D is for Democracy, Disfunction and Disorder

This post is being written as sort of a preface before I spend most of the coming year pointing out what I see is wrong with politics in New Zealand because it seems only fair that as bad as I may paint things to be here, they are far far worse elsewhere.

Currently two of the oldest and most established democracies in the world, the US and the UK (known from here on in as USUK) are in a bit of a state at the moment, and by “state” I mean the dumpster fire to end all dumpster fires.

In green and fragrant Aotearoa the biggest political bump on the horizon (at least for the chattering classes because child poverty, homelessness, the housing hernia, immigration issues, education and health and labor abuses don’t matter to them) is making sure that our cabinet has the right gender balance because god forbid we don’t have the right ratio of women and men.

In fact, I wouldn’t care if they were all women, if they were all competent, but when perennial incompetents like Clare Curran, and self-justifying bullies like Meka Whaitiri get in some how its clear that Labour is going to let the illusion take precedent over any particular reality.

So yes, they are gone but we still have Kelvin Davis, Phil Twyford and Ian Lees-Galloway despite their “problems” so the issue is that Labour (including Ardern herself) has a shortage of competent MPs/Ministers and is getting by on a combination of luck and half baked, piss poor, policy ideas which have deviated so much from their original intent (that being a re-set to NZs perilous state) to voter appeasing fiascos (like Kiwibuild) which are doing a lot to had an electoral cudgel to National.

But we are not here to take issue with these clowns, and the circus they now run, that will come later.

Right now, it’s time to point out that no matter how bad could be here, they are mucho worse over there. However, what we are seeing over there could very well happen here if we keep on the way we are going because the situation in USUK is just a more advanced symptom of the same disease we have here so its prudent to sound the warning, so to speak, lest we allow ourselves to succumb to the comfortable illusion that everything is alright here while we laugh at what’s happening over there.

And that’s just in whats left of the worlds functioning democracies, let alone what its like in corrupt and totalitarian s**tholes like Zimbabwe and China.

Currently Zimbabwe is experiencing killings in the street by security forces, a social media blackout an already fragile state teetering on the brink (again) of chaos as the new dictatorial government (lead by mass murdering monster “president” Emmerson Managawa* who was responsible for the murder of thousands as the head of Zimbabwe’s secret police) fails to bring the economy into any form of order after decades of mismanagement and corruption.

Meanwhile fun-loving China has decided to behave like the communist police state it really is by condemning a Canadian citizen to death for drug smuggling, after he was previously sentenced to 15 years jail, by re-trying him as a blatant means to bring pressure on Canada for arresting a top Huawei executive for extradition to the US which just shows what China will do if it does not get its way**.

But back to USUK, those at least are still democratic in form but not quite in function as both now have succumbed to infighting among political parties and the issues they face have no clear exit strategy and as such one may either say that this is simply the veneer of representative democracy fading away to expose the controlling elites bickering among themselves as their house of cards falls apart or (slightly less depressingly) our states shifting from true representative democracies to ones which are run by, and for, competing elites with elections as the legitimating mechanism and nothing else.

Either way its depressing but it seems that when faced by a crisis beyond their means to control (that crisis being that once you deal with the devil and start down the path to corruption and total power) you start to veer closer and closer to being a corrupt and failed state like Zimbabwe or a totalitarian nightmare like China and all the talk in the world can’t save you.

US: Go away, baiting!

Currently the US is now nearly a month into its government shutdown and I think Cracked.com has summed it up best with one of its many lists of things which show that people might grumble about “the government” but holly hell the alternative is a lot worse.

You know those far right, ACT party style, “minimal government” wet dreams that tools like David Seymour keeps on getting “excited” about? Well the US is now, in effect, in that state of affairs and it’s not pretty.

Seems all those government services that people take for granted, don’t know about or simply think are “not essential” are in fact very essential for a complex technological society like ours.

So, Seymour's ideological masturbation aside, the US is now locked into a paralytic state of stasis, in effect seeing how long it can hold its breath under water while Republicans and Democrats play chicken with each other over funding for Donald Trump’s wall.

Idiots or the naive might say its all Trumps fault but it takes two to tango and this is not the first-time politicians have played the brinkmanship game with government shutdowns. Yes, Trump has dialed it up to 11 but given that this was the core of his election policy (as limited as that was) he can’t be blamed for wanting to enact that for his voter base.

