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Lefter 39 ~ Capitol Gains

July 8, 2011 by emweb

Here’s my take on the Te Tai Tokerau byelection.

Mana won – this is a good thing if only because Hone Harawira deserved to win. As I have noted previously, all he did to get railroaded out of the Māori Party was to tell some, albeit hurtful, truths about it. They should have been heeded.

I could say the Māori Party’s showed a lack of political acumen and experience, but to be fair it’s no more than the sort of behaviour their supposedly much more experienced peers in the two major parties regularly stoop to. Only the Greens seem to be able to rise above it, generally.

But there is lots to learn from Mana’s win. Labour’s strong showing pointed out something very clearly: not just a Māori hankering for a Māori Party that is not National’s patsy, but also a clear indication that northern Māori, at least, is still pro Labour in principal.

And although that’s surprising, after some categorically awful gaffes in that regard by Labour over the last few years, it’s an important point that should not be left begging.

Of the Te Tai Tokerau result, Key said the byelection was a waste of money. He should know: he’s an expert at wasting money.

But how many votes did National get, in this election? None – unless you count the few votes for the Māori Party, since they have become National’s project to nullify Māori aspirations. National didn’t, officially, contest the election but its coalition partner did. And it all failed miserably by anyone’s measure.

All in all, we have seen a realignment in the north that might spread throughout the country: Māori want a strong party that truly, honestly represents Māori aspirations – and since this is a fundamental part of New Zealand’s sovereign and cultural identity, we should all understand and laud this.

But the other realignment is a Māori yearning for a party that has a social conscience – and this used to be Labour.

Labour could be due for renaissance with Māori and it has some genuinely admirable Māori MPs. But the future is not, currently, separate from the fundamental concerns of Māori as a people. The policies Labour creates and the alliances it’s open to could not be more important. So act advisedly in this regard.

But if Labour starts courting the Māori Party now, look forward to more dissolution and another term of National (which must be champing at the bit and hating having to be cautious) to really do some damage to ordinary New Zealanders.

Oh, and Pita? Your seats are not safe. From your partners or from the rest of the country.

Christchurch is a challenge that good government would rise to anywhere in the world, but National has not managed this well and disquiet swelled while John Key hid in India. (How insulting and naive to call India ‘the new China’!)

From where I sit, Labour – for the first time in ages – has a shot at winning the election. National has been passing the ammunition across No Man’s Land. This has, for the most part, been squandered. Is it going into an arsenal for future use? One can only hope so, but good lord, don’t wait too long.

But a shot has been fired – and it was a more like a fusillade! Thank goodness for the (‘leaked’?) announcement on plans for a Capitol Gains Tax! Finally, a point of difference that’s left even John Key gasping like a landed fish.

And finally, we have something worth fighting for – as I have written here before, everyone knows it’s the right thing to do, whether they like it or not. This makes it hard to front a valid resistance to without looking like an ingrate.

Nice one, Phil Goff. Whoever, ever (if anyone did) told you to act like a big man … well, they should be fired. New Zealand doesn’t need another dumb Kiwi bloke in these difficult times. A smarmy liar and concealer. We have a surfeit of those, with the prime chump at the tiller.

We need an academic. Please, Mr Goff, keep doing what you know.

We like it.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: Maori | No Comments
Lefter 38 ~ Waiting for Good-Oh

June 26, 2011 by emweb

Do you remember a time when New Zealand had loads of jobs, good welfare, affordable education, and when everyone had a fair crack at achieving – well, pretty much anything?

I barely do. But it was like that once.

I have recently been travelling – I hadn’t been in Holland for 26 years. When I left there in the mid 1980s, the most common forms of transport were bikes and trains. People in big cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam often didn’t own cars at all, and didn’t aspire to car ownership, or at least went years without owning them. Trains were frequent, on time, affordable and efficient, and covered almost every corner of that small, densely populated country.

The national train service employed people, gave them skills and they were a part of the fabric of the country, keeping it humming and connected.

Last month I found myself on a Dutch motorway comprising five lanes in both directions, all stopped or moving at snail’s pace.

