Now that election season is underway in NZ, I shall very briefly drift into a subject I usually tend to avoid: NZ domestic politics, and more specifically, policy agendas during election campaigns. In this case I would like to note two examples of what I (and many experts far more knowledgeable than myself) see as a major flaw in MMP, as exemplified by the Right’s embrace of populist themes.
First we have NZ First and its NZ version of MAGA mendacity. Slamming all contrary views as “woke,” sucking up to mining and fishing interests, going full xenophobic racist on Opposition MPs and communities of Chinese and Indian descent, dog-whistling homo- and trans-phobic hysteria, kissing the rear of the gun lobby and generally being grumpy old codgers is pretty rich for a party led by opportunistic rather than self-recognised Maori men in parliament. They may have been born Maori but when it comes to election agendas, they are anything but. In the US such type of MAGA people–people of color who use their color only when it suits them–have some processed snack-related names attached to them.
They are also unimaginative. They might have some One Nation/Hanson tropes in their policy mix but they are simply MAGA lite, Kiwi style. Insults included. It is a pity that a former academic political scientist is one of Peter’s main advisors because he certainly has the capacity to know better about how corrosive that brand of politics is to national cohesion and civilised debate. But for Peters and his colleagues the main goal is to exploit the MMP weakness and carve out the 5 percent needed to stay in parliament and perhaps figure in coalition discussions. Forget the other 95 percent of voters. What matters is to grab that sliver of electoral pie and if that means catering to the baser instincts of reactionary Deep State and other conspiracy theory types as well as religious bigots and assorted other anti-social ideological riff-raff, then so be it. They just need to reach the election threshold to convert their narcissistic self-interest into a parliamentary presence, perhaps as no more than a vanity project but also perhaps as a power-broker faction under MMP (as we have recently and sadly seen).
Phrased differently: The price of Grumpy Winston’s and Greasy-palmed Shane’s baubles is stirring the effluent pools of NZ politics. PM Luxon’s tepid response to NZ First’s antics demonstrate more than his personal weakness. It serves as a passive enabling device that allows racist and xenophobic beliefs to be mainstreamed into election politics. Luxon needs the financial contributions to National from certain ethnic-based business groups, but he also knows that on current polling he can either condemn MAGA-style sectarian and culture war extremism or he can hope to make a pact with the devil. He has chosen the latter.
Then there is ACT. One thing is obvious beyond the racism that is behind its Treaty Principles bill and its corporate pimping with regard to the Resources Management Reform bill. It also does not know or care about children or educators. Take its latest campaign initiative. With a strong female majority employee base, who does ACT expect to be the ones who 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? Does Seymour, a posterboi for incels who says he has a girlfriend but whose obsession with former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman was more that of the stalker creep rather than the partisan policy difference type, have a clue about how to deal with contrarian, disturbed, distressed or alienated 12 to 18 year olds? And no, I do not include as “experience” chatting up minor females on social media.
Plus, what about teacher safety? Does he really expect teachers, not trained in physical restraint techniques and deescalation procedures, to be on the front line against “miscreant” students once things threaten to or get physical? How would the chickenhawk Paul Henry fare in a tussle with a teenager? Or will it be the Cruella de Ville South African woman who cracks the whip on those do not conform, obey and bow to the rod? And if all of this was somehow achievable, what is the cost and who pays for it? Is not ACT’s schtick about reducing budgetary deficits and bloated public sector expenditures? How does a “reasonable force” policy enter into that equation, both in terms of financial costs but also in terms of the human costs involved in the resort to physical control of young people? Who pays the price for all of this, and how?
Surely ACT know that the proposal is not practicable. But they can blame teacher’s unions for being “soft” on student misbehaviour and pass the buck onto education professionals who know how and why “reasonable force” is not the answer to problems that begin far from classrooms. They can talk about parental failure and inter-generational dependencies resulting in bad school-kid behaviour. They do so not because they care or have realistic remedies, but because as with the NZ First racists and xenophobes, they hope that it stirs the pot enough to keep them in parliament as power-brokers using the same logic as Winston and company.
And true to form, Luxon and fellow National Party leaders dutiful go along with the proposed uncosted “tough on youth crime” overreach.
I say all of this only slightly tongue in cheek because this is what NZ has become, at least on the Right. And from what I can see, the corporate media is happy to give them a platform to spew their nonsense as if it were common sense.
But here lies the rub, because “common sense” is what elites tell us how things should be, whereas good sense is what our hearts and minds tell us what should be regardless of what elites say. Something tells me that, notwithstanding the crackpots in Groundswell and other astroturf outfits associated with the Wellington protests a few years back, in their hearts and minds most Kiwis know that when it comes to public policy, Seymour, Peters and their entourages are no more than grandiloquent turd-polishers posing as politicians.