Category: Parliament

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Recognising the enemy

Last night the New Zealand parliament voted 77-44 on the third reading of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill, passing it into law. The strategy I wrote about after the first reading has been spectacularly successful, and marriage equality will be a reality as soon as the bill receives the royal assent.

There were many powerful speeches last night. Louisa Wall discussed the spectrum of cultural traditions around sexual and gender diversity, and called a huge roll of supporters from almost every corner of the political compass.

Maurice Williamson lampooned the supposed “gay onslaught”, celebrated the “big gay rainbow” that had appeared in his electorate this morning as a sign, and hilariously used his training in physics to calculate the amount of time a person of his mass and humidity would burn for in the fires of Hell. “I will last for just on 2.1 seconds — it’s hardly eternity, what do you think?”

Tau Henare gave his old party leader Winston Peters a lesson in political history, why referenda aren’t the answer to everything, and why exactly he is no longer a member of the New Zealand First party.

Mojo Mathers spoke of the pride she felt when her daughter attended the school formal with her girlfriend. And following the vote, in scenes that have been viewed all around the world, the House stood and broke into song.

There were others. But for me the heaviest work of the night was done by Kevin Hague, who got to the very heart of enmity to this bill, and to this cause in general. I’ve quoted him at length, emphasis mine:

“I remember travelling to Auckland’s North Shore to protest against one of our opponents, Pastor Richard Flynn, who called publicly for homosexuals like me to be put to death. Over the years I have campaigned hard for the right of our communities to not be outsiders any more, to assume a full place in New Zealand society. With every new reform, the same group uses the same strategy, raising fears of terrible consequences which always fail to materialise.”
[…]
“Mr Speaker, that’s why this bill is about so much more than achieving equality under the law, a basic human right that has been denied us until this day. It’s about saying ‘these lives matter: our society is big enough for us all.’ With this bill, our parliament stretches out its arms to my communities and says ‘our society is big enough for you, too — you belong, unequivocally, and without compromising who you are.’

“When the debate started, I thought all of the people like Richard Flynn had thankfully gone. The early comments from opponents were refreshingly free from fire and brimstone. There is no doubt that New Zealand has grown up over the past 27 years, as we have become a more modern, vibrant, and pluralistic society. But as the debate has worn on we have seen the re-emergence of a hard core whose opposition to this bill has lost its veneer of reasonableness. Their problem with this bill is that they believe that we gay and lesbian people are morally inferior. They don’t want to include us as as full participants in New Zealand society. They recognise — correctly — what full legal equality, what this signal means. And they don’t like it.“

Kevin Hague’s measured words and calm delivery obscure a stark and clear-sighted analysis: This is war. The enemy does not regard us as human, and they never will, so we must defeat them utterly. When it comes to GLBTI people, adherents to this creed of brimstone will be satisfied with nothing less than extermination and erasure: they are an existential threat. Although it is often couched in such terms, beneath the veneer theirs is not a rational objection founded in philosophy or pragmatism, in science or honest assessment of tradition; it is simply fear and hatred that burns like the fires they preach. This is not confined to the religious sphere — variants of the brimstone creed exist within secular society, and across a broad ideological spectrum, but they share extremism in common. Much of the discourse around marriage equality, and much of the discourse around related matters, rests on ignoring, minimising or mocking those who stand up for the brimstone creed, but the brilliance of Kevin’s analysis is that he meets them — and it — kanohi ki te kanohi, staring it in the face and recognising it for what it is.

But marriage equality won because it isn’t just an issue for GLBTI people. Ghettoising it as a “gay issue”, (as feminism for generations has been ghettoised as a “women’s issue” and racial equality has been ghettoised as a “black” or a “brown issue”) was a delaying strategy that worked for a time. But no longer. Marriage equality passed because a bill introduced by a gay Māori woman was supported not only by gay Māori women, but by men and women, young and old, homosexuals and heterosexuals and bisexuals, liberals and conservatives, socialists and libertarians, atheists and agnostics and Christians and Muslims, Māori, Pākehā, Pasifika, Chinese and Indians.

All of us who believe in a just society, and an equal society, who believe in a place where ancient prejudices, cultural inertia or the maintenance of privilege cannot justify erasure must fight these battles too. The brimstone creed isn’t just an existential threat to “teh gays” — it is an existential threat to a free and decent society, and we will not have won until we defeat them utterly. There are many more battles like this, and with the clear vision and fierce determination of people like Louisa Wall and Kevin Hague, I am strangely optimistic about fighting them.

L

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Spot the difference

Prime Minister John Key has released a statement expressing condolences at the death of Baroness Margaret Thatcher:

The Government is today paying its respects to the family, friends and colleagues of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who passed away overnight.

“Baroness Thatcher was a passionate and formidable politician who loved her country. She was a strong and decisive leader with unwavering principles. She was Britain’s first and only female Prime Minister.

“We join with political leaders around the world in remembering Margaret Thatcher’s service to the people of Britain and her significant impact on the global political environment,” said Mr Key.

