Little stands to capture the 'Anyone but Whanau' vote

The least surprising news of the day is that Andrew Little has confirmed he will run for the Wellington mayoralty. I imagine the announcement will come as relief even to people not normally disposed to look favourably at a Labour Party stalwart. “Anyone but Whanau” is likely to be the catchcry, and I’m sure Nick Mills was right when he said on his NewstalkZB talkback show this morning that Little has to be the hot favourite – though there’s still a gap in the field for a late contender who combines political nous with the charisma that Little lacks.

The former Labour leader doesn’t strike me as a visionary, and nothing he said in an interview with Andrea Vance in The Post today has changed that view. No one should expect him to magically recapture the vibe that made Wellington New Zealand’s most exciting city in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Perhaps the best Wellington could hope for under a Little mayoralty is that he would be a far more competent and grounded manager than the incumbent. That wouldn’t be hard, I hear the cynics chorus; but it might be a modest first step on the city’s road to recovery.

 
Footnote: I haven't lived in Wellington for more than 20 years, so have no skin in this game. But I'm still a frequent visitor and grieve for the city that used to be.

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Andrew Little signals a tilt at the Wellington mayoralty

So former Labour leader Andrew Little is considering a crack at the Wellington mayoralty. He gives the impression he hasn’t yet made up his mind but my guess is that he deliberately put the word out that he’s a potential candidate just to gauge the public reaction – and my guess, again, is that the feedback will be overwhelmingly positive, because Little would stand out in an uninspiring field and certainly presents a very plausible alternative to the incumbent disaster, Tory Whanau.

I note that Wellington NewstalkZB host Nick Mills, who has himself declared an interest in running, gave Little a glowing endorsement on his talkback show this morning. Mills has a big audience and Little will doubtless be encouraged by his approval. 

If Little goes ahead, and if he wins, he will join a long and growing list of former central government heavyweights who have made the transition to local politics. Auckland’s former mayors include ex-ministers Christine Fletcher (not a heavyweight, exactly, but she did hold ministerial portfolios), John Banks and Phil Goff. Former minister Fran Wilde served one term as Wellington mayor, later became chair of Greater Wellington Regional Council, and this year will contest the mayoralty of South Wairarapa, where she now lives. In Christchurch, Lianne Dalziel won the mayoralty after stepping down as a minister in 2004 and served three terms in the top job.

Nelson has had two mayors who were formerly MPs: Philip Woollaston and the incumbent, former National cabinet minister Nick Smith. Other former MPs turned mayors included John Carter (Far North), Harry Duynhoven (New Plymouth), Jill White (Palmerston North), Sandra Goudie (Thames-Coromandel) and more recently Ron Mark (Carterton). There may be others I’ve missed; this doesn’t pretend to be an exhaustive list.

There was occasional traffic in the other direction too. Hamilton mayor Mike Minogue became a National MP (and a constant irritant to party leader Robert Muldoon), as did Mark Blumsky in Wellington. Another former Hamilton mayor, Bruce Beetham, served for six years as the Social Credit MP for Rangitikei, while Georgina Beyer jumped from the mayoralty of Carterton to a seat in Parliament as the MP for Wairarapa. Later came Jono Naylor, ex-mayor of Palmerston North, and Lawrence Yule from Hastings, both of whom served one term as National MPs. Green MP Celia Wade-Brown is another who rode into the House of Representatives on the back of a mayoralty, albeit a wholly undistinguished one.

Cynics hearing the news about Little are likely to nod their heads knowingly and mutter about politicians being addicted to the dopamine hit of politics and being unable to stay away. A mayoralty might have special appeal for such people because it’s seen as conferring individual power and control in a way that a cabinet seat might not. But there’s something to be said for seasoned politicians turning their skills and savvy to local government, especially when a city is in such a stricken plight as Wellington.

This post has been amended with additional information since it was first published. Thanks to my research assistant Mark Unsworth.

Correction: Eamon Sloan, a regular follower of this blog, tells me the Andrew Little story was on the Post's front page. The statement in my original post that the Herald broke the news therefore appears to have been wrong. I apologise for the error and have deleted the reference. I partially absolve myself because I could find no mention of the story on the Post's website. 

Squeeze your eyes shut, cross your fingers and hope

The Three Waters project is a con and a fiasco on every level.

First, it fails to satisfy even the most basic democratic test. A system in which the nation’s water infrastructure is run by opaque “entities” where 16 percent of the population wields 50 percent of the power (and that’s assuming the representatives of the iwi elite truly speak for all people of Maori descent, which is far from assured) makes a mockery of representative government.

Second, and in addition to the above, it severs the links by which the public is able to exercise control over infrastructure that it owns. The recent attempt to overcome opposition to Three Waters by tweaking the shareholding arrangements, so as to create an illusion of financial control by councils, was a feat of prestidigitation that fooled no one.

Those two failings could be described as the primary constitutional objections to Three Waters, but there are others – such as the absence of an informed mandate from the public (co-governance wasn’t mentioned in Labour’s 2020 manifesto) and not even a pretence of adequate consultation. (Far from it. Once Nanaia Mahuta realised dozens of councils intended to fight her asset grab, she resolved to bulldoze it through whether they liked it or not.)

