Politics as the art of hypocrisy revealed (NZ style).

It is said that politics is the art of hypocrisy and that diplomacy is the art of saying one thing when meaning another. The publication of US diplomatic correspondence between its embassy in Wellington and other US agencies in Washington and abroad (see distribution list below) show that the 5th Labour government was much more closely aligned with the US on security and intelligence matters than it let on in public, and that the push to improve ties with the US crossed the aisle in parliament but was deliberately not made public for domestic electoral purposes.
Rather than read what others have to say about the issue, I figured that it is best to just offer KP readers the opportunity to digest one particularly informative cable for themselves. It is long but well worth the effort reading, and comes courtesy of Selwyn Manning at Scoop, which also has the most in-depth analysis of the subject. Of course, by my publishing it and you reading it we have both apparently broken US laws governing classified information.
I wonder if that means that I will hear the words “cavity search” on my next trip to the US.
07WELLINGTON194
Date: 3/02/2007
98719,3/02/2007 4:55 AM,07WELLINGTON194,Embassy Wellington,SECRET//NOFORN,,VZCZCXRO2665OO RUEHPBDE RUEHWL #0194/01 0610455ZNY SSSSS ZZHO 020455Z MAR 07FM AMEMBASSY WELLINGTONTO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 3972INFO RUEHBY/AMEMBASSY CANBERRA IMMEDIATE 4773RUEHPF/AMEMBASSY PHNOM PENH IMMEDIATE 0043RUEHPB/AMEMBASSY PORT MORESBY IMMEDIATE 0637RUEHSV/AMEMBASSY SUVA IMMEDIATE 0573RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHDC IMMEDIATERUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATERUEKJCS/OSD WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATERHHMUNA/CDR USPACOM HONOLULU HI IMMEDIATE,”S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 WELLINGTON 000194 SIPDIS SIPDIS NOFORN STATE FOR EAP/FO AND EAP/ANP NSC FOR VICTOR CHA OSD FOR JESSICA POWERS PHNOM PENH FOR POL/MCKEAN E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/01/2017 TAGS: PREL, PGOV, NZ SUBJECT: PM CLARK GOES TO WASHINGTON Classified By: Charge D’Affaires David J. Keegan, for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 1. (C) Summary: Prime Minister Clark has announced to New Zealanders that she will use her March 20-21 visit to Washington to discuss key regional and world events with the President and other
Senior Officials. In reality, she has a broader agenda as well: to improve the tone of her dialogue with us and to send a message to the NZ electorate that cooperating with the U.S. is normal and advances New Zealand’s interests. Now in her third term in office, Clark has over the years developed a deeper understanding of the breadth and benefits of the US-New Zealand relationship. She recognizes that sound bites matter, and in response has begun to modulate her public statements to be more positive about the relationship. She also strenuously avoids saying anything critical about U.S. policy. Although a strengthened centrist domestic political opposition may motivate Clark to be more open to us, most of her efforts to improve bilateral cooperation have not been made public, indicating genuine commitment. Over the past year, she has quietly filled a number of key positions with officials who are well disposed towards the United States, and she and her Ministers now treat official meetings with us as opportunities to advance common agendas rather than either public relations coups or something to deny. The PM closely monitors and supports the “”Matrix”” process as well as deeper US-NZ cooperation in intelligence and other issues. She particularly appreciates our cooperation in the Pacific and Antarctica. End Summary. 2. (C) A micromanager, Clark will come to Washington extremely well briefed on the issues. She will likely suggest small but concrete ways to cooperate within the boundaries of the Presidential Directive, such as by regularizing our dialogue on scientific and Pacific Island issues. She will probably announce that New Zealand will extend its military deployments in Afghanistan through September 2009. Clark will not seek any dramatic changes to bilateral policy, which she recognizes would be more than either side’s system could bear. Nor will she make a heavy pitch for an FTA as she did during her 2002 visit, instead leaving that for Trade
Minister Goff’s trip to Washington later this year. 3. (C) We should use this visit to urge continued tangible commitments to the improving bilateral cooperation and NZ’s defense modernization. We should also elicit a greater willingness to publicize our successes where possible. Clark will be setting the pace for improving U.S.-New Zealand relations for the foreseeable future. This visit provides us an opportunity to encourage her to stay the course and to resist negative pressures from those in her party who prefer to keep us at arm’s length. ————————————– MOVING UP THE LEARNING CURVE: WE MATTER ————————————— 4. (C) With over seven years in office, Clark is now the longest serving Labour Prime Minister in New Zealand history. Although she has no clear successor and may run for an unprecedented fourth term, she is clearly already focused on her legacy. Arriving in office well to the left of the political spectrum, Clark began her tenure by stressing New Zealand’s role as a small but principled player favoring multilateral (ideally UN-based) solutions to the world’s problems. Since then, she has witnessed such events as 9/11, cooperation between NZDF and US troops in Afghanistan, and shortcomings of the UN system (such as its inability to react to the 2005 Tsunami). As a result, she has over time focused more on New Zealand’s role in the Pacific region and its relations with Australia and other bilateral allies. 5. (C) Through learning on the job, Clark has clearly developed a more sophisticated understanding of the breadth and importance of the US-New Zealand relationship. Her desire to improve relations with the Administration may be due in part to the influence of Foreign Minister Winston WELLINGTON 00000194 002 OF 004 Peters, but we see evidence that Clark herself wants to improve US-New Zealand ties. Contacts tell us she has especially valued our close cooperation following the coup