Why? They privatised the railways in Holland. Train travel almost immediately became more expensive, less efficient and, in short order, much less used. So people started buying cars.

In response, the government started pumping up the motorway networks, adding lanes on lanes, even though space is always at a premium, and despite a dense rail network.

Dutch people buy cars to the detriment of … almost everything. Parking is a nightmare, motorways are clogged (ha ha), it’s bad for the environment — and it was all completely unnecessary.

Should anyone be surprised?

When you sell a state owned enterprise to a private concern, is it any surprise it’s bought as a cash cow, then milked for every cent possible?

When it’s no longer viable and everyone is complaining enough, the state will have to buy it back anyway to get the freight (or whatever) and the country moving again – another great revenue jump for that private concern.

These entrepreneurs must really think we’re idiots. Unfortunately, again and again, they’re proved right.

Because people don’t set up businesses for the benefit of other people. They don’t build a company to create jobs, education, services and other benefits for a populace. They create businesses for power, profit and position. Any workers employed simply add to all of the above.

Do you want to know who does set up businesses for the greater good? To create jobs, futures, build skills and, in the best examples, as beneficial and thoughtful future-proofing for a population’s best interest, and the country’s?

Governments.

Category Commentary, Government, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Lefter 37 ~ The Road Ahead

April 24, 2011 by emweb

I appear to have created some disquiet with my last Lefter.

For which I don’t apologise. Sincerely.

But a couple of criticisms deserve addressing. One is that people working in the Labour Party are finding it hard enough, thank you very much, without my criticisms.

The other is that it’s easy to criticise; what alternatives do I offer?

OK, the first one: I have a fundamental problem with any party that has one voice that everyone has to agree with. This is not democratic. It’s what sunk the Alliance Party as Anderton degenerated into He Who Must Be Obeyed, and it’s what led to the Maori Party completely mishandling Hone Harawera when it should have honoured him for the gift he offered (the truth).

Personally, I refuse to hew to any party line I don’t agree with, in life or work. It’s got me into trouble before and that’s OK – it’s a principle worth fighting for.

I don’t think anybody should be expected to go along with a pronouncement made by some figurehead. Members should be able to say: So and so said this, and I don’t agree with it. And we are working together towards a solution we can all believe in.

Coalitions group together different interests. That’s what a coalition is. A party is essentially a coalition of interests that share a similar general principle. They should all be represented as different interests, working towards a common goal. Since Labour no longer has a clear stance or manifesto, the ground keeps shifting anyway. If Labour can’t enunciate what it means, how do you expect anyone to act unified? Yet Labour does. The cracks are appearing, and the wall paper being applied to hide them is not a good look.

In World War Two, it was pretty damn clear that Russia and England and the US didn’t agree on everything. Well, on much at all. But they didn’t demand each be the same to fight Hitler, did they? That would have been ridiculous. The losers, of course, did do this. Nazism had an archaic structure based on feudalistic ‘figurehead knows best’. This can be spectacularly successful, but only for a short time, and it always ends in bloodshed and disaster. It’s the same in business (perhaps without the bloodshed). The Third Reich had a dramatic rise, a dramatic (and revoltingly destructive) impact, but if you look at it from a distance, it was all gone in 12 years,wrecking most of Europe, Asia, the Pacific and North Africa in the process.

However, some business leaders and geographic despots still see fascism as an excellent model, for in that potentially truncated time frame, they can be incredibly powerful. Why would a left wing (albeit increasingly nominally) even begin to look like it’s following the strictures of anything even faintly resembling Nazism?

Labour’s archaic structure demands that whatever the leaders says is ‘agreed to’ by everyone else. This is the sham of ‘caucus unity’.

Why pretend? Encourage dissent. Encourage freedom of speech. It’s laudable and it makes you look like a group worth supporting. Goff pronounces things that Labour’s caucus doesn’t always sanction, to the surprise of some, and yet Labour then has to act, in public, as if it’s unified. Since very few have any genuine faith in Phil Goff any more, we all suspect there’s a storm gathering to displace him, to the detriment of the next election and to the country. This turns off voters even more.