Labour leader David Shearer has also issued a statement:

Labour leader David Shearer has paid tribute to former British Prime Minister Lady Margaret Thatcher, who has passed away aged 87.
“This is an enormously sad time for her family. My thoughts are with them, and the people of Britain, at this time.”
Mr Shearer says he admired Lady Thatcher as fiercely determined leader, who stood up for what she believed in.
“Lady Thatcher will be remembered as a strong and determined leader.”
During her time as Prime Minister, from 1979 until 1990, she faced some real challenges – from the conflict in the Falklands to tremendous economic changes,” says Mr Shearer.
“She has left a strong and permanent legacy in Britain. Lady Thatcher believed passionately in what she was doing, and she will be missed by many.”
Mr Shearer says he had met Lady Thatcher once in Britain, prior to his entering politics.
“I met Lady Thatcher only briefly, and I remember being somewhat in awe of her, as such a well-recognised, well-known world leader.

(Both statements slightly edited.)

L

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Selections matter

Justice Minister Judith Collins has appointed Dame Susan Devoy as Race Relations Commissioner.

She replaces Joris de Bres, who has served two five-year terms and is very well-regarded in Māoridom (at least) because (in part) he understands the importance of his own Dutch whakapapa, and the complexity of his place as an immigrant in Aotearoa. As Bryce Edwards and Morgan Godfery have noted, he has also shown an unusual willingness to comment on issues related to his mandate of opposing racism.

No doubt this fact has informed Collins’ decision to appoint someone less feisty. Dame Susan has little or no high-level experience in the field, and I suppose the thinking is that she brings a clean slate to the role or, to put it another way, her thinking and the degree of her engegement with the issues will be more easily influenced by the prevailing governmental culture. But Dame Susan is not a blank slate. A week ahead of Paul Holmes’ now-infamous Waitangi Day a complete waste column, she wrote one of her own that, although it employed language more befitting a Dame, nevertheless expressed similar sentiments. One year ago our new Race Relations Commissioner wished that instead of Waitangi Day we could have “a day that we don’t feel ashamed to be a New Zealander” and pined after a holiday like that celebrated in Australia, where — a few recent and grudging obeisances aside — 50,000 years of history and the brutal facts of the settlement of that land are blithely ignored in a jingoistic celebration of Ocker Pride.

That would be bad enough, but it gets worse: Dame Susan doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing:

Jacob McSweeney: “She admits she doesn’t have a wealth of experience in race relations, but she says the job isn’t overly complicated.”
Susan Devoy: “I don’t think it’ll make it any more difficult than dealing with any other issues, I mean, you know, this is all under the Chief Human Rights Commission [sic], and so therefore whether it’s disability or gender or employment or race, you know, the issues are not dissimilar. This is just about making it right for every New Zealander.”

(From Checkpoint.)

This is a terrible appointment. Anyone who thinks Aotearoa’s race-relations culture isn’t complicated is by definition not equipped for the job of guiding and guarding it. Not only is our new Race Relations Commissioner ashamed of our national day, but as far as she’s concerned it’s just another ism — revealing how little she must know about disability, employment or gender issues into the bargain.

So as far as that goes, she looks like the perfect post-ideological, post-identity selection for such a job: a common-sense managerialist who, to the limited extent that she understands the issues in play, finds them distasteful.

What a good opportunity for Labour! The National government, at a time when racial and cultural tensions are a major issue, clearly doesn’t value race relations sufficiently to put anyone competent in the job. But the Labour party has selection problems of its own: an Ethnic Affairs spokesperson who is a former race relations commissioner (Rajen Prasad) so far down the list that he doesn’t get a ranking; and a Māori Affairs spokesperson — and former minister — Parekura Horomia, also unranked. Labour is perilously short on brown faces, with none in the top five and one — Shane Jones — in the top 10, and him only recently returned from purgatory. Morgan Jack McDonald has some advice on this topic.

The hard truth is that Labour isn’t in a position to criticise the government on race relations issues. This is due to their internal failures of strategy, not due to exigencies forced upon them. For all that the appointment of Dame Susan Devoy to Race Relations Commissioner is terrible, the Key government has done a lot more than expected in other areas of race relations, particularly with regard to progressing Treaty settlements. That gives them cover. They’ve gotten away with worse than this appointment, and they’ll keep getting away with it as long as the major party of opposition lets them.

L

(Thanks to James Macbeth Dann for drawing my attention to Dame Susan’s column, which was plucked from obscurity by Coley Tangerina.)

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With stereotypes, timing is everything.

Richard Prosser’s xenophobic and bigoted remarks about Muslims (which are not racist, since he was targeting a religion, not an ethnic or racial group) has rightfully met with wide-spread opprobrium. More than a comment about Muslims, his remarks say a lot about him on several levels. Let’s just leave it at this: That he was prompted to air his views by having his pocket knife confiscated at an airport security gate, then actually took the time to write out his thoughts in a magazine op-ed, make it clear that somewhere in Aotearoa a village is missing its idiot, and that idiot has been found spending lots of time in the Beehive.

However, the current repudiation of his views has not always been as wide-spread, and in fact his appeal to negative Muslim stereotypes was, if not all the rage, widely accepted just ten years ago.

