether in oral or written form or otherwise) made under circumstances that may reasonably be taken to indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties to the communication.’

So far so good…; but this definition ‘does not include such a communication occurring in circumstances in which any party ought reasonably to expect that the communication may be intercepted by some other person not having the express or implied consent of any party to do so.’

Under the circumstances, having invited the media to the party, and being surrounded by cameras, surely both Key and Banks ‘ought reasonably’ to have expected that their conversation may have been ‘intercepted by some other person’ who did not have their consent to record it. They were, after all, surrounded by reporters!

Just ushering the reporters and others away by a meter or two may not have been sufficient to signal that this had become, by the definition in the Act, ‘a private communication.’

Election Day

2011-11-09T09:24:00.000+13:00

There’s something fabulous about Election Day. Just for one day, the political order dissolves, and ‘the people’ make their way into the polling booths to take representation into their own hands, for one moment each.

The results may be perplexing, as ‘the people’ never speak with a common voice. There isn’t always a clear winner once the votes are counted, as we saw in the most recent elections in Australia and the UK. But I’m perplexed by the question: ‘Who will win the election?’

For many New Zealanders, the ‘winner’ on 26 November will be either Phil Goff or John Key – most probably the latter, it seems. This is the pseudo-presidential image of politics that has become common in our country.

‘The winners’ after the election may really be those individuals who can confidently approach the Governor-General with a claim to be named as his ‘responsible advisers’ – for the time being. That is, the winners are those elected representatives who win the privilege of deciding on his behalf.

‘The winners’, one hopes, are ‘the people’, though, as a democratic election is supposed to be an expression of their will, their values and their preferences.

But everyone knows that that last statement is nonsense, because there is no common popular will, value or preference. And the will, values and preferences of the myriad individuals out there who will vote have already been influenced and formed by messengers more powerful than most of us.

The idea of ‘opinion polls’, for instance, is sheer fantasy – but nonetheless effective at shaping the choices of the people. They would have us believe that the political opinions of people are relatively stable mental constructs, belonging to the people ‘out there’, and waiting to be elicited and counted. But, beside the fact that not all survey respondents are able to express an opinion clear enough to be recorded as such, political opinions are no more than expectations of other people’s expectations.

Holding a political opinion is like holding money. You only do so because you expect that most others expect that it will have much the same value next month as it has this month. A loss of confidence in the value of money leads to a run on the banks, rendering money worthless anyway. The same can happen to opinions – only worse, as money is a state-mandated institution, whereas opinions are free to compete.

The political opinion poll is merely one of the signals of other people’s expectations that help to shape and maintain our own expectations. Add to that the confusing televisual game of claims and counter-claims that the average (poorly informed) voter has to contend with in forming an opinion upon which to vote on Election Day, and we have a very peculiar self-replicating machine indeed.

This has all been an indirect way of describing (as I see it) the problem of why (I estimate) 20 per cent of voters on 26 November may vote for policies that are calculated not to help them to meet their needs. And who will the winners be?

It’s a strange day indeed, Election Day.

MMP: Why is it not working?

2011-11-05T15:00:00.001+13:00

I ask that question not because I think we should vote for a change in the coming referendum - but rather because, going by a couple of critical indicators, MMP is not producing outcomes that we might have hoped for.

The basic trend is that MMP election results are increasingly being dominated by the two major parties, National and Labour. Their combined shares of the party vote over the 5 MMP elections since 1996 are: 62.03, 69.24, 62.19, 80.20, 78.92%. Translated into combined percentage share of seats in the House after the election, the figures are: 67.50, 73.33, 65.83, 80.99, 82.79%.

It's reasonable to predict that the combined National-Labour party vote will exceed 80% this coming election.

Conversely, support for minor parties, all together, has been declining. And there have been significant casualties, such as the Alliance and NZ First. Those 2 parties gained 13 and 17 seats, respectively, after the 1996 election. Remember those days? It's possible that the next election will result in no seats for ACT, a party that, at its best, was getting over 7% of the party vote and 9 seats.

The Greens are the only exception to this downward trend for small parties, and that may be explained by the facts that they have clear principles, which they largely stick by, and they have kept their distance from governing parties over the years. They are likely to make gains in this election, but that could partly be due to voters migrating away from Labour, and hence it may not last.

Are NZ voters not really in tune with a proportional system? If, as opinion polls suggest, NZers give National a majority of seats in the House this election, as well as punishing one more small party (ACT), then it starts to look like there's a kind of nostalgia for the FPP system. Is it as if we are trying to make MMP perform like FPP used to, or even like SMP is supposed to?

The other relevant trend is the decline in voter turn-outs. Now, this is a widespread trend in democracies, and NZers still have a relatively high turn out. So MMP is not necessarily responsible for the decline. But MMP has certainly not encouraged higher turn-outs. It's strange to think that more voters would cast a vote under FPP, even though many of those votes made no difference whatsoever to the result, and yet MMP (with far fewer 'wasted' votes) has been accompanied by declining participation rates.

What's going wrong with MMP?

(See voter turn-out figures in the Social Report)

'The bloke test': Wrong on so many levels

2011-11-04T15:14:00.004+13:00

As if to prove my point (in the previous posting) about the superficiality of contemporary political journalism, stuff.co.nz gave Goff and Key a short quiz today called "the bloke test" in which they are asked a series of light-hearted questions about their past, their preferences and their private lives (nothing seriously compromising or searching, of course, like about religious faith or honesty with money). E.g.: "If your wife cuts your hair short and you hate it, do you tell her?" Both men unequivocally answer "no". Very wise of them too.

Readers can then go to the readers' poll and vote for which of the two they think is "NZ's best bloke." ("Neither" is an option.) John Key came out well ahead on that poll, although I couldn't really see much between the two, and could not for the life me see the point of it all. If one of the leading candidates were a woman, I guess we would never have had to see such trivialities. Or would journalists then only invent trivial questions about wardrobes, make-up etc?

None of this is helping to raise the level of political debate in this country, nor is it helping voters to consider the differences and the merits in the policies on offer at this election. Have reporters lost the plot?

Look behind the mask

2011-11-03T07:53:00.000+13:00

The trouble with TV-driven presidential-style election campaigns is that they rely too heavily on imagery and affect – rather than on analysis of parties’ substantial policies and the values and interests that election pledges are intended to give effect to. Voters are prone to being persuaded by candidates’ ‘looks’ and by how well they present on TV; and so they may unknowingly vote for real-world policies that work against their material interests and social values.

The excessive production of an image of ‘the leader’ for TV-audiences’ consumption creates very fickle reactions. For instance, once the adjective ‘arrogant’ got stuck to Helen Clark’s name in the minds of enough of the public, it signified that things were more or less over for her leadership. She who had once seemed so accessible and caring came to be seen as arrogant and controlling. Never mind the policies.

For many grumpy voters in 2008, the last straw was what they called the ‘anti-smacking’ Bill. They ‘blamed’ Helen for it, even though that was a member’s Bill introduced by Sue Bradford (of the Green Party) and, in its final form, passed with the help of the National Party. Sometimes in politics, perception really is everything!

Today, equally fickle perceptions sustain the image of John Key as relaxed, liberal and down to earth, just like one of us.

Phil Goff, by contrast, was paradoxically described by one of my students as ‘nondescript’: the description you use when you’re not describing someone! It would be a danger, after all, to attribute real qualities to the man right now, as that would upset our pre-election illusions – although he has startled observers by beginning the campaign on some strong notes.

If National gain a one-party majority in the House after the Election, then they could govern New Zealand with the ‘unbridled power’ that Muldoon used to enjoy. MMP makes it hard to reach that goal, but the opinion polls suggest that Key might be close to that – and yet he has to deny that it’s a goal of his, for fear that voters might be put off by such over-weaning ambition.

But would people then see a flip-side to Key’s present nice, liberal, aspirational image?

In any case, I don’t believe we should ever allow any political party to gain a majority of seats in the House. Given the shallowness of our parliamentary institutions, that gives too much power to the executive.

Labour? National? What's the difference?

2011-11-01T20:34:00.000+13:00

I don't really agree with Bryce Edwards' claim that "Labour and National are in virtual agreement on something like 99 per cent of the way society is run" (NZ Herald, 1 Nov.)

But then again, in partial support of his case, I read these words: "The Government is reforming New Zealand’s welfare system with an active, work-based approach, starting with the belief that most people can and will work. We are simplifying the benefit system and taking a long term investment approach to getting people off welfare and into work. This means more intensive support will be provided to people who are capable of working and who are likely to remain on benefit long term without that support."

That could have come from one of the previous Labour-led government's "social development" policy documents. The basic ideas are totally familiar. But it comes instead from the fact-sheet released today by National as part of its election manifesto.

Labour had planned for years to pull all main benefits into one "universal" benefit, but they never did (and I never found out why!). National's election pledge to reduce them to three is a big step in the same direction.

I might add that the total roll on working-age welfare benefits fell during Helen Clark's nine years in office. Given that evidence, the crucial factor for reducing welfare rolls seems to be low unemployment, and government policy follows up a distant second. National can promise all it likes about work-related expectations, sanctions etc - but, without jobs for beneficiaries to go to, their policy will be as good as dog tucker.

Labour and its history lesson

2011-10-29T17:13:00.001+13:00

Labour's opening campaign documentary focused very much on history, and I was happy to see this much-reproduced photograph from the 1913 Waterfront strike appear in that. The picture was taken from a vantage point by Victoria Park, and looks up Franklin Rd on the left and College Hill on the right. If you took a photo from the same position now, the motorway viaduct would block a lot of the view. And you can see how much the plane trees have grown in the last century!

I guess that the 'blood' mentioned on the banner refers to the death of a miner in the strike at Waihi the year before.

Michael Joseph Savage could have been in that crowd, as we know he was involved in the strikes of those days, and that he lived just over the ridge in O'Neill St.

Savage was an Australian who had arrived in New Zealand a few years earlier, in 1908. He and other industrial socialists must have found the lessons of those years hard. But they soon changed their approach, formed a political party, and by 1935 they were in power.

The policies that they brought in had their future generations (that's us!) in mind. They must have realized that, in a civilized society, people should not have to go on strike and to fight the forces of the State in order to get a better deal for the labouring class. Democratic socialists believed that voters would vote for a party that had their interests at heart - and would put that into action. Well, it worked for Savage and co.

Occupy the Beehive

2011-10-26T22:43:00.000+13:00

…that’s the practical aim of politics.

But, ideologically speaking, who will get there first? The protestors, or those being protested against?

One way of understanding National’s current political vulnerability is to propose that the soundbite-free Occupy-just-about-everywhere movement may have (deep down) won more middle-class hearts and minds than any politician of any hue right now. Don’t we all more or less get the point now that unfettered markets, or deregulated capital, have screwed most of us?

The kind of capitalism that John Key represents (and by which he made his personal fortune) is simply not working for the vast majority of us.

The Occupy Wall St protest-claim that virtually 99% of Americans have been left out of the action (or even made jobless and homeless) is not entirely off-mark if applied to New Zealand. And we have known about this for some time now.

If I may quote from my own book:

“An economic study of inequality in gross household incomes over the period 1984 to ’96 concluded that ‘the bottom 80 percent of New Zealand income earners suffered a reduction in their share of the total incomes paid out, while the top 5 percent enjoyed a 25 percent gain after twelve years of painful restructuring’ (Podder and Chatterjee, 1998, p. 25). This trend was driven by cuts in welfare benefits and by the significant employment advantage held by high-skilled earners in high-income occupations. In fact, the rate of increase in New Zealand’s income inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient for household equivalent disposable income) during the mid-1980s to 1990s was far more rapid than that for Australia, Canada, France, Sweden or the US (Statistics NZ data, cited in O’Dea and Howden-Chapman, 2000). The periods during which increases in inequality were greatest were characterised by tax-cuts for high- and middle-income earners” (Duncan 2007, p. 227).

Things did not improve much under Clark’s Labour-led government – although Working for Families appeared to help reduce inequality a little. And then the 2008 Crash, the rise in unemployment, tax-cuts and (proposed) asset-sales for the well-off, have not assisted to reduce inequalities since then.

National’s weak-point, then, is in the failure to represent and to defend materially the very classes (the middle classes) upon whom it has historically relied for propelling it into the Beehive. Once the RWC effect wears off, ‘hard-working’ middle New Zealand has little to celebrate, in terms of economic prosperity.

And middle New Zealand has little to gain from National’s key forthcoming policy platforms: competitive provision of workers’ compensation is good for insurance-company executives and shareholders, and that’s about all; asset-sales benefit only the richer ‘Mums and Dads’; bashing the beneficiaries gives middle income-earners a feeling of Schadenfreude, tinged with insecurity… and nothing more.

What middle-class New Zealanders can look forward to is leaner public services, meaner employment policies, oil on our beaches, cow-shit in our rivers.

In 2008, many middle-class voters said: ‘Key made a fortune for himself; so he will do the same for the country.’ For those who can’t personally see much economic gain, if any, from the last three years, and in the light of an emerging politics of class-inequality, that positive view could easily flip into: ‘Key’s one of the 1%; so he doesn’t represent us.’

The irony is, though, that an embarrassing three-way handshake may have done more electoral damage than any hard economic realities.

And what I have yet to describe is an even deeper problem that National has exposed from behind its ‘relaxed, liberal’ façade: a tendency to authoritarianism. More about that later…

Meanwhile, watch this.

How did Key get away with it?

2011-10-24T22:08:00.000+13:00

The way to dominate politics in the MMP system is to stake out the opposition’s territory.

Labour’s ‘third way’ managed this in the 2000s by rejecting National’s worn-out neo-liberal idea that social policy must be subordinated to economic policy, and replacing it with a more subtle neo-liberal idea that social and economic policy depend reciprocally upon one another. Labour claimed both sides of the pitch, and then they put that into action by raising taxes by stealth (or 'fiscal creep') and hence delivering consecutive budget surpluses and reducing public debt.

Labour ‘squared the circle’ of the politics of the day, and they succeeded (for a good three terms in office) in taking that crucial middle-ground support. New left movements (New Labour, the Alliance, the Greens) came along, but Clark’s Labour Party captured and tamed them each time, while quietly allowing a fundamental monetarist consensus to continue unchallenged.

Such a political manoeuvre is bound to have its weak side, though. For Helen Clark’s strategy, a critical vulnerability arose from leaving their traditional working-class base unrepresented, partly due to obscuring class with ethnicity.

Since then, under Key, National has pulled off a similar political three-card trick, but under (obviously) different conditions. They’ve been sufficiently successful at it that left-wing commentator Chris Trotter went so far as to say that National now is mainstream New Zealand.

So, how did Key and co. do it?

Their first trump-card was to claim that they knew all about a so-called ‘underclass’. To this day, most New Zealanders can probably recall Key’s PR visit to McGechan Close (state house territory) and his invitation to a Maori girl to accompany him to Waitangi (shades of Norm Kirk). Thus he reached deeply and symbolically into traditional Labour territory – the very territory that Labour had left unguarded and untended for more than two decades.

The next trick was to use tax-cuts to appeal to ‘hard-working New Zealanders.’ The latter term cuts across working-class New Zealanders and middle-class New Zealanders in one go, thus implicitly representing the unrepresented. (Who, regardless of class, doesn’t want to be represented as ‘hard-working’?)

By substituting the ideological term ‘hard-working’ for the traditional working-class/middle-class (or blue-collar/white-collar) distinction, they managed to obliterate the class politics that used to limit their appeal as a traditional conservative party, and hence to stake out a wider territory for themselves. After the 2008 election, the unexpected marriage of convenience with the Maori Party then helped them to obliterate ethnic-identity political boundaries as well.

But what happened to the under-class? Here comes the third trump-card: National’s rhetoric separated ‘hard-working’ New Zealanders from ‘not-working’ New Zealanders (on working-age welfare benefits). Thus the ‘hard-working’ identity could be shored up (among those who still had jobs after the 2008 Crash) by distinguishing itself from that ‘under-class’ of the unemployed. That's the same 'under-class' which John Key had used earlier for political gain – and then abandoned for ‘welfare’ policies that attack the supposed ‘dependency’ issues of that same beneficiary ‘under-class.’

In the meantime, this ideological card-game has concealed the ace that pulls off a large-scale upward mobilization of wealth, by means of tax-cuts and asset-sales. The latter policy will convert assets that presently we all own into assets owned by the few of us with spare capital and an appetite for investment (i.e., the wealthy). Shares will be conveniently priced to ensure that the (rich) Mum-n-Dads’ investments are a safe bet.

Welfare and employment policies meanwhile have chipped away at the incomes of the lowest-paid.

If you were one of the 50% of us who didn't see the sleight of hand, Key has managed to walk on water as a 'telegenic' persona.

He was initially adopted by National’s insiders as ‘the candidate from central casting,’ and he has (most of the time) met their expectations.

But, as Athens burns, as dictators die, as the RWC ends, as the election’s knock-out match looms, and as some of our sacred beaches get polluted by the oil of neo-liberal deregulation, National’s card-playing luck may be running out.

So, what's National's weak point? More on this later...

The return of class politics?

2011-10-21T08:50:00.001+13:00

Athens is on strike. After all, why not? Why should Greek public-sector workers pay the price for other people’s greed and dishonesty? Even the Greek judges are working to rule. Middle-Eastern dictators are falling, or have fallen, and one has just been killed. Tens of thousands of students are protesting in Chile. The Occupy Wall St movement has spread to cities all over the globe. The latter are mainly peaceful protests (Rome was an exception), but their main point (‘capitalism has let us down,’ to put it mildly) gains quiet consent from a wide range of the world’s middle classes.

Back home in Godzone, the recently-unthinkable has suddenly become an election issue. Economic inequality is said (by almost everyone now) to be a bad thing; and the Labour Party (after years of abandoning class in favour of identity politics) has said we need to stop applying the ‘let the market decide’ principle to wages, and instead to raise the minimum wage, and to apply industry-wide terms and conditions of employment, overseen by a Workplace Commission. It sounds a bit like the system that we had from 1893 to 1987.

Business-class critics and their newsroom scribes say Labour's policy would take us back only as far as the 1970s, though (‘gruesome echoes of the unlovely 1970s’ as the scaremongering Press put it) – as if the situation of the average New Zealander were worse then, with national awards, than it is now!

Meanwhile, Mr Key and his party have suffered a series of blows to their credibility (e.g.: What were the SAS doing in Afghanistan? Did the PM knowingly mislead the House about what S&P think? Do asset-sales not mean a huge gift to the rich?), and so they find themselves fighting fires (and mopping up oil). This is probably not enough (yet) to spoil their chances of regaining office, but that absolute majority in the House that they were hoping for looks less probable by the day.

