One of the most striking aspects of the drama surrounding the Act leadership has been the venomous nature of much of the media coverage.
I can’t think of any political party that has aroused more naked hostility from journalists. Even when the press gallery was gunning for Winston Peters, there was a tendency to cut him some slack because … well, because he was Winston Peters, and everyone expected him to be shifty, evasive and generally behave disgracefully.
No such tolerance is exercised when it comes to Act. The media malice is undisguised and unrelenting.
Admittedly, Rodney Hide and Don Brash have at times invited ridicule. I like Hide, but I struggled to take him seriously from the time he demeaned himself by taking part in Dancing With the Stars (in my book, an even more lamentable lapse of judgment than globe-trotting with his girlfriend at the taxpayers’ expense). And I wonder whether Brash still lies awake at night rueing the fact that he was talked into a series of silly photo opportunities during the 2005 election campaign.
But do these follies justify endless recycling of news footage showing Hide dropping his dancing partner, or of Brash clumsily trying to insert himself into the cramped driver’s compartment of a stock car? There is a point at which constant repetition of those scenes – and we saw them several times during the TV news last week – becomes more than simply gratuitous. The unmistakeable message it conveys is that these men are clowns, and we’d be mugs to think that either of them should be worthy of anyone’s support.
This, in the same week as we were expected to swallow mad John Minto’s straight-faced assertion on the national news that the new party formed by Hone Harawira for a tiny minority of the bitter, the angry and the vengeful represents “mainstream” New Zealand. I note that this flat-earth pronouncement passed without so much as an involuntary gasp of disbelief on the part of the reporter.
Interesting, that. Radical parties on the Left are treated with kid gloves; radical parties on the Right, on the other hand, are fair game for vilification.
We are, of course, now well accustomed to being told what to think by political journalists, especially on television, but TV3’s Patrick Gower takes things to a new level. Gower revels in his role as TV3’s hatchet man and seems to regard political journalism as some sort of gladiatorial spectator sport in which the spoils go to whichever reporter can perfect the most contemptuous sneer. I can’t watch him without being reminded of Stanley Baldwin’s famous description of the British press: “power without responsibility … the prerogative of the harlot through the ages”. (The line actually came from his cousin Rudyard Kipling, but Baldwin made it his own.)
Recalling a time when people who got beyond themselves were said to be too big for their boots, I call this big-boots journalism. It’s a deeply unattractive phenomenon in which journalists make the mistake of thinking they deserve to be more than mere reporters or observers. They consider themselves key players, positioned at the centre of the action and with the power – and, what’s more, the right – to influence events. The tragedy is that many politicians, fearful of the power of television, encourage them in this belief.
This is a distortion not just of the journalist’s traditional role, but of democracy itself. It shows a telling lack of respect for the ability of ordinary people to decide for themselves which politicians might be worthy of their support.
Journalists overstep the mark when they tell us what to think. As long as they do their basic job properly, which is simply to tell us what’s going on, their viewers and readers are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves what to make of it all. They don’t need smug, preening journalists making lofty pronouncements about who might be fit or unfit for office.
And here’s something else that journalists too often overlook. They like to think of themselves as somehow morally superior to devious, venal politicians. I suspect many of them genuinely believe the American journalist Frank H Simonds’ famous line that there’s only one way for a journalist to look at a politician, and that’s down. But in fact politicians in a democracy will always have one huge moral advantage over the journalists who pass judgment on them. That is that ultimately, they must subject themselves to the public’s judgment. I can think of more than a few journalists whose overweening self-confidence would rapidly evaporate if they had to submit to a similar test.
Showing posts with label Rodney Hide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rodney Hide. Show all posts
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Friday, September 17, 2010
ACT enters the terminal phase of self-destruction
Will ACT survive the next election? I don’t think anyone will be betting the house on it right now. The party seems determined to disembowel itself in full public view.
My own reaction to this is mixed. On one hand I’m disappointed, because I supported most ACT policies and admired many of its MPs, at least up until the point when the party suddenly jumped the rails by aligning itself with the Sensible Sentencing Trust.
I have nothing in particular against Garth McVicar’s outfit, but the “three strikes and you’re out” shtick muddied the ACT brand. It diverted the party from its core foundation principles, which today’s New Zealand Herald correctly summed up as individual freedom, personal responsibility and small government, in favour of a focus on crime and punishment. The bizarre result was that Rodney Hide ended up courting Winston Peters’ natural constituency – the angry, frightened and bewildered. Hide’s attempt to promote himself via an inane television show further devalued ACT’s brand, giving the party’s critics (never in short supply) more ammunition with which to ridicule him, and alienating core ACT supporters who found the Dancing With the Stars episode trivial and demeaning.
