Why shouldn't ACT have a go? The Left's been at it for decades

David Seymour’s announcement that ACT may stand candidates in council elections triggered a discussion on Nick Mills’ talkback show on Newstalk ZB this morning about whether political parties should get involved in local government. But that mischievous genie escaped from the bottle a very long time ago.

The Labour Party has long regarded local politics as fertile ground, both at district and regional levels, and always fields a slate of Wellington City Council candidates with the party’s formidable organisational resources behind them.

Frank Kitts, Wellington’s longest-serving mayor (1956-74), was elected on the Labour ticket; so were Jim Belich and Fran Wilde. Four of the current councillors owe their loyalty to Labour, though only one (Teri O’Neill) acknowledges her allegiance in her profile on the council’s website.

Wellington Regional Council chair Daran Ponter is a Labour man too, as is Lower Hutt mayor Campbell Barry. So Labour is a powerful force in local government, though it largely flies under the radar in terms of public visibility.

Then there are the Greens. Wellington got its first Green councillor, Stephen Rainbow, way back in 1989. Rainbow has moved a long way politically since then, shifting to the libertarian right to the extent that the current government felt comfortable appointing him as chief human rights commissioner, but there has been a more-or-less constant Green Party presence at the Wellington council table in the past few decades – to say nothing of two disastrous Green mayors, Celia Wade-Brown and Tory Whanau (who is Green in all but official designation).

So what about the other side? For decades Wellington had the conservative Citizens’ and Ratepayers’ Association, which was widely viewed as a National Party proxy. Its main purpose was to keep Labour out of power, in which role it was often successful. Sir Michael Fowler was a popular Citizens’ mayor (1974-83) and the Citizens’ Association often commanded a majority around the council table. But Ian Lawrence (1983-86) was the last Citizens’ mayor and the Citizens’ Association now seems defunct, not having stood a candidate since 1997. National itself has never stood candidates in council elections.

So now ACT is thinking about having a go – and why not? We should brace ourselves for howls of outrage, but ACT would only be doing what the Left has done (and very effectively) for decades.

That accountability thing that Susie Ferguson doesn't seem to get

Now here’s a surprise (or on second thoughts, perhaps not): one of the two presenters on Radio New Zealand’s flagship news and current show appears not to understand why a functioning democracy depends on accountability mechanisms.

Interviewing Manawatu District mayor Helen Worboys, one of 23 mayors who have formed an action group to resist the Three Waters project, Morning Report co-host Susie Ferguson wanted to know what was the point of their opposition.

Worboys’ answer (and here I’m paraphrasing): The councils the mayors represent want to retain control of the water infrastructure that their communities have built and paid for. They believe they can come up with smarter and more acceptable ways of reforming water management and want the government to hit the “pause” button until they can put forward alternative proposals. Having paid for the assets, their communities want a say in how they’re run, but under Nanaia Mahuta’s master plan there will be no line of accountability back to them. (If I could interject here, that’s surely the key objection to the Three Waters project. It’s not so much about whether there’s a need to impose uniform standards and bring inadequate infrastructure up to standard; what’s at issue is the process by which this would be achieved, which involves transferring control to opaque, unelected and remote “entities” with no lines of accountability to, or even direct connection with, the communities whose water assets they’ll be appropriating.)

Ferguson didn’t quite seem to get any of this. As long as water assets remained in public ownership, she asked, what did it matter who controlled them? To which Worboys explained that the issue of ownership was actually quite a big deal. “The government says we will still own them, but they won’t sit on councils’ balance sheets.” (You might call it a Clayton’s type of ownership, then.)

Worboys again made the point that communities would have no voice and there would be no accountability. To which Ferguson, by now sounding slightly impatient and querulous, demanded to know: “Why does that matter?” Good grief.

After Worboys had patiently explained – again – that it indeed mattered to communities which had invested in good infrastructure that met the required standards, as in Manawatu (which Ferguson had wrongly suggested was one of the poor-performing councils that Mahuta is using as an excuse for her radical master plan), Ferguson – now sounding positively obtuse – insisted: “But you still haven’t explained why the ownership matters.”

At this point you could have forgiven Worboys for getting impatient herself, but she tried again. “Because we want a local voice in what happens to our infrastructure ...” Ferguson then imperiously talked over the top of her, again demanding to know: “Why?” Worboys' answer (and I’m again taking the liberty of paraphrasing her) was that every council’s situation is different and they want the right to make their own decisions, specific to their own needs and circumstances – a right that will be denied to them once they’re absorbed into an amorphous entity with 21 other councils, as would happen in Manawatu’s case.

It’s the accountability thing that Ferguson seemed either unwilling or unable to grasp, and it’s worrying – to put it mildly – that someone in her position professes not to see the massive accountability deficit that arises when control over billions of dollars’ worth of assets is transferred from councils, which are directly answerable to local voters, to remote bureaucracies appointed by a political and tribal elite accountable to … well, who, exactly? We don’t really know. (Coincidentally, Three Waters is based on a model from Scotland, which is where Ferguson came from. Former Far North mayor Wayne Brown explained here why the government would have learned more from Madagascar.)