A cynic might say such arrogance should be no surprise coming from a minister who enjoys quasi-regal standing within the Tainui confederation and is thus steeped in a hierarchical tribal culture that dates back to the Maori King Movement. While her manner is quiet and understated, it’s possible she’s accustomed to getting her own way by virtue of her hereditary status. (Just a personal theory …)

Against all that, we have a vague promise that the country’s water infrastructure will be better funded and more efficiently managed under the new mechanisms. But while even critics of Three Waters acknowledge there’s scope for improvement, the failings of the existing arrangements – and especially the supposed health risks from poor water – have been grossly overstated in an attempt to frighten the public, with assistance from a crude TV propaganda campaign that would have embarrassed even Joseph Goebbels.

So much for the constitutional flaws (for want of a better term) in the Three Waters project. But on top of that, and just as glaring, are the potential bureaucratic and administrative fishhooks.

Today’s Wairarapa Times-Age reports concern within local councils – or should I say panic? – over the cost of the transition to the new structure. Carterton District Council, one of the smallest in the country (population 9700), expects to spend $850,000 preparing for Three Waters over the next two years. The council’s chief executive says the plan has imposed an “enormous” programme of work that the council’s not resourced to cope with it. Mayor Greg Laing describes the process as “absolutely appalling”.

The Times-Age quotes the Department of Internal Affairs as saying funding will be provided to cover transition costs, but it’s obvious that councils haven’t seen any of the money and don’t know when they will. In any case, South Wairarapa’s mayor Alex Beijen, who presides over a district with a population of only 11,000 (and one that’s already financially stretched to breaking point), says resourcing will be a big challenge even with extra government money.

Reading between the lines, it seems clear the process has been so rushed that no one thought to put transitional funding arrangements in place – or alternatively, didn’t have the time. Could this urgency have anything to do with the fact that there’s an election next year and Labour is anxious to lock in its audacious ideological projects before it gets booted out of office, as seems more likely with every passing day?

Similar unseemly haste is evident in health, where the consequences, at least on a personal level, could be even more catastrophic. In a scathing assessment, Ian Powell – former executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – points to the massive disruption and destabilisation likely to be caused by Health Minister Andrew Little’s madcap scheme to abolish district health boards and replace them with … what, exactly? 

If anyone knows, we haven’t been told. That's exactly Powell's point. But in the meantime, God alone knows how much money, energy and expertise will be diverted from the provision of health care – to the detriment of sick people desperately in need of treatment – as the health system struggles to restructure itself to comply with Little’s ill-defined vision.

As Powell points out, “With only 40 working days to go, DHBs have no more information on what will replace them on 1 July than they had on 21 April last year when the health minister announced their abolition.” You can read his damning appraisal here – and if that’s not depressing enough, Richard Prebble has more to say about the state of the health system here.

All this has a wearying familiarity. Labour governments tend to come into office bursting with grand ideas but lacking the ministerial talent necessary to convert their missionary zeal into effective action. Their ambitions consistently outstrip their ability to deliver, resulting in reliance on obscurantist jargon and slogans (Powell cites the empty vow to end the “postcode lottery” in health care) and promiscuous spending binges as a substitute for good policy. Little, who should have been one of Labour’s more competent ministers, has turned out to be anything but.

When it’s plain to everyone except fervent true believers that the wheels are falling off, Labour collectively squeezes its eyes shut, crosses its fingers and hopes everything will magically turn out okay. That’s what Mahuta and Little appear to be doing now, metaphorically speaking, and by the time voters are able to do anything it will be too late. The damage will have been done.

 

 

Mental health gets the standard Labour treatment

Labour governments typically have two standard responses to a political problem, or even the mere perception of one. They either throw vast amounts of money at it, or they create an unwieldy, centralised bureaucracy to give the impression something is being done. Sometimes it’s both, since these solutions often overlap.

We’ve already seen several examples of both approaches under this government and it’s not even one-third of the way through its term. In health and education, Labour is re-inventing the wheel by setting up potentially cumbersome bureaucracies that will strip away all pretence of local representation – and in the former case, create a co-governance structure that will give Maori power vastly disproportionate to their numbers. Reform of local government is still to come, and we can expect it to follow a similar path.

Even more egregious is Labour’s proposed Three Waters upheaval – a project so flawed and obnoxious that even the mayors of Auckland and Christchurch, both former Labour cabinet ministers, have declared their opposition.  

Another former Labour minister, Richard Prebble, succinctly describes Three Waters as the biggest robbery in our history. “The government is taking over $35.7 billion of ratepayers’ water assets and leaving the ratepayers with the debt,” Prebble writes in the New Zealand Herald.

Once again a centralised, opaque governance structure will be created that will give grossly disproportionate power to unelected Maori, sweep away local representation and discard generations of local knowledge, investment and experience.

Arguably the most offensive aspect of Three Waters is its audacious dishonesty. Rather than solving a problem, the government has invented one. The entire exercise has been sold to the public on the basis of a one-off incident – Havelock North’s 2016 water crisis, when four people died and thousands fell ill as a result of contaminated groundwater.

Using that isolated event as its primary justification, Labour has insulted our intelligence by spending millions on an infantile advertising campaign aimed at scaring us into believing the entire country’s water infrastructure is in such a parlous state that only the imposition of a new layer of remote, unaccountable bureaucracy can save us. In fact most councils manage their water safely and effectively without help from the Big State, still less any need for a dodgy Scottish governance model.

Another striking example of textbook Labour kneejerk-ism is Health Minister Andrew Little’s action plan (I use that term sardonically) for mental health.