So here’s some advice to you, Mr Goff: Stop acting like the know-it-all leader. You are not. Nobody (but you, apparently) thinks you are. Look around. The majority overrules you. It’s time you saw it. Open your eyes. If you really want to become a good leader, marshall a flock instead of ramrodding it into the breech. This is heading for a misfire and you risk losing even your most faithful supporters.

Instead, become a wise leader guiding an unruly flock to a result worth waiting for. We like unruly flocks. We also like Border Collies. We note they are clever. This is New Zealand.

You can gather the supporters who are getting turned off because they don’t agree with you personally by giving their figureheads voices within the party.

And Labour, for god’s sake rewrite your operating procedures!

Look progressive. Act progressive. Be progressive. It’s bloody obvious, if you don’t mind my saying so. As I keep saying, we all want something to believe in.

Meanwhile, The Greens are looking like the displaced lefties’ alternative to Labour by doing just this. The Greens have social policies, they can enunciate their beliefs, and they do seem to embrace different voices within the ranks without acrimonious fallouts and the public spectacles they engender. In a nutshell, their structure is more modern and more flexible.

The Greens would make an eco-friendly New Zealand as a cornerstone of both looking after its people and economic gain. It’s a clear, laudable, achievable and easy-to-understand platform with lots to like.

There’s nothing at all like this coming from Labour. (And if there is, as I’ve said before, why don’t we know about it? The election is just a few months away.)

Ok, second criticism. Here’s how to sort the country out, from an uneducated commentator. I can’t believe Labour, with its specialists, economists, unionists, business leaders etc, can’t make these work or come up with even better solutions – but we have yet to see any real evidence of this. So here you go:

1/ Use Christchurch. It needs rebuilding. New Zealand did it with Napier in 1932, and the whole country got behind it. Rebuilding Christchurch rebuilds New Zealand. It gives us something to believe in, it gives us something to be proud of, it gives us work and sacrifice for a good cause and it internalises the economy to an extent. Plus it’s something that desperately needs doing, and doing properly. Everyone likes a rebirth story. This is ours. Labour should be taking the lead, unlike National’s Minister for Disaster.

2/ Tell everyone right now that you’ll tax the rich more. You’ll lose a few rich voters. You’ll gain back a lot – a lot! – of poorer voters. You want the Maori vote back? You want the working class suburbs back? Announce it.

The rich don’t need tax breaks, and they’re doing sweet fa for the country anyway. Besides, they vote National and worse. Make a stand, nail your colours to the mast and get over it. People out here on the street don’t care one jot for the wealthy you’re trying to placate. Many of the middle classes know they didn’t need that last tax break – they’re looking for direction from the Left and they’re not getting it. They, too, need something to believe in. Their taxes will go up for the good of Christchurch, the economy and the country. Big cheer.

3/ Capital Gains Tax. We all know we need this to rein in house prices. We all know owning three properties is bad for the country and stops people getting into houses, keeping the prices high for speculators. But Labour’s too scared. What, Labour, you’re going to lose voters? What voters? Look at the polls, for goodness sake. Make a stand. It’s easy to convince everyone that a Capitol Gains Tax is needed, because it is clear that it is needed. Have the balls to campaign on it. In the long run, it’s a winner. Take the stand of righteousness.

4/ Point out all the crap National has foisted on us. Many still don’t know. Examples are legion. Go for the jugular. Set an attack dog like Mallard onto it – but this only works if you do the above at the same time. One doesn’t work without the other.

5/ Finally, this has been unsaid until now, so I’ll say it: Patriotism. We want something to believe in, something to brag about when we’re overseas. Like we did when we stood up to America’s nuclear ships. Like when we were the first country in the world to give women the vote. The first with a proper welfare system.

Some New Zealanders lament the lack of patriotism we show, and that’s because we’re ashamed of what we have done to our own country, and of the fact we let wankers like John Key, Gerry Brownlee, Bill English and even Rodney Hide walk all over us. We deserve this shame. We’ve been stupid patsies.