Ferguson gave the impression she saw no harm in a bullying government using its power to push through radical changes, unmandated by voters. Her line of questioning could be summarised thus: "What's the problem? Why are you getting in the way?" But accountability lies at the heart of a functioning democracy. Take it away and we might as well also dispense with Parliament, councils and all the other institutions that are supposed to be ultimately answerable to the public. Come to that, there’d be no place for programmes like Morning Report either, because they depend for their existence on acceptance of the notion that in a democracy, people in power must be held accountable.

But then, democracy is notoriously untidy and inconvenient. How much cleaner and more efficient it would be if we delegated all power to an unelected central authority that knows what’s best for us. There’s even a ready-made name for it: the Politburo.

The buzz and bitchiness of local government politics

(First published in The Manawatu Standard and on Stuff.co.nz, September 18).

I switched on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report one day last week to hear a babble of raised voices all trying to talk across each other. It was the sort of cacophony you might hear when a rat appears in a chookhouse.

I realised instantly that it must have something to do with the local government elections. Sure enough, it turned out to be a debate – a euphemistic term in this instance – between the three main rivals for the mayoralty of Christchurch.

It’s always a febrile time, this period leading up to council elections. There’s a peculiarly bitchy quality to local government: a propensity for petty squabbles and personality clashes that can make national politics look almost mature and sophisticated by comparison. It may be a far smaller stage, but there’s certainly no shortage of ego or ambition.  

What motivates people to stand for office? The answer, you’d like to think, is a desire to enhance community wellbeing and contribute to sound local governance, and no doubt that’s true for many candidates. They’re certainly not in it for glamour, money or prestige.

But with some local politicians, it’s hard to escape the feeling that they become addicted to the buzz of power. There’s a hint of that in Auckland’s mayoral election, where two former Labour cabinet ministers, Phil Goff and John Tamihere, are slugging it out in an ill-tempered contest tinged with personal venom.

Admittedly things could have been worse. Former mayor John Banks, another ex-cabinet minister, threatened to have another run but mercifully changed his mind. There are too many political retreads in local government already.

Should we care what happens in Auckland? Too right we should. For better or for worse, it’s the economic engine room of the whole country, with a GDP that exceeds those of Wellington, Canterbury and Waikato combined. How well it’s managed ultimately affects all of us.

Auckland isn’t the only arena where things have turned heated. In Wellington, filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson has waded into a fractious dispute over a murky development deal involving former Defence Force land and local iwi interests.

Jackson, who seems motivated by a sincere commitment to Wellington, is backing a mayoral challenge by veteran city councillor Andy Foster. It will be interesting to see which side has the greater pull – the earnest but colourless Foster, backed by Jackson’s money, or sitting mayor Justin Lester with the formidable support of the local Labour Party machine.

Meanwhile, in Invercargill, Sir Tim Shadbolt – famous for once saying “I don’t care where as long as I’m mayor” – is chasing his eighth term, and I assume he’ll romp back in. Southlanders love him because he’s given their province something it never used to have: a profile.

Shadbolt cultivates a buffoonish image, but there’s a calculating politician behind the goofy grin. He knows he can get away with self-aggrandising behaviour - such as spending ratepayers’ money on “I met the mayor” wristbands - because he’s trained the voters of Invercargill to expect that sort of stunt from him.

Christchurch illustrates another quirk of local government. Contenders who must realise they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell nonetheless keep putting themselves forward. Their optimism, or perhaps it’s idealistic zeal, is inextinguishable.

John Minto, one of the Christchurch hopefuls, is a case in point. New Zealand voters have an admirable history of rejecting extremists from both the Left and Right of politics, but Minto - a tireless campaigner for radical causes - is undeterred.  Like Mr Wobbly Man in the Noddy stories, he keeps getting knocked down but bounces back up again.

In Christchurch three years ago he won 13,117 votes, or 14 per cent of the total – not an embarrassing result, and certainly a lot better than the 3 per cent he managed when he contested the Auckland mayoralty in 2013. The Left is good at organising, and my guess is that Minto benefited from the highly motivated activist vote. But he was still more than 62,000 shy of Lianne Dalziell’s winning total.

Speaking of Christchurch, mayoral candidate Michael “Tubby” Hansen deserves a special mention. He has contested every election since 1971 and had his best-ever result in 2013, when he attracted 1.57 per cent of the vote.

What makes him stand time after time? That’s a question only he can answer. If Minto represents one type of local government candidate – the committed activist – then Hansen is another: the quixotic oddball. Every city seems to have one.

The depressing thing is that when all the election drama has subsided and the votes have been counted, what difference will it make? In most councils, real power is exercised by bureaucrats over whom elected councillors wield very limited influence and who sometimes treat their nominal bosses with contempt.

This is especially true in Auckland, where so-called council-controlled organisations have turned out to be anything but. The phrase "grassroots democracy" has a nice ring to it, but it has never sounded more hollow.

Taking a short cut to power

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, July 11.)

Sigh. Here we go again.

According to a TVNZ news report, Northland Maori are lobbying for greater representation in local government. Despite having one of the highest Maori populations in the country, Northland iwi leaders say the lack of Maori representation on district councils means Maori are not being heard.

Ngati Hine kaumatua Pita Tipene laments that local government legislation and processes are “shutting out our people”. Not for the first time, compulsory Maori seats have been touted as one possible answer. But the solution to the lack of Maori representation is achingly obvious.