in Fiji, and during her recent meetings with PM Howard she praised EAP DAS Davies’ trip to the Solomons. The Ambassador reports that Clark is obviously impressed by our dedication to environmental protection and generous support for New Zealand activities in Antarctica, which she witnessed first hand during this year’s celebrations of USNZ cooperation on the ice. 6. (C/NF) Recognizing that her Government had initially resisted improving the U.S. relationship, Clark has since the 2005 election appointed to key positions a number of officials well disposed towards working with the United States. In addition to Foreign Minister Winston Peters (arguably a marriage of convenience), she has appointed Warren Tucker as Director of the NZ Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS), Bruce Ferguson as Director of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), Roy Ferguson as NZ Ambassador to Washington; and John McKinnon as Secretary of Defence. Together with Peters and Simon Murdoch, second in command at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, these officials have improved their agencies’ coordination on U.S. policy and instructed staff to be helpful to us wherever possible. For example, NZSIS had for months resisted housing equipment needed to implement a possible HSPD-6 agreement with the United States. Soon after his arrival, Tucker ordered NZSIS to be the host, paving the way for negotiations. 7. (C) Clark has been more mindful of the public side of our relationship as well. She participated in the Embassy’s 4 July reception even though she never attends national day events. She was also gracious guest at a media-covered reception at the Ambassador’s residence last May in honor of her favorite Kiwi composer. Mindful that her 2003 remarks about the Iraq war have not been forgotten, Clark now slaps down her Cabinet Ministers for similar offenses. When on January 12 Duty Minister Jim Anderton issued a blistering critique of
the President’s plan to send more troops to Iraq, Clark quickly disavowed the comments and removed Anderton from duty within the day. She was roundly criticized in the media for her actions, but did not budge. After confirming her visit to Washington on March 1, a reporter asked what Clark would say if the President asked her views on the war. Clark merely said she doubted that would happen, adding that New Zealand is not in Iraq and it would be “”gratuitous to offer any advice.”” ———————————CLARK REALLY DOES WANT CLOSER TIES ——————————— 8. (C) Some observers claim Clark only wants to mend fences with the United States to wrest center ground from the opposition National Party, which is gaining in the polls. We doubt this is her main motive. For one thing, polling suggests up to half of all Kiwis believe New Zealand does not need a closer relationship with the United States, and the anti-American sentiment in the left side of her own caucus is well known. Although Labour is losing ground in opinion polls, Clark is far from being in such crisis that she needs to change her foreign policy to get votes. New National leader John Key is charming and confident, but has been in Parliament for only five years and his practical agenda remains fuzzy. In contrast, while many Kiwis consider Clark cold and some question her integrity, we have yet to meet any who regard her as anything less than competent. The majority seem proud of the way she has helped forge a new, modern identity for the country: clean, green, multicultural, multilateral, creative, and yes — nuclear free. Nor is there a chance of the type of leadership putsch within Labour that has plagued National in recent years. —————————————– WE BENEFIT FROM STRONGER COOPERATION, TOO —————————————- 9. (C) New Zealand is small, but concrete improvements in WELLINGTON 00000194 003 OF 004 bilateral cooperation over the past year, including
via the “”Matrix”” process initiated in Bangkok last year, have brought tangible, positive gains for U.S. interests. We continue to cooperate closely on events in Fiji and have come to value the views of Kiwi officials regarding events in E.Timor, the Solomon Islands, and Tonga. We are increasing behind-the-scenes dialogue on N.Korea and Iran, both of which have diplomatic relations with New Zealand. The “”Matrix”” process has also been helpful in enabling both sides to stay joined up in response to other events, such as ensuring that the recent fire on board a Japanese whaling vessel in Antarctic waters would not lead to an environmental disaster. 