NZ politics – Kiwipolitico

A few years ago former KP colleague Lew decamped for more fertile writing territory and to attend to more important priorities. To my surprise he began posting on a word-limited social media platform of some notoriety, and I remember thinking that it was a waste of his talent to limit himself to pithy phrases and snarky asides. Whatever my opinion, he has developed a large and devoted following. and continues to inform NZ political discourse with his observations and critiques.

I held that view on social media posting because in the old days I used to have several types of writing outlets and felt that Lew could do likewise. I used scholarly books and articles for my academic research, opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines as a form of short piece public service, consultant analyses on a dedicated web site, and blog posts that were more personal or ideological than what the other formats comfortably allowed. For a while I did all of them concurrently, as I saw them as different parts of my writing personality.

Then, inevitably, life changed. I began doing some podcasting with a close colleague and slowly stopped academic writing once I left academia. I stopped media writing once editorial standards and word limits dropped along with the pay per word (and in some cases no pay or pay to play editorial approaches). I did media commentary until they stopped paying for “expert” analyses and charlatans entered the field. Think of it this way: If I was going to stop my normal “monetarized” or remunerated activities in order to take the time and make the effort to prepare and offer insights into world affairs when called upon by media outlets with no significant notice, why would I do that for free? Do we ask tradesmen to perform unscheduled specialist services for free? So why ask me to do so? To get my mug on TV? To hear my voice on the wireless? Geez, I have a face made for radio and in fact was a jazz DJ on radio for several years, so neither TV mugging or broadcast audio locution floats my boat. Best to leave that for (with a few exceptions to the rule) the attention-seeking poseurs.

As a result, nowadays I am down to blogging, sporadic consultancy writing and, as fate would have it, social media posts. I opted to do the latter basically to offer quick takes on current events rather than offer “deeper” analyses or opinions.

In that light here are a few recent snippets about NZ domestic politics. They refer to this year’s election and what is looking like Labour handing victory to the coalition of nasty rightwing incompetents in November.

From May: Is the NACT election campaign strategy based on promoting sectarian hatred of public sector workers by private sector ‘battlers?” Or to push public sector cuts so deep that they cannot easily be reversed and private interests can exploit the service delivery gaps? Just wondering.

From August: With a strong female majority workforce, who does ACT expect to use “reasonable force” on unruly middle and secondary school students, some of whom may either be large, violent or both? Does ACT propose to hire school discipline officers to deal with such students? If not, then what? (as the parent of a 13 year old boy this resonates close to home).

More in August:

Thoughts: By kicking the leadership can down the road National is making its election chances/options worse; Given certain contexts, it can be better to lose now and win later;
Labour excels at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, so why make it harder for it to do so?

And: If the opponent’s platform is all about being anti-taxes with no positive policy initiatives, then it truly is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory for Labour to be timid and status quo-ish when it comes to election promises. They must read the room better. Bold is beautiful. Positive policy! (Because they other side has nothing to offer on that score. It is all about what they oppose, not what they propose).

More (revised): Labour must understand that National’s performative pretence that they are doing something about kid’s social media use (i.e., pretending that it is doing something effective about digital harm to children when it in fact it is not), is just kicking the problem down the road while suckering Labour into supporting its political theatre. That is, it is an election neutralising ploy that will leave Labour holding the failure bag when the time comes for it to take office. The current bill is a plaster, not a panacea. It only postpones the hard choices that must be made if kids are to be made safe as effectively as is possible given the circumstances of their lives in an all-encompassing digital era.

Seen differently, National are doing a version of the hackneyed “tough on crime” and “countering terrorism” tactics employed by right-wingers everywhere by enticing Labour into either supporting their political theatrical performance staged to address digital harm against children or opposing what is framed as a common sense solution to the problem (when in actuality it just shifts the burden of responsibility onto households while offering ethereal promises of corporate accountability). After all, who in their right mind is not against crime, terrorism and digital harm to children?

Of course, Labour has taken the bait and supports the plaster bill. What is worse, the extremist Right clustered in ACT and NZ First cloak their concerns about the bill under a “infringement on privacy and parental rights” mantle that undercuts sincere opposition to the ongoing expansion of the surveillance State and its private sector adjacents. Then Labour doubles down on its attempt to cover National’s pre-election moves by supporting National’s rates increase cap without proposing other funding initiatives, in what amounts to another veiled anti-tax measure posing as fiscal relief on households. In doing so Labour is chasing a narrative framed by National at a time when National should be having its feet held to the fire over its gross across-the-board incompetence on virtually all matters of public policy (be it on e.g., health, economic growth, housing, education, welfare or agricultural-industrial-service balance).

In any event, as I wind down my other writing and commentating pursuits I will occasionally cobble together a patchwork of revised and edited social media posts and publish them here. Think of them as an epiphenomenal takes on contemporary events, or in other words, surface reflections on larger realities.

I had some time on my hands the past few days so spent more attention than usual consuming news about NZ domestic politics. My interests tend to lie further afield, but recent government assaults on Maori rights, women’s pay equity, constitutional neutrality, environmental, health and safety regulations, equitable taxation policy, state sector employment, Labour’s pandemic response and assorted other lesser insults have drawn me, perhaps like a moth to flame, to seek some illumination on the local political scene. These are a few tidbits that I took away this week., translated into social media posts.