It bears all the familiar hallmarks of Labour box-ticking: a Maori name, Kia Manawanui (apparently it means “have patience”, which seems apposite given how long the mentally ill may have to wait for anything to happen); a blizzard of empty buzzwords (two examples: “joined-up investment” and “a digital eco-system of support”); a 10-year plan (Stalin and Mao were fond of visionary plans too); and the creation of yet another new bureaucracy, in this instance an "external oversight group” headed by a dependable Labour favourite in the person of Professor Judy McGregor.

All this is intended to create the illusion of decisive, meaningful action, but it’s merely the announcement of a plan that has yet to be formulated. It contains nothing substantive or concrete – not even any goals or targets (they’ll come later, presumably).  It will provide work for lots of highly paid consultants and hangers-on but do nothing in the short term to help people suffering from mental illness. In short, it’s a disgrace and a travesty.

It’s not as if the government hasn’t had plenty of time already to assess the problem. It commissioned a mental health inquiry (another thing Labour’s good at) that produced a doorstop of a report in 2018, and it has budgeted for $1.9 billion to sort things out – money that it doesn’t seem to know how to spend. Responsible governments decide what needs to be done then work out what it’s likely to cost. But this one appears to work backwards, plucking a sum out of the air then wondering what to do with it.

In the meantime, Little continues to huff and puff over National’s supposed neglect of mental health (which may have been a fair criticism in 2018, but voters allow governments only one term to blame the previous lot; after that the excuse just doesn’t cut it) and wrings his hands in frustration at his inability to get anything done. Pardon me, but isn’t he supposed to be in charge?

And now, after all that, it seems we’re being told that what’s needed is more talk, more planning and ... oh yes, a layer of "oversight". If words and reports were all it took to solve the problem, New Zealand would be the most mentally robust nation on the planet.

Someone who has monitored the deepening crisis in mental crisis over many years is Andy Espersen of Nelson, a regular commenter on this blog who spent his entire working life in psychiatric hospitals. Following the announcement of Labour’s mental health “plan” he wrote the following letter to Little, part of which I reproduce here with his permission:

Dear Andrew Little.

Your government uncritically followed He Ara Oranga [the 2018 inquiry into mental health and addiction] by almost immediately accepting 38 of its 40 recommendations –  practically rubber-stamping them. You simply did not leave enough time to properly investigate, understand and weigh up the recommendations.

This inquiry was set up exclusively to solve the following New Zealand mental health problems:

 1. The increased number of suicides among clients of our mental health services.

2. The obvious shortage of fully serviced, psychiatric in-patient beds.

3. The number of atrocious murders of innocent people by known mental health patients.

4. The chaotic and dangerous state of affairs in our acute mental health units where both staff and patients are regularly assaulted by insane patients.

5. The never-ending complaints from carers (usually parents) of schizophrenic sufferers re lack of realistic support for them.

6. The problem with our many single, homeless people now slumped in our streets – of whom at least 70% are suffering from schizophrenia. 

7. The fact that whereas before 1992 we did not have one single schizophrenic sufferer in prison (it was actually illegal to imprison a schizophrenic person) – we now have ca. 2000 mentally ill prisoners (20% of our total prison population!). Tony Bouchier, then President of the NZ Criminal Bar Association, in an RNZ interview on Feb. 18th 2016, stated, “One of the main reasons the prison muster is so high is that our prisons are our proxy for our mental health institutions which we no longer have. And everybody in criminal law will tell you this, from judges through to defence counsel, if there was another way to deal with these people through proper mental health legislation our muster would be a lot smaller”.

Those were the reasons for setting up the Paterson Inquiry. Jonathan Coleman (former  Minister of Health) resisted an inquiry into mental health, dryly observing :”We know the problems – why set up an inquiry?”. Those were the problems Dr Coleman and all other people working with the mentally ill then knew as facts.

Nevertheless, in came your Labour party –  up came Ron Paterson [the inquiry chair] – and out came He Ara Oranga.

My proofs for your being ill advised by your public service employees consist of the following facts :

 1. Nowhere in the 219 pages report will you find any reference to any of the above mentioned 7 stark, accepted mental health problems, except suicide.

2. Nowhere in its 219 pages will you find any mention of the treatment of mental illnesses -  schizophrenia, human insanity, dementia, endogenous depressions  or any of the neuroses. You won't even find the words for those conditions mentioned (except schizophrenia once, in passing,  in chapter 1, page 33).

3. Nowhere in the 219 pages will you find any reference to the most drastic changes happening to New Zealand's philosophy of treating mental illness in 150 years, namely the enactment of the 1992 Mental Health Act -  which you are now blithely revoking and replacing. As none of the 7 problems mentioned above existed prior to 1992, one can hardly avoid suspecting that those changes might be a factor behind those problems!

4. All you get from the report is an incredibly vague treatise on something the commission calls   “mental well-being” -  which has nothing whatsoever  to do with mental illness. We are advised that we shall all attain that state of  eternal bliss when we have enough mental health personnel  to reach 20% of our population rather than the miserable 3.7% as at present!

5. The report lacks any practical suggestions how to initiate working towards this eventual utopia. It is all just fine words and sentiments  – all politically correct. There is nothing to hang your hat on – as is  amply proved by the fact that nobody has yet  figured out how to even begin to spend the $1.9 billion so generously promised by Labour!!   And by the way,  we who are passionately concerned about mental health were jubilant when Labour came out with that fantastic budget.