10. (S/NF) Improvements on the defense and intelligence side have also borne fruit. As Minister in Charge of the NZSIS and GCSB, Clark is read into all major operations involving U.S. intelligence. She understands the implications of a post-9/11 world for New Zealand’s security. She also realized after the Fiji coup that New Zealand had become too reliant on Australian intelligence. Clark grasps that NZ must “”give to get”” and that some of our cooperative operations — such as monitoring radicalizing Kiwi jihadists — strengthen her country’s security. But she also has been willing to address targets of marginal benefit to New Zealand that could do her political harm if made public. Over the past year, she has supported increased counterterrorism cooperation with us. 11. (C/NF) While the Presidential Directive still limits our defense relationship, New Zealand’s push since 2004 to modernize its forces have improved our ability to work together in those areas in which we can cooperate. In support of NZ military activities in the Pacific Islands, Timor Leste, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, there have been more high-level U.S. military visits to New Zealand over the past 6 months than in the previous two years. This March alone, there will be visits by two Admirals for maritime security consultations with New Zealand, France, and the UK, as
well as a yearly call by PACAF Commander General Hester. There have been more U.S. military waivers for multilateral exercises including the NZDF as well. Unlike in the past, the PM and her Government have focused on the substance behind these visits and exercises instead of touting them to the press as a sign that NZ’s nuclear ban no longer matters to the United States. New Zealand continues to be an active participant in the Proliferation Security Initiative, has helped explain the importance of this effort to Pacific Island states, and will for the first time host an Operational Experts Group Meeting in Auckland March 2628. ———- Key Issues ———- 12. (C/NF) Regional/Global Security: In her public statements announcing the visit, Clark has said that she hopes to discuss with senior US officials common interests in counter-terrorism/Afghanistan; regional security and good governance in the PICs and E.Timor; and DPRK, Iran and other nonproliferation issues. Although she told a journalist that Iraq is unlikely to come up, MFAT staff tells us that she knows that this is a major issue on the mind of the Administration. They also say she is likely to raise concerns over China’s role in the Asia Pacific region. Clark will likely announce during her visit that New Zealand will extend its deployments to Afghanistan through September 2009, the longest extension since the Afghan war began. She may also propose that both sides agree to regular consultations on Pacific Island issues. We agree this could send a positive public signal about our joint work in the region, although in reality fast moving events make it a certainty that we will continue to communicate in real time as well. We would also have to ensure that the search for agenda items and “”deliverables”” did not overwhelm our constructive dialogue. 13. (S/NF) Intelligence: Although it will be obviously impossible to publicly highlight the exact nature of NZ’s WELLINGTON 00000194 004 OF 004 intelligence cooperation during
Clark’s visit, she undoubtedly would appreciate having it acknowledged behind closed doors. We should also encourage New Zealand to agree to some public recognition of the HSPD-6 MOU that we understand will be signed during the visit. A public signing ceremony the Embassy hosted when we concluded the US-NZ Regional Alert Movement agreement received positive press play here, which indicates that not all intelligence cooperation issues are tabu to Kiwis. 14. (C) Environment and other issues: Since the Antarctic celebrations in January, Clark has become more aware of the close level of cooperation between US and NZ scientists both on and off the ice. She may propose new areas for cooperation in Antarctica and suggest both sides review the US-NZ Science and Technology Agreement to consider possible new joint research efforts. GNZ officials were struck by parallel references to climate change and sustainable energy in both the President’s and PM’s opening statements to their legislature this year, and Clark may raise this as well. She may also propose cooperation on efforts towards sustainable fisheries. Clark will almost certainly acknowledge U.S. leadership in WTO Doha negotiations. 15. (C) The Public message: Clark will deliver three speeches while in the United States. Unlike her speech there in 2002 on New Zealand’s desire for an FTA, Clark’s address in Washington will present a more positive focus on overall US-NZ relations. This reflects both her understanding that an FTA is not possible for now and her desire to speak to the broader relationship. Clark will deliver a second speech in Chicago covering WTO and economic issues (including a soft FTA pitch) and a third in Seattle on innovation in New Zealand. ——- COMMENT ——- 16. (C) PM Clark will continue to set the course for improved USNZ relations. It is clear there will be no change in New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy in the medium term; even the
new opposition leader John Key has announced that the National Party wants to maintain the ban. National also continues to be vulnerable to accusations of being too close to the United States, which cost it significant support at the 2005 election. If elected in 2008, the Nats will have more political room to work with us if they can build on progress made under this Government towards better US-NZ ties. A re-elected Labour Government will do the same. This visit provides a chance to encourage Clark to set the bar high. We may have setbacks along the way, but the better our mutual understanding of what each side can expect from each other, the less likely that these hiccups will undermine our progress. End Comment. Keegan”,2/03/2007