Consider that when Ahmed Zaoui attempted to seek political refuge in New Zealand in late 2002, his arrival was met with official alarm and a chorus of exactly the sort of xenophobic invective that Prosser has voiced. The Fifth Labour government branded him an “Islamicst” with ties to al-Qaeda, then worked with the SIS to manufacture a “terrorist” case against him in order to justify his indefinite detention and eventual expulsion. It even changed domestic spying laws and created new anti-terrorist legislation (both still on the books and enhanced by National) so as to counter the Islamicist threat. The SIS went so far as to claim in its 2005 annual report that local jihadis and their sympathizers were a serious threat to New Zealand, only to drop the claim entirely in the 2006 report.

Zaoui was not the only Arab who got the heavy treatment. In 2006 Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, a Yemeni-Saud flight school student overstayer, was summarily deported and handed over to Saudi security officials after he was caught (apparently following a tip-off to Winston Peters from a member of the public related to Ardmore Flying School). Despite concerns about his fate once he was turned over to the Saudis, he disappeared after being placed in their custody. The Fifth Labour government, through then-Immigration Minister David Cunliffe, refused to comment on his whereabouts or well-being and did not seek assurances from the Saudis regarding his treatment. As a justification for his summary deportation under escort, the Fifth Labour government claimed that he was a threat to national security, with his alleged “crime” being that he briefly flatted and shared pilot training with one of the 9/11 hijackers. No evidence has been produced to suggest that Abdullah Ali was aware of, much less involved in, the 9/11 conspiracy. Yet in the eyes of the New Zealand authorities at the time, relying in part on disputed FBI reports, he was guilty by association.

Shortly after Zaoui’s arrival Winston Peters, who now says that there is an element of truth to Prosser’s remarks but that his choice of words was unwise, demanded that Zaoui be expelled forthwith and went on to say that the NZ Muslim community was a “hydra” with extremist cells within it. Along with NZ First, National supported Labour on the Zaoui matter. Only the Greens questioned the official narrative (and Keith Locke needs to be congratulated for his staunch defense of Zaoui’s rights). Eventually, and with the help of some steadfast supporters and a few critical media types, the courageous work of Deborah Manning, Richard McLeod and Rodney Harrison destroyed the government attempt to frame and scapegoat Mr. Zaoui. After nearly five years the case against Zaoui was withdrawn and he was set free (he now runs a kebab place on K Road). For a good documentary overview of the case, see here.

My point is that timing is everything when politicians choose to stereotype so-called “out” groups. Back then Islamophobia ran rampant and it was fine if not fashionable to Muslim-bash, which the Clark government did adroitly and with aplomb. It did so by being subtle in its talk and thorough and focused in its actions. It publicly maintained it had nothing against Muslims or Islam, yet ordered its security apparatus to increase its surveillance of Muslim males (something that is ongoing) and enacted draconian security legislation with an eye towards the purported Islamicist threat to NZ (although truth be told, it first tried to use its new anti-terrorist legislation against the Urewera 18, and we know how that turned out).

Today all of that is water under the bridge although the laws remain on the books. NZ Muslims are no more of a threat today then they were a decade ago, but with the exception of the usual right-wing fanatics ranting in the blogosphere, the public mood is largely relaxed on the issue of the danger to NZ posed by Islamic extremism. Most politicians understand that even in election years scapegoating Muslims is now a losing campaign strategy. Thus Prosser is being made to wear a hair shirt over his contemporary remarks when he would have been applauded as a non-PC realist just a few years ago.

I would simply say that more than his stupid words, his timing if off. Politics is the art of hypocrisy disguised as righteousness, but the key to a successful disguise lies in the timing of the public posture. The Fifth Labour government timed its stereotyping just right, which allowed it to curry favor with its Western security partners in the anti-Islamic crusade by strengthening its anti-terrorism laws and internal security legislation. Zaoui was the precipitant and scapegoat used to that effect.

Prosser, on the other hand, is simply an uncouth political neophyte spouting rubbish at the wrong time. Had he made his remarks ten years ago he would have fared far better in the court of public and political opinion.

 

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On the need for intelligence accountability and oversight reform.

One thing has become clear after the revelations of multiple New Zealand intelligence agency failures, malfeasance and incompetence over the past few years. That is what happens when there is no effective oversight on, or accountability by those agencies. As things stand the Prime Minster is the sole oversight on New Zealand’s intelligence community. The parliamentary intelligence and security committee is a toothless wonder that gets semi-regular general briefings on intelligence matters (at a rate of less than once a month), and the inspector general (IG) of intelligence–the person who is supposed to independently investigate the actions of the intelligence community–is currently a geriatric former judge who has the equivalent of a .5 full time employee and whose office and resources are provided by the agencies he is supposed to independently assess. His predecessor, another retired judge, resigned under a cloud brought about by the Ahmed Zaoui political asylum  case, where the Security Intelligence Services (SIS)  was shown to have clearly manipulated analysis of intelligence flows derived from foreign partners and the IG demonstrated bias in favor of  the SIS version  of events prior to releasing his findings.