It beggars belief that your Mental Health Directorate advised you to follow the recommendations from He Ara Oranga  - ignoring  the facts shown above.

So far I have only criticised  -  which is easy.    I wish to finish on a positive note: How then should we proceed to repeal and replace the 1992 Act?  In 1991 British social historian Waltroud Ernst wrote a paper on 19^th century psychiatry in New Zealand.  Our first mental health legislation was The Lunatics Ordinance 1846.   Ernst wrote that it aimed to “provide safe custody and the prevention of offences by persons dangerously insane and for the care and maintenance of persons of unsound minds”. This brief synopsis  shows the foundation for the building of all our designated,  psychiatric hospitals  for 150 years - together with our whole philosophy of our treatment of all our mental illnesses. 1. It authorised society to contain acutely psychotic persons and charitably protect them from their own actions over which they have no control. 2. It gave all mentally ill persons the right to remain as a wards of the state under protection for the rest of their lives, if they so desired.

We enjoyed this mental hospital based system for 150 years – and everybody, including the mentally ill, were very satisfied and content.  I here must stress that other groups of people who eventually became patients in our mental hospitals (e.g. the intellectually disabled and the epileptics) were never happy here. This system was destroyed for ideological reasons only by the enactment of the 1992 Act – and its consequential closure of our charitable, residential institutions.

Our ten-year mental health plan should be simply to revert to the charitable philosophy of yesteryear. And would it not be good if  the whole of parliament would agree to that plan?

I have been in touch with Shane Reti  [deputy leader of the Opposition] and happen to know  that he sympathises with my views – he is an old time medical doctor who spent part of his training working in mental hospitals but, of course, like you he is thwarted by the convictions of our present mental health ideologues.  It would be ideal if you and he  could get together to talk about all this.  And why not include Brooke van Velden [ACT deputy leader]?  Please, please – do try to work towards a multi-party solution to the mental health issue.   It is ironic (and saddening)  that Judith Collins and Jacinda Ardern both claim to have mental health as a priority  but don't get together to work something out.

You politicians are supposed to be running the show – not your advisors.  It is the same with all this Covid nonsense. Here you are legislating and issuing decrees  – all terribly destructive  to New Zealanders, with long-lasting,  devastating effects both economically and psychologically.  And meekly excusing it  by saying that  you are following expert advice. But you are not obliged to follow “expert advice”.   Your job is exclusively to do the best, the most humane, the most charitable, the most rational for your fellow New Zealanders who have honoured you and elected you to govern –  and if that runs counter to scientific, epidemiological opinions, so be it. 

Yours sincerely,

Andy Espersen

An early prediction for 2023

We’re more than two years out from the next general election, but already I’m prepared to make a bold (or perhaps foolhardy – take your pick) forecast.

My prediction is that Labour will lose most, if not all, of the provincial seats it picked up last year. Many of those electorates broke with precedent by voting Labour, giving New Zealand its first decisive majority-led government of the MMP era, but on present trends they are likely to revert to the historical norm in 2023.

The 2020 election result was anomalous because of the exceptional circumstances.  Not only had Jacinda Ardern made a powerful impact with her handling of the Christchurch mosque massacres and the Covid-19 crisis (at least initially), but National was in turmoil.

Faced with having to choose between a personable young politician in charge of a government that seemed to know what it was doing and a rival party that couldn’t agree even on a leader, voters logically opted for the former.

But here we are, just eight months down the track, and already the picture looks very different. National is still fragmented, ineffectual and apparently demoralised, but in the meantime Labour's wheels have started to fall off and could roll right over the re-election chances of MPs who benefited from the provincial switch to Labour in 2020. 

There’s a pattern here. The third Labour government of 1972-75 fell apart after just one term. The fourth managed two before it collapsed in an inglorious heap. On both occasions, Labour tried to do too much too soon and with too little ministerial ability.

Helen Clark ran a much steadier ship, largely because she imposed tight discipline, but the present Labour government is looking more reminiscent of Norman Kirk’s. It’s over-ambitious, under-endowed with talent and too impatient to re-invent the wheel. The bureaucracy is struggling to keep up, and it’s showing. A popular leader isn’t enough to compensate for (or disguise) incompetence, fatigue and hubris.

On top of that, Labour, with no coalition partner to keep it in check, is pursuing a radical ideological agenda that’s alien to middle New Zealand. Voters have shown time after time that they prefer dull, stable and predictable (for which, read National) over mercurial and idealistic.

Here’s another strange thing about Labour governments. Often it’s minor, almost petty, irritants that turn voters against them. In a column this week, Heather du Plessis-Allan recalled the Clark government’s attempts to ban incandescent light bulbs and require the installation of water-conserving showerheads. Both became emblematic of an interfering nanny state and were partly blamed for Labour’s defeat in 2008.

Du Plessis-Allen could have gone back further – to the bizarre furore over Labour’s proposal to introduce health regulations banning cats from dairies, which triggered a backlash against an already floundering government in 1975. 

What’s it likely to be this time? Well, HDPA identified one obvious possibility: the punitive tax on diesel utes. This is especially potent because it plays into the old urban-rural divide, which was temporarily neutralised on election day last year.