Fire in the House

The opposition was strong in Parliament today. I’m stuck for time, so what follows is somewhat stream-of-consciousness.

Front and centre was the government’s failure to perform on unemployment and wage growth, the subject of criticism from both flanks. Bill English had led off with “the budget will be about the many, not the few”, and then “but seriously …”, to a stinging rebuke from David Cunliffe, who listed the government’s failings as he saw them. This adoption by the government of Labour’s own tagline looks like an attempt to muddy the counter-campaign and poach their emphasis, trying to set up National as the party representing “the many”, rather than the policy merits of the government’s program, but if so it’s a fairly ham-fisted one. While “the many” looks on its way to becoming this election cycle’s “hard-working Kiwis”, the government’s attempt here to muscle in indicates that National has accepted Labour’s rhetorical framing, although they disagree with it. If you adopt your opponent’s narrative, you need to be able to make it your own — either that, or you need to dismantle and discredit it. English did neither.

Cunliffe was strong, also raising the variance between English’s aspirational and controversial “Plain English” ad and the policy track he has delivered. Sir Roger Douglas also took aim, and was forced by the Speaker to rephrase the question (to Paula Bennett): “Which is more important? Young people getting jobs, or pandering to the Left?”.

Bennett also took a bit of a pasting on the matter of the identity of one Peter Saunders. The Standard has picked this up so I’ll not elaborate more. Wayne Mapp, standing in for the Minister of Agriculture also stumbled on a line of questioning from Sue Kedgley regarding AgResearch’s GM cattle trials. Not exactly a shock since, not being the minister himself, that information wasn’t top of his mind, but it contributed to the general atmosphere.

Then it was all on in General Debate, with Goff, King and Cunliffe leading off on the same topic matter (jobs/wages) with a couple of fiery speeches, and re-emphasising the “smile and wave/photo-op/government by poll” meme and the retrenchment of the government’s mining plans. Judith Collins concentrated on David Cunliffe’s lack of orthodox economic credibility, and purported concern for Goff having to shoulder the dual burden of leading a party in which Cunliffe was both the finance spokesperson and a leadership contender. Nice concern troll, but what’s more interesting is how much she was looking forward to seeing Cunliffe’s expenses records — and the threats hurled across the House while she thought she was not miked — “You wait, just you wait! …” Some irony in this given that it was just yesterday Collins raised the most threadbare defence of her (or someone else’s) extensive use of the ministerial self-drive car: “All the travel is within the rules – that’s all I’m prepared to say on it.”

So, while superficially an ordinary sort of Wednesday (albeit one where the Member’s Day was not clobbered by urgency), I think this has provided a few glimpses of the 18 months to come: a robust focus on core materialist issues from the Labour party, ahead of the budget, and a clear desire to debate the policy merits; combined with continued attacks on the credibility and perceived competence of English and Bennett in particular; the government attempting to subvert the opposition’s framing rather than exclusively arguing the merits; Collins v Cunliffe shaping up as a key battle. Nothing flash, but it’s starting to look like something resembling a threat. Most importantly, something to require the government to rethink its own gameplan. Until now they’ve had the ability to act almost with impunity, their errors going unpunished. If today’s performance is any indication, no longer.

L

Current events

I was reluctant to post while I had the chance on ANZAC day, since there was such a good debate going on, and now I’ve (temporarily) run out of time again. So just a few quick observations.

  • Phil Goff’s one-two punch on the top tax rate and Auckland governance is solid, and both are good orthodox Labour positions for him to take. But it’s more of the same: lacking verve and failing to get cut-through as a consequence. I mean to post on the positioning of the taxation pledge at some stage, but in case I don’t get to: this is a good opportunity for Goff to demonstrate compromise as well as differentiate himself, by coupling a reimplementation of the top rate with an increase of the threshold.
  • Even without Sunday’s tragic helicopter crash, Goff’s timing was poor in making these two announcements before ANZAC Day. I guess you take the opportunities you can get, but delaying things by a week would have been more useful in my view.
  • As an aside, my mum knew the three late airmen vaguely through Search and Rescue, and confirms the universal sentiment that they were of the very best sort. I’m pleasantly surprised that the crash hasn’t turned into a witchhunt about why we’re still using Vietnam-era hardware; as true as the sentiment might be, we can all do without people thundering “if we’re going to have a military, we owe it to our troops to have it decently-outfitted” under circumstances such as these. Such is the power of ANZAC day, I suppose.
  • On a related point, the discipline with which the military, government, police and media have adopted the Air Force’s framing terminology in this event is remarkable. All four groups are talking about “the Air Force family” and exploiting the metaphor for all it’s worth. Those words are used almost every time one of these people stands in front of a microphone, and in addition the three deceased are “brothers”; Mark Sainsbury reported live last night from the family’s “lounge”, the squad room at Ohakea air base; all four have referred to the Iroquois as being like “your grandfather’s axe” — the reference being that, although it’s very old, when the handle is worn it gets replaced, and when the head is worn it gets replaced, so while it’s his axe in spirit, it actually contains no parts of the original tool and is as good as new in function. On the one hand, this is compelling symbolic stuff: nobody who deviates from this framing can really be said to be showing the proper sort of respect and deference; on the other hand, it’s a bit creepy for everyone to be falling into lockstep behind Defence HQ communications. There are ways of saying these things without using the exact same words, and the constant repetition spooks me. Maybe I’m just sensitive. [Edit: There was a clean sweep for “Air Force family” or something similar in speeches supporting the Prime Minister’s parliamentary motion of condolence. No shock there, I suppose.]
  • On a somewhat lighter note, Councillor Tony Jack has picked the wrong district council to put a motion banning macrons in council materials. This is the Kāpiti Coast District Council, who moved to put the macrons into Paekākāriki and ÅŒtaki only a month ago. Jack’s motion was voted down, at which point he predictably declared that PC had gone mad. Bless. Of course, the Stuff article doesn’t contain the macrons, so I guess he wins as far as that goes.
  • Tim Watkin at Pundit continues to write excellent sense and ask smart questions about race relations in Aotearoa New Zealand. I think the emphasis in Tim’s piece is just right — there is a legitimate claim to indigeneity for non-Māori, but it’s not so obvious as Trevor Mallard’s “I was born in Wainuiomata”, and there’s a lot to work out before such definitions can be settled upoin comfortably. I’m all for having this discussion. I particularly like the ornithological allegory drawn by commenter “william blake” — we are all PÅ«keko!
  • Also on a lighter note, a (very) atheist friend whose six year-old daughter has chosen to go to Bible study classes recently asked him if, because Jesus had risen from the dead, that meant he was a zombie. It apparently took every ounce of his parental commitment to letting his girl make up her own mind to explain the origins of zombie stories, how myths come about, etc. rather than just saying, yes, Jesus is a zombie. Good on him — not sure I would have had the fortitude.
  • Speaking of things biblical, and of belonging, Joanna Newsom has a new album out, and here’s the first single — about tilling one’s own bit of the Garden of Eden:

