You don’t care about the Northcote by-election so let’s review these books instead

I spent my weekend NOT thinking about the Northcote by-election and instead caught up with friends for a birthday in Wellington along with some time for coffee (it is Wellington), poker and record shopping. I was definitely not trying to think about Northcote, the inhabitants of Northcote or any pending elections that Northcote might be having.

So instead of talking about the Northcote by-election lets instead review some books.

First up is The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbot and Peta Credlin destroyed their own government by journalist Nikki Saava. It’s the kind of book which makes great reading if you like detail heavy, blow by blow accounts of semi scandalous political events; which is fortunate because I do.

Ever wondered how Tony Abbot helped keep up the current tradition of revolving door Ozzie Prime Ministers when in decades past Australian politics operated at the same level of stability as New Zealand?

Or how Abbot, as opposition leader, criticised the circus clown level of behaviour during the Rudd, Gillard, Rudd governments but then ended up to mangling it infinitely worse when he got into the hot seat?

So if you have ever looked across the Tasman at our Ozzie cousins and the shambolic mess politics in that country* has become then this book is for you.

Saava, a long term political correspondent in Australia, has all the dirt and details, puts names to faces and paints a vivid picture of a PM (Abbot) so dependent on his Chief of Staff (Credlin) that when he was unable to rein Credlin’s increasingly brutal and bullying behaviours inside his office it spilled over into the party and eventually Australian politics in general.

And as I read this woeful tale I did start to get the feeling that Saava was taking catty to a whole new level with her descriptions of Credlin, who she paints as an emotionally unhinged control freak, who was possibly having an affair with Abbot (which in the age of the Barnaby Joyce scandal does not sound so mind-blowing), that she overwhelmed Abbot and in the process ended up nearly running the country.

Meanwhile Abbot is depicted as a good guy with his heart in the right place who just seemed to melt under Credlin’s insane levels of dictatorial frenzy into a namby-pamby mummy’s boy who would meekly follow Credlin out of the office when she was having one of her numerous “emotional tantrums” with office staff to comfort her before coming back in and making staff apologise to her for their behaviour! Imagine Jacinda Ardern being bossed around by Labours top advisor Heather Simpson** like that.

That aside, what’s fascinating about all of this is that it played out right at the highest level of power in Australian politics and in such a manner that it completely destroyed Tony Abbot’s political career in the process.

Before he became PM Abbot was Leader of the Liberal Party, ex Rhodes Scholar and all round conservative top prospect but once in office he fumbled the ball on almost every occasion it was passed to him.

Also, much like Bill English, Abbot was blinded by his religious beliefs in regards to same sex marriage and women (as evidenced in his evisceration by Julia Gillard in 2012) which in the end doomed his office and made his party seem like a bunch of intolerant religious bigots even more than they had before.

But, as some people who have reviewed the book have also noted, by the end, the tale seems more than a little one sided and bordering on either partisan propaganda or some sort of political hit piece by a jilted lover (which I am sure Saava is not but that is how it reads in places) where both the main parties (Abbot and Credlin) have not been given any right of reply (either directly or via the more usual “sources” close to them) and the continual barrage of gossipy details just turns the book into something akin to entries in some teenagers diary about the trials and tribulations of high school rather than an in depth analysis of Abbot and Credlin’s relationship and how that dynamic so effected Australian politics.

Finally it’s worth noting that such a book would not even exist in Aotearoa as mainstream political journalism in NZ is far too sycophantic to write such a thing. The closest NZ has ever gotten to such a book is either The Spin (written in the 90s by an anonymous source) or The Hollow Men by Nicki Harger (by a political outsider) so while sometimes over the top and hysterical in tone and portrayal The Road to Ruin makes for a gripping read of what brought down the Abbot Government and helped make Australian politics into the mess it has become.

Rating: three out of five on the John Howard scale

Other reviews of the book here, here and here but not this one.

Meanwhile in the Northcote by-election both Labour and National have been trying to claim victory (of sorts). National simply by having its candidate, Dan Bidos, win the actual vote but with Labour saying that it reduced the majority that Jonathan Coleman had previously had.