Farmers will obviously be penalised by this supposedly climate-friendly move, but so will urban tradies. It won’t be lost on the public that the new tax will hit two crucial productive sectors in an economy that’s struggling to recover from the massive loss of international tourism revenue.

Ardern didn’t do herself any favours with her subsequent clumsy protestations that Toyota was planning to market an electric ute anyway (it isn’t), and that lots of ute owners have no legitimate reason to use them. That might chime with electric bike-owning Labour and Green voters in Grey Lynn and Mt Victoria, but it smacks of judgmental elitism of a type that Ardern normally seems careful to avoid. (Declaration: I assume I’m one of those ute drivers with no “legitimate” reason to own one. I bought mine because I tow a caravan and load the ute up with bikes and camping gear. Apparently Clarke Gayford has one too, presumably for towing a boat. And my local Labour MP, Kieran McAnulty, famously uses his ancient Mazda ute – painted socialist red, of course – as a political prop, presumably to emphasise that he’s just one of the blokes. Ardern was happy to be photographed in it with him during her election campaign last year. I wonder, did she quietly chide him for driving a thirsty, polluting clunker that he has no “legitimate” use for?)

The timing has been unusually inept too, considering this is a government that’s obsessive about orchestrating its PR spin. If you accept that in politics, optics is everything, it didn’t look good that the announcement of the unfriendly-to-farmers ute tax roughly coincided with the green light for a cycling and pedestrian bridge over Auckland Harbour. Committing $785 million to humour a tiny minority of the affluent urban middle-class – and this on top of generous taxpayer subsidies for EV buyers that will favour the same privileged group – sent a powerful signal about whose interests the government prioritises. To put it another way, it was a double dose of harsh medicine for the "old" New Zealand that Labour seems impatient to consign to the scrapheap.

I bet, too, that plenty of nurses were scratching their heads in dismay and wondering why a supposedly worker-friendly Labour government could find money for pet projects when it supposedly couldn’t afford to meet their reasonable pay demands.

Missteps such as these eat away at a government’s credibility – and popularity – by inches and degrees. It’s not always big issues (extremist climate change policies, for example) that damage governments; these often seem too remote, too complex and too abstract for people to grasp, still less bother about. Rather, it’s the things that hit them at a direct, human level. A tax on diesel utes is something people can easily relate to.

For another example, consider the shambolic Covid-19 vaccination programme. The government spin is that it’s meeting its vaccination targets, but that’s no indication of success when the targets have been set conveniently low. People will judge the government’s performance on how New Zealand measures up internationally, and in that regard our record is dire: 120^th in the world, according to figures this week, and the poorest-performing of all the OECD countries with which we like to compare ourselves. Talkback lines are buzzing with calls from people frustrated at being unable to book their shots, despite supposedly being in a priority group, and angry at feeling misled by the smarmy Covid-19 propaganda blitz.

Even the media, whose natural instinct is to protect Ardern and Labour, are finding it hard to disguise the government’s failings, though they still do their best. Health Minister Andrew Little has been put on the spot this week over the embarrassing disclosure that only 0.2 percent of the money allocated to mental health has actually been spent – and this on top of mental health campaigner Mike King’s protest march to Parliament over the same issue.

This is a government that spends like a drunken sailor on follies such as the $98 million Hamilton-Auckland commuter train (which reportedly averages 30 passengers a day), but seems paralysed when confronted with areas of urgent and acknowledged need. A Labour government so inept that it can’t even spend money? That’s surely an historic first.

Even more embarrassing to Labour was Little’s anguished admission that he was frustrated by the lack of action from his ministry. In fact it was beyond embarrassing; it was pathetic. He’s the minister, for Heaven’s sake. He’s supposed to know what’s going on and to make things happen; it’s called ministerial accountability. Implying it's the fault of his bureaucratic underlings makes him look weak (and worse, cowardly).

Ardern and Grant Robertson were equally eager to disown the problem. T J Perenara would have admired the alacrity with which Ardern offloaded the ball when confronted at her Monday press conference about the measly five extra beds provided for acute mental health patients. For someone so unused to being asked awkward questions, the prime minister proved lightning-fast in switching her attention to a more agreeable subject. For the first time since she came to power four years ago, we are seeing what Ardern looks like when she’s rattled.

But back to that urban-rural split (and I mean split as in differentiation, not conflict). This week we heard about the NZTA’s harsh cuts to spending on rural roads, presumably so that money can be redirected to favoured projects such as the Auckland Harbour cycleway. Roads that keep farms supplied and enable crops and livestock to be transported for processing will be neglected so that affluent Aucklanders can cycle over the harbour on a summer’s day for a leisurely Saturday morning latte.

We also learned of a University of Otago report highlighting the long-term damage, human as well as economic, caused by the bungled response to the mycoplasma bovis crisis, which resulted in the culling of 171,000 cattle.

According to the report, a “badly planned and poorly executed” process led to farming families feeling bewildered, isolated and powerless. Local knowledge, expertise and pragmatism were ignored in favour of inefficient and insensitive bureaucratic processes.

Now here’s the thing: the majority of New Zealanders live in cities, and the close links that once existed between town and country have become attenuated over time. But people who are well-informed still realise that the country’s prosperity depends heavily on the rural sector, and there remains a high level of respect and empathy for farmers – particularly at times of crisis, such as flooding, drought and livestock diseases.