The playing-field of politics is changing shape. Can political parties come up with sensible responses? Do they even understand what’s going on?

More on this next week…

The Rena as a public-policy case study

2011-10-18T21:05:00.004+13:00

Although some have tried, it would be illogical to 'blame' the grounding of the Rena on the deregulation of New Zealand's coastal shipping back in the 1990s. After all, we will never know if such a disaster might have happened anyway under the old system. And let's not forget the pre-deregulation Wahine tragedy!

But, the fact is that the good ship Rena (and her foreign crew) would not have been plying our waters were it not for deregulation.

The Rena hit the Astrolabe reef at 2.18 am, 5 October. The owner and manager of the ship is the Greek firm Costamare. Costamare is also the parent company of Daina Shipping which was responsible for contracting the salvage firm, Svitzer Salvage whose global head office is in Copenhagen. The salvage contract is a standard Lloyd's contract, and hence is governed by English law.

Costamare has third-party cover with the Swedish Club, a non-profit mutual insurer, obviously based in Sweden. This cover includes pollution liabilities, and the insurer has promised to pay out 'in full' but they mentioned no exact sum at this time.

The vessel is chartered by the Mediterranean Shipping Company, based in Geneva, Switzerland. MSC is a significant customer of Costamare, leasing numerous vessels. MSC say: "MSC Group confirms that it is neither the owner of the involved vessel nor responsible for its management or the crew on board." As of today, in spite of denying legal liability, they have offered $1 million to help with the clean-up.

Although owned by a Greek firm, the ship is registered in Monrovia, Liberia. This is a common practice that is widely regarded as a way of evading the high labour, health and safety and environmental standards of developed countries. In return for the fee paid to the Liberian government, the ship-owner gets to evade European law. See the report by Al Jazeera.

Liberia is hardly noted for an absence of corruption, and one wonders what happens to those fees. And it also seems unlikely that any law-suit to hold them accountable will get anyone very far.

This globalized, non-transparent, cost-cutting approach is furthered by the ship's operator hiring a Filipino crew.

But Costamare's website boasts about high standards regarding employment, safety and environmental protection. They have issued an unreserved apology so far, but it remains to be seen what liabilities they will incur, or what assistance they will front up with, other than the standard insurance excess.

Having outlined those facts, let's bring the matter back to Wellington. Maritime NZ was created in 2005, and was previously known as the Maritime Safety Authority. The latter was created by a deregulation-led reorganization in 1993. It was split off from the Ministry of Transport as a Crown entity, giving it a greater degree of operational independence from the Minister.

The deregulation of coastal shipping of the 1990s was justified by the then Minister of Transport, Jenny Shipley, in the House in 1997, on the grounds of reduced cargo-fees and expanded services. (See Hansard). Such cost-cutting was achieved at the expense of New Zealand operators and crews, according to Harry Duynhoven, then MP for New Plymouth.

The good ship Rena, her oil, and her cargo are now our problem. This event arises from a context created by public-policy decisions made some time ago, and the prosecution of the Captain and navigator will not answer all the questions. The complexities that lie ahead in determining who pays for the clean-up will be huge, thanks to the globalization of the industry. I doubt that the companies concerned will compensate us for all of the costs and consequences, and the NZ taxpayer will probably end up footing much of the bill - not to mention the huge voluntary contributions of people out there on the beaches.

The Rena

2011-10-14T09:49:00.003+13:00

The name of the Filipino captain of the Rena is all over the internet, but I won't provide any links in case that's in breach of the court order.

But one on-line report from the Philippines suggests that crew have been sent home already – 8 on Monday and 11 more by now – compared with the Herald's report, which says: 11 put on flights yesterday and 6 are still here.

Who do we believe? Have the crew been spirited out to avoid any press attention?

Another interesting, unrelated, issue that affects the Philippines embassy and the election arose last week. The Philippines consulate (in Lake Rd, Takapuna, Auckland) is in a large house with land around it, and a billboard promoting local National-party candidate Maggie Barry appeared on the grounds in front of the house, only a few meters away from the Philippines flag.

It's now been removed, but only because it was pointed out to the consulate that any association between a foreign government and a party in the general election was completely inappropriate. It was no big scandal, but the billboard just had to be removed. The story was reported by the North Shore Times, with a photo of the offending billboard.

I can't supply a link to the story as, oddly enough, the editors of the North Shore Times (a part of the Fairfax network), have chosen not to place the item on line.

Key's worst-yet week in office?

2011-09-30T22:22:00.000+13:00

With no 'big' rugby matches this week to blot out the real news, politics came back to the fore, and things went very very badly for the government. Let's list the disasters:

Another Kiwi soldier killed in Afghanistan. My sympathies go to the grieving family. (But the government's claims that he died in the cause of 'fighting terrorism' or 'making the world a safer place' are very unconvincing, if we look closely at what the conflicts in that country are really like. Example.)

The PM's ducking and diving over the difference between 'mentoring' and 'combat'. (How can we forget the Minister of Defence, Wayne Mapp's moment of honesty about 'a substantial combat component'? As if that weren't enough, the Chief of Defence said of the SAS role: 'They need to be in the midst of the action to be able to provide the mentoring.')

A freelance journalist in Afghanistan telling us that the SAS's raid was misguided from the beginning and was not approved by the local provincial governor.

Then the economy: The sovereign-debt rating downgrade by two credit-rating agencies.

Then the torture inflicted upon the National Party in the House all week over their unconstitutional video-surveillance legislation.

What's more, the National Party's right-hand support partner, ACT, caused all the wrong kinds of headlines over its leader's politically 'dopey' comments. (There must be more dope to come, surely!)

Could things get much worse? (Yes. The ABs could lose a knock-out match. Or, a whole range of other things could go wrong too.)

Could this last week signal the beginning of the end of those over-50% poll ratings for National? Wait and see.

But, does John Key really want another term in office after this? My gut instincts tell me that he's sick of the job, and would happily kick back and live quietly off his fortune. Wouldn't you?

Brash-Test Dummies

2011-09-05T08:57:00.002+12:00

At ACT’s Auckland regional conference last weekend, Don Brash showed us, in the space of one speech, why he will fail to lift the party out of the 2 to 3 per cent zone.

We know that he has a poor record when it comes to elections, and we know his party is low in the opinion polls. But, I have some gratuitous political advice for Dr Brash.

First: Don’t imitate the cheesy nationalism of Winston Peters (“Our children will grow up cheering for the Wallabies”). You can’t be an advocate of free trade and then bemoan the growing influence of more powerful trading partners, Don.

Secondly: Don’t advocate policies that could enrage the comfortable Epsom voters upon whom you are relying so heavily.

Imagine the Epsom voter, in a gorgeous peaceful tree-lined street, sipping tea or Scotch, hearing that Dr Don has a remedy for the country’s problems: namely, the freedom of the next-door neighbours to turn their house into a brothel, or a liquor store, or a Destiny Church… without those shiny-arsed blighters at the Auckland Council getting in the way, or that left-wing Mayor.

In Brash’s ideal city, “any activity would be permitted” on any property, conditional only upon meeting the most basic of geo-technical and safety requirements.

What’s more, he wants to have this freedom of the neighbours to do whatever they jolly-well like enshrined as a fundamental right in the NZ Bill of Rights Act. So there!

His main aim, though, is the removal of the Auckland metropolitan urban limits, and hence the freeing up of rural land for subdivision, more sprawl, more motorways, etc. But you can be sure that there are many conservative and comfortable lifestylers out in those rural areas (that is, potential ACT voters) who would be horrified to think that Dr Don wants Auckland suburbia to spread out to meet them.

But Brash tried to cover his tracks by claiming that his policy for land-owners’ unfettered freedom was not meant for the wealthy owners of today (no, not at all!), but rather that it’s all for the benefit of the less well-off, those who are having difficulty getting into home ownership in a crowded Auckland market. In other words, he shed crocodile tears for the poor (whose votes ACT are clearly not interested in) as a justification for policies that would see a few rich land-owners get richer by creating “affordable” caravan-parks and soulless subdivisions on the margins of the city with (if they can get away with it) no parks or public transport.

Welcome to Brashtown, bro’!

We only have to recall the muddles he got himself into during the 2005 campaign to realize that Brash has a habit of wrong-footing himself. And it still makes one wince to recall his brazen take-over of ACT (script by Machiavelli, casting by Bram Stoker) and his deluded ambitions to get 15 per cent of the party vote.

Saturday night’s speech could have been written by a pro-development lobbyist (a name comes to mind, but I won’t publish it), or someone with deep pockets who’s funding the party. But such people apparently fail to look beyond their naked self-interest to the wider political landscape of a democratic society and to think about the real-world consequences of their policy wish-lists.

ACC: Who chooses?

2011-08-29T09:50:00.000+12:00

One of the main policy choices on offer to voters this election will be whether to remove the State monopoly from the ACC work account (which is funded by employers to cover work accidents and occupational diseases) and allow in competing private-sector insurers. Labour say no, while National say yes. And a National–Act duet could go for competition in other ACC accounts as well, forcing all individuals to purchase their own off-work accident cover.

Sticking with the work account for now, though, what are some of the key issues?

First, competitive provision would not be a genuinely ‘free’ market. The employer would be compelled by law to ‘choose’ an insurer, and the minimum standards of the insurance product would be strictly regulated. But you would still not be ‘free’ to take your own case for compensation in court (not that I think that’s a good idea!)

In a free market, the customer is at liberty not to participate at all, or to participate from time to time as much as he or she likes. Furthermore, the customer in a free market is normally the purchaser and the recipient of the service. If I buy health insurance, I get the benefits.

Secondly, the unusual thing about workers’ compensation insurance is the triangular relationship. While the employer is the premium-paying customer, the injured employees receive the benefits and services. The employer gets to choose the insurer in a multi-provider system, not the employee whose injury (or potential injury) is being insured. The person harmed is not the insurer’s paying customer.

The incentive for the insurer is to satisfy the customer (the employer), and the employee’s interests are only served in as much as it satisfies the customer–provider relationship (in compliance with government regulations). The incentive for the employer is to prevent reporting of injuries or, failing that, to dispute work-related cover. Employees would be asked to claim that the injury happened at home, so it would be covered by ACC anyway, and then the employees’ levies would subsidise this kind of misrepresentation of injuries.

Employees get choices over neither the provider of compensation nor the benefits, and so they have nothing to gain from privatization. Employees’ levies would end up paying for some work-accidents.

No doubt we would hear anecdotes about an injured employee who got a good deal from a private-sector insurer, but one hears such stories now about ACC, so anecdotal evidence is not persuasive.

Thirdly, then, let’s look at this from an electoral point of view. The numbers of voting employees (who, I argue, have nothing to gain from privatization) vastly outnumber the insurance company executives (who do have something to gain) and the employers (and I’ll come back to what’s in it for them in a moment). So, why would such a policy gain votes, if looked at rationally?

Most employers will not benefit financially from being compelled to choose among a range of insurers. ACC employer premiums are low compared to Australia, the work account is fully funded, and the employers could expect even lower levies in future if we stick with what we’ve got. In fact, because full-funding is unnecessary for a State monopoly, employers could actually get a levy holiday, if the government would only change its mind. ACC also scores reasonably well in returning people to employment.

Private-sector insurers may be able to offer competitive premiums in the short term, especially to those with low risk, and some employers with no lost-time injury-claims may do well. But, on average, premiums would be higher for employers under a multi-insurer system, especially as the extra taxes (ACC pays no tax), dividends to shareholders, higher litigation costs, and marketing costs would be passed on to the customers. Those employers who produce a few costly claims will find that their premiums really shoot up.

Reinsurers would see NZ Inc as a high-risk investment (due to the costs of Canterbury, the potential for more natural disasters, the mix of hazardous industries, and the pressure on the kiwi dollar) and so their premiums may be higher too.

NZ has a high workplace fatality rate. This has been drastically increased, temporarily, due to Pike River and the Canterbury earthquake.

These facts make us ask what drives the actions that we take to prevent accidents and injuries. Is it credible to argue that the present ACC system is somehow the cause of the high incidence of workplace fatalities? Or, that privatization is a solution to that?

I don’t think it is. Workplace safety requires commitment and strong policy from senior management, and it requires commitment and active participation from everyone in the workplace. In high-risk activities, this means constant awareness and appropriate decisions, not just a safety committee and the occasional reminder notice. The Pike River tragedy, moreover, has reminded us that, in addition to employer–employee joint responsibility, strong regulation and enforcement of regulations is also necessary.

It’s astonishing that many employers who advocate privatization of ACC are willing to state publicly that they need variable premiums (penalties and bonuses) to give them an economic incentive to prevent accidents. Those people need to have a good look in the mirror and ask themselves how callous it sounds to demand a financial kick-back in order to prevent deaths and serious disabling injuries, especially when the real circumstances of such potential tragedies are under their direct control.

What would the reaction be if school-teachers demanded financial incentives in order to make concern for children’s safety worthwhile?

The Pike River and Canterbury experiences should prove to us that safety – at work and outside of work – is always a collective concern, as well as an individual one. When a person dies at work, or when anyone dies by accident at home or elsewhere, we are all the lesser for it.

The great big benefit fraud

2011-08-15T15:42:00.000+12:00

At the National Party Conference last weekend, the PM focused on youth benefits (16-17 year-olds) as the leading issue for forthcoming welfare reforms. Young people not in education, employment or training no doubt call for attention, and especially those who lack a supportive family - but is it merely a coincidence that the leading issue announced at the Conference happens to focus on an age-group most of which will be ineligible to vote on 26 November?

Putting it into perspective, according to MSD (Ministry of Social Development) statistics, only about 1.3% of young people aged 16 or 17 are receiving the independent youth benefit, the purpose of which is to support young people who, for some serious reason, cannot live with their parents and cannot get financial support from their parents or anyone else. Why such big publicity about a relatively small-scale (albeit genuine) problem?

National have also indicated an intention of making benefit fraud into a major election-manifesto issue. But, again, this issue looms larger in the popular imagination than it does in reality.

MSD statistics show that the numbers of overpayments established each year has declined dramatically in the last 6 years, and the best interpretation of that trend is that they are doing well at preventing and detecting problems as they arise. But the Minister, Paula Bennett, did some artful dodging when a journalist pointed out to her that reported benefit-fraud debt equates to only 0.1% of MSD’s budget (Focus on Politics, Radio NZ National, 12 August). She didn’t dispute that figure (and that figure is recorded in MSD documents), but tried to distract attention by talking about ‘grey areas’ around, in particular, ‘relationship fraud’ (when does a boyfriend become a de facto husband?) and the path from over-payments to fraud.

But MSD already does a lot to prevent and prosecute fraud, so how many more teeth do they really need?

Will benefit fraud (although serious enough in its own right, when it actually happens) become a dog-whistle issue for the forthcoming campaign? Are relatively small-scale problems being highlighted to create a smoke-screen for more profound reforms, or is this simply the best that they can come up with?

What would National do anyway, if re-elected, to tackle benefit fraud? What laws are lacking to deal with it now? Well, the Minister basically told us: she wants to tighten the noose on beneficiaries who are in new relationships. Most other eligibility criteria for benefits are fairly clearly defined, and MSD have all the legal muscle they need to investigate and prosecute, so de facto relationships appear to be the target.

Now there’s history behind this, as it’s an old favourite of National governments. Muldoon saw to it that DPB recipients were hassled at home in the 1980s – along with the infamous dawn raids to search for overstayers. But it must be the ‘million-dollar club’ of the 1990s that takes the cake.

It all goes back to a decision of the Court of Appeal in 1996 (Ruka v Department of Social Welfare). This decision significantly altered the test to determine if a beneficiary is in a de-facto marriage, or ‘relationship in the nature of a marriage.’ This affected principally women on the DPB who were allegedly in a de-facto relationship, and who were thus in jeopardy of debts to the Department for benefit over-payment, or even criminal prosecution for fraud. In Ruka, it was established that it is not sufficient to find that a de-facto relationship exists purely on the basis of a ‘checklist’ of relevant potential factors; but, instead, there must exist, as essential qualities of the relationship, evidence of financial interdependence and an emotional commitment. Financial interdependence means not merely the sharing of resources, but either actual support, or a willingness to support in times of need. Furthermore, the Court found that the fact that Ms Ruka was the victim of a violent domestic relationship had to be taken into account. A more holistic evaluation of the relationship was thus required.

Due, however, to an expectation that the Shipley government was going to legislate retrospectively to over-ride the Ruka test, the new legal tests had not been properly applied. The proposed Bill lapsed, but not before the Department had established an in-house ‘million-dollar club’ to reward investigators who annually established over-payments totaling above that sum.

The subsequent Labour-led government commissioned a report on the matter by barrister Frances Joychild who found, for instance, that investigators would rely upon an admission of a de-facto relationship from the beneficiary, in return for a promise not to prosecute, rather than applying, and seeking evidence for, the objective legal test established by the Court of Appeal. Basically, the Department had not been applying the law. This led to a recommendation by Joychild to review all decisions made by the Department between 1996 and 2000 that established over-payment debts against beneficiaries on the grounds that they were living in a de-facto relationship. This involved, according to one report, 5,700 applications for review, among which it was found that in 63 per cent of cases the legally correct test of conjugal status had not been applied. The advice that WINZ now gives about relationships and income assistance is in line with the Court of Appeal’s Ruka test.

But, if legislators don’t approve of judge-made law, they can amend the law. So, I wonder if the expedient and politically popular (that is, popular with conservative middle-class voters) policy will turn out to be legislation that over-rides the Ruka test and makes it easier to exclude from eligibility a whole range of beneficiaries in less-committed relationships.

A more positive approach might be to assist newly-formed couples with a payment to help them to establish a common household, allowing them to come forward without fear of prosecution – rather than a punitive approach based on the Minister’s ideas about ‘relationship fraud’. National Party instincts would lead them down the punitive pathway, given their history. But, if we were serious about forming, or re-forming, secure family units, then surely the better pathway is to encourage new relationships, especially for single parents, rather than create fear of punishment.

The Key to Power

2011-07-23T16:12:00.000+12:00

Political predictions are always risky. But it looks safe to bet that John Key will remain PM after this year’s election and that we will vote to retain MMP. If, as some recent polls suggested, National were also to win an absolute majority in the House – and can govern without needing support parties – this would pose a challenge to MMP, as one of the original reasons for having that system was to avoid one-party majorities and the ‘elected dictatorships’ that they can become.

One main aim of MMP was to shift power away from the political party that dominates the Beehive, in favour of a more diverse House of Representatives. So, giving back to one leading party the absolute majority in the House would undermine that aim.

