The elimination of poverty will just have to wait

(First published in The Dominion Post, May 17.)

THE TEAM of Key and English may go down as one of the more effective political partnerships of modern times.

John Key is the schmoozer, the salesman. His incorrigibly sunny disposition infuriates a lot of people, who see it as smarmy and ingratiating. But it’s hard to argue with his poll ratings, which have held up extraordinarily well after one and a half terms during which the government has had to grapple with one crisis after another.

With the passage of time, Mr Key has also demonstrated an increasing command of policy detail, something that eluded him in the early days of his prime ministership.

Bill English is the dour Southlander doing the hard graft behind the scenes. While Captain Key is up on the bridge waving reassuringly to the passengers, chief engineer English is down below shovelling coal into the boilers.

He’s not as relaxed in the public eye and lacks his boss’s charisma. He had an unhappy time as National leader (the party suffered its worst-ever electoral defeat on his watch), but seems to have found his niche as Minister of Finance.

History may view him as a safe pair of hands – to use a classically understated New Zealand compliment – during a turbulent period that called for steady nerves.

While media attention was focused on political scrub fires – the Dotcom saga, the GCSB, Novopay, the whiffy Sky City deal, Mighty River Power – New Zealand has quietly been winning international regard for the way it has weathered the global financial crisis.

Only this week, both the International Monetary Fund and credit ratings agency Standard and Poor’s endorsed the government’s economic approach. S and P places us among the world’s 10 least risky economies.

There’s definitely a sense that we’ve turned the corner. Economic growth is gathering speed and unemployment is starting to fall. It seems ironic that this should happen just as Australia, which seemed to sail through the GFC almost unscathed, is being battered by severe head winds.

The great migration across the ditch (which National promised to halt, but didn’t) may soon start to reverse itself as the Lucky Country battens down the hatches.

* * *

OF COURSE the economic purists will find much to complain about in the Budget. Voter bribes such as interest-free student loans and Working for Families, introduced by Labour, remain in place.

These are a continuing affront to people who insist that a centre-right party should have no truck with such policies. The arguments here are uncannily similar to those in Britain, where the Conservative Party is locked into a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats and finds itself shackled by policies that run counter to classic principles of economic liberalism.

National abandoned ideological purity decades ago, recognising that it was no way to win elections. Keith Holyoake created the pragmatist legacy of which Mr Key is the perfect inheritor. The Key formula is to do whatever works and whatever wins elections. 

It’s a style of politics that the late Margaret Thatcher, the ultimate conviction politician, had no time for. But in the MMP era, when compromise and deal-making are the keys to political survival, the purists just have to learn to live with it.

* * *

AS ALWAYS in the days leading up to the Budget, a parade of professional supplicants shuffled forward this week with begging bowls extended.

All the usual suspects lined up in the media, demanding that the government throw more money at the worthy causes du jour. One modest goal urged on the government was the elimination of poverty – surely something any finance minister with a social conscience should be able to achieve at a stroke.

Other items on the wish list included thousands more state houses, breakfasts for starving schoolchildren and free bariatric surgery, which the medical profession tells us is essential if we’re to avoid a “tsunami” of obesity-induced diabetes.

On Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report, I heard one advocate for the poor saying it wasn’t enough to provide free breakfasts for kids from decile 1 and 2 schools. The government had a responsibility, he pronounced, to feed all schoolchildren.

On the same programme a housing activist, while grudgingly conceding that the government was on the right track by increasing housing capacity, made it clear that whatever was announced in the Budget would be hopelessly inadequate.

Most striking, as usual, was what went unmentioned.

No one thought to say where the money would come from. Too difficult. Perhaps they think it’s magically conjured out of the air rather than generated by taxpayers, which first requires a prosperous economy.

And no one made any reference to where individual responsibility – as in making sure children are fed before going to school, or saying no to that extra litre of ice cream – sits in their view of the perfect world.

Confessions of a dinosaur

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, May 8.)

My wife reckons that if I had been alive in 1893, I probably would have opposed women getting the vote.

Ouch. That’s a bit harsh. I would, of course, prefer to think it’s not true – but how can I be sure? It’s unknowable.