When New Zealanders hear of normally stoical farmers breaking down in tears over the needlessly brutal and heartless way their herds were slaughtered and the arrogant sidelining of their own knowledge and experience, they’re likely to be on the farmers’ side. This is especially true of people who live in the provinces and are exposed to the rural sector. 

On its own, this isn’t necessarily the type of issue that will determine how people vote in 2023, other than for those directly affected. But cumulatively, little peeves and resentments - over taxes on diesel utes, favouritism toward urban elites, neglect of provincial interests, incompetent and dishonest management of the vaccination rollout - build up over time. A government that was rewarded only last year for its empathy and sensitivity is rapidly turning into one that looks arrogant, incompetent and defensive.

I’m not predicting a Labour defeat at the next election; that’s too much of a leap (though I wouldn’t rule it out, either). But I do think there will be a backlash, and it will be most pronounced in the provinces. The crucial question is which of Labour’s rivals will be best positioned to take advantage of it - and at this stage, that’s an open contest.

This week in New Zealand

GULED MIRE continues to foul the nest that New Zealand provided for him and his family after they fled a country torn apart by warfare and crippled by corruption.

In a characteristically noxious opinion piece published on Newsroom this week, Mire waded into the furore over the proposed film They Are Us – which, if reports are to be believed, will take Jacinda Ardern another step closer to secular canonisation for her role in the days following the March 15 mosque massacres.

I entirely understand and sympathise with reported misgivings expressed by some Christchurch Muslims  about the proposed movie, which they say comes too soon after the atrocity and promises to focus attention on Ardern (to her discomfort, I would guess) rather than on the victims and the bereaved.

Against that, we must weigh the right to freedom of speech. In an open society, the film’s backers should be free to pursue the project. It’s an uncomfortable clash of values that would be neatly and definitively resolved if the film was completed and no one went to see it.

In the meantime it seems we must put up with more poisonous mischief from Mire, who has spewed up a bucketload of verbal vomitus in which he attacks the film using incendiary terms such as “white saviourism”.

Mire says the movie seeks to “whitewash” the murder of 51 Muslims (Really? How would he know? Has he seen the script?) and says: “It’s clear the film has gone too far and needs to shut down immediately.” Well, there you go. We can plainly see what a richly diverse marketplace of ideas New Zealand would become if zealots like Mire had their way.

“What we do not need,” he declaims, “is for Hollywood to appropriate, rewrite and shove another white saviour narrative down our throats. At the very worst, the film represents torture porn.”

“White saviour narrative”? Mire apparently thinks, then, that Ardern’s demonstration of empathy and support for the massacre victims (and by extension, that of the whole country) was just a marginally less malevolent flip-side of white supremacy.

You can’t win against that sort of deranged thinking. It’s the product of a mind warped by neo-Marxist critical race theory and locked into a sense of victimism.

It’s worth contrasting Mire’s overheated rhetoric with the typically more restrained reaction of other Christchurch Muslims when they heard about the film, but it would be too much to expect that he might note their more nuanced response and take his cue from it. I suspect his ego gets a buzz out of being a provocateur.

Here’s what I think about Mire. It’s my opinion that he has arguably done more than any other individual in the public eye to ramp up racial tension in New Zealand and undermine social cohesion. Under the pretext of speaking up for New Zealand Muslims, he’s magnifying ethnic and religious differences. Worse than that, he’s pushing a message that Muslims have no hope of equality in an irredeemably racist country.

It shouldn’t need to be spelled out that if anything is going to give oxygen to the tiny minority of pathetic white extremists in New Zealand, it’s the polarising rhetoric of activists like Mire. They enable white supremacists to say to the feeble-minded and impressionable among us: see what happens when we let these outsiders in? They turn against us!

And it’s worth noting one crucial difference between Mire and the white supremacists. While they skulk in the dark shadows of the Internet, he’s given a platform by sympathetic mainstream news organisations.

His relentless promotion of a sense of “otherness” strikes a jarringly discordant note, playing directly against the obvious desire of most New Zealand Muslims to live quietly and peaceably in a tolerant society where their right to practise their religion is honoured and respected. I’ll go further and say he’s the worst possible advertisement for Islam in New Zealand, and a liability to his co-religionists.

■

ON A related note, I heard Andrew Little describe a remark made by Juliet Moses at an anti-terrorism hui in Christchurch (sorry, Otautahi) as “provocative”.

Moses, who was representing the NZ Jewish Council in a panel discussion, was quoted as saying: “We need to hear leaders condemn all support of terrorism and all terrorism equally, whatever the source, target and circumstances, and even when it is not politically expedient to do so.  

“Hezbollah and Hamas … their military wings are proscribed terror organisations in New Zealand, but we saw a rally in support of Hezbollah on Queen Street in 2018.”

Moses was stating a bald fact, but it prompted some members of the audience to walk out and others to shout “Free Palestine”.

Well, that’s okay. Moses was asserting her right to free speech and the dissenting audience members responded by exercising their right to walk out in protest. No problem.

But it’s odd that Little thought Moses’s statement “provocative” when she was simply highlighting an obvious, if rather inconvenient, anomaly in politically fashionable thinking.

Many countries, including New Zealand’s closest allies, designate Hezbollah and the military wing of Hamas as terrorist organisations – even, in the former case, most member countries in the Arab League. Both organisations are implacably hostile to Israel. Why does a senior cabinet minister think it provocative to draw attention to that fact?