How many New Zealanders would willingly go back to the undemocratic politics of Muldoonist bullying or Rogernomic shock-tactics? If they wake up in time, enough half-hearted National supporters may switch to other parties out of fear of giving Key such an excessive mandate. But wait and see what cards the voters deal on 26 November.

For now, let’s assess the track-record and the stated intentions of the National-led government.

I almost felt sorry for Key when he became PM in 2008, being upstaged by Barack Obama’s election a few days before, and then entering office just as the global economy was on the brink of the end-of-the-world trade. But crisis suited him well, as it provided a convenient setting for pushing policies that might otherwise have met more resistance, such as cutting public-service budgets and selling off our publicly-owned property.

Another quality of Key’s leadership is to let his lieutenants front the bad news, while he retains the friendly look of the ordinary (although very wealthy) joker. So, Nick Smith gets to vent his hysteria over ACC reserves, and Gerry Brownlee drives Christchurch residents mad by keeping them in the dark; but the PM can be Teflon-John provided he keeps the key (pardon the pun) to the Beehive office.

All he needs to do now is to wriggle out of the projections he made about an economic step-change and catching up with Australia. Since 2008, we have only fallen further behind Australia, in economic terms, and there’s still no sight of the promised land. Key reminds me of the famous communist who said ‘I have a rabbit but no hat.’ And those who voted for him on the grounds that ‘Key made himself rich, so must be good at managing an economy’ may need to recant.

Before the 2008 election, Key said he wouldn’t rerun the radical free-market policies of 1984–96, an era when politicians tried to change the real world into the image of an economics textbook. Instead, his government were ready to continue with the more gradual and pragmatic approach that had worked well for Helen Clark – and which, incidentally, is more in keeping with most our political history. And so far, he and his team have muddled through accordingly.

Admittedly, disasters keep diverting their attention: economic recession, the mine explosion, the earthquakes, the ABs losing the WC (what did I say about predictions?). At such moments, true political leadership requires acting as if ‘above politics’, all the while knowing that a failure to give a convincing performance of being non-political will look bad and turn the voters off.

But while Key (the decent, practical joker) may not own up to having any particular ideological leanings, his party are now seeking to capitalise on his apparent personal popularity and to use that as a mandate for policies that are reminiscent of the National Party of the 1990s, namely the proposed privatisations of state-owned assets and of workers’ compensation – and of anything else in sight. National’s chorus of tax cuts and spending cuts sounds more like the Tea Party than traditional Kiwi pragmatism.

But what’s policy got to do with it when an inoffensive telegenic personality, a common Kiwi accent and a smiling face are what matter most to most voters?

If you ask the average adult whom they vote for and why, you normally discover that they haven’t a clue about the real-world policies they’re voting for. The so-called ‘swinging’ voters are the most clueless among us, as they can’t make up their minds until they enter the polling-booth, and some even forget whom they voted for once they leave it. But they are the ones who can turn things left or right on the day of reckoning. The most decisive votes come from the most indecisive and ill-informed voters.

So you have to ask just what kind of ‘mandate’ any party lucky enough to get elected to govern really has. Once in office, though, they’re damned to govern, and they’ll use the recklessness of voters to justify things that may not be in the interests of people who ticked the box with that party’s name on it.

Despite my bleak view of democracy, it still somehow, most of the time, works better than dictatorship. And that would bring us back to the question of MMP, but perhaps another day…

Neo-liberalism without doctrines?

2011-07-10T08:38:00.001+12:00

Are we living in an ‘anti-political’ and ‘anti-ideological’ age, and, if so, does that make the nice (but bland) Mr Key a politician who best personifies those qualities of our times?

This is my summary of the point made recently by Bryce Edwards – and responded to by Chris Trotter.

You don’t have to go far to find ‘anti-political’ sentiments. Cynicism about politicians and about their behaviour is heard often enough in everyday conversation. ‘They behave like children’ etc.

But a common trend in western democracies, including New Zealand, is towards lower voter-turnouts, lower political-party membership rates, and lower self-reported ‘trust in government’ (whatever the latter may mean). There may be exceptions to these trends, but they are generally regarded as regrettable, as they seem to signify a detachment between the political classes and ‘the masses.’

I’ve always been impressed by Richard Sennet’s book The Fall of Public Man. My take on one major theme of this book is that, in a world dominated by TV for the consumption of political ‘information’ (or ‘disinformation’), the consumer becomes a passive observer, and the attention shifts to the face and voice of the leader, his/her televised persona and apparent ethical integrity – and away from the substance and the critical appraisal of public policy.

On those grounds, it may be said that we live in an ‘anti-political’ age. TV focuses our attention on conflict and scandal, rather than reasoned debate. ‘Politics’ becomes a dirty word, and politicians are the people we most love to hate. Under those circumstances, a nice, but bland, exterior could be the right mask to put on. But is this anti-political, or just part of the character of politics today? It depends on what you mean by politics!

What about this ideology of our being ‘anti-ideological’? As Trotter rightly pointed out, New Zealand has for a long time been seen as pragmatic in its approach to policy-making. The social legislation of the 1890s was described by a French observer as ‘socialism without doctrines.’ The Liberals of that era tried to present themselves as representing a ‘classless’ society, upholding the interests of all, rather than the sectional interests of a few.

And consider this passage from John A. Lee, published in 1938 when he was still a Labour MP:

“Rather than be theoretically radical, New Zealanders have sought to achieve their radicalism with their hands as well. Plain blunt men wanted [old-age] pensions and legislated. Should they first have written tracts? Parlour revolutionaries can erect imposing theoretical edifices, but people who have worked in the industries of a country know that socialist housing, for instance, is a matter of bricks and mortar and sweat.”

Well that almost supports the point about the anti-ideological and pragmatic approach of New Zealanders, except for the fact that he did say socialist housing. Which MP would dare use that word in defence of a policy today?

Since 1938, however, fascism and the Cold War have given the very idea of ideology a bad name in the democratic west. And on the most recent occasions when New Zealand politicians sought rigorously to apply a set of preconceived social and economic theories (I’m referring to neo-liberal ideology, in the period 1984-96), the results were often disastrous and the public had good reason to feel they’d been deceived.

So, the disavowal of any ideological leanings is a common ploy in the game of ideology. It is always one’s opposition who are being ideological, while one’s own policies are the rational and effective ones.

It follows then that I am only willing to see the present age as ‘anti-ideological’ in the sense of a pretence to be non-ideological.

John Key is not so much a consummate politician of the present, as a politician who is typical of New Zealand’s political history: pragmatic, cautious and trying to please a wide audience. Underneath that, the substance of his real-world policies does follow a discernible ideological pathway. So, the Key government is seeking opportunities to promote and advance a neo-liberal political agenda, while avoiding the appearance of being rigidly dogmatic, and trying to bring voters along for the ride. It’s easy to point to examples of their policies that support this, but I’ll leave that for another day.

For now, I’m not backing the ‘anti-political and anti-ideological’ description of these times. As for whether Mr Key personifies present-day New Zealand, that’s another matter.

Harawira has reason to worry

2011-06-26T07:13:00.001+12:00

After Saturday's by-election in Te Tai Tokerau, Hone Harawira can rightly claim that he - and his new party - 'have the mandate' to be sitting in the House (see nzherald). After all, 48.5% of the vote in an electorate isn't bad at all...
But wait... Back in 2008, Harawira got 60% of the electorate vote. Even allowing for the much lower turn-out last Saturday, that's still a huge loss of personal support for him. In other words, as a Maori Party member in 2008, he received a much stronger mandate from his constituency than he seems to have right now.
And let's not forget that Labour received a much larger party vote in that same electorate in 2008 than did the Maori Party (for which Hone was then standing). It now looks like a large number of Maori Party supporters have forsaken their party last Saturday in order to try to prevent Hone from winning. So, the results show that they weren't successful (this time) in keeping him out, but the warning-message for Harawira and the new Mana Party is loud enough.
Labour must be thinking that Te Tai Tokerau is now winnable in November. Looking at the polling-booth results, Harawira has stronger backing in the obvious places, like Ahipara, Kaitaia and most of Kaikohe. Davis, the Labour candidate, has some wins in urban booths and in (I don't know why) Kawakawa.
More fundamentally, then, Harawira has not nailed down the urban working/beneficiary sections of the electorate that he needs if he is to firmly establish himself (and his party) as a working-class and beneficiary advocate. Labour still has a strong footing there.
But there must be personal loyalties at work too. Much of the voter support on Saturday for Harawira surely came from whanau and wider tribal loyalties to him and his family, especially in Whangarei and points further north. On the other hand, many voters would have been turned off by Hone's frequent gaffes, and many urban Maori voters won't have the same kinship connections.
My diagnosis? That Harawira and the Mana Party have only a thin mandate now in one Maori electorate, but they do not yet have a mandate to represent wider Maori or working-class New Zealand. If they can't win such support in the near future, their tenure in the House will be limited.

Is there government on Mars?

2011-06-20T01:56:00.000+12:00

For some reason, my stats counter shows me that this is the most popular topic of searches linking to this blog, so I may as well satisfy those curious people out there with some more thoughts on this.
But, first, can someone please enlighten me on the reason for the interest in this topic. Is it because there is a band of conspiracy-theory cum alien-abduction types out there, or has some law or politics professor set this as an assignment...? Leave a comment, below!
Anyway, I confidently say that there is no government on Mars, for the simple reason that there is no human (or similarly intelligent) life there. That makes me sound like Aristotle: to have a civil government, you need intelligent animals. Hives of bees and herds of buffalo are not signs of government. You need to have beings who are capable of speech, and hence capable of conceiving and debating the question of justice. In post-linguistic-turn times, that means that the subject that speaks is the subject that is already governed.
But, it is trivial and obvious to conclude that, if humans colonised Mars, they would need to form a government there. The reason for posing the question may be to create a hypothetical case for considering the old 'state of nature' situation and the Lockean social-contract theory of civil government.
But the question is a trivial one because the very process of getting humans on to Mars would require from the beginning the initiatives of a government. People don't just migrate there of their own accord. So, the colonisers of Mars would be an already-governed community, and would remain as such for the sake of their own survival there.
This illustrates the fundamentally tautological nature of social-contract theory: i.e., that the rational and sociable qualities of people under civil government are the very qualities that would be required of a race of humans in a hypothetical state of nature if they were to consent to being governed. The conclusion, in short, has to be assumed in the premise.
This is not a new observation, as even Rousseau had noticed it. But it spells death to social contract theory, in my opinion. Quite aside from the fact that one has to go to great lengths (even to Mars!) in order to postulate a state of nature - which is surely an exception and not the historical (or pre-historical) norm for the origins of human civilization.
So, the idea of the state of exception - as distinct from the old-fashioned idea of the state of nature - has more interest. But more on that another day maybe.

The latest trivia leaks

2011-06-13T20:55:00.001+12:00

I notice that the celebrated 'Palin emails' - which were not really leaked, I admit - have gone rapidly lower down the columns of grauniad.co.uk. They have found one interesting revelation, though: As Governor of Alaska, Palin "held private discussions with Tony Hayward, the discredited BP chief executive, to win his support for a 1,700-mile gas pipeline across North America a year after his company's failure to maintain another pipeline saw it blamed for the biggest oil spill in the state's history."
It's bigger than - but morally the same as - John Key offering to review the gambling moratorium in return for Sky City investing in a convention centre. Never mind the social and environmental consequences, government is up for sale, so long as it brings in the dollars.
Otherwise, the Palin emails appear to be as banal as the woman herself.
This of course brings me to the real leek du jour: the Labour Party files. Once the complaints about the breach of privacy and the questions about what Parliamentary staffers are really up to have all settled down, these files will quickly be consigned to the dustbin of boring information.
In the information age we learn that there really is such a thing as 'too much information.' And, just because it was supposed to be private doesn't make it interesting, let alone controversial. I guess it's helped a blogger or two get some hits. That's all that can be said for it.

The Osama theory

2011-05-15T20:42:00.000+12:00

I'm no fan of conspiracy theories, so I assume that bin Laden is in fact dead, as reported. He was being kept under the watchful eye of Pakistani intelligence and military (or at least a certain section thereof) and obviously had nowhere else to go. Now, as Tariq Ali put it, "The only interesting question is who betrayed his whereabouts and why." And, of course, there's the question of why he was being kept in a safe house in the first place.

Pakistan's government has been trying to maintain the role of America's ally in the war on terror, even though Pakistan has suffered thousands of casualties in that war, and even though there is huge anti-American sentiment among its people. The Pakistani secret services, moreover, clearly are not a unified corps who always sing from the same song-sheet. It's quite plausible to assume that Pakistan secretly did know, and yet didn't know, that it was harbouring America's most-wanted.

We have also learned that Pakistan and the US had a deal which went: Pakistan agrees that the US can take out Osama unilaterally if they locate him on Pakistani soil, and the Pakistani government will protest vociferously in public, after the fact, as if they were innocent and outraged. So it is also plausible that the riddle of Osama's 'stay' in Pakistan can be put down to a combination of complicity and incompetence on their part. But that still doesn't help us to know exactly who was protecting him, and who betrayed him and why.

My theory about the motives for protecting him goes like this: 1. Osama always had networks high up in the Pakistani forces, and 2. he was paying them good money, and 3. his survival helped to keep the Americans involved in the region, thus helping to keep the local military in business.

The next big question is the legality of killing the man. Bin Laden declared himself an enemy of the US and had shown himself capable of organising attacks. But, at the time he was shot, despite the original reports, it appears that he was not offering any armed resistance. He could have been taken a prisoner of war, if considered to be an armed enemy, or he could have been arrested for trial. Instead he was assassinated, in my opinion. This is the rule of the gun, not the rule of law. It is sheer revenge, and not justice; but it has predictably helped to boost Obama's domestic popularity.

If the world's most powerful nation is prepared to set this kind of example to the rest of them, then it doesn't bode well, even though one can have no sympathy for those who use terror as a political weapon. If war is diplomacy by other means, then terrorism is war by other means.

Getting back to Osama, a quick assassination was clearly expedient, however, as taking him alive into custody would then have dragged the whole matter out, and would have placed pressure on the US government to put the man on trial and to produce their evidence. This would have meant exposing and compromising their most valued sources.

So far, the Pakistani military have suffered their first suicide-bomb reprisal attack. The world can hardly be said to be a safer place thanks to this recent assassination.

"I ain't no great fan of diplomacy neither"

2011-05-05T21:44:00.002+12:00

There's no need for me to join the chorus of condemnation of Harawira's comments about bin Laden, but perhaps someone should have a word with him about not putting his foot in it, and about grammar (don't use double negatives!)

Oddly enough, he could take some succour from the fact that the US military inappropriately used the code-name 'Geronimo' for bin Laden. According to the amusing notes on the Guardian website, Geronimo was indeed a defender of indigenous rights who fled US forces for the cause. But I'm afraid that that's as close as the comparison gets. Osama bin Laden comes from one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families, he inherited a fortune, and he used that for terrorist activity with the aim of establishing Islamic theocracy, and not 'freedom' as I would understand that word.

Bin Laden is hardly a freedom fighter, and the revolutionary events in the Middle East recently just show us further evidence of how wrong and how irrelevant his approach had become.

The sad thing about Harawira (to get back to NZ) is that, even though he may be a great guy, his ineffective leadership style has proven already to be a disaster for a party that could have provided a real alternative for working-class disfranchised people. (And I'm already using the past tense!) It's unfortunate for low-income New Zealanders (of any ethnicity) that the emerging alternative has such a loose cannon for a leader.

It's also unfortunate that Don Brash is able to use race relations as the most prominent plank for the debate so far, thus obscuring debate about and analysis of his proposed economic policies. I'd say it suits him quite nicely to have lefties and Maoris calling him a racist, as that just reinforces support for him on the right.

A quick judgement on Brash's economic ideas, however, might go something like: Brash wants to use ultra-dry economic liberalism to help NZ 'catch up with Australia', but this pushes policies that no Federal Australian government has adopted. If we want to emulate Australia, that hardly sounds like a good way to begin. In any case, we all know that the consequences of Brash-style liberalism will mean widening gaps between rich and poor. That's a predictable outcome, and that's the ground on which the Mana Party ought to be tackling him, if they can.

For different reasons than Harawira, though, history tells us that Don Brash has rather unfortunate leadership qualities too. Do you recall the 'walking the plank' photo opportunity, or the pre-election quote "I am not a liar"? It will be interesting to wait and see if Brash can overcome the 'foot-in-mouth' disease that Harawira and he seem to share.

Labour's turn for a hiding

2011-04-27T19:10:00.000+12:00

Phil Goff must be glad that the ACT party has taken attention away from Labour's pitiful performance for the time being. His predicament resembles that of Bill English when the latter was leader of the Opposition: low in the polls, failing to find traction, etc. The fact that no-one has rolled Goff so far suggests to me that Labour's front bench have basically decided that none of them is a match for John Key this election, and they're going to let Phil be the fall-guy. The take-home message is that Labour's front-runners are giving up on this Election. One expects a coup early next year.

Labour's basic problem, though, is not about 'who leads' but about the very relevance of centre-left social-democratic politics - which appears to be in decline in many western democracies. The danger is that populist hard-right parties with strongly nationalistic ideals step in to win the hearts and minds of working-class voters whose real material interests have not been adequately upheld by the parties of the left. (Look at Finland's recent election!) NZ Labour, like other similar parties, have tended to abandon social-democratic policies for fear of scaring 'the markets', and they have increasingly taken the 'safe' conservative options.

Furthermore, trade unions, Labour's traditional power-base, have been decimated (in terms of membership) due to the changes in employment laws; and both Labour and the union movement have sought a (very fragile) refuge in identity politics. The latter, in my experience, generally leads to an introverted concern for 'who' gets represented, and on which committees, but stifles robust policy debate and analysis.

Digging themselves out of this leadership and ideological hole is going to take Labour quite some time. But they have a responsibility to lower-income New Zealanders to come up with a credible alternative - before a raving nationalist, anti-immigrant party rushes in to fill the gap. (Can you think of a contender?)

Labour's 'Stop the asset sales' campaign may be aimed at a genuine weak-point in National's armour, but it hasn't exactly hit home so far. Labour would need to do more than just attack National. And they have yet to offer the anxious low-to-middle income voters an alternative that might promise greater security and opportunity for the future. The Greens may well be looking increasingly attractive to disillusioned lefties...

New Right dinosaurs fight for survival

2011-04-26T17:35:00.000+12:00

There are many ironies in what we are seeing with the (now very old) 'new right' scrabbling desperately to regain a foothold in the electorate. The likes of Brash, Banks, Douglas, Gibbs etc had their political hey-day in the 1980s and early 90s. Because their laissez-faire policies were thrust upon us with little effective democratic mandate and no real consultation, we voted to overhaul the whole electoral system in 1993 and brought in MMP. Without MMP there'd be no ACT party in Parliament at all. But one good thing about MMP is that its results give us a clue as to how much support those good old 19th century laissez-faire policies actually have among the voting public: very very little.