Add to that the fact that the IG has limited powers of investigation and a parliamentary committee that cannot be told about operational matters and has no powers to subpoena or authority to force testimony under oath, and what you have is a recipe for institutional “stretch:” the tendency of institutions to exceed and play loose with the rules, laws and regulations governing their charter in the absence of effective oversight and accountability. That has become glaring apparent in recent weeks.

The problem is somewhat mitigated when the Prime Minister is a hands-on type of manager who is knowledgeable about intelligence matters, to include methods of collection and analysis. Although it raises the possibility of PM misuse of intelligence flows for political purposes, it does have the merit of forcing intelligence officials to be accountable to someone. However, if the PM is disinterested, ignorant or laissez-faire in managerial approach to intelligence matters, then the possibility of intelligence agency institutional stretch becomes quite real, as we have now seen.

Given the revelations about the GCSB and prior instances of SIS “stretch,” the time is now perfect for a reform of the intelligence oversight apparatus. Although the PM can and should remain as the minister for intelligence and security, the parliamentary committee needs to be granted effective and binding oversight authority that includes powers to investigate operational issues and force intelligence agency officials of all ranks  to respond under oath to questions about the how, when and why of specific intelligence matters. Likewise, the Inspector General’s position needs to be expanded into a three person panel that includes a mix of people with experience in handling sensitive information and knowledge of how intelligence collection and analysis works, and who answer to and are resourced by parliament rather than the PM and SIS, respectively.

Unchecked executive oversight of intelligence agencies is prone to what might be called the authoritarian tendency (by which elected executives assume quasi-dictatorial powers of managerial control), and is in fact the mark of many authoritarian regimes. This avoids the system of checks and balances that is not only a hallmark of democratic political systems, but of their institutional component as well. The issue, as the intelligence community well knows, is about triangulation: there needs to be at least three independent (if overlapped) sources of critical institutional scrutiny for information or oversight to be validated (which are manifest in policy or administrative decisions).

That system of institutional checks and balances is what provides oversight and promotes accountability within public bureaucracies as a whole. Such accountability is horizontal–between different public agencies such as the judiciary and security apparatus–as well as vertical (where public agencies answer to political authorities separated into legislative and executive components). The institutionalized oversight aggregate mitigates against public agency stretch and political manipulation.

Having one individual, whatever his or her persuasion with regard to issues of intelligence collection, analysis and political impact (something driven by the political context of the moment, including  the relationship between government and opposition and the  personal and partisan implications of any given decision regarding security and intelligence) is, in a democracy, antithetical. In mature democracies policy decisions are not individualized; they are institutionalized and subject to effective oversight.

This is simply a matter of democratic good practice. Effective, independent oversight not only keeps intelligence agencies honest and prevents institutional stretch. It reassure the voting public that the larger common interest, rather than narrow political, diplomatic or corporate concerns, are served by the intelligence and security agencies charged with defending the commonweal.

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In Hellas, out with the new and in with the old.

The outcome of the latest Greek election is not surprising. When faced with uncertainty and dire predictions of collective and individual doom in the event that radical change occurs, voters often tend to go with the status quo or what is already in place. Confronted with the “valley of transition” to an unknown future, voters rationally calculate that their interests are best served by staying with what is known rather than leap into the unknown. Add to that the orchestrated litany of woes predicted by bankers, capitalist-oriented politicians, and lender nations, who pretty much predicted the end of the world as we know it if Greece were to default on its debts and withdraw from the Eurozone currency market, and it is easy to see why a plurality of Greeks decided to stay with the hand that they have been dealt with.

The trouble is that hand, in the form of a New Democracy/PASOK coalition (the so-called “bailout coalition”) is exactly the hand that got Greece into the debt crisis in the first place. It was first New Democracy, then PASOK governments that set new records of corruption, clientalism, patronage and nepotism while running up the public debt on state-centered labor absorption and entitlement projects that did nothing for productivity or the revitalization of the Greek private sector (which remains fragmented and dominated by oligarchic interests in the few globally viable Greek industries such as shipping). It is to this pro-Euro political cabal that the responsibility for “rescuing” Greece is entrusted. That is not going to happen.

True, the terms of the bailout will be relaxed even further now that a pro-Euro government can be formed. That much is clear given that Andrea Merkel has hinted that the repayment terms can be “softened.” The hard truth is that repayment can be softened because what is being repaid in Greece is the compound interest on the foreign loans. The logic is that of the credit card: the issuer of the card would prefer for users to not pay off their total debt on a monthly basis and instead accumulate interest-accruing cumulative debt while paying off less than the total owed. If the user reachers a credit limit with interest debt accruing, the limit is raised. If the user defaults on the debt after a series of credit limit raises, measures are taken to seize assets of worth comparable to the outstanding amount.