The reality is that the turnout for the election was low (by then turnouts for by-elections are always low), neither candidate had anything to really give (hence why both main parties ran faceless unknowns) and if the electorate is a bellwether for the rest of NZ (something I think is a crock of s**t but what do I know) then the mood of the nation could be summed up as “meh” because only 37% of the electorate voted and that means that Nationals “mandate” hinges on  18.5% of the “people”. Meh indeed!

But you still don't care so on to the next review.

The other book on review today is The New Zealand Project by Max Harris.

From the start this was a book in which I entirely agreed with its opening premise, that being that something is wrong with this country, and found much in sync in his depiction of the issues facing NZ (the usual list of environment, social, health etc) but when it came to propose solutions Harris falls into the beginners trap, as noted by Dimitri Orlov in his book The Five Stages of Collapse, of saying things like “unless we” or “we must” but without providing any rational or coherent motive to do so other than vague appeals to doing what is right (as oppose to what is Right - geddit?).

To be fair, it’s clear that Mr Harris is a bit of rising star in the somewhat limited academic world of NZ (although he has a long way to go before he becomes the next Jane Kelsey or Nicky Hager) and his writing style and argument construction has that clean, logical flow that the best academic authors have.

But a book that spends it bulk carefully cataloging the problems gnawing away at NZ and then can’t even make the intellectual money shot in the final chapter because his ideas for a fix boil down to a list of vague liberal prescriptions which often have only tenuous connections to the problems he has spent the bulk of the book building up leaving the increasingly concerned and motivated reader saying "thats it?".

In short no clear policy prescription (ala Kelsey) or coherent rational for change based on the events (Hager) which then leaves the book little more than disaster porn for angst ridden liberals.

Want to read chapter after chapter of the degradation of NZ in all its forms but with little payoff for all the buildup; then The New Zealand Project has you covered.

As the Spinoff’s review of the book clearly notes “Now that we have it all set down in one place, maybe the Left can stop talking about What Must Be Done and start thinking about How To Actually Do It” which was pretty much the same feeling I had by the time I had finished the book. 

Harris clearly has his heart in the right place and I more than agree with many of his assessments of the issue but (as other reviews of the book have noted) the issues have been well known for a long time and repeatedly pointing them out comes down to just another angry gob of spit in a river of discontent.

Where this book starts to muck things up is that after a great opening chapter which mostly manages to avoid sliding too far into ideological propaganda the rest of the book (like many economic tracts) assumes its audience is down with the programme and just goes hell for leather into preaching to the quior but instead of economic pseudo-science masquerading as cold hard real politic we get liberal pseudo-science masquerading as warm fuzzy feel good politics.

It’s not that there are no facts to back Harris’s arguments up, there are plenty, but in places it’s clear that there has been some selective picking of data or simply pulling on one thread of what is often a many threaded argument.

Max Harris is young and the idealistic tone of the book is unmistakable and very catchy (specially for older jaded idealists like myself) and Harris might mature with time, and some actual real life experience, to write a work that is little more than a Masters level series of essays on the issues at hand.

Thus when you are going to title your work The New Zealand Project and then cast it in a clearly liberal vein and without any practical meat on its conceptual bones then the book is just another title in a long line of books which serve more as intellectual safety blankets for distressed liberals than serious attempts at fixing the issues at hand.

However, this is a book which is worth reading because while its liberal tone might jar some more conservative readers it has the strength to discuss its topics honestly and in a way that allows for discussion*** so that people can use this book as a jumping off point for any particular issue that might interest them.

Also few books out there have ever clearly cataloged the issues that do face NZ in one place (something that the more focused Kelsey and others usually avoid because of the depth of argument each topic can convey) so for that alone it’s worth reading to be able to get a feel for the scope of the issues facing Godzone.

But, in the end, the killer problem for me was that while the book clearly identifies the economic reforms of the past 30 years as a major driver for the problems New Zealand faces today, and has a wide enough scope to explore the effects of these problems (and their interrelationships) in the bigger picture it fails (as noted at the start) to come up with any real solutions and can’t even bring itself to clearly put names to faces when assigning blame so that Harris is like a detective at the scene of a crime where he has carefully cataloged the victim and the murder weapon, noted the possible motives but has no real suspects on which to pin the crime on.