All terrorism against racial or religious groups is despicable, but how easily we forget that Jews have been the victims of the most vile and relentless persecution in human history. Moses was right to remind us of that.

And how odd, too, that Little and other government politicians don’t seem to find the inflammatory invective of stirrers like Mire similarly “provocative”. It would be nice to see him called out, but I’m not holding my breath.

■

DRIVING home from Martinborough the other day, I turned on the car radio to hear Jesse Mulligan introduce RNZ National’s resident TV critic, Guy Williams.

That’s right, the same irritatingly self-satisfied Guy Williams who pops up endlessly in ratepayer-funded television shows.  I presume he’s a mate of Mulligan’s, given that they’re frequently together on Newshub’s The Project.

This is jobs for the boys, 21^st century style. There’s a distinct odour of incestuousness in the way members of the same chummy circle constantly recycle themselves. We can only conclude that NZ on Air smiles on them. 

Needless to say, there’s a certain sameness in their political stances. Here’s a tiny clue to the nature of that happy homogeneity: Williams is the partner of Golriz Ghahraman.

Even Jane Bowron of Stuff, who’s not one to frown on vogueish leftishness, was moved several years ago to protest at the overwhelming aura of chatty clubbishness on The Project, with only Mark Richardson being called in occasionally to give the illusion of balance (and be mocked as if he were some sort of Neanderthal curiosity, brought on for comic relief).

The common factor among these people is that they all seem exceptionally pleased with themselves. They laugh gaily at each other’s jokes and generally bathe in each other’s admiration. Moreover, they stick to forums where they can be confident their smug certainties won’t be challenged – such as The Project, obviously, but also RNZ, which is a cosy nest of like-thinking lefties (some of whom are old friends of mine and won’t be surprised in the slightest by my description).

I’m not sure what Williams’ talents are supposed to be. He’s described as a comedian, but the most striking thing about him in his role as a TV critic is the speed at which the words tumble out of his mouth, like water gushing from a fire hydrant. He talks as if he’s terrified that if he pauses even for a moment, people might realise he has nothing to say.  

Another characteristic of such people is that they suffer from the delusion that they’re daringly edgy and radical, constantly pushing the boundaries. Actually, they’re not. They are the new Establishment.

If the term “the Establishment” means those who hold power in society and whose ideas dominate the public conversation, then what we thought of as the conservative Establishment in the latter part of the 20^th century has long been extinct. We’ve done a 180-degree flip, to the point where what was then considered radical has become mainstream. But just like the old Establishment, the new one is oppressively conformist, authoritarian and intolerant of different ideas and different ways of doing things. That’s the nature of Establishments.

This idea was explored a couple of years ago in an insightful Stuff column by Damien Grant, who now appears to be that company’s sole surviving unapologetic voice of the Right. In that column, Grant explored what it meant to wear the “radical” tag these days (basically, nothing) and concluded: “Being part of a baying mob … isn’t brave and nor is it radical. Standing up to them is.”

We're big enough to look after ourselves

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, October 17.)

A long time ago – 1978, to be precise – I wrote an article for The Listener that began something like this: “A funny thing happened at the Department of Maori Affairs recently. They put a Maori in charge”.

The article was about Kara Puketapu, who had the distinction of being only the second Maori to be appointed as head of the department charged with looking after Maori interests.

Today it would be unthinkable for Te Puni Kokiri, as it’s now known, to have a non-Maori in the top job. To appoint a Pakeha would be seen as an intolerable affront to Maori and a throwback to the days of patronising colonialism.

It would be argued that only a Maori could properly understand Maori needs, advise the government on policies affecting Maori and, perhaps most crucially, identify with the people he or she was supposed to represent.

You might well wonder, then, why New Zealanders continue to meekly accept the appointment of non-New Zealanders to the highest levels of both the public and corporate sectors. Surely the same arguments apply.

We haven’t had a British governor-general since the 1960s and we abandoned the right of appeal to the Privy Council 15 years ago. This suggests we feel capable of looking after ourselves. Yet we continue to see a stream of overseas appointees to powerful positions – a notable recent example being the naming of an Australian, Caralee McLiesh, as the secretary to the Treasury, a job that places her at the very heart of economic policy-making.

McLiesh replaced another outsider, the Englishman Gabriel Makhlouf, who left under a cloud after being roundly criticised by the State Services Commission for his handling of an embarrassing Budget leak earlier this year.

The appointment of a virtually unknown Australian raised eyebrows around Wellington. Blogger Michael Reddell, a former top official of the Reserve Bank, found it disturbing that twice in succession, an outsider with no knowledge or experience of New Zealand had been recruited to fill what he described as the premier position in the public service.

Reddell said he didn’t think it was appropriate to recruit foreigners, especially ones with no experience or background knowledge of New Zealand, for such critical roles.

Even more disturbing was the appointment of the British academic and left-wing activist Paul Hunt as Chief Human Rights Commissioner.

The human rights role is a particularly sensitive one because it calls for someone with an intuitive understanding of our unique heritage and values. It’s inconceivable that an English academic, and a highly politicised one at that, was the most suitable candidate.

Similarly, you’d think we might have recruited locally for the position of CEO at Te Papa, an institution that supposedly reflects what it means to be a New Zealander. Yet we’ve now had two British appointees in the job, both of whom have created disruption and resentment by pursuing their own vision of what Te Papa should be.