I have never thought of myself as sexist; quite the reverse. The people I most admire and respect have been strong women. I have never identified with the Kiwi bloke culture that thinks women should be kept in their place, whether it be the kitchen or the bedroom.

But as I say, who knows? My thinking has been conditioned by a century of liberal democracy. Attitudes were different in the 1890s and had I lived then, I might intuitively have been against such a radical change in the established order as votes for women.

My wife’s accusation arose in the context of Louisa Wall’s same-sex marriage bill. She supported it; I didn’t.

I didn’t exactly lie awake at night burning with rage over the bill, but it would be fair to say I was uncomfortable about it. I’m cautious by nature. I believe there are often good reasons why society has evolved the way it has over thousands of years and that we need to think very carefully before giving way to the fashionable impulse of the moment.

So, had I been an MP, I would almost certainly have lined up with those voting against the bill. But at the same time I could see that the arguments from the other side were hard to counter.

I realise too that human civilisation can’t always be relied upon to evolve in desirable ways, and that sometimes the status quo has to be overturned for society to progress.

There was a time when slavery was accepted as part of the natural order, and the brave minority who challenged it were seen as dangerous radicals. But who would now question the moral correctness of William Wilberforce and his followers?

The same could be said of any number of issues that once polarised conservatives and liberals, but which have now been settled.

To conservative white American southerners in the 1950s and 60s, civil rights for black people were unthinkable. Even more recently, white supremacists tried to justify the subjugation and oppression of the majority black population in South Africa. Anyone proclaiming such views today would rightly be regarded as some sort of Neanderthal.

Does same-sex marriage fall into the same category? We don’t know.  To use a cliché, the jury is out. Either we have made an awful mistake, or future generations will look back in bemusement and wonder what all the fuss was about.

In his inaugural address in 2009, President Barack Obama – a man who, because of his skin colour, would have been able to enter the White House only as a cleaner or butler if society had stood still – used the phrase “the wrong side of history” to describe those who are left behind by the currents of change.

Will people who opposed same-sex marriage be regarded in future as having been on the wrong side of history? It’s possible.

My wife’s accusation (it was a joke, but she was making a serious point) caused me to reflect on whether I’d stood on the wrong or the right side of history on other causes.

The first issue that came to mind was the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1986. Although I didn’t march in the streets or attend rallies opposing it, I admit I was uncomfortable with that change too, which may seem extraordinary now.

Was I on the wrong side of history? Undoubtedly. I suspect hardly anyone now would seriously argue that homosexual acts should be treated as criminal. But at the time, it seemed a very big leap and the country was torn. The legislation eventually passed by only 49 votes to 44.

It would be unfair to characterise all opponents of Fran Wilde’s ground-breaking bill in 1986 as knuckle-dragging troglodytes, just as it was wildly inaccurate to portray those opposed to same-sex marriage (as National MP Maurice Williamson did) as bigots and religious fundamentalists.

On other issues, my record is mixed. I opposed the Vietnam War and the 1981 Springbok tour, which probably puts me on the right side of history.

I broadly supported the radical economic reforms of the 1980s, although I recall being apprehensive about the sheer scale and speed of the changes. Like many New Zealanders, I was probably so accustomed to living in an over-regulated society that the prospect of being liberated from all those suffocating state controls seemed almost scary. East Germans must have experienced a similar sensation when they were reunited with the West.

Here again I believe I was on the right side of history. What was then considered radical policy is now accepted as mainstream, although the Left continues to fight a dogged campaign of resistance. (Helen Clark pandered to the Left by referring to the failed reforms of the 1980s, but strangely left them intact.)

Nuclear weapons were the other great defining issue of that era, and while some anti-nuclear rhetoric verged on hysterical, I believed New Zealand was entitled to take the stand it did. In the end, it became a matter of asserting our right to chart our own course and resist bullying by bigger powers. That’s another tick for the “right side of history” box.

On some current issues we just don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong. The climate change debate, for instance, is so ideologically charged that it’s virtually impossible to distinguish propaganda from reliable science. 