Brash claims that his leadership of ACT could revive the party's support, as well as bring it back to its original Rogernomics/Ruthanasia principles. Sure, Hide has lost support and has taken the party down an unfortunately populist route, but the weird wisdom behind Hide's direction was that populism half-succeeded where neo-liberal purism would have failed miserably. Brash's ultra-dry style may be backed by a few wealthy potential donors, but not many voters are going to buy it. John Key seems at least to have got that point.

But here's the other irony: neo-liberal politics has always been contemptuous of democratic politics. Despite the ideas of 'freedom of choice' etc that the new right espouse, history shows us that the best way to get such ideas implemented in the real world is to take advantage of political or economic crises and to ram them through without any democratic mandate at all. If you can get a dictator to do it for you (e.g. General Pinochet in Chile, or Yeltsin in Russia), then so much the better. Milton Friedman (intellectual master of the new right) used to be a big fan of Hong Kong in the 1980s, when it was a British colonial outpost ruled by an unelected executive. (And look who's running HK now!)

The laughable thing is that this septagenarian new right are struggling for relevance with a portion of voters that may amount to little more than 3% - or even less. Brash no doubt aims to lift the party over the 5% threshold. That would be an incredible feat if he can do it (and that's a big 'if'). But it does shows you how marginal their relevance actually is.

ACT and its supporters would probably have a better chance of getting their ideas implemented if they could encourage the army to stage a coup... But don't shout about it - they have wealthy backers!

Insults and emergencies

2011-04-15T12:49:00.001+12:00

Should a person who has been hired by a state-sector agency and who has been publicly criticised for his performance of his duties be free to sue for defamation independently of his employer? This is one question arising from the comments about one of ACC's clinical staff, as reported.
I'm not supplying a link to the blog in which a woman makes comments about the clinician, for obvious reasons. But, if you read it, I think you'd agree that the doctor has cause to feel offended. (The blog-posting had not been removed when I looked this morning). I'll leave it to lawyers (and possibly even the courts) to decide whether the blog-post constitutes defamation. But the comments are so personally targetted at the clinician concerned that he could well seek some kind of remedy. A blog is a public document, after all.
My next question, though, would be whether the courts are the right place for taking action, in this instance. The author of this controversial blog-post is an ACC sexual abuse claimant, and claimants with such sensitive claims have had reason to be offended by ACC's changes in policies for their assessment in the recent past.
As a physician, the good doctor has to ask himself whether he is following the precept 'above all do no harm' by serving legal papers on the woman. Surely there must be a better way to resolve the matter, perhaps by mediation. Both parties could be more reasonable.

My second issue today is about the emergency powers conferred by Parliament to the executive under the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act. The previous Act (passed in a single day after the September quake) was, in my opinion, justifiably criticised by lawyers and by the Law Society which said that certain provisions were "potentially at odds with maintenance of the principles of the rule of law."
The new Act is an improvement on the first one, but it still doesn't completely remove the causes for concern that were raised earlier.
On the positive side, the new Act allows for the publication of plans and strategies, for greater oversight of the Minister's decisions, and for some limited community consultation. It is clear that consultation (let alone litigation) can't be allowed to go on for too long and to hold up the recovery and rebuilding process. But I am not yet convinced that the Minister has justified the 'necessity' of the powers granted to him as proportionate to the needs of the post-disaster situation. There is still wiggle room for the Minister to go too far in suspending laws, while remaining unaccountable before any court for his decisions.
Ultimately, the Minister and the government will be accountable for their actions on election-day, so there's an incentive to get the recovery process working well and designing a new Christchurch that meets the people's needs. But, in the meantime, for all we know they could be planning for a huge and ugly inner-city shopping mall to meet those needs. And they could also 'ride rough-shod' (to use the PM's subtle expression) over the local needs of those Labour-voting residents in the eastern suburbs.

Tragedy and welfare

2011-02-24T14:10:00.002+13:00

From the rubble of Christchurch there are many tragic stories yet to emerge, and I have no doubt that we all want to share our sympathies with the people affected, many of whose families will be in foreign countries and awaiting news.

The earthquake has also 'buried' the news about the recommendations of the Welfare Working Group (WWG), a coincidence that must be pleasing to the PM, and so I'll comment on some of those recommendations.

A pre-funded and actuarially-valued welfare-benefit system, according to the WWG, would have the in-built incentives to more actively manage entry to and exit from income-support.

Such proposals would represent a substantial shift in New Zealand’s approach to the welfare state, if realized in practice. The logic of fully-funding ACC has already been shown to be faulty, however (by Michael Littlewood, PensionCommentary 2009-1).

It makes no sense for government to amass savings on one hand, while borrowing to fund deficits on the other. And, if the welfare system were actuarially valued, the estimate of this massive contingent liability would end up on the government’s balance-sheet, thus increasing the political pressure for higher taxes and/or radical benefit cuts. Furthermore, the provision of welfare rights and local employment services would be controlled by artificial accounting and auditing constructs, and the lives of beneficiaries would become more complicated as a range of contracted agencies – including iwi authorities ¬– intrude into their lives to perform various State-mandated requirements, which could encompass matters normally considered ‘private’ such as contraception and alcohol consumption.

More single mothers and more of those with a history of sickness and disability – those at least who can work – are expected to get into employment, even if on a last-resort basis in any low-skilled job at all. Relevant to this are the suggestions of using work-capacity assessments, possibly based upon the ACC model. The latter has used a consulting-room assessment of work-capacity (for any job that the person can do), but its purpose is to assess (and often terminate) eligibility for weekly compensation. The emphasis is on how many hours per week people can perform in any occupations for which they may have skills and can work safely, and not on restoring or raising their income and skill levels or long-term employment prospects.

Once embedded into law, the concerns about the technical validity of work-capacity assessment can be over-ridden, and the agents of the State can determine who is ready to return to work, rather than the beneficiary and his/her personal physician. Work-capacity assessment of beneficiaries in the UK has been extremely controversial recently, due to the technical difficulties inherent in such processes. The UK system has had to be critically reviewed, and it is reported that tribunals overturn about 40 per cent of the assessments that are brought before them for review (see guardian.co.uk). While work-capacity assessment sounds like a logical idea, policy-makers tend to have too much confidence in its supposed objectivity. (My views on work-capacity assessment in SPJNZ issue no. 12 still apply.)

And then there is this remarkable recommendation (no 10): that "a person who fails or is likely to fail a drug or alcohol test due to drug or alcohol dependence, be offered the option of voluntarily agreeing to drug and alcohol treatment. Refusal to accept this offer would be a failure to meet job search obligations."

Note the totally unsubtle shift from the words 'option' and 'voluntarily' to 'obligations'. A failure to meet job search obligations means, of course, that one's benefit may be cut or cancelled. Some option!

Leaky nonsense

2010-12-22T19:16:00.000+13:00

The recent US embassy leaks are not so much of interest due to revelation of 'the truth' about what goes on in the world, but more because they reveal two things: first, the Machiavellean attitudes of many of the world's leaders and diplomats, and secondly because of the versions of untruth that they are willing to peddle. Hence, I am prepared to accept Helen Clark's rejection of the insinuation that NZ sent army engineers to Iraq for the sake of Fonterra's trade deal in the food-for-oil programme (the latter programme became notorious for corruption, however).

Just to illustrate the misleading rubbish that 'intelligence' officers dream up for their leaders, take the following passage (despatched from Wellington in 2005):

"There is little doubt today that Lange decided to implement a ban on nuclear arms as a way to initiate New Zealand's break from ANZUS. By creating friction with the United States which virtually forced the U.S. to expel New Zealand from the alliance, Lange succeeded also in forging an anti-American sentiment here that remains powerful 20 years on."

First sentence is quite wrong. The aim was not to bust up ANZUS; it was to ban nuclear ships and weapons. That was what we wanted, and that was what we got.

The writer appears to think (narcissistically) that it was all about making trouble with the US and drumming up anti-US sentiment. Yes, there was anti-US sentiment, but the US's own foreign policy (think Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, etc) in the 1960s and 70s (when NZ governments were mostly quite happy to be allied with the US) did the job of creating that negative sentiment quite of its own accord. Lange didn't have to 'forge' such a sentiment. It already existed.

By 2005, moreover, any anti-US sentiments that persisted here were being mightily encouraged by Bush and his drastic Iraq escapade.

So, let's treat the leaks with a grain of salt. They are of interest not because they uncover the truth, but because they reveal the untruths - and the sheer gossip - that guide world affairs.

Wickedly dying for a leak!

2010-12-09T21:26:00.001+13:00

So, what are we to make of the new global phenomenon of leaked cables? There are 2 extremes: on one hand, they look like a total game-changer; on the other, like a bit of a fizzer...

Naturally, I can't keep up with the sheer volume of material. But, some of the gems one reads: The Saudi royals are hypocrites who party up and engage sex-workers. The Nigerian government is laced with Shell's spies. A senior US official in Africa says that China is "a very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals" (pot calls kettle black...)

Whitehall officials express surprise and denial to their US cronies about Gordon Brown's claim to be scaling down the UK's Trident-submarine programme.

(Let's not forget that a single Trident missile, which can be launched remotely by the UK's PM, is capable of inflicting many Hiroshima-sized warheads at once! And, Oh but, by the way, Gordon Brown is no longer PM...!)

What are we to make of all this?

If anyone thought dismissively about the idea of a 'knowledge economy', well this proves it's time to think again. Look at all this 'knowledge' out there on line now; knowledge that 'we' (the likes of you and me) didn't know about just a few days ago. And look at the cyber-war inflicted against J.A., his reputation, his website, and his bank accounts; and now the counter-cyber-attack by his supporters. Is the man a hero, a journalist, a cyber-warrior, a rapist, or a 'virtual' criminal?

Is he the 21st Century's Robin Hood?

Does this not change the game of politics on the global stage, once and for all, forever?

Or is it just a big yawn, because it reveals what everyone had already guessed anyway (but were happy not to think about)? ... while, more importantly to those who rule, it reveals nothing at all?

Look at it this way...: Of course the Nigerians know that Shell knows about everything their government is doing. Of course the Saudi royals are sinners (and how do I get invited to their parties?) Of course some US diplomats have negative things to say about the Chinese (and vice versa), and of course they all know that this is how people think. Of course Gordon Brown's pontifications about disarmament were irrelevant - given that he must have known as well as anyone else that he was about to be turfed out of Downing St...!

Personally, I don't know whether to yawn and go back to bed, or get up and have another leak!

Has the Key government created a monster?

2010-11-01T21:13:00.000+13:00

Mayor Len Brown has used his inaugural speech today to push the barrow of public rail transport for Auckland. Naturally, there are shades here of Dove Meyer-Robinson, the mayor who pushed the same idea 40 years ago and got no backing from central government. After all, the city that Dovie was mayor of was a much smaller beast than the new one. Nevertheless, Auckland would be a better and more productive city today if central government had come to the party way back then.

Today, the Key government hope to pour cold water on this good idea again. Only this time the new mayor of Auckland has the whole of Greater Auckland behind him. Key and co. can go on spending their money on expensive and unsustainable motorways, but the huge political voice for rail will not go away.

They thought that the Super City would make decision-making in Auckland easier, but then they were hoping that John Banks would be mayor! Now instead there's at least one big political wrangle brewing, and it won't go away. The longer Key lets this boil fester, the more votes he loses in Auckland. The more he spends in Auckland, the more votes he loses elsewhere in the country due to anti-Auckland resentment. I guess the Super City just declared itself!

The price of being a Hobbit

2010-10-28T19:17:00.001+13:00

Well, my prediction came true. The deal was done, and, as I write, Parliament is obligingly rushing through, with unseemly haste, a law to ensure that film industry workers with contracts that say that they are independent contractors will remain as contractors in law, even if the companies treat them as if they were employees! Nice deal!

A foreign company whispers 'jump' and John Key shouts 'how high!?'

Gerry Brownlee told the House that Warner Bros never told the government to change the employment law. They didn't have to. The National-led government will use any excuse to whittle down employment rights anyway. They love doing that. And this time they have the excuse of 'saving the Hobbit'.

Presumably, Warner Bros' concern was that independent contractors may (under certain limited circumstances) be able to go to court to argue that they were in fact in an employment relationship. If successful in that case, those employees could then claim holiday pay, organise and bargain collectively, and, if a collective agreement proved hard to agree on, they could even go on strike. It's a long bow, since, by that time, the filming would probably be over; so I guess that might have happened - but we'll never know.

Scaremongering about Australian unions calling strikes in NZ were nothing more than that: scaremongering.

The sad thing we learn from this is that, however glamorous an acting career may appear to be, if an actor dares to ask for the kinds of rights at work that people like me take for granted, they risk being mercilessly vilified in the media. And then summarily denied their rights by Parliament.

It also shows us that - depending on how you look at the case in hand - our legislature is either admirably flexible and pragmatic, or frighteningly ready to strip our own people of their rights... 'to ride rough-shod over people', as the PM put it once. It shows up the weakness of our constitution.

The Great Hobbit Charade

2010-10-26T21:06:00.002+13:00

I know it's not a good idea to make predictions - and I may have to eat my words in a later posting - but I predict that the Hobbit movies will be produced in NZ.

Why? Simply because that's what everyone wants. Just about every hobbit-footed NZer wants it, including John Key ... and even Helen Kelly (the unions having completely renounced threats of a labour boycott since last week). But, above all, I am sure that Warner Bros want that too. After all, the LOTR and Hobbit series are now branded along with NZ as Middle Earth, so there'd be a huge movie-audience backlash if the Hobbit is set somewhere else.

(Alternatively, Warner Bros could look for a cheap location in Eastern Europe, say Romania, i.e. Transylvania, and make a vampire-meets-hobbit cross-over movie. That could work!)

So, why the big charade with 'crisis talks' between Warner Bros and John Key today? Obviously it suits both parties to drag this drama out for all it's worth. Warner Bros get to screw some taxation and employment-law concessions out of the NZ Government, while Johnny-Boy gets to look like a white knight, saving our economy and our international brand - and, above all, making the unions look bad.

What worries me is that this situation will become another excuse to use a nationally significant Event to pass a law that'll allow the government to suspend the law (probably, in this case, the personal grievance provisions of the Employment Relations Act). See my previous posts on the legislation passed to 'empower' the Rugby World Cup and the reconstruction of Canterbury.

The weird thing is that, while we are all presently so precious about protecting 'sensitive' lands from foreign ownership, it looks like the present government (no doubt with jingoistic popular support) could be ready to sell one of our best workforces to the lowest foreign bidder. Scoundrels! If the Labour Party support them this time, I'll be voting for the Greens at the next Election!

John Key should be very worried

2010-10-09T20:54:00.002+13:00

Going by the valid votes cast and counted by today (Saturday 9th), Len Brown won just short of 49% of votes for Auckland mayor, and John Banks 35.7%. That's a margin much larger than opinion polls had indicated prior to the Election. Let's be honest, the mayoral race was a proxy Labour-vs-National contest in (rather thin) disguise. And let's not forget that political parties can win or lose power depending on how Auckland - especially South Auckland - turns out to vote.
To make matters worse for Mr Key, his accustomed "I'm relaxed about that" attitude (which serves the needs of his conservative voters not to get too wound up about such matters) has worn rather thin this week as public opinion has turned against Henry Paul's inappropriate comments on TV. That is, public opinion has also run against the PM's apparent "relaxedness" about it all. Let's recall, the PM himself was actually there, and was complicit in, the comments Henry Paul made about the Governor-General, and he failed to challenge those comments at the time. Since then, he has avoided any outright condemnation of the discriminatory implications of the conversation that he was a party to, even as it began to turn into a diplomatic row with the Indian Government.
In a year's time there'll be a General Election. If ACT fails to get a seat in the House, and if South Auckland voters get mad and get active again, then we could very well see a situation where the National Party, even if its traditional support stays solid, is unable to form another government. (Mind you, I've never been good at predicting the future!)

Trust them they know what they're doing?

2010-09-28T14:35:00.002+13:00

I was glad to see this column appear in the Herald today.

A letter signed by 27 international legal scholars raises concerns about the government's new legislation intended to expedite post-quake recovery in Canterbury, and says that this Act "represents an extraordinary broad transfer of lawmaking power away from Parliament and to the executive branch, with minimal constraints on how that power may be used."

I share the alarm of these legal scholars about the Canterbury Earthquake
Response and Recovery Act 2010.

S 6 of the Act permits Orders in Council on the recommendation of the relevant Minister "to make any provision reasonably necessary or expedient for the purpose of this Act".

But, further, subsection 3 says: "The recommendation of the relevant Minister may not be challenged,reviewed, quashed, or called into question in any court."

And Subsection 4: "An Order in Council made under subsection (1) may grant an exemption from, or modify, or extend any provision of any enactment, including (but not limited to)" a list of 22 Acts - and note the "but not limited to."

There are only a few basic Acts that serve fundamental constitutional purposes that cannot be excepted or modified under s 6(4). (Well, isn't that a relief!)

I am alarmed at the cowardice of opposition MPs who wouldn't stall this legislation, as much as I am at the authoritarian ideology of the National-led government that introduced it.

This is the state of exception in our back yard, and anyone curious about the consequences of this kind of thing needs to watch the documentary 'Draquila' which observes the dictatorial and corrupt actions of the Berlusconi government following the earthquake in Aquila.

The following quote comes from a review of that movie from this link.

"Guzzanti's film stresses that Italy's reaction to the earthquake shows the country's democracy is on shaky ground. She documents what she sees as a disturbing shift toward authoritarianism. As an example, she shines the spotlight on Italy's Civil Protection Agency, which oversaw the [refugee] camp and is handling reconstruction efforts. Guzzanti argues that Berlusconi has given it sweeping powers that allow it to skirt the law when awarding building contracts. Guido Bertolaso, who heads the agency, is already under investigation in another case for allegedly giving contracts to friends."

Obama attempts to regulate financial services

2010-08-02T20:33:00.002+12:00

Bolivia struggles with it contradictions

2010-08-02T20:30:00.001+12:00

What world are we living in?

2010-07-26T09:29:00.000+12:00

I was asked to address the above question for the Waitakere Wellbeing Collaboration Summit, 23 July 2010, and the following notes were written afterwards, summarising my presentation. Naturally, this is too big a question for one person to answer, but I decided to begin with the big issue of the present: the Recession. At the time of writing this, it is not really clear yet if the Recession won’t turn into a ‘double-dip’ event. Despite talk of recovery, things are still shaky. But, for the worst-off in our society, the Recession is definitely not over if they are still unemployed, or have given up hope of employment, or have had to settle for new employment that does not meet their needs after being made redundant. Official unemployment figures may have reduced lately, but the consequences of unemployment and low wages are still being felt by many people.