What he can be blamed for is the fact that building a wall around the US might make good sense ideologically and appeal to his supporters but it’s not going to actually solve any problems unless the problems are how to keep employed an army of wall builders and border guards.

And with the debate now down to the level of a high school feud as Nancy Pelosi and Trump are sniping at and c**k-blocking each other (as Pelosi blocks Trumps state ofthe Union speech so Trump cuts of Pelosi's travel to Afghanistan*3) you’re not looking at anything which we could call “representative” or even a functional democracy this is two spoilt rich kids fighting over a toy at day-care.

Its assumed that eventually a compromise will be reached but the damage will have been done and given that congress polls lower than the President its difficult to see the US going on for much longer because as the song says “somethings got to give”*4 and going without pay (or public services) for a month plus is going to do a  lot for arguments of political populists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who will happily take over if given a chance.

Could they do better? Probably not but at this point I don’t think the public is interested in that and is more interested in the cathartic effect of watching the rich elites having the heads lopped off via the guillotine ala the French Revolution, which interestingly enough was brought about by circumstances similar to those we face today (political deadlock and the parasitic rich sponging off everyone else) than getting their government back up and running.

So, on a democratic scale of one to ten, one being all’s good functioning democracy and 10 being holly s**t-balls democratic failure, the US is now about a 7 or 8 with a nine not far off the longer the shutdown goes on. And even when its ends, because it will eventually, or if Trump gets impeached or removed (because that’s also a possibility) it’s hard to imagine the US going back to normal because what’s happening now is the new normal.

The US is not going to suddenly discover good behavior and responsible politics just because the shutdown ends or Trump is no longer President but instead this is it for them and living with it is the only option. Suddenly films like Idiocracy no longer seem like satirical comedy but rather as a documentary warning from the future.

UK: No democracy please, we're British*5

Meanwhile, if you have not been reading the news (and possibly living in a hole), you would, only marginally, be forgiven for thinking in jolly old England all was sunshine, lollipops and rainbows compared to its transatlantic cousin the US.

But nope, if you thought the UK was doing better then guess again sucker because if the state of the US could be described as a dumpster fire then the Brexit crisis is Dumpster Fire Deluxe.

Consider this, article 50, the clause that triggers the UK from the EU, has already been invoked and is now in progress. All that the UK can do now is negotiate the terms of the exit and its clear that the EU does not want the UK to leave because if they do it not only makes the EU weaker but could give other members ideas as well and no supranational state wants parts of its empire falling off as it weakens the whole enterprise, let alone major members of it (as the UK is).

Sure, the UK could go back to the drawing board but as CNN points out none of the four options that could develop under article 50 are really going to solve things so in the end the choices are: Brexit, crashing out of the EU (also known a s hard Brexit), having a second referendum or changing the government. Choose wisely young Padawan.

If the UK takes the Brexit path, it’s out of the EU come mind 2019, what happens after is anyone’s guess but there are disaster stories both ways if the UK does or it does not and having a second referendum may reverse the vote but that sets an incredibly dangerous precedent because if you can reverse one vote you can reverse any vote and what’s to say that it could go around again and again once that Pandora's box is opened.

But if there is a second vote and the Britain decide to stay in the EU then those who voted leave are unlikely to go quietly and this sets up something close to a civil war scenario with an intractable position and no clear middle ground.

What is clear is that the UK can’t be both in and out and like the US, political revolutionaries are getting ready to pounce, as Jeremy Corbyn has already forced the issue by calling for a general election to break the deadlock.

Of course Corbyn, once PM, may also want to bring other parts of his manifesto to the table which is fine by me but with an emphasis on massive wealth redistribution from the richest to the poorest I cant see many of London’s wealthy bankers being down with that but Brexit, like the government shutdown in the US, is just a symptom  and not the real cause of the disease that’s eating the UK from the inside out and so reversing the vote will be nothing but a cosmetic fix and simply split things even further.

And Theresa May is damned if she does and damned if she does not, she has survived a no confidence vote but that matters little in the grander scheme when her plan for an exit is not palatable to anyone. All Brexit has really done is expose the divide in the UK, just like Trump has in the US, and in doing so presented having a hand cut off or an eye poked out as the only choice to voters.

