Socialism, Bob Harvey-style

(First published in the Dominion Post, August 8.)

I WAS INTRIGUED to hear Sir Bob Harvey, the personable former Waitakere mayor and tireless champion of West Auckland, describe himself on TVNZ’s Q+A programme recently as a socialist.

Obviously the meaning of the word has changed. The classical definition of a socialist is someone who believes in state control of the economy, but no intelligent person – and Harvey is an intelligent man – could seriously argue that the heavy hand of the state creates happy, prosperous societies.

I mean, what shining examples are there? The Soviet Union? North Korea? Chaotic, wretched Venezuela, perhaps?

The truth is that wherever it has been tried, socialism has been synonymous with economic failure, misery and repression.  That’s why it’s almost extinct. People aren’t stupid.

I can only conclude, therefore, that when people like Harvey describe themselves as socialists, they actually mean something else – perhaps a gentler, kinder socialism that hasn’t yet been revealed to the rest of us.

Here’s my theory. I suspect that to call yourself a socialist these days is to announce to the world that you have a social conscience, and are therefore on a higher moral plane than all those heartless people who are interested only in their own wellbeing.

In addition to that, I suspect that “socialist” has become a code word for someone who feels guilty about enjoying the trappings of capitalism – the stylish clothes, the overseas holidays, the restored villas in fashionable inner-city suburbs.

Most of the people I know who think of themselves as socialists enjoy pretty sweet lives. Capitalism has been very kind to them. I bet Harvey (who made his name in advertising, possibly the least socialist business imaginable) isn’t exactly short of a buck.

But we’re talking about a generation that lived through the heady era of the protest movement, when capitalism was the enemy, and part of them has never moved on.

Even when they’ve grown sleek and prosperous, in their minds they’re still marching down Willis or Queen St protesting against apartheid or the Vietnam War. Calling themselves socialist is a convenient way of resolving the contradiction between their romantic ideals and the reality of their very comfortable capitalist lives.

True socialists like the founders of the Labour Party wouldn’t recognise these people.

Being a socialist in those days meant getting your head bashed in by a special constable on horseback. Now it means sitting around a Kelburn dinner table tut-tutting about income disparity while someone opens a bottle of 2003 Felton Road pinot noir and wonders whether to go to Morocco or France for their next holiday.

* * *

IT’S DECADES since newspapers decided they would no longer accept letters written under pseudonyms. Most require that the writer supply a full name, home address and phone number. It’s not foolproof, but it weeds out most of the mischief-makers who don’t have the guts to put their names to their opinions.

Predictably, the quality of letters improved almost overnight when the rules were changed.

Contrast this with the approach of the Sunday political TV programmes Q+A and The Nation, which seem happy to accept anonymous texts and emails commenting – often scurrilously – on the issues under discussion and the credibility of the politicians interviewed.

Some contributors provide a first name, but the viewer has no way of knowing whether it’s genuine. Occasionally the commenter is identified in full, but most are anonymous.

Given that the comments are displayed on screen almost instantaneously, there’s no way the producers can vet them in the hope of weeding out propagandists and barrow-pushers.

How many of the snide messages running across the bottom of the screen are from party members and activists? There’s no way of knowing. In effect, they’re no better than the cowardly trolls who infest the Internet.

* * *

I WONDER, is there a club for people who can’t stand Te Radar? If not, I might have to start one.

I admit I’m out of step with public opinion here. Clearly, lots of people love him. Why else would TVNZ (or to be precise, the taxpayer through New Zealand on Air) keep paying him to jaunt around the Pacific making prime-time documentaries?

But something about Te Radar irritates me, and I can’t figure out exactly what   it is. The frizzy hair? Those nerdy glasses? That nasal Kiwi voice? The contrived Peter Pan quirkiness? All of the above?

What bothers me most is that the people he encounters in faraway places might make the mistake of thinking he’s representative of the rest of us. Now there’s a scary thought.

 

Hobbit mania: where reality and fantasy converge

(First published in The Dominion Post, November 30.)

IN HIS WILDEST imaginings, J R R Tolkien could hardly have envisaged a world stranger than the real one.