States are different than individual credit card users because as sovereign entities they can avoid asset seizure on home soil even while bankrupt. As Argentina proved in 2000, they can default and renegotiate the terms of debt repayment according to local conditions (after Argentina defaulted on its foreign debts it was eventually able to negotiate a repayment to creditors of US 36 cents on every dollar owed. The creditors took the deal, then began lending again, albeit more cautiously. The devalued Argentine peso sparked an export boom of agricultural commodities that led to post-default growth rates unseen for 50 years). The short-term impact of default can be painful (witness the run on Greek banks as people try to cash in and export Euros), but measures can be taken to curtail capital flight and to mitigate the deleterious effects of moving to a devalued currency (the Argentines did this by placing stringent limits on currency transfers abroad in the first months after they de-coupled the Argentine peso from the US dollar while at the same time issuing interest-bearing government bonds to dollar holders in the amount valid at the exchange rate of the day before the de-coupling). Greece has not adopted any of these measures as of yet, but that is because a pro-Euro caretaker government, as well as the PASOK government that preceded it, wanted to heighten the sense of doom should an anti-Euro coalition look to be winning majority support.

That scenario emerged in the form of Syriza. Although it is formally known as the Coalition of the Radical Left it is anything but “radical” (no matter how many times the corporate media tries to emphasize that point). Instead, it is a coalition of Socialists, Social Democrats, Greens, Trotskyites, Maoists and independents not associated with the Greek Communist Party (KKE). It has an agenda that includes a possible default, and will now be the largest opposition bloc in the Greek parliament. Contrary to the perception that it came out of nowhere in this year’s elections, Syriza has been steadily building a popular voting base since 2004, increasing its electoral percentage significantly in 2007, 2009 and May 2012. Although it has had splits and defections (which are endemic in Greek politics, particularly on the Left), Syriza was the second largest vote-getter in the May 2012 elections and its margin of loss to New Democracy in the second-round elections held last weekend is less than it was in May. The bailout coalition may have a narrow majority, but Syriza and other Left minority parties will prove to be a formidable parliamentary obstacle to the implementation of  its pro-Euro agenda.

That is why the new Greek “bailout” government will not be successful even if it renegotiates the terms of the bailout along more favorable lines than in previous iterations. It will be forced to deal with the combined pressures of Syriza opposition in parliament and the angry–and I reckon increasingly violent–opposition of the non-parliamentary Left in the street. Greece has a long tradition of student and union militancy and urban guerrilla warfare. Even during the best of times militant groups have used irregular violence to make their points about Greek capitalism and its ties to Western imperialism. They have burned and they have killed (including a CIA station chief, a British embassy official and various Greek security officers) during the decades after the Colonel’s dictatorship fell in 1973. These militant strands have not gone away and instead have been reinforced as the debt crisis drags on and the impact of austerity measures take their toll on the average (and increasingly unemployed) wage-earner. With unemployment at 20 percent and youth unemployment at 50 percent, the recruitment pool for Greek militants has grown exponentially.

Some of this has been siphoned off my neo-fascist parties like Golden Dawn. But the bulk of popular rage has been channeled by the Left, divided into the institutional vehicles of Syriza and the KKE (and various off-shoots), and the direct action, non-institutionalized vehicles comprised by the likes of Revolutionary Sect (who favor political assassinations) or Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei (who appropriately enough favor arson), that follow a long line of militant groups with a penchant for violence such as the N-17 and Revolutionary Struggle (and may in fact include former members of the latter), to say nothing of various anarchist cells.

These militant groups are not going stay quiet. Instead, I foresee a rising and relentless tide of irregular violence coupled with acts of passive resistance and civil disobedience so long as the political elite continues to play by the Euro rules of the  game. Every Greek knows that the solution to the crisis is political rather than economic because the bankers have made more than enough profit on their loans and it is now time for them to draw down or write off the remaining interest owed. A softened bailout package only goes halfway towards easing the collective burden of debt, and the continued imposition of fiscal austerity deepens the stresses on Greek society (urban crime has ramped up significantly this year, and it already was pretty bad when I lived in Athens in 2010). Instead of continuing to cater to banks, the political decision palatable to most (non-elite) Greeks is not a softened bailout package, now into its fourth iteration. It is a complete re-structuring, with or without default, of the economic apparatus so that national rather than foreign interests prevail on matters of employment, income and production. This may require a retrenchment and drop in standards of living over the short-term, but it at least gives Greeks a voice in the economic decisions that heretofore and presently are made by Euro-focused elites more attuned to the preferences and interests of European finance capital than they are to those of their own people.

If there is a domino effect in other countries in the event that Greece eventually (I would say inevitably) defaults, then so be it simply because that is the risk that bankers and their host governments assumed when they lent to PASOK and New Democracy governments in the past. Perhaps it is time for bankers to pay the piper as well. After all, although their profit margins may fall as a result of the Greek default, they have already insured against the eventuality (the write-off of Greek debt by large financial institutions in the US, UK and Europe is the story that never gets mentioned by the corporate media). Moreover, and most importantly, the banks can accept the default and take their losses on projected interest as a means of keeping Greece in the Eurozone market, thereby avoiding the contagion effect so widely predicted at the moment. Default does not have to mean leaving the Euro currency market. Greece can default and stay in the Eurozone so long as the banks accept that it is in their long-term interest to shoulder the diminished profits (not real losses) that a default will bring.