Ok, so not so brief after all. Discuss. I’ll dive back in as I can. You can treat this as an open thread as well: post what you want to talk about.

L

Yours, not mines

Labour’s campaign against mining Schedule 4 land looks strong, especially at the iconographic level.

The slogan and to an extent the photo frames the issue as a matter of identity, echoing Phil Goff’s “the many, not the few” and Phil Twyford’s “not yours to sell” (though the visual style has come a long way since that campaign, and there’s some subject-object confusion). It also echoes Iwi/Kiwi, undoubtedly the most effective campaign of this sort in recent memory. The hard economic matters — the cost-benefit analysis between mining and tourism and so on — are there, as they should be, but backgrounded to the symbolic concerns.

Goff is clear that he’s not anti-mining, but wants to focus on the 60% of mineral resources outside the DOC estate. That’s the crucial point to make because it draws a bright line between acceptable and unacceptable which is still well north of Schedule 4 — to cross that line the government must first gain electoral consent to mine DOC land, and having done that must gain consent to mine the most precious areas of that estate. The point isn’t that mining is all bad; the point is that mining conservation land is worse than the alternatives. The job of the opposition, environmentalists and anyone who loves the fact that NZ still has wild places which are sacrosanct, or who thinks of those places as a part of them, is to relegate the idea of mining them to the political too-hard basket.

Labour and the Greens are also well-coordinated on this, with Metiria Turei pointing out the government’s duplicity in not revealing its intent to mine areas on Great Barrier Island which are under Treaty negotiations. The māori party should get in on this, as well. It looks good.

L

The “I” thing

iAs much as there are great expectations on John Key’s statement to Parliament today, the pressure on Phil Goff is only slightly less. He may not have the responsibility of running a country, but that’s the problem: little or nothing indicates he will have a country to run in the foreseeable future, the optimism of the activist left notwithstanding. Goff’s reply needs to be a game-changer; it needs to reframe the past year, foreshadow the coming “middle year” when the policy engine runs at full noise, and it needs to demonstrate that Goff has got some game and is willing to bring it.

It looks like Labour have just such an event in mind, but I have substantial misgivings about Goff’s planned reply to Key’s throne speech.

If the article in the Sunday Star Times is to be believed, the speech’s greatest asset will also be its greatest weakness: it’s to be delivered in the first person. There’s going to be a lot of “I have failed to” and “I should have” sort of statements coming out of Goff’s mouth which will undoubtedly be taken out of context, and on a more subtle level, it will reiterate the fact that Goff is in a pretty impotent position at present. Labour is disconnected from key constituencies, and there remains a perception that it still doesn’t really get why it lost. People will more naturally associate “failure” and “sorry” and so on with Labour than with National. The task of this speech and the coming months is to turn that around, but it will be hard work to sufficiently remind the audience that these things relate to Key rather than Goff himself, given that they’re coming from Goff’s mouth and because it runs counter to the established narrative about Key and what people want to believe about him.

He’s staking his own personal and political appeal against that of the PM. It’s a big risk, but hey, boldness is what’s needed. It’s not as if Goff has much to lose, and if he can make it work, it has potential to reframe the debate from being about the opportunities of the future to the missed opportunities of the past.

L

It’s official*

* (As official as a 1,000-person phone poll can be, anyhow.)

Māori support for Phil Goff after “blue collars, red necks” is very low — 18% among all respondents, and 36% among Labour voters. That’s dire. (Full Digipoll results here.)

So, if these numbers are to be believed, (also with the proviso that this rot probably began before the Nationhood speech) the first part of my critique is borne out: Labour under Phil Goff will struggle for support among Māori, without serious and long-term remedial work. The two other points of my critique remain open: that it is philosophically unjustifiable for a progressive left party to betray a loyal support base and its quest for tino rangatiratanga in this manner; and that the corresponding long-term increase in support among the “social conservatives” in the working class, who were the targets of the strategy, will probably not make up for this loss (and the negative-sum effects of depressing Māori turnout). I’ll watch with interest.

