Deceived and demoralised

(First published in The Dominion Post, October 3.)

I WONDER, was this the most demoralising election result ever for the New Zealand left?

There was an excited buzz in the left-wing blogosphere and in social media in the weeks leading up to the election. There seemed to be a sense that victory was in their grasp, even when the polls suggested otherwise. But they were cruelly deceived.

Their optimism is easily explained. In the early stages of the campaign, they saw the fallout from Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics dominating the news bulletins night after night.

After that firestorm had abated, the media turned its attention to Kim Dotcom’s Moment of Truth, with its dazzling line-up of high-profile journalists and leakers from overseas, all eager to tell us how morally bankrupt our government was.

Those on the left observed the adulation heaped on Hager, who was lionised at speaking engagements. They thrilled at the big turnouts attracted by Dotcom and his incongruous handmaiden, Laila Harré. And they deduced from all this that an unstoppable momentum was building, the inevitable result of which would be the unceremonious dispatch of the Key government.

They were wrong. It was a massive indulgence in wishful thinking, and it must have made the left’s defeat even more crushing psychologically.

How could they have been so misled? That’s easy to explain too.

Consider the enthusiastic capacity crowd at Dotcom’s Moment of Truth event and the full halls he addressed on his barnstorming campaign through the country. The left interpreted this as evidence of an irresistible groundswell of discontent, when it was nothing of the sort.

Someone as novel and entertaining as Dotcom was bound to attract crowds, especially in provincial centres where not much happens. In any case, there are always enough true believers to fill halls and give the impression something big is afoot.

Alas, it was all an illusion. The great mass of New Zealanders, the Joe Average types who determine election results, were unmoved.  They watched the overheated news coverage on television, read the headlines and marvelled at the unpleasantness of it all. Then, on September 20, they went into the ballot booths and voted National.

Now the left is in disarray, as is obvious from the painful recriminations within the Labour Party. David Cunliffe inevitably became the scapegoat for Labour’s humiliation even though he ran a tolerably good campaign.

Ironically, the controversy over Dirty Politics and allegations of illegal state surveillance, all of which should have been helpful to Labour, deprived Cunliffe of the opportunity to articulate the party’s policies on issues closer to the concerns of ordinary people.  

The question now is whether Labour can recover from its self-evisceration in time to mount a credible challenge in 2017. When a veteran loyalist like Sir Bob Harvey is questioning whether the party should do away with its traditional red and even consider changing its name, there’s clearly a deep identity crisis to be resolved.

Labour still hasn’t determined whether it’s a party of the blue-collar working class (think South Auckland) or of the university-educated, inner city-dwelling liberal left (think Mt Victoria).

The Greens are licking their wounds too. They worked hard to make themselves more palatable to the wider electorate. They mounted an effective campaign and seemed supremely confident that this would be their moment, but the voters had other ideas. The Greens’ message didn’t seem to resonate beyond their core supporters.

They too must now withdraw to figure out how it all went so wrong. Small wonder that we’ve heard barely a peep from them since election night.

Internet-Mana is deservedly history. Never has a new party made so much noise for so little reward.

Will Harré and John Minto get the message and ride off into the sunset? Somehow I doubt it. Zealots don’t give up easily; they are sustained by an overwhelming sense of righteousness and rationalise defeat by convincing themselves that their fellow citizens are either suckers or knaves.

The net effect of the election result is that the New Zealand left must contemplate the unpalatable possibility that it is now irrelevant. The noisy activists and ideologues who used up much of the oxygen during the election campaign have been exposed as hopelessly out of touch with the reality of most New Zealanders’ lives.

They will of course continue shouting in their own echo chamber. That’s what they do. But after the drubbing of September 20, it will be a long time before they convince anyone that they have a message worth listening to.

Key's enemies may have overcooked things

(First published in The Dominion Post and The Press, September 19.)

WHAT A CAMPAIGN. Its most striking feature, apart from the unprecedented viciousness on the fringes, has been the attempt by agenda-driven activists – some of them high-profile outsiders – to influence the outcome.

This may ultimately count in John Key’s favour. His enemies may have overcooked things.

Voters could well look at the role played by external agents five days out from the election and decide it looks too much like a concerted effort to hijack their democracy.

Certainly Kim Dotcom has burned up whatever political capital he acquired as a result of the ridiculous police raid on his home. New Zealanders are over him.

Voters may also feel that the barrage of savage denunciation aimed at Key during the past few weeks went beyond the bounds of fairness. Whether he deserves their sympathy is another matter, since there is ample evidence that he hasn’t been straight with voters. 

The public may also have wondered at the remarkable number of recent events – protest marches by Women’s Refuge activists, highly political Nigel Latta television documentaries, alarm-laden reports on child poverty, teachers’ union attacks on charter schools – that showed the government in a bad light.

That this crescendo of outrage came immediately before an election is, of course, entirely coincidental.

A few other observations:

■ Claims of media bias have been flying from both sides of politics – not from the politicians themselves, who know better, but from their overheated supporters. As usual, the accusations largely cancel each other out.

The one area where the media left itself exposed to criticism was in its generally uncritical acceptance of Nicky Hager’s cloak of moral purity. Hager has yet to explain why it’s okay for him to use stolen emails while he simultaneously condemns state intelligence-gathering.

The obvious conclusion is that the Left reserves for itself the right to decide when illegal acts are permissible because of their high moral purpose. Call it the Waihopai Three Syndrome.

The canonisation of Hager aside, the worst the media could be accused of was getting over-excited. Journalists thrive on drama and conflict, and no election campaign has delivered more than this one.

■ Winston Peters is again under fire for refusing to disclose which of the major parties New Zealand First is likely go with.

But even if he did reveal his intentions, there’s no guarantee he would stick with them. In 1996 he appeared happy for everyone to believe he would support Labour, then went the other way – after first keeping the country guessing for weeks.

If he really wanted to convince us of his integrity, the obvious course would be to guarantee support for whichever party wins the most votes. What could be more democratic than that? But that would deny him the pleasure of playing games and indulging in indignant bluster, which is what he does best.

■ Watching party leaders making their pitches at a pre-election conference organised by BusinessNZ, it was clear that the most philosophically coherent parties – perhaps the only philosophically coherent parties – are two from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum: ACT and the Greens.

All the others – with the exception of Internet-Mana, which is the political equivalent of a pantomime horse – are scrambling for the middle ground.  

Thomas Pippos, chief executive of conference co-sponsors Deloitte, made the point that policy differences between the centre-Right and centre-Left are slight in the context of the overall regulatory framework. The two major parties, in other words, are noisily squabbling over a small patch of turf.

One of the most impressive performers at the BusinessNZ event, incidentally, was Greens co-leader Russel Norman. He was polished, articulate and in command of the policy issues.

In his stylish suit and tie, Norman looks almost mainstream. He personifies the transformation of the Greens from the flaky days of hand-knitted jerseys and dreadlocks.  

■ Will this election be ACT’s last hurrah? At its peak the party had nine MPs and provided a credible voice for what is often pejoratively referred to as neoliberalism.

Jamie Whyte has made an heroic attempt to resuscitate ACT after the dire John Banks era, but he’s too cerebral to connect with voters. His other-worldly quality was cruelly exposed when he had to admit he hadn’t heard of Whanau Ora.

A strong ACT lineup in Parliament would provide a counter-balance to the Greens on the left of Labour and stiffen National’s spine, but it’s hard to escape the feeling the party has done its dash.