According to TVNZ, Maori make up an estimated 50 per cent of the Northland population. It follows that if Maori candidates put themselves forward for election and persuade other Maori people to support them, Maori councillors will be elected. Weight of numbers will ensure that.

If Maori engaged more actively in local government both as voters and candidates, 50 percent of Northland council seats could be occupied by Maori – possibly more, since non-Maori voters are likely to support good Maori candidates, just as they have done elsewhere in New Zealand.

That 50 percent figure gives Northland Maori the potential to become highly influential and possibly even dominant in local government. The remedy is in their hands if only they choose to seize it. Isn’t that how democracy is supposed to work?

In the indelicate but admirably blunt language of Te Tai Tokerau MP Kelvin Davis in 2016, Northland Maori need to get off their arses and vote. But some Maori leaders prefer to take a short cut to power.

We keep hearing that Maori are disempowered. They are “disengaged”, to use a fashionable term – too disengaged, evidently, to use the democratic rights open to every citizen.

The only possible solution, we're frequently told, is to create special mechanisms which would guarantee them a place at council tables, such as the creation of special Maori wards or the establishment of voting rights for unelected Maori representatives – as was disgracefully provided in law for Auckland City and adopted by the district council in my home town of Masterton, among other places.

What we’re really talking about here is power through the back door. The advocates of guaranteed Maori representation want to bypass the democratic hurdles that other candidates for public office must leap over.

The debate then becomes a philosophical one about whether Maori are so disadvantaged and demoralised that they must be given political rights not available to others.

The powerful counter-argument is that to grant special rights to any segment of the population, whether on the basis of race or any other factor, is a potentially lethal compromise of democratic principles, which hold that no group of voters should wield more power than others.

Ordinary New Zealanders obviously recognise this hazard, even if their elected leaders don’t. Every time well-intentioned but wrong-headed councils have pushed for the creation of Maori wards, they have been emphatically defeated in referendums. 

We’re told this is because we’re a racist society bent on preventing Maori from acquiring power.

But hang on a minute. The evidence shows that where strong Maori candidates put themselves forward for office, Pakeha as well as Maori voters will support them. Does that sound racist?

In the last local government elections three years ago, Porirua elected its first Maori mayor, Mike Tana, who beat a favoured Pakeha rival. Wellington acquired a Maori deputy mayor, Paul Eagle – now the Labour MP for Rongotai – and a new Maori councillor, Jill Day, who has since taken over the deputy mayoralty. Eagle, incidentally, had increased his majority in three consecutive council elections.

In those same 2016 elections, South Wairarapa voters elected three Maori to their district council. Napier gained a Maori councillor, Api Tapine, and Wiremu Te Awe Awe was elected to the Horizons Regional Council. All this happened without the benefit of separate Maori wards or other forms of special treatment.

No doubt there were other examples that I’m not aware of. I could also point out that two previous mayors of Carterton, Georgina Beyer and Ron Mark, are Maori, and that former rugby league star Howie Tamati served on the New Plymouth District Council for 15 years (yet contradictorily insisted in 2015 that New Plymouth Maori needed their own ward).

All of these people were elected by Pakeha voters. Racist? I don’t think so. The record shows that non-Maori voters will back good Maori candidates. But of course such candidates have to put themselves forward first, rather than wringing their hands in anguish over supposed Maori disempowerment.

Oh, and did I mention that there are 29 Maori MPs in the current Parliament, including 23 elected by voters on the general roll. Racist? Really??

When top-down solutions go bottom-up

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz, October 4.)

It’s sad to see Chris Laidlaw’s career come to this.

A photo in The Dominion Post last week said it all. It was taken at a parliamentary select committee hearing where regional council representatives were called on to explain the multiple failings of the new Wellington bus system.

In Kevin Stent’s photo, Laidlaw, who as council chairman has had to soak up much of the abuse, looks brooding and resentful. His expression says he doesn’t need any more of this.

He might well be thinking, “I had a glittering career. Is this how it ends?”

He could be forgiven for harbouring bleak thoughts. Laidlaw has had a storied life: outstanding All Black halfback (he was rated one of the game’s greatest passers of the ball), courageous author (his book Mud in Your Eye led to him being ostracised by many in the rugby establishment), Rhodes Scholar, diplomat (he played a significant role behind the scenes in persuading South Africa to renounce apartheid), race relations conciliator, Labour MP (let’s not mention the taxi chits), broadcaster (he was Radio New Zealand’s Sunday-morning host for 13 years), and of course, regional councillor.

He’s one of several former Labour and Green MPs – another is his sister-in-law, Sue Kedgley – who have found a home in local government. 

I was tempted to insert the word “cosy” before “home” in that sentence because local government provides a normally comfortable late-life career. The pay’s not bad and regional councillors are mostly spared the close and fiercely critical scrutiny that city and district councils are subjected to.

All of which must have made the past couple of months particularly trying for Laidlaw. In my few encounters with him I’ve always found him personable, but I don’t think he’s a man to whom humility and contrition would come easily.

The bus furore was probably not what he was expecting, still less hoping for, when he became GWRC chairman. It’s not hard to detect a slightly petulant tone in his statements and a reluctance to acknowledge that the council cocked up spectacularly.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that Laidlaw is one of that school of social-democrat politicians who politically came of age in the idealistic 1960s and doggedly cling to a misplaced faith in central planning.