I liked the New Zealand Project and I will definitely be keen to see what Max Harris will do next but there is nothing new in sounding the alarm and as such this book is just one of many dealing with issues facing NZ.

Rating: Two out of five Jane Kelseys

Other reviews of the book here and here.

*-ironically while Ozzie politics is now operating at the level of Italy, or worse, the level of political coverage and reporting is much better than NZ with regular and in depth articles in the media and a level of political consciousness in the public that NZ could only dream of. Perhaps it has something to do with the more diverse media space that the Land Down Under has when compared with NZs big two (and soon to be one if Fairfax and NZME get their way) mainstream media outlets.

**-Then again this is the woman credited with being the power behind Helen Clark and her nine years as PM, Hmmmmmmm ... I wonder?

***- supposedly the main focus of the book rather than proposing any actual solutions but I suspect that is more the panicked reaction of the books editor upon discovering that the manuscript was not delivering the goods and so sought to try and turn that weakness into a deliberate play. Nice try but not really covering up the gaps that Harris has left behind in his writing.

Jacinda or Judas: If Labour bows to pressure from businesses then this government is sunk!

All dogs might go to heaven but politicians always go to hell!

For me the honeymoon period with the Coalition government ended suddenly this week in the jarring screech of brakes as my political expectations slid off the road and crashed into the ditch of political reality.

My doubts had started with the recent budget, which was nothing more than Grant Robertson using the cancelled tax cuts to fund up big on various areas which needed it and in reality turned out to be little more than National-lite budget in a bright red wrapper. 

Then there has been the breaking of so many of Labours pre and post-election promises, so as not to spook the ever fragile business community, that has made the scales fall from my eyes.

Watered down immigration reforms, check; A housing policy which does not set aside housing for those who most need them but leaves it open to the market, check; Tax "reform" but no actual taxation increases on those who should be paying more (read corporate and the wealthy), Czech; One hundred million dollars for a rich man’s sport (the Americas Cup) but still dithering about how to fix the mess in Christchurch, cheque; an endless stream of money spent on pork barrel jobs for Labour cronies in all the new committees, Chek; employment law reforms on the odious “90 day trial period” law scaled back and now appointing Jim Bolger (the man who ushered the Employment Contracts Act into law) to the review committee (the political equivalent of asking the rapist to judge their own trial); and check, checky, McCheck, checkmate!

Add to this industries like Nurses and Teachers still underpaid and being offered pittance for work which is essential to the health and well being of our society and Jacinda’s bizarre protestations of ignorance when it’s clear that New Zealand’s relationship with the Five Eyes is under threat due to Chinese infiltration and interference* and I have decided that Jacinda and Labour are on the verge of selling out the hopes and expectations of most of the people that voted for her.

For Judas it was 30 pieces of silver while for Jacinda it is a half million dollars a year salary as PM plus all the money she gets to make selling photos of her and her baby to Womans Day.

And why am I suddenly so negative you ask?

The answer is simple. In the years leading up to the 2017 election there was strong stream of discussion on the many political blogs that I frequented (many left but some right), where the discussion often found itself coming round to the topic of “The Great Betrayal” of 1984 by the then Labour Government of David Lange and how any future Labour Government would have to do serious penance for this betrayal or suffer the consequences of a backlash from an electorate which was expecting Labour to start fixing the damage it helped usher in 30 years before and had now grown so acute (think housing, the environment, water, poverty and immigration) that these issues had metastasized into cancerous and toxic sores on the land that could no longer be ignored.

Not everyone agreed with the whole view but the mainstream perspectives were clear that the Great Betrayal had occurred at Labours bloody hands and on its watch and the damage was a generation of Neo-Liberal politics and economics which had gutted Aotearoa to the benefit of a wealthy few in the business community and any attendant political parasites (Richard Prebble always springs to mind when the topic of the Great Betrayal and the term “parasite” springs to mind) that had helped oversee the selling of New Zealand and the creation of Nu Ziland for their financial masters.