Again, the economic decisions about Greece had already been made by the European banks, and they are now simply waiting, while claiming gloom and doom, for the political decision to terminate their interest-based revenue streams. The PASOK/New Democracy bailout coalition only delays that political inevitability, and Syriza and the militant Left will ensure that the next bailout is just another stopgap on the road to default and regeneration along more sustainable lines.

Whatever happens, it looks to be another long hot summer in the Peloponnese. Expect a lot of wildfires.

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They Never Learn.

There is an old rule in politics that states that it is not the original sin that gets politicians in trouble. It is the cover-up or lying about it that does them in. The examples that prove the rule are too numerous to mention and span the globe. This week we have another classic case in point: Shane Jones and his explanation as to why, as Associate Minister of Immigration (the Minister of Immigration at the time, David Cunliffe, had earlier refused to revoke Liu/Yan’s residence visa and for some reason unknown to me was not involved in the granting of citizenship), he ignored expert legal advice and granted a Chinese fraudster expedited citizenship.

According to Jones he did so on humanitarian grounds because he was told by an unnamed Internal Affairs official that the applicant–he of at least three different names and an Interpol warrant out for his arrest–would be executed and his organs harvested if he were sent back to China. Forgive me if I cough. That is up there with Annette King’s claims that no one in the Labour government knew about Operation 8 until the weekend before it began.

Others have already torn Mr. Jone’s supposed rationale to shreds. Beyond the fact that not even the Chinese execute people for common fraud, even if they are members of Falun Gong (a claim supposedly made by but never proven by Mr. Liu/Yan), a legitimate fear of a politically-motivated death sentence would result in an asylum request, not a citizenship application based  upon a business visa. Nor would Mr. Liu/Yan speak of traveling back to China with a delegation of Kiwis in order to explore business opportunities in the PRC (as it is claimed he did in his conversations with immigration officials now testifying at his trial on false declaration charges). But according to Shane Jones, not only was he facing certain death but also certain organ harvesting (which raises the question as to how the unnamed Internal Affairs official could know this in advance given that the Chinese do not harvest organs from all executed prisoners because the health of the condemned varies). Put bluntly, Mr. Jones is simply not credible, and unless that unnamed official comes forward to take responsibility for the bogus claims (which Mr. Jones could have ignored), his justification simply does not wash. Add in the fact that Mr. Liu/Yan had donated considerable sums of money to Labour coffers in the lead-in to his citizenship application, and the smell of something fishy permeates the affair.

What is amazing is that when confronted with the evidence presented in court, David Shearer continued to back Mr. Jones and even allowed him to go public with is ridiculous justification. That violates a second rule of politics, which is that when smoke begins to surround a politician on ethical issues his or her party needs to move swiftly to prevent a full-fledged fire from erupting by distancing the tainted one from the party as a whole. By not doing so immediately and only leaving open the possibility of standing Jones down if an investigation proves him guilty of wrong-doing in the Liu/Yan affair, Mr. Shearer has failed the basic test of leadership that involves saving the party from further uncomfortable scrutiny on the issue of campaign financing and political donations.

Once again, let us remember the iron law of oligarchy that governs all political parties: the first duty of the party is to preserve itself. Individual political fortunes come second. Legalities aside, it is the appearance of unethical behavior on the part of Mr. Jones that is at play here.

What is even more amazing is that this comes on the heels of the John Banks-Kin Dotcom scandal and John Key’s equally egregious mistake in not removing Banks from his ministerial post while the Police investigated whether Banks violated political finance laws in his dealing with Mr. Dotcom. Regardless of whether the press played this sequence of events on purpose, the scenario unfolded as follows: National was on the ropes in the weeks leading up to a dismal budget announcement, beleaguered by policy and personal conflicts and dogged by an increasingly assertive mainstream press. Rather than strike a contrast in approach that would give it the moral high ground that would allow it to score major political points against its weakened rival, Labour’s response to revelations of the dubious ethics of one of its senior members in a past government–dubious ethics that are being aired in court for crikey’s sake–is to bluster and blow more smoke on the matter. Do they never learn?

Just as Mr. Key should have removed Mr. Banks from his ministerial position as soon as his denials and lies about his relationship with Mr. Dotcom were exposed, so Mr. Shearer should have moved quickly to demote Mr. Jones until such a time as an independent investigation exonerated him. Given the passing of a few news cycles and the issue would have faded into the political “bygones be bygones” category. By not doing so Mr. Shearer has allowed the Jones-Liu/Yan relationship to become a distraction away from National’s peccadillos and policy failures. He has, in fact, thrown National a life line in the days before the budget announcement and the decision to demote Banks (who could stay in government but not be a minister pending the resolution of the Police investigation), and I would imagine that the National caucus are high-fiving and back-slapping each other in delight.

Of course there are political calculations in all of this. By-elections are costly, list candidate replacements are unproven or unreliable, internal Party factional disputes run the risk of being aggravated or exposed.  National is clearly waiting for the Budget to be announced before moving on Banks. Labour does not want to lose a senior figure who “ticks the boxes” of important internal constituencies. And yes, there is a difference between illegal and unethical activity.

