NZ First ministers and their hats

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and on Stuff.co.nz, September 4.)

What is it about NZ First ministers and their hats?

There’s Ron Mark, the Minister of Defence, who’s rarely seen without his trademark cowboy hat.

This might be explained by the fact that he’s a country music fan. But not being a tall man, it’s also possible he deduced a long time ago that wearing a distinctive hat ensured people noticed him.

He certainly likes to be seen. Years ago, when he was mayor of Carterton, I observed him working the crowd at a local country music festival that he helped organise.

It was almost embarrassing to watch. Mark was the MC for the day, and when he wasn’t on stage he paraded around the venue in a cringeworthy display of grandstanding. 

He got up and sang too – and to be fair, he has an okay voice, although no more than that.

I admit I’m in two minds about Mark. I used to appear with him occasionally on my brother’s radio show in Wellington, in a segment in which we discussed the events of the week.

I liked him and respected his clear thinking. It probably helped that we agreed on a lot of things. I would never doubt that he’s sincerely motivated by a desire to do the right thing for his country.

I also admired him because he came from a disadvantaged background but rose above it.  He would be the first to give his foster-parents credit for that, but it must have been due to his own efforts too.

Perhaps that background explains his determination to prove himself. He has something of the character of the bantam rooster about him – a quality that sometimes comes to the surface in parliamentary debates, where he has occasionally lost control of both his tongue and his judgment.

He makes much of his military background, of which he’s very proud, although I’ve heard mixed reports about how he was regarded by his army colleagues.(Of course that could be the tall-poppy syndrome at work.)

To give him his due again, he appears to have been an unusually effective Minister of Defence. On Mark’s watch, real progress has been made in replacing scandalously outdated Defence Force equipment.

That presumably reflects NZ First’s sway within the coalition government. The party has a degree of influence that’s unearned and undeserved, but which occasionally delivers good outcomes nonetheless.

But there’s still that troubling self-promotion shtick. At the Featherston Booktown festival earlier this year, I went to a well-attended session about Paddy Costello, the brilliant post-war New Zealand diplomat who was suspected of being a Soviet spy.

Mark was there and apparently couldn’t resist the opportunity presented by a captive full room. At question time he took the floor and talked for a good 10 minutes about the things he was doing as Minister of Defence. There was no connection whatsoever with Costello but the audience listened politely because that’s the sort of people New Zealanders are.

But back to those hats. The other NZ First minister with a penchant for headgear is, of course, Shane Jones, whose preferred styles are the fedora and the pork pie hat.

When these are worn in combination with a heavy overcoat, as they often are in Jones’ case, the visual effect is worryingly gangsterish. I’m waiting for him to complete the image by carrying a violin case, as was the habit of the notorious 1920s Chicago Mafia hitman Samuzzo Amatuna.

According to legend, Amatuna, who was an accomplished violinist, used his instrument case to conceal a tommy gun with which he would assassinate rivals. I’m not suggesting Jones is a mobster, but he does seem to take pleasure in cultivating a certain gangsterish swagger which sits uncomfortably with his propensity to play fast and loose when it comes to matters such as perceived conflicts of interest.

Jones’ other political trademark is his verbosity, with which he mesmerises journalists. He’s adept at using his loquacity to avoid giving straight answers to awkward questions and seems unable to decide whether his role model is Winston Churchill or Al Capone.

Yes, he’s a colourful, outspoken and charismatic character in a political arena where colour, charisma and risk-taking are in short supply. But are these the qualities we want from a minister charged with spraying $3 billion of public money around in the most undisciplined spending spree in New Zealand history?

The Provincial Growth Fund that Jones controls lacks contestability, transparency and accountability. It’s a recipe for political patronage, pork-barrelling and vote-buying on an unprecedented scale.

Colour and charisma are all very well, but I think most New Zealanders rate integrity as a more desirable attribute.

Labour and NZ First: a shared fondness for pork-barrel politics

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz., February 7.)

In a memorably pungent turn of phrase, former Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox said of Maori support for Labour in the 2017 election that it was like a battered wife going back to her abuser.

Okay, she was bitter at Maori voters turning against her party. Sour grapes, her critics would have said. But you could see where she was coming from.

Labour has traditionally commanded support from Maori, dating back to its alliance with the Ratana Church in 1936.

It’s one of the stranger quirks of New Zealand politics that Ratana is still regarded as exerting powerful political influence, to the extent that even National MPs routinely make the dutiful pilgrimage to Ratana pa every January for the event that kicks off the political year.

Few commentators bother to ask why Ratana is still deemed so important when the Church commands a relatively small following. At the time of the 2013 Census (I won’t embarrass Stats NZ by asking where the 2018 results are), Ratana had just 40,000 followers.