We know from our own observations in the community, as well as from income statistics, that economic inequality and relative rates of low-income increased from the late 1980s on. This trend abated in the late 2000s, partly thanks to Working for Families. At the time of writing, statistics covering the Recession were not yet available, but it is fairly predictable that the Recession would have widened the gaps some more again. The skilled middle-class workers will have weathered the storm reasonably well, but the impact of the rise in unemployment has adversely affected mostly the young, the lower-skilled and the Maori and Pacifica workforces.

We also know that there is a large productivity and income gap between New Zealand and Australia, and that’s why we are losing skilled people across the Tasman. Australia did not have a recession, in the strict technical sense, and so that economic gap will have become wider and the lure of better-paid jobs over there will become stronger.

From a wider viewpoint, the Recession was not just about a credit crisis affecting the financial services. It was also a symptom of the huge economic imbalance between the US and China, and the effect of this on New Zealand (and Australia too) is that we will increasingly become an economic outpost of China. In the past New Zealand has been a part of Britain’s economic empire, and then after WW2 came under the sway of American imperialism. But the power-balance is now shifting East, mainly towards China, but also India – and one should not overlook the rise of Brazil too. This means a shift in strategic power-relations for New Zealand, and a change in the cultures and politics that will come to influence us from abroad.

I also wanted to look at local politics. One of the things that most troubles me at the moment is the apparent willingness of central government to ‘ride rough-shod over’ (as the Prime Minister put it) local democratic governance. The way that the Auckland amalgamation was rammed through by legislation, often ignoring the outcomes of the Royal Commission’s consultations, and the sacking of Environment Canterbury are two examples. The Rugby World Cup 2011 Empowering Bill (currently at the select committee stage) is another example, as this Bill effectively would suspend many laws and processes governing local matters, and sweep aside the participative rights of local people, in favour of almost dictatorial executive powers to be granted to an appointed authority. I hope this Bill gets thrown out, but I fear that it may only be watered down a little, and it will set an example of how central government can get its own business and economic objectives met by decree, if it happens to see the need, and to ignore the principles of the Local Government Act (and other Acts) in the process.

In New Zealand generally, I am saddened at the extent to which people resort to blaming individuals for the outcomes that they suffer, and so refuse to look for solutions that can be shared in common. An example of this is the readiness to seek punitive actions against individuals who commit crimes, as if that were the solution, rather than to seek, in addition to penal remedies, a collective public response to the root causes. Some of us forget, for instance, that perpetrators and victims of crimes are not distinct classes of persons. Most perpetrators have also been victims, and public services to give young people a better start in life could help to prevent crime at the outset. Or, to give another example, if we assume that pedestrians injured on the roads are ‘careless’, then we have forgotten that good urban design and engineering could help prevent such incidents in the first place.

The City that Auckland is about to become has been presented to us as if it were little more than an economic commodity in a competitive global marketplace: a place to attract investment, to move bodies and things around more efficiently, and to soak up the tourists’ dollars. But our City is much more than that. It is our home, the place in which we meet others, the place where we grow up and eventually die, and the location of many of our memories. We need to reclaim not just the local governance of our City, but also its very meaning.

Let’s not forget, though, that New Zealand is a high-trust society. We are still able to rely on matters being relatively well regulated and transparent. You don’t have to bribe officials to get things done here. We are a relatively tightly-knit community among which networks are close and social connections are easily established. New Zealanders do continue to participate on a voluntary basis in all kinds of activities. The talk tends to be about the decline of community, but we should recall that there is still a lot of so-called social capital out there. We do have many people in our communities who are willing and able to make a difference – and who are actually doing so. There are many more who, with a bit of support, might come out and take leadership roles or contribute something extra. New Zealanders seem to me to be people who are concerned about their community and who willingly organise around collectively agreed roles. Cynicism, fear and apathy have not taken over, and events such as the Waitakere Wellbeing Collaboration Summit are the living evidence of it.

Thinking, then, about the world we are living in, there were three questions that I put to the Summit, hoping that they might be questions that the audience would find stimulating. First, I asked whether the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights would eventually carry more weight than the Treaty of Waitangi. While the Treaty has a huge role in our constitutional history and in our contemporary law and politics, we also know that it was hastily drafted and badly translated, and many of its words are now outdated (for example, ‘British subjects’ in Article 3). The UN Declaration is very far-reaching, and has broader provisions than the Treaty. Furthermore, it has been developed and written, with great care, in the context of international relations. Admittedly, a UN Declaration has no binding effect on New Zealand’s domestic law – but neither does the Treaty, in fact. I suggest, then, that the Declaration will eventually supercede and become more effective than the Treaty.

Secondly, I asked when will we learn to design civility into our urban landscapes? – as distinct from designing it out. It saddens me to see what we have done to Albany, to see the hideous buildings that have been permitted in central Auckland, and to see how motorways have carved the heart out of so much of the City. Too often, the structures and environments that have been ‘planned’ force us to pass one another by at speed, or leave us with no way to say hello to one another, or give us no public place to gather, to celebrate, to protest, or just to hang out casually in a safe and convivial atmosphere. Environments that do work well socially tend, ironically, to be places that have older buildings (or, as parks, no buildings at all) and have been spared too much attention from planners and developers! If, on the other hand, all of the places where people congregate are commercial malls, and the only public spaces are roads, then the City physically excludes us from our fullest rights and liberties as citizens who participate in public events and in voluntary social organization.

Thirdly, I asked when will child poverty become a hot political issue? The income statistics tell us clearly that children are the age-group most likely to be living in a household with low income; and indeed, the presence of children is the predominant demographic characteristic of low-income households. We know that poverty affects children’s development permanently, at the most vulnerable developmental stage in life; and it is obvious that the child has no control over the source and quantity of household income. The long-term health, educational and economic outcomes for those raised in relative poverty tend to be disadvantageous, and we, as a society, suffer the consequences collectively, no matter how hard we try to ignore the problem or to blame the parents. Child poverty is, in my eyes, the most shameful fact about contemporary New Zealand society. And politicians have tended to ignore the issue, or to avoid doing anything serious about it. I think this is changing now, but it is not helped when people drag red herrings across the trail by saying ‘Ah, but it depends on what you mean by poverty!’ or talking about rich people who don’t spend time with their children as a kind of poverty. Such quibbles, which I think are aimed at challenging materialism, are valid in a way; but they also distract our attention from the hard issues of real material disadvantage, with long-term negative social outcomes, for perhaps about one quarter of our children, especially Maori and Pacifica children.

Connected with the problem of child poverty is a whole complex of other issues, ranging from parenting skills, employment skills, community facilities, substance abuse, and so on. Listening to the discussions at the Summit impressed upon me how highly aware the participants were about the interconnectedness of such issues. People were constantly making connections, and seeking to see things holistically. For example, there was talk about the connections between physical activity and mental health, about the social benefits of sports participation, about the implications of housing for health and for social belonging, and so on. Around many different topics, the need to support or up-skill parents was identified as a basic need. This included, for example, the need for parents to relearn how to play with their children. Challenges like this have very direct implications for all of us. The discussions were very wide-ranging and creative, and the consciousness of the participants appeared to be holistic and lateral-thinking.

Alongside those positive and creative thoughts, though, was the realistic identification of barriers. Economic barriers and intangible social barriers (such as ‘unsafeness’ or discrimination) were identified, and they tended to pose moments of pessimism on the discussions. Naming such barriers is the first step to overcoming them, but they can also seem to be too big for a community to deal with. Perhaps, I wondered, we should just decide that nothing is too big for a community, if there is a will to work together.

Overall, then, I was really impressed with the scope of practical ideas that were being offered around a huge range of community issues: food security, time-banking, literacy, physical activity, housing, etc. It was an honour to be invited to address and to participate in the Summit.

Further evidence to add to my previous post...

2010-07-11T11:21:00.001+12:00

The PM has been quoted as saying that, if the ARC won't agree to demolishing buildings on Queen's Wharf and doing what he wants in pursuit of a "party central" venue, then there are other options, such as, he casually suggested, Victoria Park. And, better still, his government has introduced legislation for fast-track powers (Rugby World Cup 2011 Empowering Bill) that would allow unelected officials (mainly lawyers, appointed by the Minister) and the Minister himself (McCully) to simply over-ride any local-body democratic governance processes in permitting activities, structures and liquor licences for the Rugby World Cup.

Mr Key was quoted by stuff.co.nz as follows: "It's always possible for a government to ride rough-shod over another party – in this case, local government – and if we did that, it might actually be with the support of the majority of Aucklanders, who I would suggest share our view that something better can be constructed on Queen's Wharf."

Whether or not the majority of Aucklanders would agree (if they had time to think about it) is a moot point, but Mr Key was obviously thinking of applying that Empowering Bill to this kind of situation. He wants his government to be able to "ride rough-shod" over the Auckland Council, if the latter happens to get in the way.

This, in my opinion, is an extraordinary and arrogant usurpation of normal constitutional rights and powers by the Executive.

Whatever happened to local democracy?

2010-07-10T11:11:00.002+12:00

Remember all of that nice talk about 'empowerment' and 'local democracy'? And, do you remember the inspirational words in the Local Government Act 2002, which states that its purpose is to provide for 'democratic and effective local government that recognises the diversity of New Zealand communities' and for 'powers for local authorities to decide which activities they undertake and the manner in which they will undertake them'?

Well, let's look at the facts: First, the biggest rearrangement of local democratic powers currently under way (the amalgamation of Auckland's councils) would probably not have been supported by a referendum of local voters. Knowing this, central government has forced it through by legislation. To the extent that Aucklanders were consulted about the amalgamation (by the Royal Commission), central government has been prepared to ignore and over-ride many of the resulting key recommendations.

Worse still, consider the sacking of Environment Canterbury, due to its internal deadlock over water rights. It seems that, on those occasions when the results of local democratic choices fail to produce the results that central government wants, then democratic process will just have to be negated, and the matter will be decided by executive decree.

Twice now, Ministers (Mallard and McCully) have tried to step in to bully Auckland's decision-makers into doing radical things to Queen's Wharf for the Rugby World Cup. Ultimatums are delivered, decisions are demanded, and, when the local people start to object and raise alternative uses for the Wharf, the Minister blames Aucklanders for not being able to get their act together. McCully was recently quoted on Radio NZ as saying that the Super City 'can't come soon enough.' What that suggests to me is that Cabinet regards the Super City Council as a puppet that will make it easier for them to ram through changes that they happen to want. Whatever Aucklanders might have wanted and decided (after lengthy debates and consultations) can be over-ridden in favour of (once again) central executive decree.

So much for local democracy!

Constitutional Matters

2010-04-22T09:51:00.002+12:00

The last couple of days have seen two significant events: the voting down of the private member's Bill on referenda about changing our Head of State, and the ratification of the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights.

On the former issue, I gather that Keith Locke and Phil Twyford spoke in the House about giving NZers a choice about this issue, especially as our Sovereign is neither elected by us, nor appointed by our representatives, and is not a NZer herself. I thought it was odd that ACT, the party that supposedly stands for 'freedom of choice' for all NZers, refused to consider giving us a choice in this important matter.

Anyway, the vote against the Bill indicates that MPs are mostly afraid of the political consequences of this debate. MPs may agree privately, but political parties with a majority in the House just do not want to get embroiled in this, as there is nothing to be gained from it politically, and the public probably are in no mood for change anyway, at present.

If (in the unlikely event) such a referendum were to go ahead and we voted for change, the probability is that NZers would vote for a Head of State to be elected at large (who would trust politicians to appoint him/her?) and that would then politicize the role. We would no longer have a constitutional Monarch, represented by a Governor General, who is kept apart from political debates and negotiations, and thus has a more impartial constitutional role. There's a danger in that. So, although I did endorse Keith's Bill to go forward for debate, I'm not sure if the matter would have led to anything but mischief, once it got into the hands of the chattering classes and the bloggers.

Then there's the UN Declaration. NZ had to sign up sooner or later, but it is interesting to see how the PM was trying to play it down (merely 'aspirational', and 'non-binding') while others have been saying, for instance, that it's the greatest thing since the Treaty itself and will lead to iwi self-government, etc. The truth, I guess, is somewhere in the middle. Sir Edward Durie's comments are the best I've read so far:

'Sir Edward said he did not overlook the fact that the declaration had only moral force. The same was said of the Treaty of Waitangi.

'But he added: "Important statements of principle established through international negotiation and acclamation filter into law in time, through both governments and the courts, which look constantly for universal statement of principle in developing policy or deciding cases."

'Sir Edward said that were nothing else done during the Maori Party's lifetime, "this one thing would be enough to secure for it a treasured place in Maori history."'

(These passages above were copied from the Herald.)

The Declaration's wording is really very wide-ranging, and it does give great support to Maori aspirations - and to real-world negotiations or litigation - around pretty much everything. It will, without doubt, have a bearing on matters to do with the foreshore and seabed, the issue of mana whenua representatives in local government (especially Auckland), whanau ora services etc.

Ironically, all this plays into National's pro-privatization agenda, as they can use it to off-load costs and responsibilities onto iwi organizations for all sorts of troubles, such as family violence, adoptions, offender rehab. etc. Whanau Ora is just the beginning!

In fact, they could go further, by using Article 4: "Indigenous peoples, in exercising their right to self-determination, have the right to autonomy or self-government in matters relating to their internal and local affairs, as well as ways and means for financing their autonomous functions." That is, the Nats could say to iwi organizations that they can levy their own members to raise their own finances in order to run their own by-Maori-for-Maori social services, and the rest of the country's tax-payers can be relieved of the costs. Isn't that what the Maori Party was asking for?

No More Nukes! (or not so many, anyway)

2010-04-13T20:21:00.002+12:00

Well it's not often that NZ has a role to play in international affairs, so I have to make the most of it... And I guess that many baby-boomer lefties and greenies will be choking on their chardonnay to see a National Party PM basking in the glory of our anti-nuclear law at Obama's summit, hand-shakes and all. After all, Key's immediate predecessor was busted for telling US officials that the anti-nuke legislation would be 'gone by lunchtime' if he ever became PM. But then, as recently as the 2008 Election, National had to promise not to repeal the anti-nuclear law - but only under sufferance, in order to avoid electoral-campaign embarrassments. It was one of the famous 'dead rats' that they forced themselves to swallow in order to get into power. Now that they're there, Obama and Biden are pouring praise on them for the leadership role that NZ has adopted, and suddenly NZ and the US are the best of buddies again. Irony of ironies!

But, this now seals in New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy for good. The centre-right has now thoroughly and warmly embraced it, under the avuncular eye of the American president. What this means is that those who fought so hard against allowing (potentially) nuclear-armed vessels into our ports in the 1970s and early 80s are fully vindicated. That battle has now been completely won, and the enemy has capitulated totally! The protestors who were accused of being anti-American, commie, pinko pacifists (I was one of them) can take some pleasure in seeing the National Party give in totally on this issue - now that our policy is considered to give NZ a place at the 'top table'.

Mind you, despite what you'd think from the local media, there really is little mention of Mr Key on the official website for the Nuclear Security Summit. And Mr Key did not capitalize on the leadership opportunity that Obama gave him, choosing not to highlight our no-nukes policy in his speech, and appearing to be more concerned with free-trade deals instead.

But we also need to be realistic. Obama is talking about reducing weapons stockpiles, and ending testing and proliferation, and his main rallying point is around the prevention of nuclear terrorism. And Iran and North Korea are hardly going to come to his party! There's still a long way to go, if we think of disarmament as the goal. One nuclear weapon is still a nuclear weapon too many. But, if we think back to the Reagan days of nuclear 'sabre-rattling', this is a whole lot better.

The Global Financial Crisis

2010-04-06T14:15:00.001+12:00

A good article has appeared in the New York Review on this topic and its implications for regulation of the finance sector. It covers some of the points I was trying to make in 144-721 contact course, linking the global east-west savings imbalance, the 'lax' or 'moderate' (depending on your point of view) policies of the Federal Reserve, and a light-handed regulatory regime as contributors to the reckless investment behaviour that led to the GFC of 2008. Alcaly is a good authority and he uses plain English, so I am happy for students to cite this one in essays. He stresses the importance of public policy reactions in pulling the economy out of free-fall, and also to mitigate future crises. He is justly cautious in admitting, at the end, that 'there can be no assurances that it won't happen again'. The piece in the same journal by Robert Solow may also be useful.

The making of the Super City

2010-03-25T12:43:00.002+13:00

Abstract

This essay charts the progress of local government in Auckland, from shabby colonial settlement to Super City, with the 'Greater Auckland movement' somewhere in between. It shows the significance of local politics and policy to everyday life, and ponders the question of whether Aucklanders will be better off for being denizens of the new Super City.

A draft is available on request. The essay is to become part of a volume of essays, called A Super City? Views of Auckland being edited by Jack Ross and me, for the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Massey University Albany.

If you would like an advance copy of my draft essay, then either email me, or leave your email address in the comments box.

My email address is:
L.G.Duncan@massey.ac.nz

Welcome to 2010

2010-03-02T15:30:00.000+13:00

Dear Public Policy students

The new academic year has begun, and your contact courses happen at the end of March, for those doing MPP and PGDip. You should receive readings and admin guides for your papers by mail, but we also hope to have the readings downloadable on the university's Stream system. If that isn't working well, please let us know.

We have had a good intake of new students to the programme this year, so we look forward to meeting you all in the contact courses.

Auckland 'Super City' amalgamation

2010-01-14T11:13:00.003+13:00

Students interested in the amalgamation of Auckland City can find lots of background information on line, so the following are the relevant websites:

The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance reported to government in March 2009, and their website includes lots of background research as well as their Report.

Not all of the Commission's recommendations were accepted by central government, while others were significantly changed; but the basic decisions made by Cabinet are available on line here. The most controversial aspect was the government's refusal to accept the Royal Commission's recommendation for special Maori elected representatives on the Council.

At the moment, the exact boundaries of the City and the electoral wards are not finalised. The Local Government Commission has the job of drafting boundaries and consulting with the public about this. You can see their consultation documents on boundaries here.

Meanwhile, the nitty-gritty tasks of organizing the transition from 8 Councils into 1 'Super City' Auckland Council are the responsibility of the Auckland Transition Agency, and you can view their work here.

Social Report 2009

2009-10-29T17:33:00.003+13:00

Students in 179-201 especially should note that the 2009 edition of the Social Report is now on line and shows some interesting (but negative) trends. Click here.