The weirdness takes multiple forms. Busloads of overseas tourists descend on a dairy farm near Matamata to gasp in awe at a few holes in the ground; Tolkien obsessives from around the world travel to Wellington so they can they dress up in Hobbit costumes and hairy feet to attend a Hobbit party; and not least, star-struck reporters abandon all semblance of journalistic detachment – not to mention all sense of proportion – in their gushing coverage of the Hobbit premiere.

Somewhere along the line, reality and fantasy have converged to such an extent that it’s hard to know where one stops and the other begins.

Someone should have gently explained to the awe-struck fans pressing in on actor Elijah Woods at Monday night’s party that Woods isn’t really Frodo Baggins. He’s just an unusual-looking bloke pretending to be Frodo Baggins. This point sometimes seems lost on them.

Similarly, you have to wonder whether the tragic tourists gawking at the Hobbiton film set realise that Bilbo Baggins doesn’t actually live there.

It’s all harmless, and a handy boost for a beleaguered economy, but mystifying to anyone not gripped by Hobbit mania.

No doubt the experts can explain the popular obsession with fantasy as evidenced by the popularity of Tolkien, Harry Potter and the infantile comic strips that Hollywood has inflated into big-screen epics.

One theory is that they fill the belief void created by the decline of religion (something of an irony, given that Tolkien was a devout Catholic). Another is that people are so disenchanted with the real world that they seek refuge in an alternative universe.

Whatever the explanation, you have to hand it to Sir Peter Jackson and his associates. They have taken the work of a bookish Oxford don and built it into a billion-dollar franchise – although whether Tolkien would recognise his work, or feel comfortable with what has been done to it, is another matter entirely.

* * *

 

THE MOST important two hours on television are between 8am and 10am on Sunday mornings. That’s when TV3 screens The Nation and TV One follows it up with Q&A.

No other programmes take the time to illuminate important political and economic issues or expose politicians to in-depth examination.  

Sometimes the result is that you find yourself forced to revise previously held views. A recent interview with John Key on The Nation, for example, may have come as a revelation to anyone who previously dismissed him as a lightweight with limited command of policy detail.

On the other hand, existing prejudices can be reinforced – as when David Cunliffe, ahead of his thinly disguised play for the Labour Party leadership, came across on the same show as smug and evasive.

A diminishing segment of the population can remember when TV channels showed programmes like these in prime time. There was no competitive pressure then; viewers watched because they didn’t have dozens of other channels jostling for their attention with foodie porn, talent quests and home renovation shows.

Virtually everyone in the country saw the famous 1970 Gallery programme in which Brian Edwards mediated in the resolution of a long-running Post Office industrial dispute. Similarly, the exchange between prime minister Robert Muldoon and the fearless young upstart Simon Walker on Tonight in 1976 (“You’re not going to set the rules, my friend”) was a talking point for days.

We were probably a better-informed democracy then. These days, serious current affairs attracts a pitifully small audience. The ratings-driven networks have succeeded in their long-term mission to turn viewers’ brains to mush. Most people probably don’t even know the Sunday morning programmes exist.

Of the two, my preference is TV3’s The Nation. It’s less flashy and production-driven than Q+A, and all the better for it. Presenter Rachel Smalley manages the unusual feat of being a sharp interviewer while also looking elegant and cool.  

The Nation also benefits from its regular media panel consisting of the aforementioned Edwards, who is nearly always witty and insightful, and Bill Ralston – although I’m amused at how Ralston, an absolute bodgie in his heyday, has reinvented himself as some sort of elder statesman of journalism. 

* * *

 

IN MY last column I feigned indignation at the ageing BBC correspondents reporting on television from world trouble spots, and asked why the illustrious Beeb didn’t follow the example of our own TV networks by employing attractive young women.

I had hoped it would be obvious that I was writing tongue-in-cheek, but no – I have been condemned by some readers as ageist and sexist.

My apologies to anyone whose sensibilities were offended. Clearly such items should come with a warning that they are not to be taken seriously.

We now know a bit more about John Key - or at least I think we do

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, June 22.)

I recently watched Sean Plunket interview prime minister John Key on TV3’s The Nation.

Plunket’s pre-interview spiel gave the impression we were finally going to learn what drives Key politically – a tantalising prospect, since this is a question that has lots of people scratching their heads.

In fact the interview succeeded only partially in telling us what the nation’s most powerful politician stands for.