Treaty settlements? Those who support them may yet turn out to be on the right side of history, provided settlement money is wisely used to raise Maori achievement levels, lift Maori out of poverty and contribute to economic growth. Ngai Tahu seems to be on the right track. But scepticism will persist if settlement proceeds are used to promote separatism and enhance the standing and power of tribal elites, as too often seems to be the case.

On the current issue of paid parental leave, it strikes me as contradictory that when so much has been done in the past 30 years to roll back the state’s intrusion into people’s lives, there is mounting pressure for it to assume the role of a super-parent.

On that issue too I’m sure to be seen as a social dinosaur, stubbornly resistant to progress. But at least my wife agrees with me.

 

Tiny Tinui paid a high price for patriotism

(First published in The Dominion Post, May 3.)

SHORT OF Gallipoli itself, or perhaps the famous Menin Gate in  Ypres, there can be no better place to observe Anzac Day than the charming rural settlement of Tinui, in the Wairarapa.

Several things make Tinui perfect. First, it’s an enchanting little place, tucked away in a pretty valley and proudly preserved to look much as it would have decades ago. Even the original village jail is still intact.

Second, Tinui has profound historical significance. It was there that the world's first Anzac Day ceremony was held in 1916, when Anglican vicar the Rev Basil Ashcroft held a service in the tiny Church of the Good Shepherd (still in use) before leading a procession up nearby Mt Maunsell to erect a permanent memorial.

A cross stands on the hilltop still, though the original wooden one had to be replaced in 1965 after being battered once too often by the wind. It has become traditional for people to climb the steep track to the cross after attending the Anzac Day service at the Tinui Memorial Hall, where the local women’s institute provides a classic country morning tea: asparagus rolls, bacon and egg pie, club sandwiches and, naturally, Anzac biscuits.

But perhaps the most striking thing about Anzac Day at Tinui is that it brings home, in a way few other places can, the human impact that the two world wars had on small communities.

As part of the service, schoolchildren stand in front of the war memorial and recite the names of the men who went away and never came back. Thirty-six locals died in World War One, including seven at Gallipoli, and 12 in World War Two.

It’s hard to imagine the impact those losses must have had in a small, isolated rural community. Among those killed in the 1914-18 war were two lots of three brothers.

Masterton mayor Garry Daniell told me after last week’s service that many farms in the Tinui district were run by strong, matriarchal women who, when the menfolk failed to come home, rolled up their sleeves and took over.

He also recalled that as a boy aged about 10, he met a local spinster who mentioned that her husband had died in the war. When the inquisitive young Daniell asked his name, she answered: “I don’t know. I never met him” – a poignant way of explaining that marriage was denied her because the war took the lives of so many eligible local men.

* * *

ONCE AGAIN, Radio New Zealand has debased the word “debate”.

It’s currently broadcasting what it calls a series of “debates” on the current review of New Zealand’s constitution. But they are nothing of the sort. 

They are cosy consensus sessions featuring safe speakers who can be counted on to agree broadly on the key issues. While the participants are learned and articulate, it’s dishonest to pretend these affairs are a genuine contest of ideas.

They are a sham, creating the misleading impression that the highly contentious issues under discussion – such as the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our constitutional arrangements – are largely settled.

The only hint of dissent comes in the few minutes allocated for questions at the end, when one or two brave souls have the temerity to ask pointed questions – such as whether the speakers favour a society in which rights are allocated on the basis of race.

Even my left-wing fellow columnist Chris Trotter is appalled, pointing out that there are plenty of people willing and able to challenge the politically correct orthodoxy of the “debaters”. (Ironically, the same Chris Trotter recently denounced me for suggesting some Radio New Zealand programmes were biased. Perhaps he has had a change of heart.)

This charade closely follows a series of pretend “debates” on the Treaty, also broadcast by Radio New Zealand, to which I referred in an earlier column. The state broadcaster and Victoria University, whose Centre for Public Law organised the events (and stacked the panels with its own academics), should be ashamed. It is a misuse of power – nothing less.

* * *

FASHION, both female and male, is a source of endless amusement.

I keep a close eye on the fashion pages and can pronounce that for women, the frumpy look is "in" this winter. Shapeless clothes designed to disguise the female form are big, along with colour combinations that appear to have been thrown together in the dark.