So, at this point, the UK reminds me of England on the eve of the 1640s civil war which split the nation between Royalists and Parliamentarians, Catholics and Protestants and Cavaliers

 and Round-heads in which the decent, unlike the American Civil war in the 1860s, was not a supremely violent struggle to the death between two economic and political systems set inside a supposedly democratic state but rather a political schism between sides over a range of issues, magnified by religious difference and where the sides were emergent democracy vrs the older monarchical order.

Thus, at some point, something has to happen and when it does one side or another will not be happy and so another phase of the disease will kick in and further unrest ensues, making the situation in essence loose/loose.

Meanwhile in Godzone: Don’t say it can’t happen here!

If the political antics and chaos of USUK is not enough to make you wonder the we have our cousins across the ditch and their own political turmoil to consider.

Still NZ compared to USUK is a lot more viable at this time and if a cabinet reshuffle is all that gets into the media then we may be just a bit better off, for now that is as we shall soon see that being slightly further up the democratic anthill may protect us from the rising floodwaters of crappy politics and politician’s for a while but we also have to deal with the survivors from lower down scrabbling their way up trying to take over what’s left (I’m looking at you Peter Theil and China).

Democracy has its moments to be sure and it is having a bad day worldwide at this time but if USUK is anything to go by the alternatives to good government and real representative democracy (or even direct democracy) are rule by corrupt elites, genocidal maniacs and places that we don’t even want to visit let alone live in.

So consider this post a means of making sure that what’s follows on this blog is always with the perspective of what’s going on elsewhere lest I be accused of complaining about nothing because its not the state of NZ per se that’s the issue with me but the direction our own democracy is going in that has me blogging and it’s a lot better to sound the alarm before the whole mess goes off the cliff than pick up the pieces and rebuild (if such a thing is even possible) at the bottom or like USUK try and do so while free falling downwards.

Vootie!

*-Who has family happily living in NZ because reasons.

**-And people wonder why the National Party acting as a quisling for China is such a threat to democracy here.

*3-Why she needs to go to Afghanistan anyway is anyone’s business but I suppose she needs a holiday

*4- Yes Fitzgerald’s sentiment is upbeat and positive but the sentiment remains the same but if you need something more suitably dark then the Beastie Boys have you covered.

*5-with apologies to Messrs Foot and Marriot

Simon Bridges: Political stillbirth or something entirely different?

Because if Tracy Watkins can come up with a ridiculous and over the top headline so can I.

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist

The above is a quote from Gustave Flaubert and could be paraphrased to New Zealand Journalism as One becomes a political reporter when one cannot be a politician.

Political journalism in NZ is going through a dull patch at the moment or to be more precise; with no scandal to feed the media, many political reporters have been reduced to reporting on mundane political occurrences or, even worse, writing speculative “think pieces”.

This is ugly journalism at its worst and it shows how the high drama of the political campaign can twist and warp a reporters mind so that they get lost in the glare of personality politics and forget that outside of the campaign, trail politics is not actually about grandstanding political egos (think Winston Peters), personal events (think Jacinda’s baby) or petty political nit-picking (ala all the recent focus on Simon Bridges).

And in the wind up to the recent National Party conference in Auckland the two remaining mainstream outlets in the political media went, what could be politely termed, into overdrive, spewing out page after page of low wattage drivel about Bridges, his leadership prospects, his hairline, his gel quota, his family, his background and absolutely anything but the actual problems afflicting the National Party.

Such star focused reporting shows exactly why political reporters need to be conversant in the Three P's of Politics (Principles, Policy and Personality) rather than just their relentless focus on personality, which is fine for the campaign trail but becomes all but irrelevant once the election is won (or lost) and government and opposition settle down to the day to day of Policy and, on those rare moments when the planets align, Principles.

Its simple stuff really, yet we are still getting articles speculating about Bridges fate as leader or Mike Hoskings sponsored BS about how well the party is doing. Worse still is the kind of bland spin via David Cormack who really needs to just stop writing these suck up articles like some overgrown teacher’s pet (in this case the teacher being Labour) and stick to being the self-confessed “PR guy” role that he refers to himself as. And for the love of sweet baby Jesus take that horrible picture of yourself out of all those articles you write, you look like a total creep.