It didn’t help that the 2005 election saw ACT’s representation in Parliament reduced from nine seats to two, taking out most of the party’s intellectual heavy-hitters and ideological standard-bearers – people like Stephen Franks and Muriel Newman. ACT has never fully regained the status it enjoyed between 1996 and 2005 as a coherent and sturdy alternative to National’s soft-centred, let’s-not-frighten-anyone pragmatism. And of course Hide did himself no favours by exposing his double standards on the question of MPs’ travel perks – the very issue on which he made his name.
David Garrett, who entered Parliament in 2008 and has plunged ACT into the crisis which now threatens its survival, seems a very different personality from the old-school ACT MPs, and looked a potential liability from day one. He’s intellectually sharp and has made some impressive speeches in the House, notably on the foreshore and seabed, but there’s a loose-cannon quality about him – something slightly feral – that makes his false passport escapade much less of a surprise than it would be if any other MP had done it (or at least anyone from the current crop of MPs, arguably the most goody-two-shoes mob in memory; sometimes one longs for a John Kirk or Alamein Kopu).
As I write, Hide has returned from his foreshortened holiday in Hong Kong and is reportedly meeting Garrett this afternoon. There is speculation that Garrett will be made to resign from the party – but will that put the issue to bed? Hardly. Hide himself has some hard questions to answer because he knew of the false passport affair but was apparently happy for Garrett to keep quiet about it. It won’t look good if he makes Garrett walk the plank for something in which he (Hide) was complicit. Garth McVicar was probably right when he said Garrett should have fessed up when he made his maiden speech in Parliament. It would have caused a temporary sensation, but without the potentially fatal effects a beleaguered ACT is now having to deal with. Covering something up in the vain hope that no one would ever breathe a word of it to the media (in a political hothouse like Wellington???) was extraordinarily ill-judged.
As the Dom Post editorial points out today, ACT’s problem is also National’s problem. There has been media speculation that National will abandon Hide and put up a strong candidate against him in Epsom. But if Hide loses his seat, National would have no ally to its right and would therefore be wholly dependent on the Maori Party for support – an unappealing prospect for National, and for the rest of us too.
I wonder if what we are now seeing merely demonstrates that it’s ACT’s turn to suffer the curse of being a minority party in government. As long as a party remains outside government, as the Greens have done, it can safely occupy the moral high ground. Its high-minded principles are unlikely to be compromised by the dirty reality of having to govern. But the moment a party is drawn into a coalition, it’s exposed to that reality. Deals are done and principles get stretched.
It’s also unhealthy for political egos. Ambitions are unleashed. Tensions arise between idealists and pragmatists. We saw these strains when Heather Roy was given the heave-ho as ACT’s deputy leader. Given that the information about Garrett's Day of the Jackal stunt was reportedly leaked from within ACT, possibly by a disaffected Roy loyalist, the current crisis in ACT may be directly related to Roy’s demotion.
Being in government also means a minority party is subjected to much more intense media scrutiny. Who cares what a no-name backbencher might have done in 1984? But when he’s one of five MPs propping up the government, his past becomes a matter of public interest.
All of these pressures must be magnified when the party caucus consists of only five people – and not only that, but five strong-willed people with firm ideological views and bigger-than-usual egos. In a larger caucus, such as National or Labour, I imagine tensions are more easily diffused. But the tectonic forces at work when ACT’s MPs get together in a small room must be of Canterbury proportions.
Will ACT go the way of the Alliance, Mauri Pacific and New Zealand First? It certainly seems to be nearing the terminal phase of self-destruction. As I said at the start of this post, I would be disappointed if that happened. ACT has performed an important function on the right of the political spectrum, just as the Greens have on the left, and has achieved more in government than its critics imagined possible. But it has lost its way and must accept responsibility for the mess it now finds itself in.
My own reaction to this is mixed. On one hand I’m disappointed, because I supported most ACT policies and admired many of its MPs, at least up until the point when the party suddenly jumped the rails by aligning itself with the Sensible Sentencing Trust.