Stick-thin models continue to predominate, with the added requirement that they must now be pigeon-toed.

For men, the desired look this season is suits that appear at least one size too small, making the wearers look like schoolboys who have put on a sudden growth spurt.  Designers have gone the American way, opting for trousers that end at least an inch above the ankles.

And as always, the most ludicrous examples are the most expensive.

 

George Jones takes his final bow

George Jones, the country singer Gram Parsons called the king of broken hearts, has died, aged 81. He lived far longer than anyone could have expected, given his chaotic, self-destructive lifestyle. Anyone who thinks rock stars invented the drugs, sex and booze culture could commence their re-education by reading the New York Times obituary here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/arts/music/george-jones-country-singer-dies-at-81.html?pagewanted=all 

No-Show Jones, as he became known due to his notorious unreliability, recorded a lot of dire material, but no one ever sang a painful country ballad better. The most famous example was his 1980 comeback hit He Stopped Loving Her Today, a wondrously overwrought tearjerker from which he wrung every ounce of sentiment.

My other personal favourite comes from his 1994 album The Bradley Barn Sessions, on which Jones performed with a stellar lineup of country and rock luminaries, among them Keith Richards and Mark Knopfler. On the track Where Grass Won’t Grow, he was joined by Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton and Trisha Yearwood. If you’re not into country music (and we have to accept that many people just don’t get it), you could easily dismiss this song as pure hokum. I would never waste my time playing it for some of my friends, who, for all their virtues, are musical bigots.  But I think it’s just magnificent.

If God's a country music lover, as I'm sure He is, he'll be waiting to welcome Jones at the Pearly Gates. The question is, will he turn up?

Not an easy woman to like

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, April 24.)

LIKE a lot of people, I’ve been thinking lately about Margaret Thatcher. My feelings about her are, to use a fashionable term, conflicted.

The best way I can explain it is to say that it was possible to respect what she achieved without actually liking her.

Mrs Thatcher was imperious. She gave the impression of never harbouring a moment’s self-doubt.

She professed to love nothing more than a good argument, but you got the impression that she had little patience for anyone expressing a contrary opinion. I suspect she enjoyed arguments only if she won them – which she usually did, through sheer force of will and an overwhelming sense of her own rightness.

Like another revered British leader, Winston Churchill, she sometimes gave the impression of being largely indifferent to the human consequences of her policies.

She focused unwaveringly on the end goal, and if there were casualties along the way … well, that was the price to be paid for getting things done.

These are not qualities that necessarily engender feelings of warmth and affection, but it was exactly these characteristics that made her such a formidable prime minister.

She seemed immune to the uncertainties that would assail most politicians pursuing controversial and unpopular policies. Perhaps she just lacked natural empathy, but I think it’s more likely she trained herself to be steely and unyielding because she knew that was what the job demanded, and that any sign of sensitivity or frailty could be politically fatal.

Those who worked with her said she did, in fact, have a human, compassionate side that was rarely glimpsed by the public.

Like Churchill, Mrs Thatcher came along when her country most needed her.

Britain had emerged from World War II nominally a victor, but sapped of energy and spirit. It was as though all the effort expended in defeating Nazi Germany had left it exhausted.

Three decades of steady decline followed. Britain’s empire disintegrated and its industries could no longer compete. Nationalisation of failing companies – many of them terminally weakened by militant unionism – served only to delay their inevitable demise, at the taxpayers’ expense. Strikes and industrial unrest became known as the “British disease”.

Under both Tory and Labour governments, the dead hand of the state assumed an ever larger role in the economy, with stultifying consequences. Despite occasional entertaining distractions (the Mini, the Beatles, Swinging London), the trajectory was remorselessly downwards.

Britain reached its nadir in the 1970s. Inflation was rampant and strikes were constant; garbage piled up in the streets and power blackouts made life intolerable. At one point Britain was reduced to a three-day working week because of electricity shortages caused by coal miners’ strikes. The advent of punk music in 1976 – angry and anarchic – seemed a perfect symbol of the times. 

It all culminated in the Winter of Discontent in 1979, so named because a wave of strikes coincided with the coldest winter in 16 years. Even gravediggers refused to work, causing corpses to be piled up in a disused factory. 