This is a model of government that imposes top-down solutions in the belief that bureaucrats and policy-makers know better than the punters who actually use the systems they devise.

Trouble is, the bureaucrats and theorists are often isolated in their own bubbles, unburdened by experience of how the real world works and what ordinary people want. We’re seeing this played out in Auckland too, where planners have created their own grotesque public transport fiasco.

I wonder if that’s the bigger issue here. As local government bureaucracies grow bigger and more centralised, there’s an increasing risk that they will get things wrong.

On paper, it often makes sense to have over-arching administrative structures rather than bitsy local councils all doing their own thing and protecting their own patches.

But the bigger a council gets, the more distant it become from the people it’s supposedly accountable to, as the Auckland experience shows. It tends to take on a life of its own. That’s why I’m still not convinced that a single council should replace the three existing ones in the Wairarapa, where I live.

The kindest thing that can be said for central planners and their political masters is that they usually start with the best of motives. But good intentions too easily morph into control-freak government by People Who Know Best.

The crux of the problem is that they expect the world to conform to their theoretical models rather than vice-versa. And when it all turns to custard they disappear down a rabbit-hole of butt-covering reviews and inquiries rather than simply admitting they cocked up and starting again from scratch.

I saw a classic man from Central Planning on TV3’s The Project last week. He was a transport planner – possibly the worst type – and he had the slightly crazed eyes of a true believer.

He was trying to convince a sceptical panel that Auckland needs a 30 kmh speed limit. Why? Because he thinks people should walk or cycle rather than drive cars, and if it takes a 30 kmh speed limit to force them out of their vehicles – well, so be it.

In other words, he was talking about compulsion by stealth. Never mind what people want.

Translate that attitude to Wellington and it becomes clear that if the bus system is a disaster, it's probably because the users don't know what's good for them. Clearly they must try harder to make it work.

A shot in the dark

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, October 9.)

Some of us (but only a minority, by the look of things) have taken the time during the past couple of weeks to cast our votes in the local government elections.

As a result of this three-yearly exercise in participatory democracy, some cities and towns will have new mayors by this time next week. A much larger number will have an intake of new councillors.

As always, the candidates include a significant proportion of no-hopers, cranks, misfits, oddballs, mischief-makers, egotists and single-issue obsessives.

Fortunately, local government also attracts conscientious, capable people who genuinely want to serve their communities. The problem for voters is that it’s often hard to tell the difference between the two types of candidate.

The information we are given with the ballot papers, or in advertising material, is a wholly inadequate basis on which to cast our votes.

It tells us what candidates value – or at least what they say they value – and what they propose to do if elected. But it gives no indication of how they will perform if they succeed in winning office. The proof of the pudding, as the saying goes, is in the eating.

Mostly, candidates’ election promises consist of safe platitudes that no one could disagree with: stuff like keeping rates down, ensuring transparency and working hard to represent their constituents.

Usually the election bumph lists the councillors’ credentials, but these don’t tell us much either. Even a certifiable sociopath might be truthful in saying he’s lived in the town for 20 years and is married with four children – but it’s no guide to his competence as a councillor.

I recall years ago being impressed by the CV of a council candidate in Wellington. He seemed to tick all the right boxes, but turned out to be a disaster: erratic, argumentative, emotionally unstable and incapable of working with his colleagues.

Attending candidates’ meetings is more informative than reading election material. It provides an opportunity, albeit a limited one, to assess candidates’ personalities.

I went to one such meeting a couple of weeks ago and, as a result, changed my mind about a person I previously intended to vote for. A sitting councillor, he struck me as casual and complacent. He didn’t bother to confirm to the meeting organisers that he would turn up and he hadn’t prepared any speech notes, instead speaking off the cuff in a rambling fashion.

He dropped from number one on my preference list to last place. I reasoned that if he took such an offhand approach to a candidates’ meeting, he would probably be similarly lackadaisical in his attitude to council business.

The problem is, only a tiny handful of voters make the effort to attend such meetings. Many of the few dozen people present at the meeting I attended were senior citizens, and I suspect a lot of them knew enough about local politics to have already made up their minds about who they would vote for.

Now here’s another problem. Traditionally, people have formed judgments about the performance of their mayor or councillors through the local media. Media coverage was a never a perfect basis on which to cast an informed vote (in fact it sometimes had the perverse effect of giving prominence to stirrers at the expense of councillors who got things done), but it was far better than nothing.

Alas, many local newspapers that once provided detailed coverage of council meetings no longer have the resources to do so, or have diverted those resources into supposedly sexier subjects.

This means people wanting to make their vote count must find out more about the candidates for themselves, but the overwhelming majority don’t consider local government important enough to make the effort. They end up voting for people because they like the look of them, they recognise their name or they have a sister-in-law who has her hair done at a candidate’s salon and says she seems nice.

That is, if people bother voting at all. Most don’t.

A recent survey by Local Government New Zealand revealed that 31 per cent of people didn’t bother voting because they didn’t know enough about the candidates. Another 24 per cent intended to vote but forgot to, and 14 per cent were too busy. But only 14 per cent were genuinely not interested.

The low participation rate is hard to explain when you consider the profound impact local government has on our daily lives: the streets we drive on, the sewage plants that treat our waste, the hospitals we go to when we have an accident, the water we drink, the disposal of the rubbish we create, the sports grounds we play on, the libraries that issue our books and the hygiene standards of the restaurants and takeaway bars we patronise.