It’s time for a change, because these figureheads are not good New Zealanders. They’re obsessed with money and personal power and they don’t care about the general population except as a cash cow.

It’s time to displace this regime. Prove them wrong.

That’s my two cents worth. It’s hardly rocket science, and plenty of people have said it before me, so I honestly don’t get why Labour is still faffing about.

And if you don’t like commenting and want to talk to me personally, email my alias: [email protected] (no, it’s not my real name).

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: Maori | No Comments
Lefter 36 ~ here we go, here we go, here we go …

April 13, 2011 by emweb

Here we go to nowhere.

I wrote it months ago, and I feel I must write it again: If Goff was a clever man, he would have set up a succession plan and enacted it. Instead he’s continued with his delusion that he’s Prime Minister material, and unfortunately the party has gone along with this. At least in public – it’s quite possible that the angry pronouncements from first Chris Carter, then from Damian O’Connor are the tip of an iceberg. (It’s ironic that Carter would have been part of O’Connor’s ‘gaggle of gays’.)

And that’s just two men who succumbed to rage after getting their noses out of joint. There are many Labour incumbents who are much better at keeping their heads down. Having had lots of practice.

Much more troubling is that one of Labour’s top financial advisors announced Labour was in trouble, and also laying the problem at Goff’s door.

This, if nothing else, should have galvanised the party but instead, it seems to have made the internal blocs into even more isolated silos struggling to maintain their nebulous positions in a Labour Party that, to all intents and purposes, is dissolving into an amorphous blob.

But this stupidity has continued for so long, Labour has pretty much guaranteed that a party that has reneged on every single promise it has made can nevertheless easily coast back into power. (Yes, that’s National.) Labour had a platform in February, but let it go …. ensuring that from now, National literally needs do nothing to stay in power. It doesn’t need policies, it doesn’t need to make progress, and it doesn’t need to stop cutting benefits while pumping money into financial disasters, even despite the fact some are clearly of its own making.

Because financial disasters are presided over by New Zealanders National does understand. Rich white people.

For it’s plain to see: National will put money after money, but keep cutting it for the poor and workers while making their lives harder in every way possible: instant dismissals, tougher sick leave and growing constraints on opportunity and education.

The stupidity of all this is mind boggling. It’s what you’d expect from a Third World country – but hey, that’s what we’re rapidly becoming. It’s so obvious that New Zealand is failing that our Finance Minister is even touting NZ’s low wages as if it’s a good point; a feature that’s making us competitive. This is ignoring the fact National promised to solve the wage gap (now 30%) with Australia.

Hah.

There is more than one stupidity at work, of course. While Goff flounders from one unseemly crisis to the next, looking ever more ineffectual, the New Zealand public still thinks Key is doing a good job. This is stupid because he patently is not. Yet just because he shows up on TV every five minutes, grinning his imbecilic grin and mangling his way through even the most innocuous of sentences, the New Zealand public still thinks he’s a good guy.

Good Lord!

Either way, I have no faith in either of them. I never had any in Key, but I did hope Goff had some vision. He clearly, by this juncture, does not. He also appears to listen to, then enact, only the most execrable advice.

Meanwhile, his party faffs about, lacking the cohesion to do anything, lacking the gumption to put an alternative forward, and now having left it far too late anyway.

This is a gift – to National, which does not need gifts.

Now National can literally forget Labour while it concentrates on the dissolution of the Maori Party and Act, thinking this will lead to National having a clear majority after the next election.

Meanwhile, Labour presides over its own shabby and unseemly public decline.

Fellow citizens, when National gets its second term, you will see what damage an unfettered National Party can really do.

For believe me, National has evil plans for you aplenty.

Meanwhile, we simply don’t have a left wing party.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: | 1 Comment
Lefter 35 ~ cuts that hurt

March 3, 2011 by emweb

Was anyone else embarrassed when John Key went on international TV asking for donations for the Christchurch quake? New Zealand is still one of the wealthier countries in the world, despite National’s mismanagement. We should not need any help. (Michelle A’Court raised this issue at a Grey Lynn Locally Left this week – good point.)