Thus if a future Labour government was to make good on atoning for this heinous act then the healing could only begin with rolling back most, if not all of the reforms it had helped bring in, but if it did not then the dark project that had been started by it in 1984 would be complete and Nu Ziland would prevail over New Zealand into our grim dark future.

Now fast forward a few years to early 2017; Labour is sunk in the polls and stuck with Andrew Little as leader while National under Bill English looked set to sweep into power for a fourth term, destroy any remaining vestiges of pre 1984 new Zealand in the process and bring about Nu Ziland at large. It was a doom struck time and the mood of any not on the National party train to “prosperity” was gloomy to say the least (see this post from me from that time for an idea).

Then a miracle occurred, Little bowed out of the leadership and relative political noob Jacinda Ardern stepped in and Labour started climbing in the polls on the strength of mostly the expectant mood of change her ascension had created.

Then, in a further political miracle, Labour was able to form a coalition government out of the election results and the National party inspired nightmare of pedophiles running the day-care was aborted in a frenzy of a post-election announcements about fixing the damage to NZ, from things like the housing hernia and child poverty, and giving capitalism a friendly face.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No the above sentence is not a typo but the sound of the needle of reality scratching its way off the political record as the warm, soft and fuzzy tune (you can substitute the music for We are the World here for effect if you wish)of the post-election “we are going to fix things” Labour Coalition Government was hijacked by the grubby reality of a Labour government “talking loud and saying nothing” while playing much the same game as National did for nine years.

Put in simple terms, the fact is that in the age of FukYoo politix Labour has only one mandate from the public and that is to atone for the damage it helped cause from the Great Betrayal and if it cannot deliver on that then this will be a one (or maybe two if its lucky) term government which will backslide on any meaningful promises for change so long as it can remain in power but in the end will become mired in the toxic filth of its own defunct legacy.

And it’s become clear that Labour, as it is in 2018, is clearing thinking that the politics of the Third Way, as it was under Helen Clark in 1999 (or even 2008: when Labour had blown its mandate to rule by 2005 and had to cook up a deal with Winston Peters to maintain its political program) is still a viable option in the minds of the Labour brain trust.

This kind of thinking is 19 years and a bitter generation too late for the harsh realities of politics in a time of populist parties and political instability.

Ardern and Labour have clearly been watering down their plans and actions to accommodate the business community (the same community that was the direct beneficiary (pun intended) of the way the current labour and tax laws are structured) because Jacinda & Co would rather pander to this vested interest rather than take an honest attempt to cleanse the poison that has made this country so sick.

So while Judas Ardern and Labour are banking on a strategy of doing just enough to keep public opinion on side with some photos ops for Jacinda and baby to distract from the skulduggery going on behind the scenes they will be counting the blood money for their dirty deeds both past, present and future.

And this growing mood is not just me, there are rumbles in the public and the upcoming Northcote by-election may be an interesting (if somewhat distorted) barometer of the public feelings about how things are going, as if the current round of teacher and nurse pay disputes/strikes are anything to go by then Labour has not done enough to meet the expectations of those who voted for them (because not a single nurse or teacher I know or have met (bar one) has ever voted for National) in 2017.

The breakdown of public trust in Labour as government is not an impossible scenario. It’s not the one that National and Mike Hosking keep salivating over (because no one on the Left is really keen to let National back into power just yet) but keep in mind that a year ago Labour was 24% in the polls, with half its supporters defected to the Greens and stuck with an unpopular leader and the only noticeable shift on the Left side of the line since then was the rise of Jacinda Ardern and the deals which stitched up the coalition government so the ground under Jacinda's feet is less political bedrock and more shifting sand.

So if Jacinda can’t keep her end of the bargain with the public then don’t expect people to keep on supporting Labour as one of the salient features of FukYoo politics is the willingness of voters to punish parties they feel have betrayed them as well as indulge in self destructive political behaviors (ie voting for extremist parties in what I refer to as Joker politics) far more than staying loyal to any particular politician or political brand.

And while I am not planning to vote National just yet because I am disappointed in Labour reverting to their Champagne  Socialist habits so quickly (because I did not vote Labour in 2017) I won’t be giving Labour any more free passes on this blog so readers can expect me to turn the focus onto the current government just as much as I did on the previous.