Neither does it seem to strike people as odd that politicians pay homage to Ratana despite the general consensus that that religious belief should not intrude on political affairs. The Catholic Church would be told where to get off, and rightly so, if it suggested that political parties send representatives to Sacred Heart Cathedral every year to give an account of themselves.

Be that as it may, the Ratana connection still works for Labour. But Fox wasn’t the first Maori politician to make the point that Maori haven’t always done well under Labour governments. Mana Motuhake in 1980 was formed out of a similar sense of frustration that Labour took its Maori support for granted.

Labour created the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975 but it was National in the 1990s, under Jim Bolger and Sir Douglas Graham, that drove through the first big treaty settlements.

In that same decade, Labour lost its hold on Maori voters when New Zealand First, still in its infancy, won all of the five Maori seats then in existence. Labour has been trying ever since to woo them back and finally succeeded by securing the seven Maori electorates in 2017 – although Fox, who has experienced a string of adverse events since losing her seat, obviously didn’t think it deserved to.

All of this came into sharp focus in the events leading up to Waitangi Day.

Next year is an election year, and Labour will be anxious to consolidate its Maori support. This dovetails neatly with the desire of its coalition partner, NZ First, to build its reputation as the saviour of the regions and to atone for its acquiescence in government policies – notably the signing of the highly unpopular United Nations Compact on Global Migration – that are seen as a betrayal of its supporters.

Jacinda Ardern has pronounced 2019 the Year of Delivery, which suggests she realises that at some stage the public will expect the government to translate last year’s plethora of reports and working groups – presumably set up to buy time while the coalition parties adjusted to the shock of finding themselves in power – into action.

Over the past few days, a few clues have appeared as to how that will be done. In the best Labour tradition, it will involve spraying a great deal of money around – a lot of it in Northland, and targeted either expressly or by implication at Maori.

Last Sunday, flanked by Winston Peters and Shane Jones, Ardern announced a $100 million fund to help Maori landowners develop unproductive land. She followed that on Monday with details of an $82 million regional employment scheme. Both will be paid for out of Jones’ $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund, which with every passing day looks increasingly like the Peters and Jones re-election campaign chest.

Americans call this pork-barrel politics: the funding of local projects in the hope that voters will reward their benefactors at election time.

Pork-barrelling is a traditional Labour weakness, but Peters – perhaps taking his cue from Robert Muldoon, a socialist in National disguise and the man Peters appears to have modelled himself on – is favourably disposed to it too.

The announcements will have played well in the regions and to Maori, especially in Northland, where Peters and Jones have their roots. And Jones, in his blustering champion-of-the-people mode, will advance grandiloquent arguments about having to make up for nine years of National Party indifference.

Not since David Lange has a New Zealand politician been able to weave such meandering, elliptical sentences, presumably in the hope of leaving his interrogators cross-eyed. Just don’t ask Jones any inconvenient questions about accountability and transparency – or if you do, don’t expect a straight answer.

The perils of imported appointees

(First published on Stuff.co.nz and in Stuff regional papers on August 8.)

I wonder if Shane Jones, the Minister of Macho Bluster, had a point when he called for a New Zealander to be appointed the next chief executive of Fonterra.

After all, our biggest company hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory under the leadership of the Dutchman Theo Spierings, who will quit later this year, or his Canadian predecessor.

And while it may be simplistic to assume that a New Zealander would do the job better, Jones has focussed attention on one of our more peculiar national quirks: namely, the assumption that important jobs are best given to outsiders.

We kid ourselves that we’ve outgrown the old cultural cringe whereby we automatically defer to people from supposedly more advanced societies, but the syndrome persists.

This is most evident in the public sector, where British appointees, in particular, are rife in both national and local government. It would be a rare Morning Report that didn’t include at least one interview with a bureaucrat whose formative work experience was gained in a country 20,000 kilometres away – one with a culture quite dissimilar to our own, and becoming less like us with every passing year.

Brits tend to be naturally officious, gravitating to jobs that often involve administering rules and regulations. They come from a more rigid, rule-bound society – one described last year by the British author Lee Child, who chooses to live in New York, as “very managed and precious, the epitome of a nanny state”. 

They also tend to carry a bit of nationalistic baggage from the days of empire, and with it a belief that British ways are naturally superior. This doesn’t always gel with our more casual, egalitarian culture.

No doubt many of them are competent administrators, but you have to wonder whether some bring attitudes, values and mindsets that don’t transfer easily to a New Zealand setting.

This probably matters less where decisions on pure policy are involved – as at the Treasury, where former British public servant Gabriel Makhlouf runs the show – than in jobs that call for an intuitive understanding of New Zealand culture and the ways in which it is unique.