What’s interesting is that Goff’s rhetoric has moderated substantially since December. Goff and Pagani seem to have lost their nerve. This is potentially the worst of all possible worlds for Labour’s electoral fortunes: they have rightly been tarred with the redneck brush, probably alienating Māori and social liberals in important numbers, but not sustained their narrative for long enough to turn the targets of their appeal away from National. Double loss in electoral terms; but I think something of a gain in strategic terms for the party.

Long may their nerve to continue this ugly business remain weak.

L

“The many, not the few”

This is the theme of Phil Goff’s State of the Nation speech today, according to early coverage. And would you look at that: it’s even up on their website.

It’s a sound speech full of bread-and-butter Labour appeals, not too heavy on the wonkish details, and it doesn’t spare anyone who oughtn’t be spared, targeting a range of elites: Finance company sharks, big business shysters, benefit fraudsters, nearsighted property developers, the honours list, public sector CEOs. Also obligatory references to education, justice and community systems failing young people, which ties into a small serve for the māori party (not named) about the Foreshore and Seabed Act and Tino Rangatiratanga flag, although wisely appealing to Kelvin Davis’ mana rather than Phil’s own, which shows that while he still doesn’t really get tino rangatiratanga, he at least realises that it’s a topic to be treated carefully. Also the absence of a direct attack on the māori party or its principals themselves is a good sign for future reconciliation; an indication that Sharples’ hints of recent weeks that the two parties retain much in common have been understood.

It speaks to the continuing narrative that the government is coasting on a gradually improving economy which has turned out to be much less dire than predicted — a good choice given the same chord has been struck by people like Matthew Hooton in the past week, and playing into Key’s “relaxed” persona. This narrative will stick.

It’s a solid speech, but not a great one. I didn’t hear it, perhaps you had to be there, but this is largely pedestrian stuff, and while “the many, not the few” is an excellent platform for any social democratic leader, this needed to be a speech which burned bright, not one which smouldered. The biggest reason it didn’t, for me, was because it wasn’t clear about who its audience was.

The collective noun of choice, something over which important battles have been fought in recent years, was generally “all new Zealanders”; sometimes “(hard)working New Zealanders” or “working families”. I’ve argued before that the first (“all New Zealanders”) is too broad except as a rhetorical device, and this was an opportunity for Labour to drive home it’s “the many, not the few” focus by telling us who it stands for, to clearly frame of who “we” are to Labour, and to oppose it to who is meant by National’s “we”. You can’t win 100% of the electorate, and you shouldn’t try: if your position isn’t pissing a fair chunk of the polity off (your ideological enemies) then it’s probably not doing much for your friends, either. Mealy-mouthedness is the bane of effective political engagement.

If Labour represents “all New Zealanders” then, by definition, it represents the few as well as the many, and you can’t base a political appeal on that. You can’t represent both the interests of the minimum-wage workers and the stuggling middle classes and the disenfranchised urban poor and the sharks and speculators and fat cats you claim are leeching off them: you need to distinguish one from the other and say: “we work for you, not for those guys”.

This is implicit through the speech, but it must be explicit, and must be repeated over and over, forged as a bond of identity with a Labour party from whom the electorate feels disconnected. All the good policy initiatives in the world won’t save Labour unless it reconnects and re-engages its base, and it can’t do that until it sorts out who its base is, and lets them know. This speech could have done that, but it didn’t.

L

‘Blue collars, red necks’: triply flawed

To those who stick up for their identity, socialism sticks up two fingers!

To those who stick up for their identity, socialism sticks up two fingers!

In the coming years, core tenets of socialist and indigenist faith will be tested. Labour, with its recently-adopted ‘blue collars, red necks’ strategy, has struck out along a path which requires a large slice of its core constituency — Māori — to search their political souls and choose between the renewed Marxist orthodoxy which privileges class above all else; and the progressive social movements developed over the past three or four decades which have produced a society tolerant enough to permit their unprecedented cultural renaissance.

The strategy indicated by Phil Goff’s speech appears to be substantially based on the simple calculus, most forthrightly argued by Chris Trotter, that ‘social liberals’ are fewer in number than ‘social conservatives’ among the proletariat, and therefore an appeal to ‘social conservatism’ will deliver more votes than the equivalent appeal to ‘social liberalism’. This is couched as a return to the old values of the democratic socialist movement — class struggle, and anything else is a distraction. But because the new political strategy is founded upon an attack on Māori, it requires that working class solidarity wins out over indigenous solidarity and the desire for tino rangatiratanga in a head-to-head battle. Māori must choose to identify as proletarians first and tangata whenua second. Similarly, the māori party’s alignment with National and subsequent intransigence on issues such as the Emissions Trading Scheme asks Māori to privilege their indigeneity over material concerns.

An article of faith of both socialist and indigenist movements is that their referent of political identity trumps others: that all proletarians are proletarians first, and that all indigenous people are indigenous people above all else. In the coming years, unless Labour loses its bottle and recants, we will see a rare comparison as to which is genuinely the stronger. Much of the debate which has raged over this issue, and I concede some of my own contributions in this, has been people stating what they hope will occur as if it surely will. For this reason the test itself is a valuable thing, because it provides an actual observable data point upon which the argument can turn.