LGNZ chief executive Malcolm Alexander put an interesting spin on the elections last week when he pointed out that local government controls $120 billion worth of assets and spends $8 billion annually. If you were a shareholder in a company that size, he said, you’d surely want a say in who ran it. 

In many respects, local government has a more direct influence on our quality of life than legislation passed by Parliament. Yet a general election generates infinitely greater interest and excitement than the local government polls.

And it goes without saying that Parliament attracts a different type of candidate. National politics has an aura of glamour and power – words not normally associated with local government. The money’s better, too.

Yet there’s never a shortage of candidates for local office. For reasons that are not immediately apparent, it seems to appeal to a particular personality type. And I suppose the rest of us should be grateful, because someone has to do it.

All of which brings me back to those oddballs, mischief-makers and egotists.

Inevitably, some of them will get elected. And once in office, they can be hard to dislodge. They will attract publicity. Their names will become known.

And three years down the track, when people vote again, they may get re-elected simply because people recognise their names.

That’s one of the hazards of local government. We just have to hope that the sensible, conscientious councillors will outnumber those who are in it for self-aggrandisement or to pursue their own weird agendas.

Creators of tosh should bow to Peters

(First published in The Dominion Post, June 28.)

SOME people are in the fortunate position of being able to write or say almost anything and get away with it.

Take art critics, for example. Most contemporary art is, almost by definition, incapable of being explained coherently. It follows that a critic can interpret it any way he or she chooses and sound authoritative, at least to the gullible.

Often the artists themselves have no idea what their works mean. Some of the more honest ones admit it.

The critic therefore has total freedom to decide what the artist’s creation represents – and if the critique is phrased in words whose exact meaning is impossible to pin down, so much the better.

Much the same applies to wine writers, some of whom are in danger of displacing art critics as the most infamous creators of pretentious tosh.

Because the flavour, aroma and texture of wine is subtle, nuanced and hard to capture in words, a wine writer can use outrageously fanciful descriptive terms and appear knowledgeable. I know, because I used to be one.

Then there’s Winston Peters. Even art critics and wine writers should bow to him as the acknowledged master of verbal flummery.

Words cease to have any meaning when they tumble out of Mr Peters’ mouth. The sounds that emerge resemble recogniseable language but they reveal nothing.

It follows that it’s usually pointless trying to get sense out of him. An interview with him is as futile as a dog chasing its tail. Yet journalists keep on trying, as John Campbell bravely did on Campbell Live a couple of weeks ago.

Campbell is a very accomplished broadcaster, but perhaps he needs to be gently reminded that Albert Einstein defined insanity as trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

* * *

THE FUNNIEST programme on television so far this year wasn’t a comedy. It was Bear Grylls tackling the wilderness of the central North Island.

I’ve often suspected Grylls was a bit of a fraud but could never be sure. He’s not a complete fraud, because he obviously possesses genuine survival skills and attempts dangerous feats that you and I wouldn’t.

But you’re always aware, watching him, that there’s a cameraman recording his stunts and sometimes probably taking even greater risks than Grylls does. And I’ve always wondered just how wild and inhospitable the terrain he tackles really is.

Now I know. It was hilarious watching Grylls indulging in heroics on the volcanic plateau as if it was one of the last untamed wildernesses on the planet – a place where his life was in danger with every step.

It wouldn’t have surprised me if most of the time, just out of the picture, there was a gaggle of Japanese tourists, a herd of inquisitive cows or an espresso caravan; possibly even a Four Square store and a busy highway.

Watching Grylls will never be quite the same again.

* * *

IT WAS good to see Peter Dunne looking defiant on TV3’s The Nation last weekend – or at least as defiant as a mild soul like Dunne is capable of looking.

Yes, he behaved stupidly, but it’s hard to disagree with Dunne’s statement that he experienced an extreme form of muckraking.

He could well attract a wave of sympathy after the hammering he’s taken. New Zealanders are fair-minded people and many would view the recent gang-up against him with distaste.

It’s a sad reflection on the state of politics that one of the least offensive people in Parliament should be the target of such malice. Apparently we don’t like such people and relish a chance to bring them down.

Many voters dislike him because they see him as an opportunist – an each-way man, bending with the political current. But there’s another way of looking at him.

I see him as being anchored firmly at the dead centre of New Zealand politics. It’s the two major parties, rather than Dunne, that wobble around ideologically as they scramble to capture that vital middle ground.

* * *

WHAT IS it about public transport that incites the quasi-religious fervour exhibited almost daily in the correspondence columns of this newspaper?

Maybe I’ve just unwittingly put my finger on it. There’s evidence that human beings are psychologically hard-wired to need belief systems. Organised religion once met that need, but it has been in decline for decades.

Perhaps the people who once embraced religion now find their purpose in proselytising for light rail, trams, trains or trolley buses. Certainly their advocacy is as ardent as that of the most pious Bible-basher.

Whatever the explanation, they are thunderously boring. If Wellington’s local government elections are going to be dominated by these single-issue obsessives, the entire populace will switch off.

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.

Why I'm over Attenborough

(First published in The Dominion Post, January 11.)

THERE ARE some people you’re just not supposed to criticise. The sainted Sir David Attenborough, who has just celebrated 60 years making wildlife documentaries, is one.