Chloe Swarbrick’s remarks about the government’s cowardice on the issue of Palestinian statehood in the wake of Israeli actions in Gaza.:

First all, Swarbrick is correct. If only six coalition MPs had some moral-ethical courage, then NZ could join the majority of the international community, including three of the 5 Eyes partners, in condemning Israel’s collective punishment of all Palestinians for the sins of Hamas on October 7, 2023, including the IDF’s use of ethnic cleansing and mass starvation as a means to that end. For that she was told to apologise by the Speaker (and National MP) for using the phrase “if six…members had a spine” and when she did not, ordered to leave the debating chamber. and later “named.” This is my comment on social media: “Peters, Jones and Seymour voice ugly boorish insults against their opponents (including racist taunts) and are allowed to remain in the House. Swarbrick correctly points out the spineless behaviour of government MPs regarding Gaza and gets thrown out. So much for Speaker impartiality” (referencing routine remarks made by the NZ First and Act leaders).

Also, as an aside to the particulars of this case, I should note that in light of prior history by Brownlee and other conservative MPs when it comes to progressive female members, there is a whiff of misogyny in the ruling. As a relative said to me (paraphrased here), male MPs can be loud, rude, condescending and bombastic when speaking to the House, but women cannot get angry or raise their voices even in defense of universal values. Now, I realise that Brownlee fashions himself as “old school” when it comes to parliamentary ethics and protocols, but if these boy’s club unwritten rules are part of the “old school” way of doing parliamentary politics, I say that he and others of his ilk need to be woken from their Rip Van Winkle stupor and shown the door.

By way of a broader backdrop, we should be clear that for all of its talk about foreign policy independence and having stood up to the US and its Anglophone allies with the 1985 non-nuclear declaration, NZ is a diplomatic follower, not a leader. It waits until other States make a move or show initiative on sticky international issues or events, then coattails on whatever seems most beneficial over the short-term. It pays lip service to international rules and norms but sniffs the wind when foreign policy smoke is in the air.

This syndrome has been accentuated in recent decades, particularly by National-led governments, and is now at rock bottom when it comes to NZ supination to other’s interests. The governing coalition’s current lack of resolve when it comes to denouncing the Palestinian catastrophe and upholding the right to Palestinian self-determination can be attributed to slavish obsequiousness to the US (Trump) position on the matter, perhaps abetted by the influence of the NZ Israeli lobby. Whatever ulterior ends the coalition of chaos may think that this approach may serve vis a vis the bilateral relationship with the US, they are sorely mistaken. NZ is just another squirrel looking for that elusive US nut.

2) On the decision to remove Maori words from schoolbooks :

I wrote “a main tool of cultural erasure is to remove all public references in a language other than that of the dominant social group. The CCP does it to the Uyghurs in the PRC. The excuse for doing so is usually to promote assimilation and social cohesion. The real motive is darker.”

I could go on about the attempts to erase indigenous languages and dialects in the public sphere is a host of places, particularly in Latin America, the region I am most familiar with, but also in Canada, the US, Africa and parts of the Pacific. The practice was so common in the colonial past that some linguists have written about the cultural genocide that follows erasing of a native language. When ti comes to identity and cultural preservation, language (and words) matter.

What is also remarkable is that it is well accepted that, rather than “confusing” in the Education Minister’s words, learning other languages at an early age promotes brain development and complex thought. Defending the removal of Maori words from children’s books is therefore doubly retrograde: it is the first step of an attempt at cultural erasure (at least in the public space), bookending similar attempts to remove te reo from public buildings and signage; and it is counter-productive (and counter-factual) as a pedagogical approach. Shame on Erica Stanford and her acolytes! And if a few Maori words are confusing, why not remove all non-English words from school books? Sacre bleu!

3) On the refusal of former Labour Ministers to front up to a public hearing of the Royal Common of Inquiry into the Pandemic Response:

“Why front up to a kangaroo court when the kangaroo judges are the political opposition? Especially after providing written answers to documented questions supplied by the kangaroos about events long in the public domain? Smacks of an ex-post political beat-up best avoided.” The fact that the Inquiry was instigated by ACT and NZ First as a partisan bludgeon after listening to conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers appears lost on the corporate media (partisan media like Plunket, Bridges and Hoskings just megaphone the anti-Labour lines). In fact, Labour should be pushing back harder at the political instigators, for example by questioning how they came to get involved in the witch hunt after actively supporting Labour’s pandemic response at the time, and who feeds them their talking points.

4) On a serving NZDF member is standing trial for espionage.

“The espionage charge against a serving NZ soldier is remarkable. The defendant is accused of working for, at the behest, or on behalf of a foreign State. Many questions arise from soldier’s court martial/trial. 1st: Which State? 2nd: what motive(s)? 3rd: what was compromised?”

Charging an active duty NZDF member with spying is remarkable because that charge–espionage– is only brought if the accused is suspected of working as a covert foreign agent. It does not refer to any domestic interlocutor., patron or client. I seem to recall at the time of the arrest that the soldier was detained for having objectionable material, presumably extremist literature (the military does not court martial people for having porn unless it is of the illegal variety). The soldier was also said to have links to right wing white supremacist groups. So it would be premature and very possibly wrong to finger the PRC as the puppet master (as the usual suspect). Given its other dark activities in NZ, Russia is a possibility. Or some other State. What should be clear is that it would not be an ally of the NZDF like the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France or other countries that routinely share higher-level intelligence with the NZDF (say, on operations, deployments, capabilities and tactics) that the soldier could not easily access unless s/he was in a military intelligence billet.

There could be a mix of motives involved, including money, sex and ideology. The counter-intelligence aspects of uncovering the suspected spy are also worth considering. In that light the trial should be interesting and revelatory, assuming that coverage is not effectively shut down for reasons of national security (yeah, right).

Should it be your inclination, feel free to weigh in within the KP rules of discourse.

Tag: NZ politics

Some comments on NZ politics.