Election 2014: For and Against

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election-polling-booth

With the general election tomorrow, we have had a very noisy campaign but little sign that the electorate wishes for a fundamental change of governmental direction. This reflects in part the fact that the economic cycle is close to its decadal peak, and reflects the fact that the Key government has been driven as much by pragmatism as by ideology.

Yet it is likely that the percentage of vote going to the smaller parties – a percentage that generally rises substantially as the undecided decide – will be even greater than usual. This reflects the perception that, to use the expression John Key applied to David Cunliffe, the leadership of both National and Labour have been “tricky” in their approaches to politics.

 

For

Although we don’t have a two-party system any more, we still tend to divide into camp left and camp right, and expect our government to be of one camp or the other. This is at odds with what happens in Germany, where the equivalent of grand National-Labour coalitions are not uncommon.

My tribal instincts have always been with Labour. Indeed my parents were, independently, solid supporters of the left. Yet Mum and Dad (both middle children) were each politically dissonant with respect to their parents and siblings. School teachers, they were in their twenties when they met (doing country service), and I think that independence of thought attracted them to each other.

Yet, despite those Labour instincts, in forty years of voting I’ve only voted Labour once (National twice). Under MMP, however, more often than not I have voted for Labour electoral candidates (and I expect to this time), but never for the Labour Party. Too often Labour is a party of many good people, but with bad policies; policies that do deceptively little for the people whose votes they rely on. In 1984, following the ousting of their A-team in favour of the fish and chip cabal, the chemistry on the hustings between Labour and the New Zealand Party should have served as a warning for what was to come. That year I voted Social Credit. Then 1987 became the one year I didn’t vote; I disliked every option equally. And living in one of the safest Labour electorates in the country (Island Bay) meant my vote was never going to matter.

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I don’t think a National-Labour coalition is viable at present; and the overt austerity of both parties chills me. (What eases my mind, however, is a degree of covert unausterity – otherwise known as pragmatism – within National.) Yet I do like the idea of a government that bridges the left and the right; yang and yin, if you will.

What I would like to see, for the next three years, is a National-Green-Maori coalition (or governing arrangement). I believe such an accommodation is possible, and without the Greens selling their soul. Yes, it would be like the present United Kingdom government; and the Liberal Democrats have been on the electoral skids. The Green Party would have to communicate the benefits of such a bridging arrangement better perhaps than the Maori Party has done in the past.

A National-Green-Maori government would be a change of government, even if there was no change of Prime Minister. I can see two scenarios where it might come about. The first scenario is that New Zealand First has the traditional balance of power between the left and the right. Conventional analysis would be that Winston Peters would thus be the kingmaker, and that the Greens would passively accept whatever Labour could negotiate for them; or the Greens would passively accept another three years in Opposition.

The Greens could circumvent that process by negotiating directly with National, undermining New Zealand First’s bargaining position. (Further, both myself, and I’m sure John Key, would feel that prospective Green Ministers – all experienced parliamentarians – will be much less likely to be incompetent in office than the inexperienced MPs that will come in on Winston’s list.)

A second option is that a National-Conservative-Act-United combination has enough votes (just) to form a government. Now let’s look at this situation from the point of view of Green voters. If the Greens could start talking with National, then we could be up for the following binary choice:

Choice 1: National-Conservative-Act-United

Choice 2: National-Green-Maori

If I was a Green voter (and I may be!) then I know that I would prefer Choice 2 to Choice 1.

National voters might be evenly split about these two options. But National’s leadership team might prefer Choice 2 to Choice 1. First, it would mean not having to include the Conservatives and Act in his government. Second, it would be a shift towards the centre, which I sense is the direction that Messrs Key, English and Joyce would favour. Most of the more ideological National stuff that the Greens couldn’t countenance has already been done.