We have grown up with Attenborough. My children and I were captivated by his landmark series Life on Earth 30 years ago. There has probably never been a better natural history programme.

His documentaries continue to set standards for their breathtaking photography and inspired use of music.

Yet I’m over Attenborough. I started to have my doubts at the time of his Frozen Planet series in 2011, when scenes showing a polar bear and her newborn cubs, purportedly filmed in the Arctic wild, were revealed as having been shot in a European zoo using fake snow.

Attenborough’s defence of the deception – namely, that it would have ruined the effect to say, “Oh, by the way, this was shot in a zoo” – said a lot about his attitude toward keeping faith with viewers.

Since then I have watched him more critically. I believe Attenborough, for all the good he has done, has become very adept at manipulating viewers’ emotions. 

He consistently anthropomorphises the creatures he’s filming – in other words, encourages us to think of them as behaving and feeling like humans. This ramps up the emotional impact of the programmes, because who can’t feel teary at the sight of a forlorn-looking polar bear apparently adrift on an ice floe?

This is a technique originally perfected by Walt Disney and used with great success by production companies like Pixar, but we expect more of BBC wildlife programmes.

I have also found myself questioning Attenborough’s honesty. It strains credulity when he purports to single out one juvenile wildebeest from several thousand, as he did recently, and follow its struggle for survival. It seems far more likely that his crew filmed several young wildebeest in life-threatening situations and then presented it as the story of one individual heroically prevailing against the odds. Disney would have been impressed.

It makes gripping television, but I just don’t buy it.  

* * *

EVERYONE I know seems to have a story about the frustrations of dealing with council bureaucracies.

Try to build a simple garage to keep your car out of the weather, and you’re bombarded with engineering requirements more appropriate to the construction of a nuclear reactor.

Apply for consent to build a standard house – which these days requires submitting hundreds of pages of documents – and you can expect to wait the full 20 working days allowed before getting a response, only then to be told that you’ve overlooked some minor technical detail and will have to put your builder off until it’s been rectified.

Seek permission to launch a modest coffee trailer to cater to passers-by on a popular walkway, and prepare yourself to be treated as if you’re proposing an aluminium smelter in a national park. 

On no account, in any of the above circumstances, should you expect constructive advice as to how you might overcome the obstacles in your path. Council functionaries exist to tell you what you can’t do, not to make helpful suggestions. 

My own council has been co-operative in my very limited dealings with it, but I know plenty of people who tear their hair out with chagrin at having to jump through endless regulatory hoops.

Politicians must hear such complaints all the time, yet seem either powerless or unwilling to act. Councillors must get an earful too, but the rule-bound bureaucrats always prevail. That’s where the real power resides.

The standard explanation, of course, is that catastrophes such as leaky buildings and slipshod construction standards exposed by the Christchurch earthquakes have forced councils to be more diligent. The exquisite irony is that these were the results of councils’ own failings, yet the hapless citizen ends up carrying the can.

* * *

A RECURRING lament in 2012 was that New Zealand has an intolerable level of poverty. Kids go to school hungry, families live in sub-standard accommodation, benefits are inadequate and wages are not high enough to provide a satisfactory standard of living.

People are right to be concerned about cold, damp homes and children who lack adequate food and clothing. No one benefits from such deprivation.

But what’s striking is that the lobby groups demanding government action seem to think the problems of poverty can be eliminated at a stroke by increasing welfare payments, providing children with free medical care and meals in schools, raising the minimum wage and building more rental housing.  Just like that.

Like the Greens with their money-printing plans, they propose seductively simplistic solutions for very complex problems.

They prefer not to think about where the money comes from; too hard.

 

Democracy has been turned on its head

(Published in the Curmudgeon column, Dominion Post, June 9.)

IT WAS Winston Churchill who said democracy was the worst possible form of government, except for all the others that had been tried from time to time.

We’re certainly seeing some of the flaws in our democratic systems laid bare right now.

In Britain, the hapless Gordon Brown’s government is disintegrating amid uproar over MPs’ abuse of their expense allowances. Far from feeling honoured and humbled to be sitting in the mother of all parliaments, many British MPs seem to regard a seat in the House of Commons as a licence to rip off their constituents.

It’s interesting to note that one of the many Labour parliamentarians caught up in the scandal is the ageing Austin Mitchell, who made a name for himself as a witty political commentator while living in New Zealand in the 1960s.

Mitchell, 74, lamely tried to deflect accusations against himself by turning it all into a bit of a joke. Confronted with evidence that he had claimed expenses for whisky and gin, Mr Mitchell told the Daily Telegraph: “I will check to see if my wife is an alcoholic and take appropriate action.”

Ho ho; what a wheeze. I wonder what Mrs Mitchell thought.

Feigning shock that reimbursement had been claimed on his behalf - apparently by his wife - for the purchase of Branston Pickle and Sainsbury’s Ginger Crinkle biscuits, Mitchell said he would institute immediate enquires in his household to see who could possibly be responsible for introducing such “dangerous substances”.

British taxpayers may not have seen the funny side. Mitchell has been MP for Great Grimsby since 1977. One wonders whether the complacency which results from being repeatedly re-elected in a rock-solid Labour seat has transmuted into contempt for the voters he’s supposed to represent.