Everyone’s trying to find money to send to Christchurch. How far do you think NZ$6,800,000 or more would go to help the Christchurch quake disaster? A fair way, I hazard to guess. A good drop in the massive bucket required.

Oh, but wait – that’s the amount the National government just blew on 34 luxury, exclusive BMWs we don’t, in any conscience and for any reason, need.

But wait – Key is a ‘money expert’, right? This is why people feel safe with him at the helm, merrily squandering the nation’s revenue to please his cronies. This must have been a very wise business decision … yeah, right. Finger on the pulse Mr Key said: “I can’t take responsibility for a contract that was entered into by the previous Labour Government, that wasn’t bought to my attention or to my ministers attention”.

Key said “Internal Affairs did understand sensitivities about spending but felt they got a good deal.”

Demonstrably.

Do you feel sick? You should.

Meanwhile, it looks like this government is borrowing $1.5 billion a year to pay for the tax cuts that it put in place a few months ago.

Tax cuts for the rich.

Christchurch’s citizens can get $50 flights out to other NZ centres, and some arrive with just a few clothes. The Canterbury rich, meanwhile, are probably buggering off to Hawaii instead, thanks to their tax breaks. Tax that a prudent government would be collecting for … you know, acts of God and that. Like the Christchurch quake.

Stuff reported that a Treasury spokesman said new tax forecasts had yet to be finalised; “However, the loss of revenue could be in the order of $5 billion over the next four years,” he said.

This is mind bogglingly stupid by anyone’s reasoning.

Meanwhile, Key is trying to spread the responsibility, instead of making the hard choice of deleting those ill-advised tax cuts. He is considering involving other political parties in decisions about Christchurch as well as locals and the city council.

The decision should be: get rid of this farcical government!

His excuse is “I don’t think this is a political event, I think it’s actually a national event and we need to reflect that.”

I reflect that a prudent government would have had a surplus and wouldn’t need to go cap in hand to the world like Haiti (understandably) had to.

The richest New Zealanders have had three rounds of income tax cuts in two years. Meanwhile, the minimum wage got an insultingly tiny boost, welfare cuts are hurting, preschool care has been cut, and we’re all paying more for food, services (OK, everything) with the GST hike.

And we wonder why people in Christchurch are looting.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: | 1 Comment
Lefter 34 ~ Where’s the plan?

March 1, 2011 by emweb

The New Zealand left is crying out for a left wing party. A ‘NZ left wing’ might (however sadly) be a minority that’s no longer deemed worth courting, but the fact is, so-called ‘ordinary New Zealanders’ (who you might also characterise as ‘swing voters’) are crying out for a simple message they can believe in. A stance that’s easy to understand.

They’re getting nothing like this fromNational, although even the most myopic must be starting to perceive the harm Key’s party is doing to poorer New Zealanders.

Labour so far presents nothing like a clear statement either, though. If anything, at the moment it’s ‘National Lite’. National calls the shots, Labour reacts. Weakly. This is how Labour lost the last election, too.

And that should hurt. It hurts me.

Do I need to remind everyone that Labour was originally a left wing party that sought to protect and nurture workers in a world-beating, then much emulated, welfare state?

That New Zealand emerged from The Great Depression and then World War Two with considerable wealth and enviable lifestyles for the masses … thanks to Labour?

Does anyone think that’s what Labour is capable of now? Or even anything like it?

No. Actually, as I keep saying, we’re not even sure where Labour stands in the scheme of New Zealand things except as opposition to National.

This is not satisfactory. Not even remotely.

This is what I want – and I’m sure this is shared by many:

A plan to pull New Zealand out of recession, which could/should be linked to the next, which is —

A plan to rebuild Christchurch that’s good for Canterbury.

(And what’s good for Canterbury is good for New Zealand.)

A clear raft of policies to protect our vulnerable that doesn’t further alienate the middle class – in other words, working New Zealanders need to be able to buy in to it.

That’s much easier tan it sounds – you just make it patriotic

Doesn’t everyone want that?