That was the setting in which Mrs Thatcher came to power. Rarely has any Western leader in peacetime had a better excuse for taking decisive action. And she made the most of the opportunity, instigating a programme of radical economic reform that included deregulation, privatisation of state-owned industries and emasculation of a union movement that had become intoxicated with power.

Many of the protesters who danced in the streets on hearing of her death weren’t even born when all this happened. Their warped understanding of the period probably comes from the many films that portray Thatcherism as a vicious attack on the working class.

Even now, among left-wing film directors and scriptwriters of a certain age, Thatcherism remains a burning pre-occupation. But I shudder to think how Britain might have turned out had it surrendered to the ugly class hatred propounded by union bullies such as the coal miners’ leader Arthur Scargill (who, incidentally, is still fighting the class war as leader of the breakaway Socialist Labour Party).

It’s true that the jury is still out on aspects of Mrs Thatcher’s prime ministership. In the industrial north of England, communities remain bitter about the impact of mine closures and other consequences of her policies. Debate about the efficacy of her economic reforms, and in particular their effect on income disparity, still rages.

But it’s unarguable that she transformed Britain and restored British pride. The vibrant, dynamic Thatcherite Britain where I spent three months in 1985 was far removed from the wretched, demoralised nation of the late 1970s.

It’s equally unarguable that the dire situation Mrs Thatcher inherited in 1979 required emphatic action. Britain was on its knees. Many of the industries that closed down on her watch were dinosaurs already, condemned to extinction by a combination of weak management and suicidal union militancy.

Perhaps her master stroke, politically, was going to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.  Whatever the British people felt about her economic policies, bloodying the noses of the Argies – and thereby restoring, however briefly, a sense of Britain’s faded military glory – elevated Mrs Thatcher to the status of a warrior queen in the tradition of Boadicea.

New Zealand supported Britain in that military adventure by sending two frigates to the Indian Ocean, thus freeing up British warships to help in the Falklands. But whatever gratitude Mrs Thatcher may have felt for that gesture quickly evaporated after David Lange replaced Rob Muldoon as prime minister in 1984 and New Zealand embarked on its nuclear-free policy.

It seemed she considered New Zealand a valued ally as long as it dutifully did whatever was in Britain’s interests, but woe betide us if we had the impertinence to pursue a foreign policy of our own choosing.

Her disapproval of our independent nuclear stance was made clear by her refusal to sanction criticism of the French for blowing up the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour.  That was not only a classic piece of Thatcher imperiousness – she probably thought the French were right to put us in our place, upstarts that we were – but demonstrated a very selective morality.

A similar moral blind spot was evident in her friendship with the murderous Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet, who ingratiated himself with Mrs Thatcher by giving Britain clandestine support against Argentina.

As I say, not an easy woman to like. But it’s hard to argue with her accomplishments, and she certainly deserved better than to have vengeful, embittered losers metaphorically dancing on her grave.

Buffoon of the week

Maurice Williamson is being lionised as some sort of international celebrity for his speech in Parliament in support of the same-sex marriage bill. He has become an improbable hero in the eyes of the media, which abandoned all semblance of professional impartiality on Louisa Wall’s legislation. (I say “improbable” because Williamson has been more whipping boy than poster boy for the media in the past. It’s just that on this occasion, his politics happened to align with those of most journalists.) But I see nothing to admire in Williamson’s grandstanding. On the contrary, I think it was a contemptible speech – contemptible because it mocked and ridiculed people who had merely exercised their right to express a view on the bill. That’s called democracy, a point apparently lost on the ego-tripping MP for Pakuranga. Democracy confers the right to hold unpopular, silly and even offensive views without being smugly derided and held up to contempt in Parliament. Others may regard Williamson as a hero, but he confirmed my impression that he’s a clown and a buffoon – and worse, a clown and a buffoon with no regard for the right of constituents to freely communicate their honestly held opinions to their elected representatives. And while he may boast of having a degree in physics, I’m curious to know how anyone could get to the age of 62 without learning how to pronounce the word celibacy. Thank God ministerial rules prevented him from accepting Ellen DeGeneres’ invitation to appear on her TV show. I shudder to think of the harm that might have been done to New Zealand’s reputation.