And finally, it’s clear that the sun has well and truly set on Bryce Edwards as political commentator. Bryce, sweetheart, trolling the internet and for stories and then presenting a rather over worded list of other people’s work as your own is shallow beyond belief. Just stop, please, or at least write something original because in reality the problem with National is NOT Simon Bridges or his leadership (the Personality part of the three P’s) but rather the other two (Policy and Principles).

Even veteran reporters like Audrey Young of the NZ Herald and Tracy Watkins (as noted above) have, at times, been sucked down to this level of verbal diarrhea with catchy headlines and little else beyond to pad out their articles. It’s as if the respective editors of Stuff and the Herald ordered their staff to write about the upcoming National Party conference but the star struck reporters simply could not conceive of anything beyond the same campaign style reportage (with its relentless focus on the negative and the personal) that they were turning out during the election campaign last year.

There are exceptions to this mess with Henry Cooke from Stuff and the Spinoff (despite the disaster of its “hipster TV” channel) being very conspicuous exceptions to the poor state of the general political media by producing ongoing quality assessments of the situation in NZ politics.

However I am 500 words in and I would be no better than Bryce if I was to keep on with this line of analysis rather than getting to the question at hand: that being the question posed in this posts title, but I would be remiss if I did not at least pause a moment to consider why political reportage in NZ is so often the kind of knee jerk tabloid muckraking akin to the gossip magazines at worst or, on a good day, barely pedestrian factual reportage without a hint of in-depth analysis.

But journalism, like life, has posed a question to which there is no single answer (much like why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near or why side A of Marc Jacobs Mannequin is just so damn good or the answer to life the universe and everything is 42 but what’s the question?) however if I was pressed to consider NZ political reporters as a whole I would simply say that most of them are far too close to their sources and as focus too much on the human/personal element of politics and thus become so tainted with the foul stench of politics* that they can’t be too critical lest they piss off their sources and loose access.**

So what is the problem with Simon Bridges at this time and place in NZ politics? The Answer: Nothing, nothing at all and if you don't believe me, check out Liam Hehir from Stuff.

What kind of P is Simon smoking?

Bridges, as I noted a few months back, has the hardest job in politics as the leader of the loosing party in the wake of  government change election and that job has been made harder by a number of factors which relate back to the Policy and Principles aspects of the Three P’s rather than the Personality factor.

First up for Bridges is that he was picked for a role which, in the wake of the dark magic of John Key, is not really tenable because expecting Simon bridges to have the superstar polling of John Key is just not realistic and highlights that even the National Party is desperately trying to ignore its failing in policy and principle by pumping up the personality factor to the Nth degree.

Problem is, John Key and his Teflon personality was an anomaly in NZ politics but it’s easy to see how and why so many have tried to follow the trail he blazed but instead got shot down in a screaming mess of ugly revelations and piss poor polling (think Labours endless run of dip-stick leaders prior to Jacinda) because Key used his magnetic polling skills to keep the party afloat when it was otherwise politically bankrupt and hollowed out in both the principles and policy areas.

Yes Bridges is still in single digit polling and yes Bill English was higher BUT outside of an election and definitively in the wake of Jacindamania the last thing Bridges needs to worry about is how high he is on the preferred PM stakes.

Instead the fact that the party still holds a solid core of political support should be more than enough to settle any questions about how well the party is doing when the grim fact is that the tide is going out on National as a party after nine years in power and it’s going to be spending some time in opposition before the body politic decides it’s safe to trust it again (or more accurately Labour pisses it off enough) to let it back into power.

However that’s not to say that Bridges has not made some mistakes in his time as leader and its here that Bridges will have to up his game if he wants to stay in the job to see another party conference (in 2019) as leader.

Making National your bitch!

First up there is the fact that when Simon got the role from Bill English he did little to stamp his own mark on the party or more importantly his caucus. And super-duper mistakerino number one was the fact that he kept Paula Bennett as his deputy. Yes it was a nod to the old guard Gang of Five (Bennett, Brownlee, Smith, Joyce and Collins) (now four) in National that had monopolised the top spots in the previous government are now little more than tainted vessels (and that is me being extremely polite) and horrid reminders of what National is all about and why people should vote Labour.

Paula Bennett has clearly gotten the memo from Nationals image team to dress less like an on the make suburban housewife and more like a politician because she has ditched most of the god awful outfits she used to wear in favour of more sombre attire (think darker less bedazzled clothing and you get the picture) and a conservative hairdo but clearly did not get the memo on overusing the spray tan or behaving like a cast member from the Jersey Shore (given her behaviour in and out of the House) which clearly shows that beneath the jazzed up hair, clothes and makeup is a smouldering harpy ready to start screeching the moment someone upsets her wine cooler or says something catty.