And if it’s too early, even ghoulish, to talk about what Labour would do with Canterbury to help it rise above this devastating ‘act of God’, can’t Labour at least hint that it’s working on it, for goodness sake?

Simple, really.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments
Lefter 33 ~ The Battle Lines

February 3, 2011 by emweb

John Key has announced the election already, for November. That’s a long lead time for anyone – why did he do it?

I think, psychologically, it was to make people choose sides.

And the evidence is pretty compelling over which side to choose. While at the moment, it looks like Soft Left or Soft Right (yeah, the twain have virtually met), there’s evidence that both are morphing into their truer selves. The core of National, behind Prime Minister Key’s smirking anyway, is already much more right wing than he likes them to appear, but even Key’s façade is starting to slip.

The local building industry is running at 6 billion (billion!) dollars less than at its peak just a few years ago.

Meanwhile, unemployment rose to 6.8 per cent from 6.4 per cent in the three months to September, as the number of people in work fell and the number unemployed rose. In response, Key’s message was that New Zealanders ‘shouldn’t lose confidence’ in the job market despite an increase in the unemployment rate in the December quarter.

Does anyone actually have any confidence?

And should we lose confidence when families can’t afford to buy milk? Which would sound more reasonable if we were importing this from across the sea, but for goodness sake, it’s one of NZ’s primary products! Milk used to feel like a birthright. Now it’s a luxury. One generation from now, only New Zealand’s upper middle class and wealthy will have decent bones and teeth. Thanks, John Key.

So when are we supposed to lose confidence, exactly? When we notice more beggars in the street? It could be interesting to find out.

I reckon it’s when we admit we’re just serfs, and just tug the forelock when the wealthy swan by. Who needs votes anyway?

Key intimates that selling off New Zealand’s assets is ‘possible’ (read: probable.) His excuse is that NZ ‘mom and pop’ investors will buy them and it will be good for everyone.

So let’s get this straight: mom and pop New Zealanders can’t afford to build houses or even buy milk, and unemployment has grown, but you’re saying it is they who will buy NZ assets?

This confirms my summation all along that Key and co are all about class protection. It’s tribal, and their tribe has the wealth, and the greed to want more wealth at any price. There’s nothing remotely patriotic about these people. They just want more wealth. Cost irrelevant.

Of asset sales:

1/ It has proved disastrous wherever it’s been tried. Examples are legion, from all over the world – but what the hell, New Zealand pretty much pioneered this crap under Roger Douglas.

When the NZ government sold Telecom, rich people bought shares and took dividend payments while it was allowed to run down. Same with Air New Zealand.

2/ When they really become disasters, they had to be bought back to make them workable again. Governments are supposed to work for the people, remember? Governments are supposed to run things for the country.

People like Allan Gibb and other key ACTors may have benefited twice from all this asset to and fro, but ‘mom and pop’ New Zealanders paid twice for years of national services being run down purely for the double benefit of the wealthy. And besides, who will but NZ assets? Gibb and his henchmen. Wealthy New Zealanders who patently don’t care one jot for Key’s ‘mom and pop’ New Zealanders. Plus overseas investors who really have no stake in New Zealand’s people.

Labour claims, by the way, that the National government is borrowing 300 million a week just to cover the tax breaks it granted its rich cronies while screwing everyone else with the GST rise.

Nice one, Mr Key.

Meanwhile, the ‘left’: my contention remains – Labour is so ‘nice’ it has to lose an election to get rid of Goff.

This is bullshit, frankly. A party worth its salt would face up to the challenges facing the country, move Goff aside with whatever dignity is left him (and here I imagine him riding off into the distance on a motorbike) and remanifest itself as a left wing party willing to fight – genuinely fight – for the people of New Zealand. And nail that to its masthead.

I’ve met lots of people who think Goff’s a really great guy.

I would maybe believe them if he’d set up a succession strategy. But wait – the first inklings he has even considered this may be evidenced by the reshuffle, which puts some good keen people closer to the top. People with some ideas.

Meanwhile, is Hone Harawira destroying the Maori Party to strengthen the left?