But in putting these calculations ahead of ethical considerations given the appearance of impropriety, both parties have once again shown their contempt for the NZ public. And on this score, Labour’s contempt is much worse. After all, Mr. Banks was just a greasy-palmed private citizen seeking to be mayor when he approached Mr. Dotcom for support. Mr. Jones, on the other hand, was a Minister of State who apparently used his office to bestow special considerations on an individual in exchange for, uh, party “favors.”  Both actions were slimy, but it is the official nature of Mr. Jones’s intercession that makes his behavior worse. Which is why he should have been stood down straight away, because rightly or wrongly, it is the attempt to downplay or cover up past impropriety, rather than the potentially unethical or illegal behavior itself, that will cling to the Labour Party long after Mr. Liu/Yan’s case is adjudicated.

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ACT and National Front to announce merger.

That is about all I can figure after reading this about Louis Crimp, Act’s largest individual donor in the 2011 election. The line about Invercargill is priceless but there are several other gems as well. Mr. Crimp appears to be getting PR advice from Kyle Chapman or Jim Beam, so why keep up the pretense any more and not just announce the merger of the two white rights movements?  Better yet, once John Banks gets the inevitable boot from parliament, perhaps the AKKKT Party can dip into some of that NF talent pool for a replacement.

AKKKT–a political cough in the larger scheme of things, but a full throated sputum of the NZ Right.

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Fortune-cookie strategy and the Labour leadership

Since at least the mid-20th Century it has been fashionable in our culture to adopt postures derived from Asian martial manuals — most notably Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings — in diverse civilian contexts including business, and politics.* There is much to recommend in these texts, but too often they are poorly understood and are reduced to fortune-cookie wisdom, lazy magical thinking of the sort that’s only good enough to bamboozle those who are susceptible to such things. Sun Tzu in particular is a rich mine of sage-sounding aphorisms, and I have indulged in quoting him at times. But it is no get-wise-quick scheme; it’s like a cargo-cult.**

While I have no direct knowledge of the extent to which these ideas hold sway within the New Zealand Labour party, their present strategy bears considerable resemblance to this sort of magical thinking. I’ll cover two specific points brought to light by Claire Trevett’s recent article on the goings-on in the Office of the Leader of the Opposition.

Attitude of No Attitude

Attitude is the spirit of awaiting an attack. … I dislike the defensive spirit known as “attitude”. Therefore, in my Way, there is something called “Attitude-No Attitude”. (Musashi, The Wind Book)

This is the most obvious manifestation of magical thinking: that an official posture of David Shearer “staying above the fray” will necessarily confer a non-politician or statesmanlike aura upon him. Of course, such an attitude can have this effect, but whether or not it does in a given situation is not such a simple matter. Such a strategy could have worked for Shearer, given the right people and the right circumstances, but the right people and circumstances were not present. So the result has been a Labour-party-sized hole in the NZ opposition narrative for most of the past four months.

This hole is not entirely of Labour’s own creation — Shearer took the leadership just before the holidays, and the Ports of Auckland lockout took place within the blessed month between Christmas and Wellington Anniversary where most reasonable New Zealanders will hear nothing of politics. Engaging too strongly with the lockout issue risked alienating the very people Shearer was asking to give him a chance. But the period of inaction has lasted well beyond the silly season, and although some of the Labour caucus have been beavering away, people have not noticed. They have been waiting for the leader, and the leader has not been leading.

I can see the logic: “when we zig, people complain we should have zagged; when we zag, it turns out we should have zigged. Let’s hold steady, bide our time, and become at one with the Universe. At least that way we can guarantee there will be no blunders, and the wheels are bound to fall off this Tory bus sooner or later.” But attitude-no attitude is not merely a damage-mitigation strategy. It is effortlessness, not lassitude. It is creating opportunities to strike, not awaiting them. The opportunities have presented themselves — industrial relations, charter schools, Treasury figures, paid parental leave and the veto, others — and the only time Labour has gotten any traction is with regard to ACC (not of their making), and only then by getting sued by a Cabinet minister!

The past four months have been what another lot of military jargon would refer to as “target-rich”, and Labour largely refused to take advantage of it. Either a zig or a zag would have been preferable to an OM.

The Sovereign and the General

Sun Tzu said: In war, the general receives his commands from the sovereign, collects his army and concentrates his forces … There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must be not attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed. (Sun Tzu, Variation in Tactics)

The “above the fray” strategy noted in Trevett’s article suggests an attempt by Nash and Pagani to position David Shearer as a “Sovereign” — someone who issues orders that are interpreted and then executed by his “generals”, in cabinet and the staff (led by Nash and Pagani.***) Conversely, the strategy said to have been argued by Fran Mold seems to be to position Shearer more as a general, leading from the front.

Both can work, and both do work in the present NZ parliamentary context. But again, the problem with this framing is that it is simplistic — the leader of a Labour movement, as Shearer referred to the party upon attaining the leadership, cannot be above and aloof from the movement, he must be down in it; but he must not lose sight of the bigger picture. It is a near-impossible job and he must own it. He must determine the balance between the various roles that best suits his own strengths, and those of his cabinet and advisors. He cannot do all of it, but how it is distributed must be congruent.