The net result is that Bennett is now the Snooki LaValle of NZ politics with an image of someone who is a vapid attention seeker and nothing more than a simulation of human being rather a genuine person and as 2IC for Bridges Bennett should be the one getting the MPs into line and whipping up policy teams to be an effective opposition but she is not and Labour has had an almost free ride since getting elected despite an increasing stream of issues which it (and not National) have created or curated.

And replacing Bennett is easy; just add Amy Adams! Yes folks, if Bridges wants to strut the stage like John Key he needs an effective second fiddle (ala Bill English) to manage the numbers and keep things in the back office ruining smoothly and Adams is proven go getter in this area so having her playing second banana to Bridges would be a lot closer to recapturing the JK magic than just sending a younger, more ethnic, lookalike of John Key out into the glare of the footlights in the hope that the audience won’t see it’s just a roadie in a wig.

Sure Adams is a potential rival to the throne but, just like Key was clever enough to keep Bill English close by giving him the Deputy spot he was also smart enough to realise that English’s ambition (while not that of an actual leader) was perfect for being his right hand man (or just The Hand if you are a GOT fan). The result was that Key was free to be Key while English was in charge of the day to day and while it often pains me to say it English was very good as the power behind the throne (emphasis painfully mine).

So if Bridges was to ditch Bennett and promote Adams then he has at least a strong approximation of the Key situation and can focus on getting his personal popularity up (something that will be more important as the election approaches) without having to worry about what his minions are doing.

The STDs of the National party

As for the rest of the gang of four; Brownleee just needs to be demoted to the backbenches as he is no longer effective in his role as flack catcher for National as he is now just as controversial as any issue he is sent into distract from (Brownlee might poll in his Ilam electorate*3 but he is still the most hated man in Christchurch for his role in fucking up the Christchurch rebuild and allowing corruption, nepotism and dodgy behaviours to flourish in the wake of the quake); Smith needs to be disinfected and strategically shaven before being made to work as the mop boy in Wellington sex dungeon.

Which just leaves jolly Judith Collins, who is more of a risk to remove, but could probably be useful as a productive shadow minister or perhaps as the leader of the conservative splinter faction that some in National think is the answer to its problems but needs to be kept on a short leash and kept busy guarding the perimeter, like the good attack dog she is, and not left to fomenting her own limited dreams of being leader, which if were to come to fruition would split the party down the middle.

Getting rid of these human dumpster fires is an essential prerequisite for Bridges getting the party back on track and if he can’t do that then there is no phase two (or three) to any plan to win the next election or be an effective opposition because these malingering cyphers do nothing but take up space and block more productive MPs from rising in the ranks. Bridges needs to cull and he needs to cull now. He has given these monsters a grace period after the leadership challenge and now it’s time to build a new team, in his image and stop relying on these decrepit throwbacks to another age.

The gang of five have been like STDs to the National party, disgusting reminders of a dirty moment of pleasure that they will now carry with them for life, like luggage!

If Bridges can sort the wheat from the chaff then he will have a new team and be able to spend the next two years working hard as the opposition party and rebuilding the policy and principle planks that the party desperately needs to go back into government. However there is just one problem with that and it’s that National scarified its policy and principles in the 1990s to the gods of economic “progress” and outsourced the work (how ironic) to the pro business goons at the Business Roundtable (now the pro-business goons at the New Zealand Initiative).

Surfing the zeitgeist

“But what’s the problem!” I hear you cry, whacking the side of the monitor in anger at the sheer lunacy of the suggestion that we don’t run our country on a pro-business model that exploits the many for the benefit of a small few and has lead this country to have things like a housing hernia, dirty dairy and a low wage, cheap labour economy.

The problem, Henrietta, is that Nationals current crop of policy plans around things like Marijuana, smaller classrooms and more of the same hands off business practices are not really going to address the problems that NZ faces today or in the future and, in fact, are a big part of the problems that helped get Labour elected (by saying they had solutions to those problems).