A roomful of teddy bears could hardly do worse

(First published in The Dominion Post, April 19.)

WELLINGTON could save itself a truckload of money by getting rid of its mayor and 14 councillors and replacing them with teddy bears.

Would the quality of governance be affected? Not a jot. The council bureaucrats would continue to run things just as they do now.

The people’s elected representatives are obviously not in control at the Town Hall and it’s an elaborate charade to pretend that they are. That’s clear from the fact that councillors had no idea 150 infrastructure jobs were being outsourced.

Even more comically, council functionaries didn’t bother to inform the mayor that they were proposing to spend $350,000 tarting up a temporary office for her. That shows how much regard the bureaucrats have for their elected overseers.

It’s all eerily reminiscent of an article published in The Dominion more than 20 years ago, in which an investigative reporter named Al Morrison – now better known as the director-general of the Department of Conservation – exposed the existence of a brotherhood of senior council officials known as the Order of the Rabbit.

Their purpose was to keep councillors in their proper place – in other words, in the dark. Those aspiring to join the said order had to swear they would maintain a tradition of regarding all councillors as “a pack of bastards”.

In this respect, Wellington is hardly unique. In local government, real power often resides with the managers. But in Wellington’s case, it’s a lot more obvious than usual.

Hence my suggestion that the council abandon the façade of participatory democracy and replace the councillors with stuffed toys. Meetings would be over faster, the bickering and point-scoring would cease, ratepayers would be saved more than $1.3 million a year – which is what they pay the mayor and councillors – and council officials would be free to get on unhindered with what they do anyway, which is running the show.

It would have the added benefit that most of those around the council table would be better looking.

* * *

ON A LESS flippant note, perhaps local government could learn something from the United States Constitution.

No one can serve more than two terms as US president. A similar rule in local government would clear out a lot of dead wood.

Under the present system, people can keep winning re-election ad infinitum. Councils become self-perpetuating, if often highly fractious, oligarchies.

The more often a councillor is elected, the more likely he or she will be elected again next time – not necessarily because they have done their job well, but because voters recognise their names on the ballot paper. 

The cunning ones soon learn the tricks of political longevity: they turn up at the right functions, make sure they’re prominent in the media and take a populist position on controversial issues. This can be more rewarding than hard graft behind the scenes.

In Wellington’s case, Helene Ritchie is the standout survivor, having first been elected in 1977. Other long-serving councillors are Andy Foster (1992), the mayor, Celia Wade-Brown (1994), Stephanie Cook (1995), Bryan Pepperell (1996), John Morrison and Leonie Gill (both 1998), and Ray Ahipene-Mercer (2000).

Admittedly, it can be useful to have councillors who have been around a while and know the ropes. Besides, some long-serving councillors are conscientious and hard-working. But there are others you couldn’t trust to feed your cat.

The trouble is, voters often can’t tell which is which.

Wellington is a dynamic, creative city that deserves a council to match. Unfortunately many of the incumbents give the impression of having run out of ideas and energy years ago and now merely keep their seats warm.

* * *

WHO WOULD have thought that animism, the belief that inanimate objects possess a living soul, could be taken seriously in a 21^st century court of law in secular New Zealand? 

Such beliefs are generally associated with primitive tribes untouched by civilisation. Yet when a helicopter pilot appeared in the Timaru District Court charged with unlawfully hovering on the summit of Aoraki/Mt Cook, the Department of Conservation told the court – in what was laughably called a “summary of facts” – that the mountain represented, to Ngai Tahu, “the most sacred of ancestors, from whom Ngai Tahu descend and who provide the iwi with its sense of communal identity, solidarity and purpose”.

Ngai Tahu are of course entitled to believe they are descended from a mountain, just as they are welcome to believe in Papatuanuku, the earth mother, and others in the pantheon of Maori mythology. And if the chopper pilot knowingly broke the law, he deserved to be pinged.

But isn’t it taking cultural sensitivity to the point of absurdity when a government department advances superstition as “fact” in a court of law? It invites ridicule.

Oddly enough, the people most likely to nod approvingly at such mumbo-jumbo are those who are most contemptuous of religion in any other form.