I have nothing in particular against Garth McVicar’s outfit, but the “three strikes and you’re out” shtick muddied the ACT brand. It diverted the party from its core foundation principles, which today’s New Zealand Herald correctly summed up as individual freedom, personal responsibility and small government, in favour of a focus on crime and punishment. The bizarre result was that Rodney Hide ended up courting Winston Peters’ natural constituency – the angry, frightened and bewildered. Hide’s attempt to promote himself via an inane television show further devalued ACT’s brand, giving the party’s critics (never in short supply) more ammunition with which to ridicule him, and alienating core ACT supporters who found the Dancing With the Stars episode trivial and demeaning.
It didn’t help that the 2005 election saw ACT’s representation in Parliament reduced from nine seats to two, taking out most of the party’s intellectual heavy-hitters and ideological standard-bearers – people like Stephen Franks and Muriel Newman. ACT has never fully regained the status it enjoyed between 1996 and 2005 as a coherent and sturdy alternative to National’s soft-centred, let’s-not-frighten-anyone pragmatism. And of course Hide did himself no favours by exposing his double standards on the question of MPs’ travel perks – the very issue on which he made his name.
David Garrett, who entered Parliament in 2008 and has plunged ACT into the crisis which now threatens its survival, seems a very different personality from the old-school ACT MPs, and looked a potential liability from day one. He’s intellectually sharp and has made some impressive speeches in the House, notably on the foreshore and seabed, but there’s a loose-cannon quality about him – something slightly feral – that makes his false passport escapade much less of a surprise than it would be if any other MP had done it (or at least anyone from the current crop of MPs, arguably the most goody-two-shoes mob in memory; sometimes one longs for a John Kirk or Alamein Kopu).
As I write, Hide has returned from his foreshortened holiday in Hong Kong and is reportedly meeting Garrett this afternoon. There is speculation that Garrett will be made to resign from the party – but will that put the issue to bed? Hardly. Hide himself has some hard questions to answer because he knew of the false passport affair but was apparently happy for Garrett to keep quiet about it. It won’t look good if he makes Garrett walk the plank for something in which he (Hide) was complicit. Garth McVicar was probably right when he said Garrett should have fessed up when he made his maiden speech in Parliament. It would have caused a temporary sensation, but without the potentially fatal effects a beleaguered ACT is now having to deal with. Covering something up in the vain hope that no one would ever breathe a word of it to the media (in a political hothouse like Wellington???) was extraordinarily ill-judged.
As the Dom Post editorial points out today, ACT’s problem is also National’s problem. There has been media speculation that National will abandon Hide and put up a strong candidate against him in Epsom. But if Hide loses his seat, National would have no ally to its right and would therefore be wholly dependent on the Maori Party for support – an unappealing prospect for National, and for the rest of us too.
I wonder if what we are now seeing merely demonstrates that it’s ACT’s turn to suffer the curse of being a minority party in government. As long as a party remains outside government, as the Greens have done, it can safely occupy the moral high ground. Its high-minded principles are unlikely to be compromised by the dirty reality of having to govern. But the moment a party is drawn into a coalition, it’s exposed to that reality. Deals are done and principles get stretched.
It’s also unhealthy for political egos. Ambitions are unleashed. Tensions arise between idealists and pragmatists. We saw these strains when Heather Roy was given the heave-ho as ACT’s deputy leader. Given that the information about Garrett's Day of the Jackal stunt was reportedly leaked from within ACT, possibly by a disaffected Roy loyalist, the current crisis in ACT may be directly related to Roy’s demotion.
Being in government also means a minority party is subjected to much more intense media scrutiny. Who cares what a no-name backbencher might have done in 1984? But when he’s one of five MPs propping up the government, his past becomes a matter of public interest.
All of these pressures must be magnified when the party caucus consists of only five people – and not only that, but five strong-willed people with firm ideological views and bigger-than-usual egos. In a larger caucus, such as National or Labour, I imagine tensions are more easily diffused. But the tectonic forces at work when ACT’s MPs get together in a small room must be of Canterbury proportions.
Will ACT go the way of the Alliance, Mauri Pacific and New Zealand First? It certainly seems to be nearing the terminal phase of self-destruction. As I said at the start of this post, I would be disappointed if that happened. ACT has performed an important function on the right of the political spectrum, just as the Greens have on the left, and has achieved more in government than its critics imagined possible. But it has lost its way and must accept responsibility for the mess it now finds itself in.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Power-crazed councils must be checked
(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, October 14.)
Not long before the last election, I had an animated discussion with a political scientist about the role Rodney Hide was likely to play in a National-led coalition government.