I don’t think so. (Much as I’d like to think that the present disingenuous prop to National might dissolve, I would mourn the loss of a voice for Maori – but hey, I’m already there.) I think Harawira is just being true to his own principles and to his constituency. That’s laudable, in an MP. Perhaps the more so for its rarity.

Chris Trotter reckons there’s no legs to rumours that a new left wing party might coalesce around Harawira, Matt McCarten, Sue Bradford and others … I think he’s right, but since Chris Trotter has been considering running for Labour, on present evidence, how ‘left’ is that, these days? It may just mean Trotter has become a conservative, and that’s what he’s voicing.

(Hopefully, he’d disagree.)

Labour, you have ten months. We, thereafter, will most likely get another term of National which will clearly perpetrate right wing and destructive things on New Zealand. Meanwhile, Labour will finally get its house in order with Goff unceremoniously dumped as a result.

Thanks a lot. Labour, can’t you just bite the bullet and get your house in order now? With dignity? I mean hell, bright-eyed boy Shane Jones wore the porn-buying thing, and he’s already looking good again. That’s quite a feat. Goff has done nothing as daft or stupid as that. He’s just not going to win an election. But he could set up a better Labour Party. That would be quite a legacy.

National is giving Labour the ammunition it needs already. For the first time in a long time, it looks like the battle lines could be drawn clearly enough that Labour might actually have a shot at fighting an election on its own terms, instead of just reacting to National’s salvoes.

Unlike what Labour did in the last three.

It’s an opportunity.

Don’t squander it.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: Maori | 2 Comments
Lefter 32 ~ The Right, Honourable MP Harawira

January 20, 2011 by emweb

The right honourable Hone Harawira (‘right’ as in ‘correct’, and honourable above and beyond the call, unlike most New Zealand politicians) was 100% right, telling the truth in the Sunday Star Times (January 17th 2011). I agreed with every single word of ‘Crunch time for Maori grumbles’, and I read it with the hope that the Māori Party would take notice.

And the Māori Party did take notice – completely in the wrong way. Instead of taking what Harawira wrote as a perceptive tract written in good faith, the party took umbrage. Instead of accepting a clear manifesto to improve things, the Māori Party had a hissyfit – albeit one cloaked in ‘due process’, legal advice and its constitution, which seems to have been copy-and-pasted from the Pakeha parties.

So congratulations to the The Māori Party – you have become what you set out to counterbalance. A kow-towing minor party that suppresses dissent in its own party and constituency and which lets emotion rule politics in that time-honoured, petty Kiwi way that also infests our business class while the major parties rule. Key – and worse, Brownlee and co – must be capering with glee. In fact, Key has already been on the radio. Crowing, essentially.

Shame on you, Sharples and Turia, for supporting this ‘disciplinary’ motion. You are stifling dissent just like National and Act – and Labour’s the same, for that matter. In these parties, MPs are supposed to toe the party line whether they agree or not, voting with the majority.

What rubbish! I completely disagree with any structure that insists on obedience against personal better judgement and/or beliefs.

Why? Take it to its extreme, and you get the ‘I was just following orders’ excuse.

Which served the Nazis so well.

I’ve said it before and no doubt I will say it again – the Māori Party made a pact with the devil when it went into league with National. It’s losing its way. As Harawira wrote, between 2005-08 the Māori Party voted 30% with National and 70% against. In the period 2008-10, the Māori Party voted 60% with National and 40% against.

What does that tell you?

It’s quite possible the same criticisms would have come to have been levelled if the Māori Party had gone into league with Labour – and I would have been as critical. But the Māori Party and Labour would clearly have been a more natural fit, despite the stupid Foreshore and Seabed legislation.

But pettiness and small-minded stupidity ruled this out, too. (Probably, to be fair, this was on both sides.)

Even so, I am gobsmacked that Pita Sharples has descended to this level. I used to respect him.

Good on you, honourable Mr Harawira. You enjoy strong support in your own electorate and you totally deserve it. If you go out on your own, I hope you continue to enjoy strong support – but this is all helping in the dissolution of current Māori aims.