A spontaneous interlude: I write this on the train into Wellington, in a carriage full of squirming, shouting, eight and nine year-olds on a school trip to the city. In a (rare) moment of relative calm, a few bars of song carried from the next carriage, and the tune was taken up enthusiastically by the — mostly Pākehā — kids in my carriage.

Tūtira mai ngā iwi (aue!)
Tātou, tātou e.
(In English:
Line up together, people
All of us, all of us.)

Read into this what you wish; one of life’s little rorschach tests.**

Clearly, I don’t believe Māori will abandon the hard-won fruits of their renaissance for a socialist pragma which lumps them and their needs in with everyone else of a certain social class, which in the long term would erase the distinction between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti. This distinction will fade with time, but that time is not yet come. For this reason I believe the strategy is folly at a practical level. Add to which, the appeal to more conservative social values was always going to be strong among Māori and Pasifika voters, so the left and right hands (as it were) of the socialist conservative resurgence seem unaware of what the other is doing: with the left hand, it beckons them closer, and with the right it pushes them away.

My main objection to the ‘blue collars, red necks’ strategy is not practical — although that would be a sufficient cause for opposing it. The main reason is because of principle, and this question turns on an assessment of the left in politics. Trotter and other old-school socialists (and presumably Pagani and Goff and the current leadership of the Labour party) believe that the left has been hijacked over the past generation by non-materialist concerns and has lost its way as a consequence. I believe that the wider social concern with non-material matters has saved socialism from its own dogma.

Largely discredited as an economic system and its legacy irretrievably tarnished by the catastrophic failure of practically every implementation, socialist-aligned parties on the left have been forced to diversify from a strict focus on what’s in the pockets of the proletariat to what’s in their heads — what they care about and who they are, their identity beyond being ‘the proletariat’. In doing so these movements have embraced liberalism, social equality movements, and environmentalism, and the resulting blend, termed ‘progressivism’ has become part of the political orthodoxy, such that the political right must now pay at least some mind to these considerations if it is to remain viable. This broadening, and the progressive movement’s redefinition of what is right by its general and gradual rejection of racism, sexism, sexual and religious discrimination, among others, has been hugely beneficial to society. For reasons of principle, it should not be discarded out of cynical political expedience.

Furthermore, maintenance of the social liberal programme has strategic, pragmatic value. It has enabled left political movements to broaden their support base and engage with groups often marginalised from politics, breaking the previously zero-sum rules. The modern Labour party has built its political church upon this rock of progressive inclusion, broadening its support base by forming strategic alliances with Rātana from the time of the First Labour Government and less formally with the KÄ«ngitanga and other Māori groups, to which the party owes a great deal of its political success. The progressive programme has broadened to include other groups historically marginalised by the conservative establishment. For Labour to shun its progressive history and return to some idealised socialist pragma of old by burning a century of goodwill in order to make cheap electoral gains by emulating their political opponents is the same transgression many on the economic left have repeatedly levelled against the māori party, and with some justification: selling out one’s principles for the sake of political expedience is a betrayal, and betrayals do not go unpunished. In this case, the betrayal is against the young, who will rapidly overtake the old socialist guard as the party’s future; and Māori, who will rapidly overtake the old Pākehā majority in this country’s future. The socialists might applaud, but Labour represents more than just the socialists, and it must continue to do so if it is to remain relevant.

So, for my analysis, the ‘blue collars, red necks’ strategy fails at the tactical level, because it asks Māori to choose their economic identity over their cultural identity; it fails at the level of principle, because it represents a resort to regressive politics, a movement away from what is ‘right’ to what is expedient; and it fails at the level of strategy, because by turning its back on progressivism the party publicly abandons its constituents, and particularly those who represent the future of NZ’s politics, who have grown up with the Labour party as a progressive movement. It is triply flawed, and the only silver lining from the whole sorry affair is that (again, if Goff and Pagani hold their nerve) we will see the dogmatic adherence to class tested and, hopefully once and for all, bested.

L

* Of course, Goff claims it is no such thing. But Trotter sees that it is and is thrilled, and John Pagani’s endorsement of Trotter’s analysis reveals rather more about the strategic direction than a politician’s public assurance.

** I see this as an expression of how normalised Māori-ness is among young people, and as much as can be said from the actions of nine-year-olds, an indicator of NZ’s political future.

Insensitive and hypersensitive

In the Insensitivity and hypersensitivity paper I referred to previously, Raymond Nairn and Timothy McCreanor studied submissions to the Human Rights Commission in response to the Haka Party Incident in which He Taua, including one Hone Harawira, broke up an offensive Auckland University engineering school mock-haka (this is poorly documented on the internets, but see here). They found that Pākehā responded by conceding that while the students may have been insensitive, He Taua were hypersensitive. This was and remains the default mode of rationalising race relations incidents in NZ: no matter whether it’s having their haka mocked or their Foreshore and Seabed nationalised, those Māoris are always complaining about something.