This last — congruence — is crucial. Its absence is what makes a strategy cargo-cultish. To be strategically successful, whatever David Shearer does must be authentic to David Shearer and to the political narrative that he has cultivated; it must not be some get-popular-quick scheme thought up by clever bastards in expensive suits, it has to be his. That it has required such effort to maintain Shearer’s studied aloofness is a strong indication that it is not an authentic strategy, but a pose struck for dramatic effect, and therefore worthless. Bouncing from cloud to cloud, as good as the strategy of aping Key might have seemed on paper, has not rung true because David Shearer is not Teflon John.

One of the most important tasks of leadership — and Sun Tzu goes on and on about this as well, but I’ll spare you — is to surround oneself with good people, and people suited to their tasks. It is also crucial that a leader has the strength of will to maintain his own strategic direction, and this is doubly true of Shearer, who was elected leader on the claim that he was beholden to no-one. His performance at these tasks has been very poor. It may be that he was drawing from a shallow pool of talent, it may be that he was continuing the network of patronage, it may simply be that he thought John Pagani was the best guy for the job — but his team failed to match Shearer’s strategy of action to the narrative he has built around his leadership, and ultimately that’s his responsibility.

So what now? It’s beyond me. And so as not to provide further opportunities to take an inauthentic path, I’ll refrain from giving any sort of detailed advice, beyond “find your own damned way, choose good people, and avoid magical thinking”. I continue to note the irony that folks who, for years, have pooh-poohed the need for polish and presentation in politics now insist that Shearer’s inability to talk good is what’s holding him back, and even greater irony that staunch supporters of Phil Goff are now abandoning Shearer for having failed to accomplish in four months what Goff failed to accomplish in three years. I also can’t get too cut up about his alienating the old leftist revolutionary guard.

David Shearer now has an opportunity to refresh some of his underperforming staff, and that at least shows an awareness that Goff’s office did not show until much later in his term. It may yet be that he has to go; it may be that he really has no authentic vision, style or strategy, and even if he has them, if he can’t articulate them then it’s all moot. Things are not good, but there’s still plenty of time to roll him if that’s what’s needed. Patience, though not lassitude, remains a virtue.

L

* Machiavelli’s The Prince and Clausewitz’s On War are also popular, and justifiably so, though they lack that easy Orientalism of the former two.
** I have seen it persuasively argued that this sort of thing had a central part to play in both the boom and the bust of Wall Street in the 1980s.
*** While it is tempting to suggest that this was part of a Tuckeresque scheme to concentrate power with the senior staff, I think the truth is more depressingly mundane.

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A question of citizenship.

I am a US citizen permanent resident in NZ. I got here on  a normal (i.e. not a business or student) visa after going through a “good character” check and because there was an employer vouching for me. I am now beginning the process of taking out NZ citizenship and am amazed by the level of detail and bureaucratic hurdles I need to go through to get it after living in NZ for nearly 15 years (things like the names and last addresses of my long deceased parents and name and address of my long-divorced American ex-wife are just the start). The process is said to take 6-12 months and I need to surrender my US passport during that time. I guess that is a good thing as it verifies my bonafides.

I say this because I have read reports that Mr. Kim Dotcom, the Jabba the Hut of the internet world according to the US government, purportedly has a NZ passport. He also apparently has a Hong Kong passport as well as that of his birth country Germany. These are said to be legitimate, not fraudulent passports.

My understanding is that you have to be a NZ citizen to hold a NZ passport, and that applies even though one may have entered the country in the investor plus scheme by buying 10 million dollars of NZ government bonds. This makes me curious because Mr. Dotcom arrived in NZ in 2010, which means he was granted citizenship very quickly (as a contrast, a friend of mine of British birth lived in NZ for 30 years, married a Kiwi, served in various official roles including as a JP, and it still took him a year to get his NZ citizenship even though he has never been arrested anywhere and had several NZ people of import vouching for his good character). I am thus curious as to how, with his prior convictions and assorted other odd baggage, Mr. Dotcom managed to get a NZ passport so quickly, especially if there are residency and character requirements involved in acquiring citizenship and he is not claiming refugee status. I also wonder if he surrendered his foreign passports during the time his application was being processed because I have read that he traveled extensively after his arrival in NZ.

I also understand that in order to be an MP one has to be a citizen. I remember some minor scandals a few years back surrounding MPs who turned out to be non-citizens, something that forced their resignations. That also makes me curious because there is a new list National MP who may or may not be a NZ citizen as far as I know. He is a decent chap for a Righty and certainly will improve the intellectual calibre of the NAT backbenches, so good on him for making a go of it. But I am not sure that he is a citizen even though he arrived in NZ about a decade ago. I could be wrong and certainly harbor him no malice, but wonder if all the ticks were checked off on his citizenship prior to the election.

More generally, I am just curious about the flexibility of NZ citizenship laws and the process of granting citizenship because I too hope to join the NZ citizen ranks in the near future. Since I do not have 10 million bucks and am not the darling of any political party, can I instead run for local office with my PR status? I already own property, pay taxes, married a Kiwi etc., so if my citizenship application is rejected (presumably on “good character” grounds), can I still make a nuisance of myself at the local political level?