The academic was convinced that Hide would wield little, if any, real power. Because the ACT leader represented a small party to the right of National he would not be in a strong bargaining position, whereas the Maori Party – which was pivotal to National’s ability to govern – would be able to extract lots of political concessions.
Well he was right about the Maori Party, of course; no surprises there. But he was wrong about Hide, which proves again that supposed experts can be woefully off-beam in their assessments.
No one who knows Hide could have thought for a moment that this stroppy politician would be content to accept a tame, lap-dog role in government. And so it has turned out.
Assigned the local government portfolio, normally one of those low-profile Cabinet jobs like Customs and Internal Affairs, Hide has taken to his new role with typical gusto. Aucklanders must be shell-shocked at the speed with which he has driven through his controversial “super city” plan.
I understand the misgivings of those who worry that such a far-reaching change is taking place at such pace, but I can see why Hide has done it this way. If you give the opponents of change time to marshal their defences, proposals get sandbagged and nothing happens.
This is probably truer in local government than in other sectors of the economy, given that it’s the domain of wily local politicians and bureaucrats intent on protecting their own empires.
Of course it’s not just Auckland that’s feeling the heat under Hide. Councils elsewhere must also be squirming with discomfort at the shake-up he has demanded.
While commending some councils for their innovative, ratepayer-friendly initiatives, he has signalled a crackdown on red tape, compliance costs – many of them imposed under the former Labour government – and excessive rate increases. Most of all, he wants councils to concentrate on their traditional core roles.
We should welcome this approach because local government exercises wide-ranging powers over the way we live, and the potential for misuse of those powers is considerable.
One abuse that needs to be checked is the propensity of councils to routinely increase rates without regard for the state of the economy or the ability of property owners to pay. It’s all too easy for councillors – or more precisely bureaucrats, which is where real power usually resides in local government – to regard ratepayers as a bottomless cash barrel.
Earlier this year Wairarapa MP John Hayes subjected councils in his electorate to withering criticism, accusing them of spending like Paris Hilton. He gave the example of a farmer who, struggling to pay an $11,000 rates bill after enduring three back-to-back droughts, found himself lumbered with a nine percent increase. Hayes also asked why pensioners in South Wairarapa were expected to pay a 20.17 percent increase when inflation was running at less than 3 percent.
These are examples of councils lamentably out of touch with their constituents.
Another disturbing trend in recent years has been for councils, in their eagerness to promote economic development, to play at being entrepreneurs. Council-sponsored art festivals, car races, stage productions and garden shows have hoovered up public money with little regard for commercial risk.
These are often vanity projects for councillors and officials. Occasionally they succeed, but only with generous ratepayer subsidisation. Sometimes they fail spectacularly. Auckland Regional Council lost $1.8 million last November staging an exhibition football match starring David Beckham and Auckland City Council took a scandalous $2 million bath with a production of My Fair Lady that attracted less than half the audience needed to break even.
Show business and professional sport are high-risk undertakings at the best of times. Even the most astute promoters can come a cropper. Why on earth should public money be placed at risk to stage them, other than because the hapless ratepayer is a captive source of money?
Equally disturbing is the tendency of some power-crazed council officials to treat citizens as if they are the enemy. A classic example was Hamilton City Council’s mad attempt to fine residents $1500 each for daring to watch the V8 street races from the roofs of their own homes.
The council thought to seek legal advice only after imposing the fines, and had to back down. What an indictment of the bossy, punitive mindset that seems to afflict some Town Hall bureaucrats.
Other examples include Hastings City Council’s demand that a resident take down a sea wall erected, at considerable cost, to replace a previous one protecting his house on a notoriously erosion-prone stretch of coast, and Central Otago District Council’s ban on the use of local Oamaru stone in the construction of rural houses because some community busybodies thought it was – get this – too visible.
It was in that part of the country too that pop singer Shania Twain had to jump through endless hoops before coming up with a design for her house that satisfied all the nitpicking demands of the local planning commissars.
In Wellington, meanwhile, pettifogging planning dictates have triggered a row in the historic suburb of Thorndon, whose residents can hardly install a light bulb without getting a council dispensation.
Something has gone seriously wrong when councils are constantly at odds with the people they supposedly serve, and when bullying bureaucrats seem to regard it as their purpose in life to place obstacles in the way of the people who pay their generous salaries, rather than try to make things easier for them. If the Minister for Local Government can change this, he will have earned our gratitude.
Not long before the last election, I had an animated discussion with a political scientist about the role Rodney Hide was likely to play in a National-led coalition government.