There would be potential long-term benefits (as well as risks) for both National and Green. A pragmatic National-Green-Maori government gives John Key an opportunity to initiate a new phase of clean politics, and hence raise his party’s chance of success in 2017. And the Greens would come to be seen as a natural part of any future government, rather than being a party perpetually on the sidelines. Indeed I quite like the idea of future alternating (maybe every six years, on average) National-Green-Maori governments, and Labour-Green-Maori governments; a nice balance of change and continuity. Certainly I would like all our governments to be green.

One good policy that I would suggest of a National-Green-Maori government would be for the government to sell its shares in Mighty River Power and buy Genesis back into 100% public ownership. Genesis would then become the Kiwibank of the power industry.

Another policy that I believe both parties could subscribe to, would be the tax scale (option 3) that I suggested for National in an earlier posting. This three-step scale (top rate of 33%) is consistent with all of the tax principles that National stands for. Yet it gives a tax cut of $660 per annum to low-income workers, while giving nothing to persons earning more than $70,000. Jam today; that’s what low-income workers need. Not only would this alleviate child-poverty; it would also alleviate non-child poverty.

Note that the bridging principle, with a leftish party teaming up with a rightish party is not that novel. It is regularly used within large parties, with Cabinet positions being carefully allocated to both the left factions and the right factions of large established parties.

 

Against

As I have written in other recent blogs, and despite my tribal instincts, I want Labour to go back into Opposition, to rethink its economic policies. It needs to draw inspiration from the First Labour Government (NZ, not UK [see end of this post]), and its commitment in the late 1930s to the formation of the universal welfare state. It needs to drop its commitment to the ethics of thrift, paid work, and economic growth as ends in themselves. Labour needs to abandon its policy to create its crock pot of gold, now to be given the formal title of New Zealand Inc.

(Presently, NZ Inc. is a nice expression for the New Zealand economy taken as a whole; an expression that Russel Norman for example likes to use. It would certainly be sad if this useful concept were to be hijacked by a Labour administration to be used as a specific label for its money hoard.)

New Zealand already has a sovereign wealth fund; known as the Super Fund or the Cullen Fund. Quite rightly, the present government does not borrow to put money into it. Labour wants to run ongoing surpluses so that it can build a fund, ostensibly to buy back power companies, but in reality a fund with no real purpose; jam on the never-never, no jam today for needy New Zealanders.

Peter Lyons, writing in the NZ Herald (‘Is NZ’s prosperity real?’, 10 September), says:

Most of us have a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right. Even those on middle incomes are finding it harder to pay the bills. Often the blame is laid on those further down the income ladder for being bludgers.

While I do not agree with all of Lyons’ analysis, I think this point is especially pertinent. New Zealand is a lucky country with a lucky economy. While we are a prosperous country, now, we have far too many people who are not prosperous; and too many of the rest of us content ourselves that poverty is self-inflicted, or is inflicted on those in the middle by the indolence of the poor.

There are simple things we can do now to share our prosperity. But Labour just says work more, and save more through their compulsory savings scheme. Labour offers a capital gains tax which is unlikely to make rental housing affordable, but is intended to draw off revenue into New Zealand Inc.

Sovereign wealth funds are good for countries like Norway and Saudi Arabia that earn huge profits from a finite resource. (At a personal level; professional rugby players likewise need to build up a pot of money to ensure their well-being after a very finite career.) But even then, sovereign wealth funds, along with private hedge funds and the like, serve as the principal destabilising force in the global economy. The fund managers buy and sell financial assets for both interest and capital gain. These pots of gold represent a huge part of the world’s itinerant money; money that creates real estate, sharemarket and commodity price bubbles in its restless quest for even more money.

I will finish with two quotes from John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 essay, ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’:

The “purposive” man is always trying to secure a spurious and delusive immortality for his acts by pushing his interest in them forward into time. … For him jam is not jam unless it is a case of jam tomorrow and never jam today. Thus by pushing his jam always forward into the future, he strives to secure for his act of boiling it an immortality. [Keynes]

The miser always strives to add to his pot of gold, as an end in itself. He or she cannot endure it to be spent. But when conditions change sufficiently to move a miser, each miser seeks to liquidate his fund at the same time, only to find that it becomes as worthless as an Icelandic bank deposit in 2008.