Conference on community well-being

2009-10-28T15:29:00.002+13:00

Students (and others) are encouraged to attend the Passing Go conference on 20 November: Click here for more info.

The organisers say:

"The success of the new Auckland Council is dependent on strong and healthy communities. For the first time this conference brings together Auckland's leading academics, political thinkers, and expert practitioners, to debate the crucial issue of how the new council can work to promote social wellbeing in Auckland."

A student discount can be organised. Contact me, if you are interested in this.

Section 59

2009-09-15T14:23:00.004+12:00

The present wording of s. 59 can be found on line: click here.

I mentioned a literature review on the effects of corporal punishment, and you can find that here.

There's another article on public submissions to the amendment Bill that may also be interesting, here. But remember that, while public opinion is relevant to Parliament's deliberations, it is not the only factor to consider. International legal obligations on States and research-based evidence need to be taken into account.

The UN convention on the rights of the child includes a periodic review of NZ as a signatory. Click here for more info, and then click on the link that says 'concluding observations' to download the most recent UN Committee report on NZ (dated 2003). That document does include comments about S. 59.

Poverty

2009-09-11T10:47:00.002+12:00

A couple of students have already asked about the poverty essay question and where to find info on this. As the lecture on this topic is a while away, and as it is a question that really does require reference to well-informed analyses, I refer you to some useful on-line sources.

First, the Social Report's data on economic standard of living (and possibly other indicators) will be useful as a basic set of stats for NZ. Please note that the Social Report does not use the term 'poverty'.

The MSD's own journal the Social Policy Journal of NZ also carries numerous articles about poverty, and you can browse and download these free on line. Note that you can sort by subject, and one of the subjects in the list is 'poverty'. Just a wee hint there.

You can also look at the Child Poverty Action Group, who are a lobby group and have some highly qualified researchers working for them. They will give a more critical perspective on government policy.

If you're really ambitious, you might like to look at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation too, even though they are in the UK.

So please DO NOT consult randomly googled newspaper columns, blogs etc for 'research' on this topic. If you do that, your grade will suffer for it.

Unemployment

2009-08-06T12:35:00.001+12:00

Social policy students may like to take note of the report in the Herald on the latest unemployment figures.

It's not over yet for Bill English

2009-08-06T10:20:00.007+12:00

The questions over Bill English’s ministerial housing allowance are not over yet. Mr English has tried two tactics to put an end to the crisis. First, he said that it was time we all got back to thinking about the recession. Then he decided to pay back the difference between the ministerial housing allowance and the allowance payable to any out-of-town MP who rents accommodation in Wellington. That may have satisfied public opinion to some degree for the time being. Many people are accepting this as setting an example. But it’s not over yet, and questions remain unanswered.

On 1 August English said: "I get the same deal as everyone else. This isn't about the money this is about the support I get which I appreciate that enables our family to be together." Article. Yes, but it's also helping his family pay for a valuable property in Wellington, even though his 'home' electorate is in Southland.

On 6 August, on Morning Report, John Key was saying something quite different. Mr English was not getting the same deal as other MPs, but his situation was ‘unique’ for some reason. Mr Key said there was an ‘anomaly’ between how Mr English was treated compared with others. Nonetheless, Mr Key claimed that Bill English had not broken any rules, and so the solution was to clarify the rules.

By paying back the difference between his allowance and that to which ordinary MPs are entitled, Mr English has not just admitted that his housing allowance was politically embarrassing, he has also exposed himself to deeper questions about how a family trust made it possible to get that higher allowance.

According to a report in the Herald, it appears that Mr English has had a Wellington home that is owned by an English family trust declared an official ministerial residence. How did he do that? It appears that his name was not on the family trust (though his wife’s name is on it). He then rented the house from the trust as an official ministerial residence, entitling him to the higher ministerial allowance. What information did he supply to ministerial services in order to justify this? Can we, the public, see the trust deed and the property valuation?

It’s not just that we are in a recession and that Mr English, as Minister of Finance, is cutting costs in a way that affects many members of the public, and hence that he should be setting an example. There is a further point that, as Minister of Finance, his custodianship of public funds should be above question at all times. And, at the moment, that is not the case.

Action at last.

2009-08-04T14:06:00.003+12:00

From a social-policy point of view the obvious problem arising from a recession is rising unemployment. According to Stats NZ figures, unemployment began to rise sharply, from a relatively low level in late 2007 to about 5% in the March 2009 quarter. As I write, there is no sign that this trend is reversing, and the next quarterly figure will presumably be higher than that.
What are some of the negative social consequences of unemployment?
And what is the government doing about it? As if to prove me wrong (see previous post), the government has recently outlined a package of special measures to address the present economic crisis - Youth Opportunities. The target appears to be young people, especially those aged 16 to 24. A number of subsidised employment and training schemes are outlined on the Beehive website. These tend to be of limited tenure (6 months for the main two employment schemes, down to summertime scholarships for 1600 tertiary students) and, of course, limited numbers. The government predicts that there will be 16,900 new opportunities as a result of this package.
Compare this with over 100,000 unemployed, and growing. Some of those unemployed have been laid off from the public sector as a result of the government's line-by-line budget review. Presumably at least some of those savings have now been reallocated into the scheme that has just been announced.

Massey University Albany takes on the New Economy

2009-07-22T14:33:00.003+12:00

The following is the text of a speech given (on 22 July) at a forum hosted by the School of Social and Cultural Studies on the topic of Albany's designation as the university's centre for innovation and the new economy.

Just as Massey University launched its glossy new strategic plan, and locked its Albany franchise into a brave new ‘new economy’ re-branding, the real (or the unreal) economy became a train-wreck in the worst Crash ever – or, to be more precise, the worst since the close of World War II. Was this just bad timing? Or, more helpfully, what could possibly be meant, in July 2009, by that now-ironic phrase ‘new economy’?

The fact is that no-one can really imagine what ‘the new economy’ will look like after the full implications of the present catastrophe have played out. The Crash was previously unimaginable, and so its consequences remain unimaginable. Despite the focus on ‘toxic debt’ composed largely of so-called ‘sub-prime’ mortgages in the US, there is not yet even full agreement on the underlying causes of the Recession (with capital R). Neither is there yet any certainty about whether the worst effects of the catastrophe are behind us. We don’t know yet if the Recession has bottomed out. Worse still, we don’t know yet if the widely predicted Recovery (let’s use another capital R) will come, or when it will come, or what the world will look like when and if it does come. It could turn out that, today, to expect a Recovery based on the past’s business-as-usual assumptions is the darkest form of narcissistic disavowal since Neville Chamberlain said ‘peace for our time’. But I’m not making any predictions.

Let’s recall instead some past predictions about ‘new economies’ – because new economies come and new economies go. In the heady days of supply-side economics, ushered in under Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, the present catastrophe and the subsequent public-policy responses were unthinkable. Instead, New Zealand was to be a financially liberalized ‘Switzerland of the South Pacific’, doing trades while Wall St and the City of London were asleep, and populated by self-reliant market-players saving for their own retirements. In the even headier days of third-way knowledge-economy discourse, the present catastrophe and the new economic-policy emergency responses were equally unthinkable. New Zealand’s economic productivity boom was to be fuelled by educated brains and innovative software, not milk. And universities were to be ‘key players’ in all that. Remember those days? They weren’t that long ago.

Instead, what do we see now? New Zealand is now high on the world’s sick-list of debtor nations, not far behind bankrupted Iceland, and probably in the top half of the OECD on the current-account deficit league-table. We’ve been copying our American cousins: living beyond our means, and relying on Asian savers. The only problem is that, even while things may have been disastrous in the US, New Zealand doesn’t have anything like the US’s productive potential, nor the hegemonic power of the US dollar, to back up its unsustainable lifestyle habits.

The new economy will be one that will have to live with the consequences of an underlying imbalance between excess Asian capital and the environmentally and economically unsustainable western (especially American) consumer life-styles that it supported. The pay-off for Americans – and, from the crumbs off the table, for New Zealanders too – has been the enjoyment of cheap throw-away products that emerge from Chinese factories with Dickensian working conditions. (For further reading on this imbalance, see the article by Skidelsky.) Wearing cheap T-shirts made in China, each one of which requires at least 500 litres of water to produce, we can blob out in front of the TV and wish for the brands that we cannot afford, imagining an out-of-reach form of happiness. Once that T-shirt fades, just throw it away and buy another. The next morning, go back to the office, wearing suits made in China, to foreclose some more mortgages or to sell some more insurance policies.

Looking to Obama (he who can do no wrong) and the policy responses of the leaders of the free world, what can we now expect? Traditional Madisonian economic liberties, supposedly protected by the US Constitution, have been suspended while the Obama administration takes on emergency powers. Miscreant bankers are bailed out, if only because they’re too big (but not too crooked) to be allowed to fail, so-called ‘toxic debts’ generated on Wall St become tax-payer-owned liabilities, and the US Federal government is now the major shareholder in GM, from which commanding position it can dictate what GM produces. Similar nationalizations have been performed on the other side of the Atlantic. Sir Robert Muldoon would have been laughing inimitably (and lop-sidedly), were he alive to see this.

So, what has been the response of the New Zealand government to this new economy? ‘Duck and cover’ would perhaps be the best epithet for it. Much as the instincts of the National Party, and its allies in ACT, would love to privatize everything that moves, there’s just no spare capital around now to take much more exposure to New Zealand’s ailing and obese economy. Even plans to introduce competitive provision of workers’ compensation have had to be shelved due to sick balance sheets and a lack of meaningful credit in the insurance industry.

National has made some gestures towards job protection (with the 9 day fortnight) and to create work by planning a new cycle-way, which no doubt is already described as ‘iconic’, but has shrunk from a national route to a mere ‘patchwork’ in the Prime Minister’s imagination. But the employment effects of these measures are easily out-weighed by the numbers of people being sacked from the public service, let alone the hundreds of other redundancies occurring weekly in the private sector.

May’s Budget provided little inspiration, and certainly no obvious policy pathway to lead us out of this new economic crisis. But, then, what could we have expected? Because New Zealand is so indebted, it is imperative that the government minimize its borrowing – and borrow it must, because the tax-cuts have locked Mr English into budget deficits for many years to come – and this means he must tightly rein in public spending. In the meantime, we are expected to wait optimistically for the Big Recovery. And we are expected to assume that the new economy that is about to emerge will largely be like the old economy before the Crash – even though the governments of the world’s leading powers are now doing the previously unthinkable in reaction to the biggest global destruction of wealth ever seen. Given, then, New Zealand’s tortoise-like ‘duck and cover’ policy, perhaps this is where Massey Albany could come into the game, offering courses for redundant public servants, re-educating them in the new realities of the new economy and its fiscal implications. I reckon that the MPP will have no trouble accommodating them all. And I assure you that we’re up to the challenge!

Whatever the ‘new economy’ turns out to be like, the signs are that it may become a more centrally regulated economy, a conservative economy based more on saving than consumption, a new economy of rising unemployment and poverty, and possibly even an authoritarian economy based upon the new dominance of Chinese production and capital accumulation. Given the present recession in New Zealand, plus an unacceptably high current-account deficit, an inevitable feature of the new economy domestically is a reduced standard of living and poorer public services.

Semester 2, 2009

2009-07-09T14:43:00.002+12:00

As I was on leave last semester, this blog has been inactive for quite a while. But, with the second semester about to begin, it's timely to reflect on some of the big issues that will be of interest to students of social policy, political economy and public management.

To say the least, the last 12 months have seen some world-changing events, especially the massive economic collapse. As governments struggled to deal with the effects - if only to be seen to be doing something - they abandoned the 'free market' purism of recent decades and began nationalizing banks, guaranteeing deposits, printing money, and (in the case of the US auto industry) controlling major manufacturers. A while ago, such interventions would have been heresy!

At home, to add to this, we have had a change of government. While National had quietly adopted many of Labour's programmes (such as Kiwisaver), they have also signalled a change of direction. But, not without unwelcome restrictions due to the Recession (note the capital R!). Consequently, they have had to indefinitely postpone promised tax-cuts, and (I believe) to shelve plans to allow private-sector insurers to provide workers' compensation. The new government will have to live with projected budget deficits, funded through increased public debt, for the foreseeable future. This radically reduces their policy and spending options, and has seen them getting much tougher on public-sector job-cuts than they had indicated prior to the Election. Overall, their options for tackling the Recession through stimulatory policies are very limited, largely because NZ as a nation is already heavily indebted (that is, we have been living beyond our means for far too long, and further borrowing is only going to make it tougher.)

So, the biggest thing on the National-led government's mind right now is the reform of Auckland's local governance. As I write this, many of the key aspects of those reforms are undecided, but there is no doubt that the 'super-city' is going to become a reality. Will this reform deliver on its promises, and make Auckland a better place to live, to work and to invest? Will the new governance structure work more effectively to deliver infrastructure development? Will it help to restrain growth in rates?

From the student's point of view, though, the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance provided us with a wealth of information and research on just about everything to do with local governance in the region. See the papers posted on the Commission's website, especially volume 4 Research Papers.

Political theory 200-215 possible questions

2008-09-10T15:18:00.000+12:00

Instructions: Answer any ONE (1) of the following questions, basing your answer on at least one of the theorists covered in this course.

1. Is it enough to consider politics to be a sheer struggle for power?

2. Does a social contract exclude women?

3. Is the aim of the state the happiness of its subjects?

4. On your reading of political theory, from Plato to Marx, is there any evidence that the human race made any progress in governing well?

5. Is democracy a good idea?

So, what is privatization?

2008-07-04T11:37:00.000+12:00

John Key says that the opening up of the present state-monopoly ACC scheme to competitive provision by private insurance companies is not privatisation. See news article. He says “there will be competition and choice” and this has been National’s policy for some time, at least since the failed attempt to introduce competition under 1998 legislation.
Now, National has also pledged not to privatize any state-owned assets in their first term in office. So, there is obviously some confusion here, and it revolves around what privatization actually is, and whether opening up ACC to competitive provision is a form of privatization.
Privatization is the sale or transfer of public assets to the private sector. On the face of it, ACC would not be ‘sold’ to the private sector, as it would remain as a crown entity managing what remains of the state’s obligations to injured people after competitive provision is introduced (if that happens).
But ACC, like any insurance scheme, builds up an asset of reserves which it invests in markets. ACC’s 2007 Annual Report shows a net levy income of $3,290 million, a net investment income of $801.7 million, and investments totaling nearly $10 billion. These reserves are needed to cover future claims liabilities.
Moving to private-sector competitive provision would not mean selling off this sizeable asset to the private sector, as those reserves are there to meet the costs of existing claims.
However, it would mean that the (mainly Australian-owned) insurance industry would gain a compulsory hold on New Zealand businesses’ and households’ premiums to amass their own reserves for investment – and, of course, to help to enrich their shareholders. In other words, the NZ government would be giving them an asset. That’s privatization!
Further, that privatized asset would no longer be transparent to the New Zealand public who have contributed to it. ACC’s accounts are open to the public, and we can see how much ACC is saving and investing on our behalf, and we can call them to account as ethical investors. This would not be possible if such reserves were held by Australian insurance companies. For all we know, these funds could then be invested in tobacco or alcohol companies whose objectives and effects are contrary to the injury prevention and health promotion mission of our present ACC scheme.
So, why would we give away our savings and investments in our compulsory accident insurance scheme to Australians to profit from and to do what they like with? And, let’s not evade the issue. Private competitive provision of accident insurance means privatization!

The Budget!

2008-05-22T20:40:00.003+12:00

All the fuss is naturally about the tax cuts, but, being the theorist, I was drawn to Cullen's words in the closing passages of his speech (which you can view in full on the Beehive website):
"I am conscious of the honour that I have in being the first Finance Minister since 1944 to present nine successive Budgets to Parliament. The connecting thread throughout those nine Budgets has been the twin themes of security and opportunity, those ideals which lie at the heart of our national identity."
Was that the only way he was able to say that he must be conscious that this is probably his last Budget?
Whatever the case, and as I don't like to gaze into crystal balls, the important matter is that we are now getting into a phase of nostalgically assessing the Clark-Cullen years as a phase in our ideological evolution as a nation. No matter how cynical you might get about the tax cuts etc, Cullen has to be acknowledged for providing a steady and responsible pair of hands at the fiscal tiller. He has consistently delivered surpluses, retired public debt, saved on our behalf - and still found room to spend up large on the public services that we all thought were going south (as far as Antarctica) in the 1990s. He set aside money to help fund NZ Superannuation, he set up Kiwibank, he steered Working for Families (a form of tax relief by horizontal redistribution) and, for all its worries, he created KiwiSaver. Quite an achievement, really, and all based on moderation and on hope and investment for the future, as well as spending for the present.
The Third Way at its best! I think that History (his own discipline!) will judge him kindly.
Cullen was alluding in his speech to Walter Nash, who was Minister of Finance in the first Labour Government. After winning the 1935 Election, Labour "immediately nationalised the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, shifting control from private bankers to the minister of finance. Guaranteed prices for butter and cheese were introduced and a State Advances Corporation Act provided cheap loans to farmers and stimulated house-building. State salaries, reduced in 1931, were restored to their former levels, pensions were raised, the education vote was increased, and free milk was provided in schools. This increased expenditure necessitated increases in income and land taxes."
['Nash, Walter 1882 - 1968'. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 22 June 2007: Link]
And of course they passed the Social Security Act 1938.
Are the themes of Nash's term as Minister of Finance comparable to Cullen's?

So, what is a 'smack'?

2008-04-29T21:13:00.000+12:00

One of the problems with citizens’ initiated referenda is that the authors of the petition may not think things out very clearly. So, for example, the present petition for a referendum proposes the question: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" I suppose that most ‘Kiwis’ will say yes to that, but I would like to know what ‘smack’ means. ‘Typical academic!’ you may say. OK, that’s my job. So, if one person says ‘I’m gonna smack your face’ usually that suggests the likelihood of a direct punch to the head with a closed fist. Surely, the petitioners couldn’t mean that. Maybe ‘smack’ only means ‘a blow with an open hand’. So, then, is slapping the child’s face included? No, surely not. Not the face. Well, which body parts, then? Legs and bottom seem OK. What about the genitals? No, surely not! What about the stomach?
And how hard is a smack? I’m sure the petitioners would declare that they were meaning only a ‘light’ blow. But how light is light? Let’s look at this from the child’s point of view. A light blow from a strong adult male could cause the child quite some pain and distress, especially if only one year old. I guess that’s the whole idea! Discipline, parental love and pain seemed to be linked in many people’s minds, after all. Have you ever asked yourself why?
Is it OK if the blow leaves a red mark, then, or a bruise even? ‘No, no bruising, please!’ I hear our petitioners say. ‘Just a little pain, to remind the child, but no injury!’
OK, so how much pain should the child experience as a result of this smack? And how would you know, if you were the parent, that you had caused enough pain? Is the child supposed to cry?
Oh, and can I deliver the smack with a tennis racket? I guess not!
Well, I’m narrowing the thing down, but I’m still not entirely clear, as a voter, what I would be voting for if I agree to this proposition that ‘a smack’ is not a criminal offence. Maybe it means ‘a light smack, hard enough to cause a little pain, delivered with an open hand, to the lower backside or legs.’ Have I got that right? It does not mean ‘a blow to the head’ or ‘a hard slap that leaves a bruise’ or ‘a blow aided by an object’.
Have I got that right? Well, if I have, how come the proposed referendum doesn’t explain that?
So this petition is already in a pickle over the definition of ‘a smack’. Perhaps I’d better vote against this referendum. If the law permitted parents to ‘smack’ their children, before you knew it there’d be someone in court claiming that walloping his child with a closed fist across the head was a ‘smack’.
Oh, and the other matter is this: That the petitioners have to prove that smacking a child actually is effective in correcting the child’s behaviour, and not just in satisfying the parent’s need for revenge or to express anger. The weight of research evidence bears against that idea! See the article at this link.