Labours talk of a friendly face for Capitalism is now looking more like giving Capitalism a friendly face-lift; simply hiding the wrinkles, crow’s feet and that god ugly nose with a few nips and tucks with liberal injections of political botox to smooth everything out.

Of course the typical response from a Labour Acolyte (because there are still of few of them Left – geddit?) would be that expectations need to be managed and that all stakeholders need to be consulted.

However this is a load of super frosty bullock droppings as the entire theme of the Great Betrayal has been to accommodate business at the expense of the all other interests and stakeholders and the last nine years of National was such an extreme of pandering to the vested interests of the market that Labour playing anything less than the revolutionary march right through the Center and back to the Left is not going to fit the mood of the public.

And if that’s not enough Jacinda should take heed of the case of Ed Miliband, the young dashing and photogenic, middle ground, leader (sound like anyone we know) of Labour UK who found himself deposed by a faster moving and more in touch Jeremy Corbyn because Miliband's brand of same old third-way Labour did not match the mood of the party or its supporters, or even the public.

In such circumstances Jacinda is less than six months away from becoming Judas and if that occurs Labour is going to find out in a rather stinging way that not only will National look better and better to the public (and keep in mind they already poll higher than Labour at this point) as 2020 approaches but that the potential of coalition partners being peeled off (as in the case of NZ First) or neutralized (as in the case of the Greens) will be much more of a possibility than if it’s was actually doing something constructive and not just letting Jacinda flap her considerable gums and smile for photo ops.

Worse still (for her, not us) is the potential for a Labour NZ’s radical faction to find the Right (geddit?) candidate for the job and run Jacinda right off the throne, and don’t say it can’t happen because that’s what got Andrew Little elected (and deposed) as leader, and then genuinely tap into that revolutionary mood of the nation** to make the changes needed.

Then there is the case of places like Australia or Italy with their revolving door politics, parties and leadership changes and while Kiwis like to think that “it can’t happen here” they would be wrong as there is nothing, not even NZ’s legendary political apathy, to offset a groundswell of righteous (or riotous) public anger when the issues which have been simmering away for the last 30 years start to boil over in seething entrails of discontent.

So Labour is now on the verge of the post-election slump and while National won’t be making hay just yet, the dynamics of this Coalition government rely on keeping the coalition partners happy (something for a later post) and to prevent Jacinda from being seen by her supporters as just another traitorous, untrustworthy, scumbag politician who is out for herself (or far far worse hideously delusional and in thrall to business interests) as the only two thing that got Labour elected were a desire for genuine change (ie anyone but National) and the X-factor that Jacinda brought to the game.

Our pregnant PM has not yet left her mark on NZ politics and the specter of Norman Kirk and David Lange loom large over her as both men were willing to take steps, as radical as they were, to fix what they saw were problems with this country and Jacinda Ardern's statements about climate change remain nothing more than gentle farts of smug self congratulation until backed up by serious action.

However Jacinda Ardern has yet to do that*3 and even if she wishes to emulate one such as Helen Clark she is going to have to do more than get knocked up and wear fashionable clothes to parties.

Labour exists as government today on the fact that its not National far more than anything inherent in its own makeup, policies or personnel excepting the star factor that Jacinda has harnessed.

And while Labour is sure to be playing the longer game and planning to drop all sorts of lollies round about May 2020 that maybe too little too late if those lollies are little more than some crappy placebos for the crippling ills of this Nation.

So if I thrashed National for its corruption while it was in power I can sure as heck beat Labour for failing to make good for the Great Betrayal now it is in government.

Labour can’t micro manage away the cancers it helped create and the time for radical surgery is at hand. The prognosis is grim but the outcome really depends if the doctor’s name is Jacinda or Judas.

*-Although to be fair it was National that set the ball rolling with Judith Collins and Jin Yang but if Labour was genuine about addressing this threat it would be doing more but instead its doing pretty much what National did and that makes them as bad, if not worse than National.

**-I admit that with her current popularity its unlikely but in the age of Trump never say never.

*3-And Saying no to further offshore drilling does not count BUT some action over fuel prices might!