That leads me to another danger with overseas appointees. Many have no emotional stake in New Zealand or long-standing commitment to the country. They are free to screw things up and move on without so much as a backward glance, leaving whatever damage they have done for someone else to clean up.

This is equally true in the corporate sector, where Fonterra, the ANZ Bank and Fletcher Building have all had to mop up after high-flying but seriously flawed CEOs recruited from the Netherlands, Australia and Scotland respectively.

In academia, too, we have had to suffer the consequences of questionable appointments from overseas. I’m thinking in particular of Massey University’s vice-chancellor Jan Thomas, who deservedly copped a backlash for assuming powers of political censorship on campus. What right did an Australian veterinary scientist have to dictate what opinions New Zealanders should be exposed to?

Another intriguing phenomenon, which I suspect is related, is the high proportion of foreign-born activists at the forefront of radical politics in New Zealand. Examples include the career peace protester Valerie Morse, the abortion rights advocate Terry Bellamak, the anti-poverty campaigner Ricardo Menendez-March and the vociferous Guled Mire, who keeps complaining about our supposedly racist immigration policies.

Such people bring with them an ideological fervour that is alien to New Zealanders, who are essentially a complacent and contented lot. Because we tend to be passive and polite, we make it easy for shouty, highly motivated outsiders to push their way to the top. But they don't speak for us.

New Zealand, meet Paul Hunt - the man who will shape our human rights policy

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, May 2.)

We’ve finally been properly introduced to the man who will shape our human rights policy for the next few years, and who will almost certainly seek to tighten the boundaries around what New Zealanders can legally say.

British academic Paul Hunt was appointed as Chief Human Rights Commissioner last October but to my knowledge, hadn’t been wheeled out for public inspection until Kim Hill interviewed him on RNZ National last Saturday.

It wasn’t a reassuring interview. Hunt’s responses to Hill’s questions served only to confirm suspicions that he will push for tougher hate speech laws that could erode the right to freedom of expression.

He talked at length about wanting a respectful and inclusive debate about free speech, but at the end of the interview many listeners would have been left with the impression that he already had firm ideas about what the outcome should be.

Hunt failed to explain why the Christchurch mosque massacres had suddenly made it imperative that we review the laws governing speech. To put it another way, he didn’t satisfactorily answer Hill’s question about how tougher hate speech laws might have averted the atrocity.

The truth is that they almost certainly wouldn’t have. But the massacres gave human rights activists – and we can include Hunt in that category – a perfect opportunity to generate a moral panic. The objective is to stampede politicians into making changes for which there is no demonstrated need.

The push for tighter hate speech laws should be seen as an opportunistic and ideologically driven exploitation of a tragedy. The momentum is coming not from the Christchurch Muslim community, but from left-wing activists and a politicised, media-savvy faction of New Zealand Muslims who purport to speak for all their co-religionists.

As an aside, you might well wonder why the supposedly liberal Left so fervently champions the interests of a religion that, in its more dogmatic forms, oppresses women and persecutes homosexuals.

Equally contradictory is the neo-Marxist Left’s habit of condemning even the most reasoned criticism of Muslim practice and belief as Islamophobic, while simultaneously seizing every opportunity to deride Christianity (the name Israel Folau comes to mind). Don’t hold your breath waiting for the neo-Marxists to explain these inconsistencies.

But back to Hunt.  The question posed in my last column remains: is an English human rights careerist, albeit one who apparently also has New Zealand citizenship, the right person to be in charge of the Human Rights Commission?

Hunt comes from a political and cultural milieu far removed from ours. It grates when I see this newcomer writing about “our” multicultural values, or hear him telling Hill that “we” New Zealanders are very used to striking a balance between competing rights.

Securing a highly influential public position doesn’t make Hunt one of us. It doesn’t magically endow with him an intuitive knowledge of how New Zealand society functions.

On that note, readers may recall that I sought information from Justice Minister Andrew Little on the appointment process. Among other things, I asked who the other applicants were, who was on the interview panel and who made the final decision.

In his reply last week, Little declined to name the other contenders for the job on the basis that applications were made in confidence. Fair enough.

The panel that assessed the applicants consisted of Pauline Winter, former chief executive of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples, Sir John Clarke, former chief executive of the Ministry of Maori Affairs, and Al Morrison, then a deputy commissioner with the State Services Commission. 

Four candidates were interviewed and Hunt was judged to be the best suited to the job. Little accepted their recommendation.

I also asked Little whether the government was aware of Hunt’s involvement in British politics. (As disclosed in my last column, he was associated with the socialist Corbynite wing of the British Labour Party.) Little replied that he understood this came up in the interviews but was not identified as a conflict of interest or a disqualifying factor. Hmm.

Kim Hill homed in on this aspect too, and in particular, on Hunt’s support for Corbyn – a politician who has been widely and rightly condemned for condoning anti-Semitism. Hill wondered how this squared with Hunt’s championing of human rights. His answer could only be described as highly equivocal.

Oh, and an intriguing sidelight: Little’s letter revealed that Hunt’s appointment was made in line with a United Nations convention called the Paris Principles, which dictates how human rights commissioners should be appointed. New Zealand is a signatory so must comply.

You never heard of the Paris Principles? Me neither, and it raises an interesting question: what other binding UN agreements has New Zealand committed to without parliamentary debate or even public knowledge? So much for autonomy.