Meanwhile, here at home, the politicians observed the fury of the British public and decided on some pre-emptive measures to protect their own backs.

The Greens cleverly took the initiative – and the moral high ground – by releasing details of their modest expense claims, which no doubt included nothing more incriminating than bicycle tubes (in lieu of taxis) and organic fruit smoothies.

That prodded Prime Minister John Key to announce a cross-party review aimed at ensuring “greater transparency” on the issue of MPs’ expenses – a marked turnaround from Parliament’s previous emphatic position, which was that it was none of the public’s business how MPs spent our money.

* * *

YOU DON’T have to look too far to find other examples of how we have allowed democracy to become distorted.

In theory, we elect representatives to carry out our wishes. But in reality, the only time politicians make a pretence of being our servants is when they need our votes.

Once re-elected they revert to giving orders rather than taking them. This was certainly true under Labour, which spent nine years instructing us to pull our socks up, stub out our cigarettes and face the front.

It’s even worse in local government, where elected politicians seem to have largely ceded power to council bureaucrats. These wily professionals run rings around most councillors, who after all are mere amateurs with day jobs to attend to.

I recently learned of a situation in which officials of a council pushed through an expensive and pointless, but politically fashionable, programme despite having been advised against it by councillors who knew, from their “on the ground” experience, that it wouldn’t work.

And just look at the Wellington suburb of Thorndon, where planning commissars want to tell residents what they may or may not do with their own properties, even to the extent of ruling whether they can instal skylights and satellite dishes.

Somewhere along the line, voters have lost control of democracy. The whole process has been neatly turned on its head, so that it’s the elected – or more often their backroom policy makers – who give the orders and the electors who must meekly comply.

* * *

PRESIDENT Barack Obama condemned the murder of Kansas abortionist Dr George Tiller as a heinous act of violence, which it undoubtedly was. But since we’re talking about heinous acts of violence, what about the barbaric third-trimester abortions that Dr Tiller specialised in?

Even if you believe abortion is wrong in almost any circumstances, there is something specially repulsive about the way Dr Tiller made his living.

A third-trimester abortion is one that is carried out when the baby has been growing for 27 weeks or more. At 27 weeks many babies are capable, with the right medical care, of surviving outside the womb. Winston Churchill and the great ballerina Anna Pavlova weren’t much older than that when they were born.

At that stage of its development a typical baby is 36 cm long and weighs nearly 1 kg. It is blinking its eyes, kicking and developing physical co-ordination. It is not just a lump of tissue, which is how abortion advocates like to characterise most aborted babies.

It’s one of the great ironies of modern medicine that while dedicated neonatologists are performing miracles in successfully delivering babies as early as 22 weeks, others like Dr Tiller are killing them.

Calm down, lefties, and have another chardonnay

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, Dominion Post, November 25)

THE MOST striking thing about the election was not the outcome, which was telegraphed well in advance. Neither was it the unexpected speed and decisiveness with which John Key acted in the following days.

No, the most notable aspect of the election result was the anguished wailing and hand-wringing of the chardonnay socialists, who revealed themselves as sour losers and fair-weather democrats, deeply resentful of a result that didn’t go their way.

Let’s get things in perspective. What happened on November 8 was hardly a tectonic political shift. It’s difficult to recall an election in which the two major parties were more closely aligned.

The electoral cycle followed its normal and predictable course. Far from endorsing a violent ideological lurch, New Zealanders voted for some new faces and a change of tone.

Accordingly, most people reacted to Labour’s defeat with equanimity. I mooched around Wellington the morning after the election and the mood was neither subdued nor excited. People were just getting on with life, as you do.

But among affluent baby-boomer lefties in suburbs like Thorndon and Wadestown, where the liberal puritan class guiltily enjoys the trappings of capitalism while simultaneously condemning them, the mood was one of black despair. Helen Clark was gone; the sky had fallen.

There was irrational fear at the prospect of Rodney Hide being in government and of Sir Roger Douglas, fangs dripping blood, getting back into Parliament. The mass bayoneting of beneficiaries was due to begin at dawn – or so you’d have thought.

The tone was set by a splenetic Sunday Star-Times column in which Chris Trotter bitterly condemned his fellow New Zealanders for daring to elect a party he didn’t approve of.

From Melbourne, a peevish hack named Jill Singer, combining arrogance and ignorance in equal measure, reproached us for behaving liked doped slugs. Of course, being an Australian journalist, she would know what’s best for New Zealanders.

In the face of this hysteria it was tempting to recall the dignified, statesmanlike response of Michael Cullen when Labour was elected in 1999: “We won, you lost, eat that.” But a more appropriate response would have been: calm down, folks. It’s called democracy. Take a mogadon pill and have a lie down; the world isn’t about to end.

And most important of all, show some respect for the right of your informed fellow citizens to elect the government of their choosing.

* * *

A CHARITABLE explanation for the over-reaction of the middle-class Left is that they were in mourning – grieving the passing of a political generation raised on protest marches against apartheid and the Vietnam War.

Miss Clark was almost certainly the last of our leaders to come from that liberal, university-educated, baby-boomer cohort. While there’s a theoretical chance that her fellow baby-boomer Phil Goff will become prime minister, no one’s holding their breath.