So National needs to step back and genuinely consider if it can win an election by proposing more of the same (as it has done for the last 30 years) or like medical marijuana, pandering to what is essentially an emotional issue and not one that actually has any relevance to the direction of the country. Smaller classes and medical dope are easy things to say and sound good but one requires a major investment in our educational infrastructure and the other is simply addressing a long standing reality that many Kiwis smoke dope. Neither of these will win an election.

Thus if truly wanting to be seen as credible in the policy stakes National will have to come up with workable solutions to Housing, Health and Wages rather than some quick and easy feel good side shows (like marijuana) while the main issues keep on messing up the country and as National helped to create those messes Bridges, if still leader, is going to have to front for his party’s part in making those messes.

Imagine if this were to occur in a time when Labour still can’t say sorry for the Great Betrayal. Bridges could tap into the national mea culpa, swallow his pride and that of his party and reinvent National to align with the zeitgeist rather than stand in stark isolation to it. National has stolen Labours political thunder before and the best way to out Jacinda Jacinda is by acknowledging that National lost the last election (instead of a continually petulant atmosphere of a sore looser) and going forward rather than holding onto the John Key stained past.

Coming out of the Conservative closet

Also Simon Bridges could retain much of his conservative base by realizing that conservative voters care about things like the environment too. It’s a cross party issue and it’s not the only cross party issue out there where National could steal a march on Labour by changing tack on all and any broad based issues such as wages, the environment, land sales, water and health and in doing so show the public that everything will not be viewed through the lens of the market place.

So instead of having to desperately try and make eyes across the house at the Greens in the hope of a political one night stand in order to temporarily boost his and the parties credibility (which is what this medical marijuana things appears to be about) he can just be real about why it’s important not to piss away the environment because we know that after a torrid night between the political sheets the horror and shame of the morning after would probably see nothing more than a few more evenings of angry sex between the two parties before the whole thing would fizzle out and neither would be able to speak to the other or make eye contact again.

And as much as Simon Bridges would like a savage night of passionate man on man action with James Shaw (perhaps as some sort of delayed hysterical reaction to his strict religious upbringing) to get the party fortunes kick started it is unlikely to work as Nationals previous flings with the Maori and United Future showed that National is only interested in getting its own rocks off and not willing to get down on its knees or even give a reach around to the party that it is currently bare backing into oblivion. So Shaw would be a fool to let a couple of wines in the hot tub one evening destroy him and his political party*4.

National is not going to save the day by sticking to an ideological platform that runs counter to the majority of Kiwis so while I can see why medical marijuana has now come on the agenda for the party the scope of conservative kiwi views and opinions is broader than that and open to be redefined if a new generation of conservative politicians leading the party.

Stop picking on Simon!

By getting rid of the dead wood National could potentially revitalize its principles and the natural flow on from that is an energized policy perspective as the Neo Liberal ideology that National stubbornly clings to has been so thoroughly discredited (thank you FukYoo politix) and hollowed out the party that there are no fresh seeds in which to plant into voters minds.

A fresh approach would inject more capital into what is currently a politically bankrupt party that is going to meander in the wilderness for more than a single term if it can’t embrace change.

And none of this has anything to do with Simon Bridges because he is a fresh face in the party, so to speak. He was not very prominent under John Key and has not been around long enough to give off the evil vibes that the Gang of Five does.

In fact I would go so far to say the problem with National is anything but Simon Bridges (as I said at the start) or at worst Bridges is the least of the party’s worries. I think National has the common sense not to try and roll Bridges before the next election but for Simon to be “match fit” for the next election he needs to use the next two years to get his team into shape and up to speed and that requires some new players in the front row and some new plays in the playbook.

So let’s get the hell away from this endless fascination with The Leader (or in Jacindas case her baby) and focus on Politics and specifically the Policy and Principles aspects, you know the things that actually matter.

*-To recreate this smell take one part used baby diaper, one part fridge full of rotting food and one part sewage farm.

**-And if you guys don’t like that you can start by writing a better standard of article

*3-The same electorate where I currently reside

*4-actually I take that back, Shaw is just the kind of political mercenary to sell his party down the river given how he behaved prior to the election

Winston tells China to SOV(erign) off: We will buy our guns; please keep buying our butter

The first draft of this article was far too sarcastic even for me. The second draft was not sarcastic enough, while the third was just right.

There was an interesting confluence of events in politics last week that caught my attention that had something to do with China, P8 maritime surveillance planes, Defence commitments, Winston Peters and some nurses going on strike.