That’s not to say Key wasn’t honest, or that the interview wasn’t revealing. But in some ways it only served to deepen the Key enigma, and to remind us how different he is from his predecessors.

We certainly learned a few things about who inspired Key, and what he cares about.

Clearly, the dominant influence in his life was his late mother. He learned from her that you get out of life what you put into it (my apologies if I make that sound like a line from Forrest Gump). Despite her straitened circumstances as a solo mother, bringing up her children in a state house after the death of her alcoholic husband, she took control of her life. She taught her son to look forward, not to look back, and not to feel sorry for himself.

She also encouraged him to be ambitious. She had “huge” expectations of him and firmly set him straight when, at 15, he wanted to leave school and train horses.

His mother also taught him to be frugal. He remembered her putting the tips she earned as a hotel night porter into a jar to pay for occasional treats. So when his high-flying colleagues in the foreign currency dealing rooms were blowing their money on champagne, long lunches and flash cars, Key and his wife Bronagh concentrated on paying off their mortgage.

He bluntly described his high-living former workmates as stupid for not realising their stratospheric incomes wouldn’t last forever.

How, then, did these early life experiences mould John Key the politician?

We learned that although his mother was a Labour supporter (in common with many of her era who were grateful for a state house), the young Key was an admirer of National prime minister Robert Muldoon. He thought Muldoon had a vision of what New Zealand needed to be.

I found this revealing because Muldoon, while leading a party that ostensibly championed private enterprise, didn’t hesitate to exert tight economic and social controls using the apparatus of the state. (Full marks to Key for his honesty, at least. The only other contemporary politician I can think of who might cite Muldoon as a role model is Winston Peters.)

Key also revealed himself as a fan of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, an authoritarian leader who used the power of the state to suppress dissent.

Plunket noted, as I did, that both the leaders cited approvingly by Key were political strong men with little patience for opposition, but we shouldn’t assume from this that Key has a hidden authoritarian streak. He has a boyish enthusiasm and comes across as open, affable and reasonable. I can’t think of any New Zealand prime minister in my lifetime who was harder to dislike.

He explained that he admired Lee Kuan Yew because his bold, aspirational policies had transformed what was once a poor, Third World country - although he acknowledged that the same approach, which placed economic progress ahead of human rights, wouldn’t necessarily work here.

Key’s respect for Muldoon and Lee Kuan Yew is significant because neither leader seemed to care about ideology. They were pragmatists who adopted whatever policies they thought would work, regardless of any philosophical inconsistency.

The same might be said of Key’s government, which in its first term has been virtually an ideology-free zone – much to the frustration of many people who voted for it, expecting a much stronger commitment to traditional centre-right values.

Key gave some clues to what he believes. He wants everyone to have equality of opportunity and he sees education as crucial; but he also thinks people are responsible for their own success or failure. “You can make a difference in your own life.”

He clearly has little time for trade unions but appears to care deeply about the number of people trapped on welfare. As he said, something has clearly gone wrong when 13 percent of the working-age population are on a benefit compared with two percent in the 1970s.

He believes in celebrating success, which is why his government reinstated the traditional honours list. A consistent theme in the interview was that people should be encouraged to aspire to greater things. “You make your own luck.”

What was lacking, however, was a clear picture of how these beliefs translate into policies. We learned quite a lot about John Key the man, but there remains a credibility gap between what he professes to be motivated by and what his government is actually doing. He says the right things but his party remains cautious to the point of timidity.

Plunket rightly questioned whether Key’s performance in government was consistent with his maiden speech in Parliament, in which he talked about the need for politicians to be bold and to ignore public opinion when necessary.

Perversely, one of the few times Key appeared to disregard public opinion was when his party supported left-wing MP Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking bill, much to the disgust of most National voters. He also antagonised his own party’s supporters by pushing through a senseless, quixotic emissions trading scheme and pandering to divisive Maori claims on the coastline.

There may of course be a master plan behind Key’s apparent reluctance to embrace radical change. Colin James, one of our most perceptive political commentators, says National’s strategy is to make changes each term which are not earth-shattering in themselves but which the electorate can broadly go along with.

“After two or three terms of this pragmatic incrementalism the piecemeal changes add to a significant total,” he wrote recently. We shall see.