Further to our discussions...

2008-04-02T22:20:00.000+13:00

...from 144721 contact course, on trans-gender, please see the Herald story at this link. For your info.

And if you have any concerns about the essay, and how to write it, please be in touch. I am keen to ensure that you use this as a learning experience, and that you are confident in the skills of using your sources constructively.

Wecome to 2008

2008-02-13T15:30:00.000+13:00

Welcome, especially to those studying extramurally, to our public policy programme for 2008. Keep an eye on this blog for any up-dates, information, feedback etc during the year.

You will get guidance from your study guides and course information sheets about reading, but you may also like to think about the practical realities of what government is doing. A good place to get an overview of that is in the PM's speech to the opening of Parliament (click here to view).

This speech is naturally a very political one, and so is very upbeat about the government's achievements. Nonetheless, it does give you a quick summation of the big picture plans for the foreseeable future. Note, for example, how sustainability has become an integral part of the policy programme. And a big administrative and funding change is signalled for NGOs. The latter represents a big swing of the pendulum away from the times of contestable community funding.

All of these matters are grist to the mill for our classes during the year. Being election year will make it all the more exciting to observe developments. I look forward to seeing you all.

Grant

ACC

2007-11-02T11:44:00.000+13:00

New Zealand’s ACC system is an internationally unique form of accident compensation that provides universal, 24-hour no-fault cover for personal injury, and is accompanied by a complete ban against common-law negligence actions. The concept was proposed by the Royal Commission on Personal Injury, 1967, chaired by Sir Owen Woodhouse. ACC came into existence in 1974.
The Woodhouse Report is a visionary social and legal document, and a one-day seminar to celebrate its 40th anniversary will be held at Auckland University on 13 December 2007. See link.
ACC is universal for those injured by accident, but there is an ongoing grievance in the disability sector about the more generous entitlements for ACC claimants, compared to those who may be equally incapacitated due to other causes and who are covered by public health and social assistance. For people in the disability sector, the ACC–health anomaly has been an ongoing source of dissatisfaction and grievance. ACC is based on the social-insurance principle of compensation for losses incurred, and, due to the ban on the right to sue, it must make up for the loss of those rights. Persons with disability covered by ACC are thus entitled to more generous income support that is not means-tested, and to more generous treatment subsidies and rehabilitation entitlements. From the point of view of an individual who lives with a disability caused by a congenital or a chronic degenerative condition, the discrepancy in the levels of support for different disability groups, based purely on cause and not on actual needs or losses, seems unjust. A case brought before the Human Rights Tribunal claims that the different entitlements provided by ACC and the Ministry of Health, being based purely on different causes of disability, are a form of discrimination. A woman who suffers from severe multiple sclerosis and who is wheelchair-bound has taken this case. Despite severe impairment and disability, she receives significantly less support than an ACC claimant with similar needs. At the time of writing, Crown Law had successfully challenged the Tribunal’s right to hear the case, arguing that cause of disability is not one of the prohibited grounds. The plaintiff, however, was preparing to appeal this decision to the High Court (John Miller, personal communication).
Whether or not that appeal is successful, it does indicate the ongoing grievance in the disability sector about a discrepancy in entitlements based purely on the cause of disability, to the neglect of actual life-consequences. Furthermore, the financial disadvantage to many persons with disability who may not be granted ACC cover raises the stakes for those on the margins of the scheme to litigate over the question of cover.

What is serious misconduct?

2007-08-18T10:31:00.000+12:00

Simon Murdoch, CEO of Foreign Affairs, has been let off with an apology for embarrassing the Government over charter flights by Air NZ to carry Australian soldiers to Kuwait (from which destination they were probably to be deployed in Iraq). Murdoch should have advised his Minister, and even the PM, over the possibility of an Air NZ charter flight when it was first suggested informally by Air NZ. Given Murdoch's otherwise good record, and his admission of responsibility, this is probably as far as the matter should go, regarding his employment. Compare that, though, with Auckland University's decision to sack Paul Buchanan over one email that caused offense to a student, a mistake for which he too accepted responsibility and apologised... Was that a case of serious misconduct deserving of instant dismissal? I think not.

Political neutrality

2007-08-02T10:47:00.000+12:00

Controversy surrounding the handling of an apparent conflict of interest of a senior employee of the Ministry for the Environment has raised questions about the the political neutrality of the public service. For further information on these issues, see the SSC website, link on the right hand column of this blog. It includes a statement about the handling of the affair, and you can find also the Public Service Code of Conduct that addresses the principle of political neutrality.
On another aspect of relations between politicians and public servants, a recent comment in the Herald (July 28) by the PM is also of interest. She was discussing how the relationship between the NZ and British Labour Parties results in a lot of policy ideas being exchanged. When asked, though, to what extent the ideas come from the public service, she gave what she called 'a very blunt answer': 'We generate the ideas'. The role of the public service, in her eyes, is then to turn those ideas into detailed policy, and to implement them.
This approach is in fact in accord with the intent of the State Sector Act. The same Act delegates employment matters to CEOs, and this means that Ministers should not interfere with the employment of public servants.

Disconnected power!

2007-06-05T21:51:00.000+12:00

The recent tragic death of Mrs Folole Muliaga has numerous implications for public policy. While I am hesitant to comment about the events – let alone to pass judgement – before we hear all the facts, I think everyone can agree that the power to her home should not have been disconnected, given the vulnerable state of Mrs Muliaga’s health. The persons involved in the disconnection may claim that they didn’t know about her health – but then surely they had a responsibility to find out before they took that step. So, if they really didn’t know, why didn’t they know?
Now, the SOE Act does have a clause that requires these enterprises to be ‘socially responsible’, but it has always been considered a weak and ill-defined provision, and likely to take second priority to the enterprise’s commercial objectives. And so now government is considering stronger regulation to control such behaviour in the industry. See Herald Article.
But these events also raise general questions about essential utilities (including electricity, gas and water) as public goods. Does the fact that these utilities are essential to health and household well-being over-ride considerations of costs of production, competitive pricing, efficient allocation, etc.? I imagine, given the mood of the country over these recent events, that ‘social responsibility’ may be back on the rise.
There is also a question about contracting out. The power was disconnected by a contractor. One may now ask whether such an action should be given to a contractor, for whom considerations of ‘social responsibility’ may be further weakened. Indeed, the commercialized SOE governance model itself could now be placed under public scrutiny… at least for those goods that are essential for health and well-being.

Albany, city on edge

2007-05-21T12:54:00.000+12:00

“The city is that human settlement in which strangers are most likely to meet. The public geography of a city is civility institutionalized” (R. Sennett, The fall of public man, 2002, p. 264).

Let me take you across the road from the Albany campus in which my office is located. Once we cross the highway, which has an 80 kpm speed limit, we find the back of a cheaply built shopping precinct. This area is devoted to two functions: parking cars and spending money. Space for walking about freely, safe from mobile vehicles, is strictly limited. One finds what one was looking for, returns to one’s car, and leaves. Or possibly one travels to the other end of the car park to get closer to the next goods outlet. There is no place at which people could possibly linger or gather to interact freely, let alone to celebrate or commemorate anything publicly. Appropriately, the only eating-space is a fast food outlet. Admittedly, Albany has acquired its share of more fashionable cafes and bars, but these too are dominated by automobility and car-parking spaces. The diner drives in and out, and does not linger in a public square or on a sidewalk to see and be seen in public, except in so far as he or she may be seated at the table of one of these private businesses, consuming their products.

The dilemma of the loss of physical public space is also illustrated by the behaviour of the university. The main public ritual of the university is the graduation ceremony. But Albany has no street along which people in gowns may safely process, and no auditorium or hall suitable for the public to gather as witnesses and co-celebrants. Instead, we are forced to travel – naturally by car, on the motorway that bisects Albany and crosses the sewage ponds, because public transport is so inefficient and inhospitable – to distant Takapuna which still possesses a traditional shopping strip with limited traffic and which has the Bruce Mason Centre for such occasions.

In short, the new ‘edge city’ that is Albany has been designed in such a way that publicness is virtually prohibited or rendered impossible or deemed undesirable. Public lands are devoted to the rapid and hazardous transit of automobiles in which people sit and gaze from a private mobile space onto footpaths and grassy verges that are almost always devoid of people. There is nowhere for the few pedestrians to shelter or linger, and hence they appear conspicuous and vulnerable from the perspective of an automobile.

It’s hard to imagine how the social capital described so beautifully by Jane Jacobs (The death and life great American cities, 1961) could ever be fostered in such a ‘neighbourhood’, if that term even applies. How can people act as neighbours, let alone civilly as strangers, in such an environment? Hence, it is even harder to imagine how the associative practices and rituals of that realm fondly called ‘civil society’ by neo-liberal and third-way theorists could grow in any meaningful way here – and yet this environment was deliberately planned and authorized by so-called public officials and publicly elected councilors. But whatever happened to the practices and spaces of public life amidst all of their planning?

Putting 'public' back into public policy

2007-04-18T13:33:00.000+12:00

Two of the challenging issues that came with the managerialist reforms since 1987 may be summarised as follows: Do we need, or do we derive real value, from certain public services? And to what extent can such services be performed better by private-sector operators? Asking these questions led to some substantial changes in terms of privatization and contracting out of services. It also led to rethinking the appropriate boundaries between private and public sectors and about importing many private-sector managerial concepts into the public sector.
What I’m wondering, though, is how do we now conceptualize ‘publicness’ in relation to public policy?
Now, the State Services Commission has the central leadership role in defining public-service ethics and overseeing the machinery and the effective leadership of the state sector organizations. So, one can get a good idea from them of how ‘public service’ is framed in the present environment. But the question I’m asking here is really more of a political ideological question, and so I was curious to know what our political parties, in their policy manifestoes, have to say about the fundamental values of public services. So, I went to their websites and had a look, and found that it was not always easy to find a clear ‘vision’ for the future of ideals of ‘publicness’ in our society.
Labour have a specific State Sector Policy, and their 2005 manifesto stated that they have ‘always stood for strong public services available to all New Zealanders who need them’. They claim to have rebuilt services after the cuts of the 1990s, and use figures of numbers of nurse, teachers, etc to justify this. Their policy seems to be a ‘more is better’ approach.
National is a bit harder to pin down. They take a ‘pragmatic’ approach to the possibility of future privatizations of state-owned enterprises, but they have no overarching statement about the value of public services or public ownership. One gets a bit more insight, though, from their Schools Policy which talks negatively about ‘increasing central control’ and ‘increasing bureaucracy’, the remedy for which is to decentralize control to schools (bulk funding?) and give parents more choice (less zoning?).
NZ First also lacks a clear defining statement on the value public services. They talk about their opposition to further asset sales, however. Their Health Policy is also revealing. They want ‘a properly funded and resourced public health service’, but without any more radical restructuring. They also talk negatively about the need to reduce ‘the burgeoning health bureaucracy at all levels’. So, more doctors are welcome, but not more public health officials and managers. But, while they are committed to a public health system, they also want to encourage more people to take up private health insurance. So, the picture one gets is quite contradictory, from the perspective of one who is trying to understand how we value public service per se.
United Future is prepared to privatize some state assets, but they specifically want only ‘partial sale of SOE’s to mum and dad investors’. And their Health Policy is similar to NZ First’s. While they are committed to ‘the public health model’, they are not keen on public administrators and managers, and they are clearly not happy with the supposed inefficiency of the public health system. Hence, they want to ‘promote public-private partnerships in health care, contracting out health services such as surgery to private providers, or others services such as primary care to non-profit agencies, where they can provide care more efficiently or cover shortages in the public sector’.
ACT’s website doesn’t tell us a lot at all, by comparison. They want to make government ‘more transparent and accountable’. As if there weren’t enough budget and reporting documents out there already, they insist on more detail being given to the public about what their taxes are being spent on and why. They want public servants to be bound by ‘pledges’ that commit them to specified levels of service. ‘Health insurance companies will tell you what you’re entitled to, as will security companies. So too should public hospitals and the police.’ They thus mirror the standard neo-liberal line that public services are less efficient and responsive than private enterprise.
The Greens are peculiarly silent on policy about the values of public service, though one would expect that they are generally committed to generously resourced public services.
The Maori Party frame all their policy around the well-being of whanau, and so it seems that their kaupapa cuts right across the traditional Westminster value-system of public administration. Hence, their website contained little that I could apply to this question.

Anyway, I would be interested in responses to this question: After 20 years of reforms that have challenged and renegotiated our assumptions about the value, the values, and the scope of public services, how are we now to conceptualize the ‘public’ in public policy? What is the value of the ‘publicness’ of these services and assets, beyond simply seeing it in terms of the apparatus of government and the conduct of public servants?

Justice system review

2007-03-20T10:16:00.000+12:00

Recent bad news about the Corrections dept has prompted a review of the whole justice system by the government, and this will be worth watching, especially for 724 students. There is a good article on the topic by John Armstrong in the Herald too. The previous National Govt split Corrections, Courts and Justice as part of the general move to disaggregate large bureaucracies into single-purpose agencies, and to avoid 'provider capture' by separating policy advisors from service providers. Labour have chosen sometimes to re-integrate such departments, but only as needed, rather than undertake more 'radical reforms'. Hence, for example, the amalgamations that created the Ministry of Social Development. They also merged Courts and Ministry of Justice, and now it looks like Corrections could be amalgamated into Justice too. We'll wait and see.
In the bigger picture, such changes suggest more than just a political knee-jerk reaction to bad publicity. They suggest a gradual turn-around and re-thinking of NZ's whole approach to public management, reversing some (but by no means all) of the reforms of the 1980s and 90s.
In a later posting, I would like to expand on this theme, and ask whether we need now to reconceptualize public management, in a way that puts the term 'public' clearly back into the picture. Do we need now to develop new ideas about public institutions, public services and public spaces?

What's up in public policy this year?

2007-03-08T08:59:00.000+13:00

Just to get you into thinking about the practical trends for us in public policy in 2007, a good place to begin is with the PM's statement to the House, read at the opening of Parliament. If you do get around to reading it, please note her use of the key terms 'sustainable economy', 'living standards' and 'national identity'. And think about the practical strategies that the government is undertaking to live up to these values. Anyway, each of these concepts is relevant to 721. Indeed, there is an essay topic on the meaning of 'sustainability'. What does the present NZ Government mean by this term? And why might 'national identity' be the business of government? You can link this project of creating and sustaining a sense of cohesive nationhood to the topic of 'social contract' in next week's lecture.

Welcome to 2007

2007-02-22T11:58:00.000+13:00

This is a special welcome to public policy students - those returning from last year and those who are new to the programme.
Now that the academic year is beginning, please note that this blog site can serve a number of useful functions for us.
1. I will put occasional postings on here regarding topical matters in the news or in government websites so that you can think about their relevance to our course. I do sometimes get a bit opinionated on this blog, so don't quote these postings in your essays, please!
2. I will occasionally post information that comes to hand and that may be useful for your assignments - for example, interesting articles that may be in electronic format and that I can send you on request.
3. I will also leave general comments of interest to the class. This is especially useful for extramural studies (144724) but also for the internal course (144721) since there are times of the year when we do not meet for a long period.
4. You can leave comments or questions on the Comments link. This may get some online discussion happening. Please note that you can click on the Anonymous button if you do not wish to be identified.

Have your say...

2006-09-07T14:44:00.000+12:00

Please leave a comment on whether you think Auckland local bodies should amalgamate into one big council (or two, or three...) and why.

For 724 students, essays are looking good so far, and should be back at the next lecture on Tuesday 12 September.

Tertiary Education Strategy

2006-08-30T13:00:00.000+12:00

The government has recently released a Discussion Document to begin consultation towards a second Tertiary Education Strategy (TES). Some comments on this are warranted, and I will give the Discussion Document a tick and a cross. First, though, it is worth noting that the existing TES had a number of notable failings. Perhaps most obvious of these was the language and rhetoric used. It did not reflect the values and idiom of educationalists, it was unduly instrumental and economistic in its approach, and it tended to assert, in a rather bossy tone, that tertiary education institutions ‘will’ do this or that. (Though I have to say that it was surprising just how cravenly obedient university managers were to all of this!)
The present Discussion Document is a little more promising in that it appears to be more inclusive of a range of educational values and outcomes. Nevertheless, it is still bent on making the sector ‘align itself’ with goals set by government.
It is promising this time round, however, to see the document include some (albeit slight) recognition of academic freedom and the role of ‘critic and conscience of society’ (a role that is a duty of universities under the Education Act). The Discussion Document is still inadequate in this regard (and one hopes that the new TES will make up for this). So, for example, it talks of ‘navigating academic freedom’ as if that were some kind of obstacle, rather than a fundamental quality of higher education and research, insisted upon by the Education Act, and in accordance with which the Minister is required always to act.
It is, in principle, likely that the present government’s strategic direction and funding structures for universities actually breach its requirements to preserve and enhance academic freedom. Governments breach that statutory requirement when they use incentives or planning to change or direct the priorities of universities. The freedom of scholarship and inquiry and the freedom to determine curriculum and to assess students as they believe best meets the requirements of the advancement of learning are not adequately recognized when governments use funding as a bribe to take on governmental values and goals (regardless of how laudable the government’s intentions may be). The Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF), for instance, is a direct interference in academic freedom.
Nevertheless, the staff of universities serve a public good when they are prepared to stand outside of government’s social and economic goals and to critically appraise them – or even to simply ignore them and to direct their attention elsewhere. This is a public good because an advanced and open democratic society requires the maintenance of well-informed debate that can question popular beliefs or political opinions and promote new ideas.