Shame!

Harawira has exposed his colleagues for what they have become, to the detriment of New Zealand.

Lackeys.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Pacific, Politics, Thought | Tags: Maori | 3 Comments
Lefter 31 ~ Stilicho, Vandals & the fall of empire

January 10, 2011 by emweb

As the Roman Empire fell apart, various saviours appeared and failed, were despatched or swept aside.

As Rome’s aspirations solidified and became moribund, its citizens increasingly engaged in faddish cults and idiotic public spectacles – and it became increasingly difficult to make its citizens fight in the legions.

So Rome increasingly engaged non-Roman citizens as soldiers, promising them bounty and, more valuably, citizenship at the end of a term of service.

This was considered worthwhile, even when that term ran to decades.

As things went on and the empire declined even more, and with many ex-soldiers now subjects in turn producing reluctant ‘Roman citizen’ offspring, Rome resorted, in some cases, to employing mercenaries.

Mercenaries may be very professional, but even an excellent pay packet is easier to walk away from than a set of firmly held beliefs once the going gets tough.

Humans can do wondrous things for sets of beliefs; humans also do terrible things for sets of beliefs.

Around 400AD – when Christianity was starting to really gain a hold – some of these offshoots of Rome’s legionary machinations started gaining office in the struggling Empire.

Flavius Stilicho was the son of a Vandal father (albeit one who had served as a cavalry officer for the Romans) and a Roman mother.

His father wasn’t a bloke who tagged walls and broke things for the hell of it – he was a member of a Germanic tribe which famously sacked Rome – hence our modern appropriation.

(There are other Dark Age Germanic tribal names that have survived into modern times – France is named after the Germanic Franks who took over what had been called ‘Gaul’; the French name for Germany, ‘l’Allemagne’, comes from the Allomanni tribe; the Burgundians were a German tribe resettled, after defeat, in a desolate valley area they turned into the famous wine region; England is named after the Angles – Angle-Land – and so on.)

Stilicho considered himself a Roman. It appears he was a Nicene Christian like his patron Theodosius I, who had declared Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Stilicho joined the Roman army, was sent as an envoy to the court of the Persian king Shapur III to negotiate a peace settlement, and was then promoted to comes stabuli and later to general (magister militum) in the Roman Army.

Theodosius was impressed with the half-Vandal. He married his adopted niece Serena to Stilicho.

By this time, the Roman Empire was assailed from all quarters and was soon to divided into eastern and western halves, with separate emperors, for easier ruling.

Stilicho helped raise the army that Theodosius led to victory at the Battle of the Frigidus.

An ally in that campaign was the Visigothic warlord Alaric, who commanded a substantial number of Gothic auxiliaries. The tribe of the Goths (another modern day appropriation for you) was divided into eastern (Ostro-) and western (Visi-) wings themselves.

Stilicho distinguished himself further, and Theodosius quite wisely saw him as a man worthy of responsibility for the future safety of the Empire. He appointed Stilicho guardian of his own son, Honorius.

Honorius succeeded Theodosius as emperor of the Western Empire after its division. Stilicho ended up de facto commander-in-chief of the Roman armies in the West and proved his abilities energetically.

But political manoeuvrings by agents of both imperial courts hindered him.

I could go on – suffice to say, this mixed-blood general was becoming the great hope of an assailed empire, but he would not be allowed to succeed. Romans resented his power, his intelligence – and his mixed blood.

Eventually, the resistance mounted to such an extent that someone who was perhaps Rome’s best chance at success was captured, tried without resistance – and decapitated.

Stilicho was such a believer in Rome that he followed orders and the will of the people, even against his own better judgement.

Now, if you don’t see the parallels with the US and Obama, I sure as hell do.

The gunning down of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is a first shot, if you’ll excuse so crass an allusion, from the kind of collective ignorance and stupidity that is conspiring to bring down Obama in a centuries-apart mirror to what brought down Stilicho.

And the world will be the worse for it.

Category Commentary, Government, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Religion, Thought | Tags: | No Comments

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