The academic was convinced that Hide would wield little, if any, real power. Because the ACT leader represented a small party to the right of National he would not be in a strong bargaining position, whereas the Maori Party – which was pivotal to National’s ability to govern – would be able to extract lots of political concessions.
Well he was right about the Maori Party, of course; no surprises there. But he was wrong about Hide, which proves again that supposed experts can be woefully off-beam in their assessments.
No one who knows Hide could have thought for a moment that this stroppy politician would be content to accept a tame, lap-dog role in government. And so it has turned out.
Assigned the local government portfolio, normally one of those low-profile Cabinet jobs like Customs and Internal Affairs, Hide has taken to his new role with typical gusto. Aucklanders must be shell-shocked at the speed with which he has driven through his controversial “super city” plan.
I understand the misgivings of those who worry that such a far-reaching change is taking place at such pace, but I can see why Hide has done it this way. If you give the opponents of change time to marshal their defences, proposals get sandbagged and nothing happens.
This is probably truer in local government than in other sectors of the economy, given that it’s the domain of wily local politicians and bureaucrats intent on protecting their own empires.
Of course it’s not just Auckland that’s feeling the heat under Hide. Councils elsewhere must also be squirming with discomfort at the shake-up he has demanded.
While commending some councils for their innovative, ratepayer-friendly initiatives, he has signalled a crackdown on red tape, compliance costs – many of them imposed under the former Labour government – and excessive rate increases. Most of all, he wants councils to concentrate on their traditional core roles.
We should welcome this approach because local government exercises wide-ranging powers over the way we live, and the potential for misuse of those powers is considerable.
One abuse that needs to be checked is the propensity of councils to routinely increase rates without regard for the state of the economy or the ability of property owners to pay. It’s all too easy for councillors – or more precisely bureaucrats, which is where real power usually resides in local government – to regard ratepayers as a bottomless cash barrel.
Earlier this year Wairarapa MP John Hayes subjected councils in his electorate to withering criticism, accusing them of spending like Paris Hilton. He gave the example of a farmer who, struggling to pay an $11,000 rates bill after enduring three back-to-back droughts, found himself lumbered with a nine percent increase. Hayes also asked why pensioners in South Wairarapa were expected to pay a 20.17 percent increase when inflation was running at less than 3 percent.
These are examples of councils lamentably out of touch with their constituents.
Another disturbing trend in recent years has been for councils, in their eagerness to promote economic development, to play at being entrepreneurs. Council-sponsored art festivals, car races, stage productions and garden shows have hoovered up public money with little regard for commercial risk.
These are often vanity projects for councillors and officials. Occasionally they succeed, but only with generous ratepayer subsidisation. Sometimes they fail spectacularly. Auckland Regional Council lost $1.8 million last November staging an exhibition football match starring David Beckham and Auckland City Council took a scandalous $2 million bath with a production of My Fair Lady that attracted less than half the audience needed to break even.
Show business and professional sport are high-risk undertakings at the best of times. Even the most astute promoters can come a cropper. Why on earth should public money be placed at risk to stage them, other than because the hapless ratepayer is a captive source of money?
Equally disturbing is the tendency of some power-crazed council officials to treat citizens as if they are the enemy. A classic example was Hamilton City Council’s mad attempt to fine residents $1500 each for daring to watch the V8 street races from the roofs of their own homes.
The council thought to seek legal advice only after imposing the fines, and had to back down. What an indictment of the bossy, punitive mindset that seems to afflict some Town Hall bureaucrats.
Other examples include Hastings City Council’s demand that a resident take down a sea wall erected, at considerable cost, to replace a previous one protecting his house on a notoriously erosion-prone stretch of coast, and Central Otago District Council’s ban on the use of local Oamaru stone in the construction of rural houses because some community busybodies thought it was – get this – too visible.
It was in that part of the country too that pop singer Shania Twain had to jump through endless hoops before coming up with a design for her house that satisfied all the nitpicking demands of the local planning commissars.
In Wellington, meanwhile, pettifogging planning dictates have triggered a row in the historic suburb of Thorndon, whose residents can hardly install a light bulb without getting a council dispensation.
Something has gone seriously wrong when councils are constantly at odds with the people they supposedly serve, and when bullying bureaucrats seem to regard it as their purpose in life to place obstacles in the way of the people who pay their generous salaries, rather than try to make things easier for them. If the Minister for Local Government can change this, he will have earned our gratitude.
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