Long story short the defense force wants to buy some new planes, expensive ones which will allow them to remain part of the military Big Boys Club to which we keep on aspiring to belong.

Unfortunately in the winter of our political discontent, where public servants, low wage workers, teachers and nurses are going on strike, 3.2 Billion dollars (said like Dr Evil from Austin Powers) is a lot of cheddar cheese to be putting out for three planes.

So, how do you sell these fantastically expensive pieces of equipment to a public clamouring for cheaper housing and increased wages? How do you make a bona fide, fool proof case for spending 3.2 billion dollars on military hardware when that money could go a long long way to addressing issues like the housing hernia and 30 years of stagnant wages.

Answer, you cook up a defence report which specifically names a threat which these, and only these planes, can counter; in this case Chinese submarines, correction, insidious Chinese submarines, prowling through our territorial waters, sowing higher property values and corrupting National party MPs as they go.

Unfortunately there was one small problem which was that China (rightly or wrongly) did not appreciate being labelled a threat by some pip squeak nation which it expects to just shut up and sell its land to so China issued a strongly worded piece of propaganda response demanding that we all just get along in peace and harmony (like China is doing in the South China Seas) and all will be well.

This caused some problems for Gollum Ron Mark who immediately realised that with no manufactured credible threat there would be no rational to buy those expensive planes that the top brass in the Air Force had been telling their Australian and US counterparts they would be buying, so they could go to the Generals Ball.

But wait, whats this, is it a bird, is it a plane (if it’s a P8 it is), no it’s the acting PM, Winston Peters, coming to the rescue with a unconditional reply which stated that it’s the sovereign right of a nation to decide who is a threat and who is not, so there!

Economic Interlude (play this music while reading)

In economic theory the balance between military and civilian spending is called the Guns verses Butter model. It’s not quite an either/or situation but it is supposed to highlight the limited resources a nation state has in a time of competing demands for those resources.

Do you buy guns to defend yourself against the enemy next door or food (the butter) for the people?

Neither answer is correct per se but if posed properly it should force the decision maker to prioritize or even balance competing demands against the strategic environment they operate in.

In New Zealand’s case we don’t have any real military threats to our nation but we seek (some would say sycophantically) to be a part of various western based military and international orders which, both militarily and economically, promote open markets and liberal democracy, so in order to be a part of that order we have to align our interests with those of the bigger actors (both economically and militarily).

Therefore while not subject to a traditional gun versus butter analysis there is still a decision to make regarding the price to pay in remaining part of the economic, political and military order.

And in New Zealand’s case the question is around staving off growing social/political/economic discontent in the general populace against the need to be part of a larger social/political/economic order which, in many cases, is creating and driving the aforementioned discontent at home and then the need to sell our products (and ourselves) to a nation we just named a threat to us.

Interlude ends

So, did NZ make the right choice? Will the Chinese retaliate? Is it worth all this cost to be part of a club which increasingly seems to be only marginally better than the states it opposes?

And why can the government invoke the “sovereignty” option so bloody quickly when it comes to buying some military hardware but not when faced with land and asset sales to foreign interests, spies of foreign powers roaming the halls of the Beehive or where we have hitched a large part of our economic wagon (ie all that butter and milk we sell to China) to the nation we just invoked our sovereignty against that has a social, economic and political system in direct opposition to ours.

And just for those whose perspicacity may be waning, sovereignty, in this context, means the authority of a state to govern itself.

I suppose I should be thankful because under National we would have still gotten the planes but not the cheap catharsis of watching Winston telling China to buzz off, at least when it comes to the findings of the defence report that is. National would have just pandered to China (yes the pun was intended) and maybe asked for another spy to replace Jin Yang.

And there is an argument for NZ having maritime patrol planes, one which I do support but in politics, like music and humor, timing is everything.

Sovereignty in this country has long been a highly abstract concept as when Labour recently ratified the TPPA, citizenship is up for sale to any billionaire who wants it, we still remain a haven for money laundering while tourism and dairy sales are destroying our environment for the short term gain of a small few.

In the end Winston coming out and playing the sovereignty card was merely symbolic so that buying the P-8s can go ahead with the clear conscious of the NZDF and the politicians, who will also be hoping that China will keep on buying our butter and dairy. Let’s hope the Chinese see it that way.