The baton has been passed to a new generation. While technically John Key is a baby-boomer (he was born in 1961), in terms of values and outlook he is more representative of Generation X. The greying veterans of the protest movement, who are convinced they have a monopoly on idealism, are inconsolable.

* * *

IT WILL be interesting to see whether the new government makes good on its pledge to curb extravagance in the public sector. It will have its work cut out, since a culture of contempt for taxpayers and ratepayers has become embedded in local as well as central government.

The poor mugs who fund the Gore District Council, for example, are paying for the council’s chief executive to study for a law degree at Otago University. He spends two afternoons a week in Dunedin, travelling back and forth in his council car.

Gore’s mayor defends this by saying it’s all about investing in the future. Well, call me cynical, but I wonder how long the CEO will stick around in Gore once he gets his degree.

Then there’s the Canterbury District Health Board, which – despite being $15 million in the red – paid $10,000 for its retiring chief executive to attend a conference in Paris earlier this year.

That’s right, retiring chief executive. He quit on November 15.

Given that he didn’t have much time to apply whatever knowledge he might have acquired in Paris, in between cocktail parties and visits to the Moulin Rouge, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the trip was a reward – as was the $7000 farewell party that the board threw in the CEO’s honour.

How easily councils and public boards seem to be persuaded that their employees deserve these special considerations over and above their very generous emoluments (the Canterbury health boss was on $450,000-plus a year). And how odd it is that the conferences they attend invariably take place in Paris, Rome or New York. I wonder whether the CEO would have been itching to go if the event had been held in Kyrgyzstan or Chad.

In praise of boring people

CURMUDGEON COLUMN, PUBLISHED DOMINION POST AND THE PRESS, JUNE 10

I WOULD LIKE to say a word or two in praise of boring people.

We might not want to sit next to them at a dinner party and we’re certainly not interested in reading about them in the paper. The lives of dysfunctional celebrities and egotistical big-noters are far more riveting.

But the world would be an unimaginably worse place without the vast number of anonymous, boring people who don’t do drugs; who don’t cheat on their partners or walk out on their spouses and children when the going gets tough; who are not into tattoos, body piercing and tagging; who pay their bills on time and obey the road rules; who join school committees, turn up at Saturday morning sport to support their kids and run sausage sizzles outside the Warehouse to fund a class trip to Australia; who help foster a sense of community pride and order by keeping their sections tidy and their houses painted; who catch the train or the bus to work at the same time every day and sit down to eat at the same time every night; and who tut-tut at the appalling things going on around them, but would never dream of thrusting their head above the parapet by taking part in a protest march or writing an angry letter to the paper.

If I were able to choose my neighbours, these are the sort I would opt for.

Perhaps we should institute a new category in the honours list: the Order of the Bore, for people who keep their heads down and just get on with it. Recipients could be randomly plucked every year from the duller middle-class suburbs to receive the award on behalf of the tens of thousands like them.

* * *

I RECENTLY drove through the territory of the Horizons Regional Council and pondered, not for the first time, the fatuousness of public organisations trying to sound dynamic and glamorous through “branding”

Horizons Regional Council covers the Manawatu-Wanganui region. I need to explain this because the name “Horizons” doesn’t give you a clue where it is, which is one of the reasons why it’s fatuous. You would expect the name of a regional council to convey a sense of place, since that is surely its essence; but every place has horizons, so Horizons Regional Council could just as easily be in Nova Scotia or the Mato Grosso.

Another reason it’s fatuous is that unlike a commercial enterprise, which has to attract customers and promote its product, a regional council has a captive market and doesn’t need “branding” to tout for business. However much they might like to, its ratepayers can’t switch to the Feelgood Regional Council (“Where Rates Increases are Painless, Year After Year”) or the Betta Value Regional Council (“Three Resource Consents for the Price of Two”).

Still, no doubt councillors and bureaucrats feel better working for the snappy-sounding Horizons than for something as dull as Manawatu-Wanganui Regional Council. And some lucky advertising agency or PR firm will have got several months’ lucrative work out of exploring alternative brand names and coming up with inspirational logos.

And if it all cost a lot more than anyone expected, as it always does – well, it’s just a matter of making a small adjustment to the rates demands.

* * *

AT THE annual Summer Sounds Symposium in Marlborough last year, Australian academic and writer Joe Poprzeczny introduced a new word of his own invention: ballotocracy.

It’s the term he uses to describe the system of government in which we get one chance every three years to decide which politicians will govern us, then relinquish any control over them for the remainder of the triennium. Poprzeczny is a great fan of Swiss-style democracy, in which voters exert continuous influence over their elected representatives through referenda.

He argues persuasively that “ballotocracy” describes our system more honestly than democracy, which implies direct rule by the people.

If his argument holds true in Australia, it’s probably even more applicable here. Later this year we will go through the motions of an MMP election in which voters will have no control over the ultimate outcome, since no one knows what deals will be hatched behind closed doors in the coalition negotiations that will almost surely follow.

If it follows the pattern of previous MMP contests, the election will deliver a result in which minority interests with a narrow agenda will wield disproportionate power. This is the antithesis of democracy, in which the majority is supposed to hold sway – a point we’ve lost sight of in our eagerness to appease clamorous minority groups.

The first-past-the-post system may have been seriously flawed, but for all its faults it had the virtue of being more transparent – and arguably more honest – than the fraudulent crock we’re stuck with now.