Another risk with high-level imported appointments is that they may have no emotional stake in New Zealand or long-term commitment to the country. The New Zealand gig may be just another step on their career path. If they screw things up, they can walk away and start afresh somewhere else.

The public sector doesn’t have a happy record with overseas appointees. Remember the unfortunate Englishwoman Lesley Longstone, who lasted only 15 months as Secretary of Education? A Massey University academic euphemistically commented at the time that she was possibly not well-equipped to read the New Zealand mood.

Another Englishman, Michael Houlihan, brought big ideas with him when he took over as chief executive of Te Papa, but his disastrous four-year tenure resulted in massive financial losses and a lot of unhappy staff. It remains to be seen whether the man now in charge - a Welshman - has a better handle on what it takes to run a New Zealand museum.

Then there was the embarrassing case of Stephen Wilce, a senior Defence official recruited from Britain, whose dazzling CV turned out to be largely a work of fiction.

Questions might even be asked about the wisdom of putting an Irishwoman, Grainne Moss, in charge of Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry for Children.  

She’s obviously capable and committed (she swam the English Channel at the age of 17), but her background is in the aged-care and forestry sectors. There’s little in her CV to indicate she has the empathy and understanding necessary to run a ministry that’s up to its eyeballs in intractable social issues and has a very substantial Maori and Pasifika clientele.

Were there no suitable New Zealand applicants for these key jobs, or didn’t we bother to look locally? I have a friend in the corporate sector who claims that executive recruitment agencies prefer to cast their net overseas because it gives them an excuse to fly around the world and stay in posh hotels.

Part of the problem is that some of the most capable Kiwis end up taking their talent abroad because this country is just too small for them. Conversely I suspect we attract a lot of second-rate people from other countries because the bar is lower here. I suspect this is especially true in academia.

But it’s not just the public sector that seems to remain locked in a mindset that people from overseas have better ideas about how to run our affairs than we do. Under an English chief executive, New Zealand Football comprehensively lost its way and managed to alienate the entire Football Ferns team by importing an Austrian coach whom no one liked.

Both men are now on their way home, and deservedly so. But how often must we repeat these mistakes before the message sinks in?

FOOTNOTE: This column was written before Massey University vice-chancellor Jan Thomas issued her edict banning Don Brash from  speaking on campus. Thomas is an Australian who has been in the job since January 2017. Her background is in veterinary science. She is not a New Zealand citizen, but considers herself entitled to determine what New Zealanders can safely be allowed to say to each other. Whoever appointed her can now bask in the knowledge that she has done serious damage to Massey's reputation and probably succeeded in alienating more New Zealanders than any Australian since Greg Chappell.

Enough soap opera; let's get back to the sport

(First published in The Dominion Post, April 5.)

 

THE SCRIPTWRITERS for the daily soap opera that masquerades as sport have been busy again this past couple of weeks. Here are a few plot summaries:

Former All Black Jerry Collins spent several days in a Japanese police cell for illegally carrying a knife.  His agent explained that Collins’ relationship with a woman had led to threats from a Brazilian gang. Pure soap – and what an inspired choice to introduce an element of exotic menace by making the gang Latin American.

Then there was cricketer Ronnie Hira, a member of the Canterbury Wizards, who was sent to the naughty corner for not singing the team’s victory song – clearly an offence of the utmost gravity in a sport that demands unquestioning compliance with infantile bonding rituals.

Meanwhile, Australian rugby player Kurtley Beale was sent home in disgrace from South Africa and will seek counselling, a profession much in demand by sports show-ponies, after punching his captain and another team mate. A penitent Beale, showing an admirable command of 21^st century psycho-babble, said he sometimes made “bad choices”. It seems grown men don’t behave like petulant four-year-olds; they simply make bad choices.

In rugby league, former Canberra Raiders star Josh Dugan was accused of “inappropriate behaviour” – another way of saying he made bad choices – after engaging in a profane tirade against a Raiders fan on a social media website. Such forums offer endless opportunities for sports stars to make fools of themselves, enabling them to indulge in impulsive, sub-literate rants that are immediately picked up and plastered over the sports pages.

There was a Twitter-driven uproar in cycling, too, when Slovakian rider Peter Sagan pinched the bottom of a “podium girl”. Personally I find it more offensive that sports promoters still insist on having winners kissed by mini-skirted young women, a tradition that deserved to die decades ago.

Then there was the biggest sports soap opera of them all. Tiger Woods, we’re told, has found love again, this time with Olympic champion downhill skier Lindsey Vonn (she’s blonde, of course). Vonn told the Denver Post that she’s very happy. Now where have we heard that line before?

You have to hand it to those scriptwriters. Day after day, they come up with compelling new plotlines. It’s a dull day when the sports pages are filled with nothing but sport.