The insensitive-hypersensitive contrasting pair is a victim-blaming technique: the assertion that while we may have been insensitive, they are hypersensitive. This is presented as a concession but is in fact an attack which minimises the ‘insensitive’ party’s wrongdoing and magnifies the other party’s ‘hypersensitivity’ as a character flaw:

The term ‘hypersensitive’ carries a psychological load for which there is no parallel in ‘insensitivity’. Insensitivity is represented as deriving from ignorance; as such it can be dispelled by information. It is to be regarded as transitory, incidental, and non-deliberate. From a state of insensitivity an individual can act in ways similar or identical to those who are malevolent but is less culpable because a plea of ignorance can be made in mitigation.
[…]
In contrast, hypersensitivity is represented as deriving from emotional sources and is thus internally mediated. Such psychological phenomena are seen as part of the person’s nature and are not easily accessible to adjustment. Hypersensitivity is thus regarded in the same way as aggression, introversion and other personal characteristics. […] The association of hypersensitivity with emotion and indeed with extremes of emotion facilitates the marginalising of the actions and beliefs of people so labelled in ways which removes them from serious contention in social debate.

… and it’s ‘Warrior Gene’ all over again. Moreover, the common lexical root of the terms produces a false equivalence which amplifies this imbalance:

Blaming both sides, albeit one more than the other appeals to readers’ commonsense lore. […] It doesn’t matter that the unequal weighting of the ideas of hypersensitivity and insensitivity prejudices the judgement.

The sweet irony of this device is that, where there is a genuine imbalance of offence perpetrated by one group against another, it requires the offending group to be both insensitive to their own actions, and hypersensitive to the response of the group against whom the major offence was given. So it is with Hone Harawira’s deeply foolish, divisive and unhelpful comments of late: Pākehā New Zealand took hypersensitive umbrage at the terminology while insensitively ignoring the much greater offence caused by the repeated injustices visited upon Māori. I do not defend Harawira; the purpose is only to illustrate that this remains very much the standard means of reasoning around such incidents.

And so it is with Phil Goff, who played the insensitive/hypersensitive Pākehā role to the hilt in his response to Harawira, and has compounded that ill-considered reactionary stance by extending the narrative to the Foreshore and Seabed and the māori party’s decision to coalesce with National. This implies that Labour still thinks that Māori were unreasonable to object to the mass nationalisation of resources to which they had a legitimate claim in law, and that by cutting loose and forming another party they had somehow given greater offence to Labour than the original nationalisation had justified.

The message from Goff’s Labour party is loud and clear: we make no apologies for the decisions taken while being chased by the Brash Iwi/Kiwi monster, and are now prepared to do it all again if need be. This is a damned shame for the country, and for the party. Labour had a great opportunity to mend its bridges with Māori, as the māori party is burdened with an appalling ETS and its more and more fraught partnership with National — and instead of doing so they set another charge and detonated it. The Māori electorate will not support a Labour party which has declared itself the party of blue-collar Pākehā rednecks who are sick of ‘those Māoris’ and their complaining about things which happened the century before last. Where will they go? What will Labour do without them?

L

Goff is the new Brash

Perhaps this speech is an attempt by Phil Goff to reclaim the term and concept of “Nationhood” from the clutches of rampant colonialism. If so, it is an abject failure. It compounds Labour’s cynical appeasement of National’s race-war stance in 2003 with a reactionary, resentful re-assertion of the same principles before which Labour cowered in 2004. It is the very epitome of what Raymond Nairn and Timothy McCreanor called “insensitivity and hypersensitivity“. More on this here

I had an incandescent rant underway, but I’ve said it all before. If you refer to the tag archive under the terms “Chris Trotter” and “Michael Laws” you can read most of it — which should give you an idea of the company Goff’s speech deserves to keep. And in the mean time, Idiot/Savant has summed up my thoughts in several thousand fewer words than I would have. I can do no better than to quote him (and please excuse the transitory obscenity in this instance):

This is the same cynical attempt to whip up racism so memorably used by Don Brash at Orewa. I despised it then and despise it now. Goff knows better, just as much as Brash did. But he’s willing to pander to racists to get a short-term boost in the polls, and bugger the long-term damage such pandering does to racial harmony.
Well, fuck him. Racism has no place in our society, and a proper left-wing party would be fighting against it, not engendering and exploiting it for political gain.
[…]
Despite Labour’s dear wishes, the Maori Party is not going to go away. Instead, it looks likely to be a permanent feature of our political landscape. More importantly, it looks to be setting itself up as the swing bloc which makes or breaks governments. That’s certainly likely to be the case at the next election, unless the government really screws up.
What this means is that if Labour wants to regain power, it will have to sit across the table from and work with the Maori Party. And that will simply be impossible if they are running on a racist platform. By following Brash’s path of cheap racism, Labour is alienating the party it desperately needs to win over. And the result may see it locked out of government for far longer than if it had kept its hands clean.

I’m trying very hard to find an image of that “white is the new black” All Whites poster/shirt with which to adorn this post — because that’s what Goff is driving at here: what you thought was colonial paternalism wasn’t, and what you thought was self-determination isn’t. It’s a disgrace.

L