Post-Match Commentary

2006-08-28T09:38:00.000+12:00

Thanks to all of you who attended the 721 contact course and made it an enjoyable weekend. It is a shame that the university supports no weekend food etc facilites for these courses, but we survived all the same. I should confirm that the deadline for the second essay is now 18 September.
Also, there's a good article on the Bill of Rights Act in the Herald today, and thanks to those who have commented on these constitutional matters - and on other posts too.
Ciao from Grant

Constitutional Reform

2006-08-21T10:43:00.000+12:00

In a recent Listener article Tim Watkin has done a good, thoughtful job of explaining the need for constitutional reform. It’s a shame that so many other New Zealanders find the subject too boring to think about, or else take the complacent ‘if ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach. Worse still, MPs are clearly too scared to tackle the problem, and produced a very lame reporton the matter. I think we need more debate about this.
I disagree with Watkin in his assumption that the Treaty is an essential part of any future constitution. The Treaty is a poorly drafted and ambiguous document, and some of its wording is now simply irrelevant (‘British subjects’? The Crown’s ‘exclusive right of Preemtion’ in land transactions?). It has become a source of division, rather than unity; and its two versions appear to mean quite different things.
Certainly, it does have an historical constitutional role, in that it signifies the formation of the British colonial government here, and it purported (at very least) to protect Maori property rights. So, a constitution may note the historical place of the Treaty. But surely we could come up with wording that would better reflect the future status of sovereignty and indigenous peoples’ rights than what the Treaty offers us. We need to think creatively about this, and not just assume that the Treaty has an unquestionable place as some kind of constitutional bedrock.
Naturally, the status of the Treaty will become one of the biggest debating points in any future constitutional reform process. But, the place of the British monarch as head of state, and the possible powers of any new head of state, are equally significant and emotive issues for us. I think it’s time we ordinary New Zealanders took the lead over politicians and began this debate.

What are the limits of effective public policy?

2006-08-03T13:45:00.000+12:00

Concerns about crime and violence have led to various proposals about controlling such problems. These are sometimes fuelled by the capabilities provided to us by scientific research and electronic technologies. So, for example, Rotorua City wishes to monitor its CBD on closed-circuit TV to spot known criminals who have been banned from the streets and to have them removed. The Children’s Commissioner wants a national database to track every child from birth to 18 (why stop at 18?). A researcher, Kaye McLaren, proposes a system that identifies – at birth – those likely to become serious criminals so that their families could get priority aid from social services. This is intended to reduce the numbers of offenders in prisons. (As you probably know, New Zealand’s prison incarceration rate is already one of the highest in the world, and growing). McLaren says: ‘The path to prison starts at conception’. But if you are poor and Maori, you are more likely to be a target for the system she proposes. I’m just wondering what the limits of effective law and public policy actually are. What do you think?

Benefits

2006-07-27T11:05:00.000+12:00

First of all, apologies to anyone inconvenienced by my being sick this week.
Anyway, this week I thought I'd draw your attention to the numbers of people on benefits in NZ. You can find recent stats on MSD's Website. The good news is basically that 'The number of clients receiving a main benefit at the end of June decreased from 354,240 to 280,299 between 2001 and 2006' (to quote from one of the MSD fact sheets). By 'main benefits' they mean the income-tested working-age benefits, especially unemployment, DPB, sickness, invalids', widows' etc.
The main reason for the decline in numbers is low unemployment - making it easier to keep people off benefits, or move those on benefits back into employment. An opposite trend, though, has been rising numbers on sickness and invalids benefits. This is driven by demographic ageing, a rise in age of eligibility for the public pension, and deinstitutionalization in mental health.
So, what happens when unemployment rises again? Obviously benefit rolls increase too. But worse: The new Working for Families policies make the assistance to families with jobs much more generous than to those without jobs. So, now, if you lose your job as a family breadwinner, the impact is that much worse if you end up on any form of state assistance (including ACC, if you were injured at work). 'Making work pay' also makes losing your job much more of a penalty.

In search of excellent English

2006-07-20T12:30:00.000+12:00

The State Services Commission has recently released a State of the Development Goals Report 2006. The purpose of these goals is to help lift the performance of the state services so that they deliver better results for government and for New Zealanders. For example, they aim to improve co-ordination across services, and to make them more accessible – all of which I’m sure is a good thing. And worth having a look at.

Forgive me if I get on a hobby-horse here, but the one thing that I do not like about this (and many similar governmental policy documents) is the misuse of the English language. So, for example, the document tells us that state services will have ‘a strong commitment to constant learning in pursuit of excellence’ (p. 9) – a cliché inspired by the 1982 text ‘In search of excellence’ by Peters and Waterman. As a public servant, if you are one, you will be ‘committed to delivering excellence’ (p. 11), in case you needed to know that. This reminds me of the perpetual misuse of ‘excellence’ in educational institutions and their related policy documents, such as the Tertiary Education Commission’s 2002 report on the Performance-Based Research Fund, aka Investing in Excellence.

Now, what does it mean ‘to excel’? It means to surpass others, to be superior or outstanding.

So, by definition, only a few can perform ‘excellently’ at any one task – or, alternatively, most people can excel at only a very few things, and probably not all of the time. The trouble is that, nowadays, every government department, every university, every hospital is required to be excellent – all of the time – as a matter of policy. So, either we are to achieve the statistically impossible feat of all being well above average, all at once; or, the word 'excellence' no longer means what the dictionary says it means, but instead now means merely ‘good enough, on average’, or perhaps just ‘mediocre’. What do you think?

Living Standards

2006-07-13T09:23:00.000+12:00

Well, if you ask me, the big news in public policy in NZ this week was the release of the latest NZ Living Standards Report (2004). This is a study of economic hardship based on a survey of household consumption, as distinct from the usual income-based surveys. The first one was in 2001. It applies an economic living standards index, and classifies households into 7 categories of ‘restricted’ or ‘comfortable’ living standards (1 being the most severely restricted). The full report gives breakdowns into relevant social variables. Now, the Ministry has, in its press release, chosen to focus on the relationship between ‘life shocks’ (such as divorce, personal injury, etc.) and economic hardship, and the NZ Herald dutifully reproduced this particular party line without any critical analysis. Meanwhile, TV One focused on the percentages of Maori and Pacific Islands peoples in the most restricted categories (as if that were news). But, the most scandalous revelation to be found in this survey is the rate at which dependent children under 18 (who have no, or little, control over household income and expenditure) live in ‘restricted’ households, especially when one compares this with the living standards of the elderly in New Zealand. Check it out and judge for yourself. If you have a special interest in child poverty and the Working for Families policy, I have an article on that subject – in hard copy only, sorry – that I can post to you.

Traffic Fines

2006-07-06T17:21:00.000+12:00

There’s been a lot of fuss lately in the press about claims that police officers have targets or quotas of traffic-offence fines. Now, I’m not going to join the debate about whether or not this is so. But there is an important principle that underlies the disquiet that the public feel about this issue. The power to impose a fine for breaking the law obviously derives from the basic powers of the Sovereign. The decision to issue a ticket is an exercise of justice, even though on a fairly mundane level. But the public reasonably expect the exercise of justice to be performed (ideally) impartially, even if perfect impartiality is not fully realizable. It seems wrong to us if this task is treated as a mere job that can be controlled by performance targets or quotas. We would get especially upset if there were pay incentives for meeting certain traffic-fine targets, especially if measured in dollars-worth of revenue, as it would destroy the possibility of being treated impartially as a citizen before the law. It may be OK to structure targets and incentives into the remuneration and performance criteria of a commercial salesperson, but such a technique seems quite inappropriate in the context of law-enforcement. (This is a matter relevant to one of the 724 essay questions, by the way).

Such targets or incentives would be (in principle) almost as bad as bribes issued to influence the decision made by a judge.

On the other hand, it seems reasonable also, from a management point of view, to keep some kind of account of the numbers of tickets issued in relation to the amount of time spent patrolling the roads. If there were none, or very few, being issued, we would wonder if the officers were doing their job of enforcing the law. If the Police had no quantitative criteria for officers, it would be harder to manage their allocation of time as a workforce.

Somewhere in the middle there’s a happy medium, but unfortunately this particular debate has been caught up in political point-scoring. What’s your view?

France 1, NZ 0

2006-06-29T10:33:00.000+12:00

According to a World Bank-sponsored survey
of business regulation, New Zealand has among the least restrictive labour laws in the world (despite what employers say). France, by contrast, has relatively rigid labour-market regulations. You may recall recent protests there when the French Government tried to introduce a law that would permit young employees, in the first 2 years into a job, to be dismissed without cause or explanation. This kind of relaxation of regulations is thought to help reduce unemployment (specifically for youth, in this case) by making employment more flexible and cost-effective. The downside is that employment security is reduced.

Current policy dogma is that labour-market deregulation is a good thing. However, it is worth looking at some of the effects of deregulation in the context of international trade. The following example is from a recent article by Alain Supiot. (If you want, you can go to the complete article in NLR 39. Or I can email you the full text in pdf.)

“Contrary to the dogma of the labour-market deregulators, unemployment levels in any given country depend far more on the organization of international trade and on company law than on local labour legislation. The notion that a reform of the labour law will create jobs is an illusion: the complete abrogation of all regulatory norms applicable to wage labour would have scant impact on unemployment. Witness the situation of the self-employed, excluded from wage-labour regulations, but subject to those of international trade. A typical instance of self-employment is the food and agriculture sector, which switched almost overnight from the ‘archaic’ pattern of peasant smallholdings to an ultramodern model, integrated within international production and distribution networks. A part of this sector lives off the Common Agricultural Policy (another neglected aspect of employment law), but other farm businesses receive no subsidy at all. This is the case, for example, with the battery-farming of poultry, which has been intensively developed since the early 1980s. The method is industrial (25 birds per square metre, massive reliance on antibiotics, etc), the product is tasteless, and the pollution is huge (ground-water poisoned by nitrates), but the—apparent—costs are low. The system is organized into networks on the basis of bilateral contracts signed between the food giants that dominate the world market and the breeders whom they control, from one end of the production chain to the other. This is the sort of ‘social paradise’ of which the advocates of labour deregulation dream: no minimum wage, no limit to the working day, no right to strike, no collective agreements.

“The evolution of such a sector offers a concrete example of the impact on employment were labour regulations to be completely abolished. The battery-chicken industry initially underwent a period of vertiginous growth, exporting within Europe and beyond; the number of poultry farmers rose accordingly. Before long, the food corporations moved into developing countries where costs were lower (Brazil, Thailand, China) and began to re-import products from there into Europe, thus exerting pressures for increased productivity and lower margins on the European breeders. In terms of jobs, however, the most destructive effects of the free circulation of frozen chickens were felt in Africa. Here, poultry markets had been shielded from excessive competition by the 1975 Lomé Accords, signed between the eu and the acp countries (Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific). Thus protected, a small cottage industry of quality poultry, sold live, had begun to flourish.

“These protections were removed in 2000 under the Cotonou Accords, in compliance with WTO rules, opening the floodgates to the mass importation of frozen chicken pieces of the kind scorned by northern consumers (necks, wings, parson’s nose). Sold for next to nothing and in poor sanitary conditions thanks to the rupturing of the ‘cold chain’, these imports were mere surplus profit for the multinationals, whose trade in ‘choice cuts’ for the north yielded huge returns; but their effect was to wipe out the local industry. Ruined poultry farmers swelled the stream of African workers compelled to emigrate by the breakdown of local economies. In Europe, the avalanche of ‘choice cuts’ of frozen chicken from Thailand or Brazil threw Breton poultry farming into crisis, as profit margins shrank and more jobs were lost. Predicated on the excessively low cost of transport—itself a function of the deregulation of maritime labour—the globalization of the poultry circuit also increased the chance of a major health disaster, by ‘globalizing’ the risk of avian flu.”

144721 Essay 2

2006-06-22T11:20:00.000+12:00

Some of you may already have given thought to the document that you might use as a subject for assignment 2. A good place to start looking is the Beehive website, or the websites of policy ministries. I can help you find a specific example if need be, but here are some general guidelines. Clearly it will need to be a document that concerns issues that are of intellectual interest to you personally and that have wide ramifications for an analysis from the perspective of political economy. You will need to read around the subject so that you can form your own analysis. Be careful about choosing policy work in which you may have a personal involvement or responsibility. While you may know a lot about it as an 'insider', sometimes this has the disadvantage of making your analysis too one-sided, or distracting you from the importance of the wider international literature on the topic. Please contact me if you need assistance with this.
As a matter that is perhaps more relevant to 144724, I thought I would invite comments on this question: Should the Minister of Energy have resigned (as called for by the Opposition) over the recent power blackout in Auckland?

144721 Essays

2006-06-15T13:39:00.000+12:00

I have marked most of the 721 essays. There are some very good evidence-based analyses of diverse countries, all which of which were interesting. There seems to be a general lack of engagement with theory and models of political economy (which really is the core of this course!) What I find often puzzling about these courses is that we give you a healthy selection of study-guide readings that the course controller believes are relevant to the assignments, and most students don’t use them in their assignments. If you’re reading this blog and you can think of a reason why this is so, please note that you can leave anonymous comments on here (click on 'comments' below and click the 'anonymous' button), so feedback would not be able to count against you.
Anyway, while the study guide is by no means the definitive collection of works on this subject, and your own library searching and reading are also vital to success, I should also reiterate that, at postgrad level, one does expect to see evidence that you have read and learnt about something from reliable sources (and, as I said earlier, Wikipedia is not all that reliable!). You should also be able to judge just what kind of case can validly be based upon the reading and evidence that you have dredged up. This expectation must be met in future assignments.

Money

2006-06-08T12:58:00.000+12:00

Today is Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) day. The Governor of the Reserve Bank has announced that the official cash rate (OCR) will remain steady at 7.25%. The topic of money and monetary policy will be raised at the next 721 contact course, in case you’re not sure what that means and why it’s so important. In the meantime, you may like to look at the MPS (downloadable from the RBNZ website). It gives a good oversight of the state of the NZ economy.
But there are other sources of such useful national contextual information too. See, for example, the Treasury’s Economic and Financial Overview, or the National Bank’s New Zealand Limited which is written like a corporate annual report, with a balance sheet and performance statements (though the 2005 report is getting out of date now). And in case you think that this is too much emphasis on money and the economy, for social indicators you should look at the Ministry of Social Development’s Social Report. These kinds of documents give you credible contextual statistical information and commentary, usable as evidence. And evidence is good thing.

The State as arbiter of taste

2006-06-01T12:07:00.000+12:00

You may have heard on the news about Creative New Zealand’s recently commissioned report on its support for the ‘et al’ installation as its entry in the Venice Biennale 2005. Creative NZ is the government’s main arts funding body, and this was its 3rd entry to the Biennale. The Venice Biennale is easily the world’s most significant international art exhibition. Et al is an anonymous artist (though it’s now well known who she is) and her installation caused a great deal of controversy. Why should the government have spent $500,000 on this? And is it the best use of scarce arts funding? The report mentioned above generally endorses the involvement of Creative NZ, and the presence of an NZ pavilion, at the Biennale. It does, however, recommend that more be done to proactively manage media and political reaction to the choice of artist. The negative publicity was not helped by ‘et al’ choosing to remain anonymous and hence refusing to talk to the media. Having attended the Biennale 2005 myself and seen the et al installation, I’d have to say that I did not particularly like it, nor did I find it intellectually challenging – though I don’t mind if Creative NZ takes a risk or two. Nonetheless, the whole issue highlights some interesting public policy questions. How do we ‘value’ the arts and their role in social and economic life? How does an agency of the state decide, on behalf of the taxpayer, who is to be shown at an event like the Biennale? Is the state effectively acting as an arbiter of taste on behalf of the rest of us? I am reminded of Pierre Bourdieu’s famous dictum: ‘Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier’. Perhaps I’ll explain that another time, though.

Regulations, and the ease of doing business

2006-05-25T11:20:00.000+12:00

One big issue for governments everywhere (especially in a competitive and mobile global economy) is the maintenance of appropriate regulations to ensure that economic life is conducted with transparency, predictability and fairness. Further, regulations should not add too costly a burden to businesses, or the cost of creating new business activity becomes too great, and investors take their money elsewhere. Over-regulation can be a constraint on economic growth - besides just adding to people's everyday frustration with 'red tape'. The NZ government has recently announced a review of regulations governing business (see Beehive website link on the right).
Although the World Bank has rated NZ number 1 in the world on its 'ease of doing business' survey scale (click here to see their international rankings), the NZ Government has accepted that more needs to be done to streamline regulatory compliance for business.

Budget 2006

2006-05-18T16:22:00.000+12:00

Those of you doing 144723 can no doubt anticipate more detailed analysis of the Budget than is required for 721. Nonetheless, the Minister of Finance's Budget Speech normally has some interesting clues about prevailing policy ideas, and these can be linked to broader models of political economy. So, the Budget contains some fairly predictable measures to boost investment in transport infrastructure, health, education and research. Cullen's statement that 'the most important contributor to economic growth in a modern economy is human capital' helps to justify extra spending in education, and is also a common theme in this 'third way' era.
This government's savings programme (mainly, but not only, the NZ Super Fund) is making substantial inroads into the public debt position. So, while Cullen is having to remind us that NZ is at the bottom of the economic cycle, he boasts that 'NZ is in a far stronger position to cope with the fiscal consequences of the demographic transformation which will occur over the next 30 to 40 years than almost any other developed country. This will increasingly become a competitive advantage for us...'
But, also intriguing is Cullen's statement that his government 'does not subscribe to the theory that economic transformation consists of a period of actual intense pain followed by often hypothetical gains', noting also that the pains and gains are not normally evenly distributed through the population. Here, Cullen is rejecting a form of fiscal austerity that would have been applied by strict neo-liberal dogma.
So, Cullen argues that 'slashing government expenditure, thus making the slowdown worse', while at the bottom of the economic cycle, is not the way he intends to go. He uses the phrase 'automatic stabilisers' to refer to the way that government spending, if sustained - and not slashed - during a slow phase of the cycle should help smooth the long-run growth path. It helps us understand why he is able to be confidently announcing new spending and investment while facing cash deficits ahead.
All this sounds rather Keynesian to me - or am I just thinking too hard?
For all the Budget details, click on the Treasury link to the right...

Public sector ethics: 144724

2006-05-17T09:41:00.000+12:00

Those of you doing 144724 may note - in advance of the management component next semester - that the State Services Commission's report on the leak of a cabinet paper concerning unbundling of Telecom's local loop is available on line.
Click here! This is relevant to questions of public-service ethics, confidentiality and internal management, including the handling of serious misconduct by an employee.