They overstepped the mark, though, with Jesse Ryder. The life-endangering assault on him showed these things can get seriously out of hand.

The public appetite for stories about flawed sporting heroes makes celebrities of people like Ryder. That puts them at risk – the more so if they lack the instinct to avoid potentially troublesome situations. Inevitably they attract the attention of feral men who want to prove themselves by giving the bash to someone famous.

Perhaps the vicious assault on Ryder is a timely warning to dial back the soap opera and focus on the sport.

* * *

 

WHAT IS IT about the parliamentary press gallery’s love affair with Labour MP Shane Jones?

His recent return to the parliamentary front benches was treated as a comeback of messianic proportions. He’s routinely referred to as one of Labour’s most capable MPs. Even National-aligned blogger David Farrar describes him as incredibly talented, though adding that he’s “notoriously lazy and sloppy”.

But these are insiders’ views. Outside the hothouse that is parliament, Mr Jones is chiefly known for two things: spending taxpayers’ money on pornographic films and arousing suspicion over his handling of a citizenship application from a wealthy Chinese entrepreneur.

These are hardly like to commend him to the public. I can only conclude that the press gallery has been seduced by what Tracy Watkins, the Dominion Post’s political editor, describes as Mr Jones’  charm and self-deprecating wit.

* * *

IS IT JUST me, or is the fuss over supposed breaches of privacy getting a bit hysterical?

Night after night, I watch breathless TV news items in vain for evidence of anyone having been seriously disadvantaged or put at risk. All I see is a lot of contrived outrage over vague allegations that people’s rights have been abused in some undefined, unquantified way. Exactly what harm has been done, if any, is never explained.

On One News, a Dunedin woman was interviewed with her face melodramatically hidden, as if she were in imminent danger of being murdered by Mexican drug traffickers.

Good grief. All that had happened was that she received a letter from the Ministry of Health that was intended for someone else. No intimate personal details had been disclosed but nonetheless she told the reporter she was “very shocked” – was she coached to say that? – and “didn’t know what to do”.

Granted, government agencies need to be more careful about protecting information. But I can think of far more serious issues to huff and puff about.

 

 

 

A textbook media feeding frenzy

There is a strangely moralistic tone to the furore surrounding Labour MP Shane Jones.

Jones has been singled out for particular shame over misuse of his ministerial credit card because some of his spending was on adult movies. But surely what matters most is that the spending was unauthorised. That some of the money went on pornographic films is secondary. In the relentless media focus on that titillating angle, we risk losing sight of the central issue.

On Jim Mora’s daily panel discussion on Radio NZ yesterday, Jock Anderson described the reaction to Jones’ transgression as “Presbyterian” – a word that neatly captured the cloud of moral sanctimony that burst over the Labour MP’s head. No doubt there was a large element of schadenfreude involved too.

If Jones had postured in public as a morals campaigner, the vilification would be justified. But he hasn’t – at least, not to my knowledge. So the focus should be on the fact that he, and several of his colleagues, played fast and loose with public money. Whether it was misspent on blue movies, $155 bottles of Bollinger, golf clubs, flowers or massages is really neither here nor there.

It’s the misspending that matters. That’s what Jones should be ashamed of, from a political standpoint. That he watched pornographic films in the privacy of his hotel room is probably more a personal issue for him to square with Mrs Jones (for whom this must all be painfully humiliating) rather than the taxpayers.

Of course there is a delicious piquancy for political trainspotters, as Audrey Young points out in the New Zealand Herald, because the Labour caucus includes staunch feminists for whom pornography is anathema. They may well be baying for Jones’ blood. But from a public interest standpoint, the pornography angle is a sideshow.

If there are any lessons to be drawn from the controversy, other than the obvious one that politicians should be more respectful of public money, it’s that hubris can cloud political judgment. In Jones’ case, he seemed so confident of batting away the credit card controversy that he failed to see the minefield in front of him.

Duncan Garner’s report on TV3’s news on Wednesday night indicated that Jones’ strategy was to take the heat out of the spending revelations by boldly fronting up. But his composure started to crumble when Sean Plunket threw him a curved ball on Morning Report the next morning by asking whether his hotel movie bills included porn films – a question Jones appeared not to have anticipated, and which he fudged unconvincingly – and by the end of the day he was wallowing in ignominy that was almost embarrassing to watch.

It was a textbook example of a media feeding frenzy developing at such speed, and with such force, that Jones was knocked off his feet. His clumsy attempts to salvage the situation by excusing himself as a “red-blooded dude”, and jokily dismissing the films as not worth watching anyway, only made things worse.

Politically, Jones seems to have led a charmed life up till now. He has frequently been touted as a future Labour leader, though for the life of me I have never been able to see why. Now, to use the familiar cliché, his career is in tatters. Shakespeare would have loved it.