The love of money as a possession – as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life – will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. [Keynes]

At the time Keynes published his essay (1930), the British Chancellor of the Exchequer was a very “purposive” man indeed. Philip Snowden was UK Labour’s first finance minister, an austere socialist; he held to a rigid policy of ‘sound money’ and balanced budgets, as Britain rapidly slid into its worst ever financial crisis. This Snowden is not a good role model for the left in New Zealand.

10 COMMENTS

  1. Some good points here! If the Greens could push their environmental and transport policies onto a National govt., I’d be okay with it.

    But there’s really something rotten in just about all of National’s current ministers. They are breeding a culture of nastiness that I just can’t look past…

    • Indeed the TPPA would break this theorised alliance. Luckily for the theory it doesn’t look like the TPPA will happen any time soon.

  2. I’m sick of this talk about “growing the pie” “growing the economy”

    FFS.

    It’s grown enough already. We need to be looking at how best to “distribute the pie” and “benefit from the economy”

    Growth only benefits the few. Distribution, something that can only be done effectively at central government level, benefits the many.

    Until we stop talking about fantasy growth, and start talking about how best to use what we’ve already got, then inequality will only increase, poverty will not disappear, jobs will not magically be created and the neo liberal paradigm will continue – and what has that done for us since 1984?

    Nothing. Unless you’re a 1 percenter.

  3. I think there is a saying something like ” If you lie down with dogs you come up with fleas”. This would be the Greens if they went with such a corrupt mob as the current leading Nats. Look what has happened to the Maori Party.

    The future is Green or not at all. That change can’t be done within the confines of a right of centre government. Labour is also attempting to block the Green’s plans to Green NZ.

    Labour and National support the old order that has got to go if there is any hope for our children and grandchildren to have a decent life.

  4. Himsee said “Some good points here! If the Greens could push their environmental and transport policies onto a National govt., I’d be okay with it.”

    Himsee could have a good point, as Greens would assist us all moving forward with this issue of vital importance to us here.

    But our gut feeling is we would prefer the Labour/green/NZ First club as they all want better transport including rail freight.

    THE Citizen’s Environmental Advocacy Centre was established in 2000 as a non-political organisation to promote a sustainable, safe environment; preservation of environmentally-friendly rail being part of that.

    Labour MPs Paul Swain, Mark Goshe, Pete Hodgson and Michael Cullen met with us. Green Party co-leader Jeannette Fitzsimmons visited our area of concern along the HB Expressway, stating that it was the most dangerous highway in a residential area she had ever seen. We received three letters from Helen Clark. All these forged a way to reinstate rail as a major transport option, and reduce the freight task on our roads.

    From 2002, National MPs Anne Tolley and Chris Tremain visited the same location to inspect freight truck impacts but could not help.

    In 2006 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment released its report on the HB Expressway in Napier, stating 12 mitigation steps be taken including use of rail — bingo!

    In the past three years, 54 emails to the Prime Minister, Transport Minster and others remain unanswered. There has been no support or communication from the National-led Government. Not one of its coalition partners has supported rail to save the thousands living near truck routes who who will now suffer an early death from noise, vibration and air pollution. We are alone in this bid to save the people and environment.

    National is aggressively capturing truck revenues, rather than caring for public health and environmental issues.

    A 2003 news article stated that pollution near the HB Expressway in Napier regularly exceeds health guidelines, and would be having an adverse effect on people living nearby.

    Doctors and public health reports confirm the potential dangers and call for action to reduce the pollution, especially with heavy traffic forecast to increase. The highest reading was 133 micrograms, nearly three times the guideline. Niwa scientist Gavin Fisher said exposure to concentrations even below the guideline can have serious effects. The guideline was regarded as an “acceptable risk” level, not a totally safe level.

    Analysis by Water Care Services showed five of 12 days monitored from May to October 2002 had pollution, in the form of small particles, that exceeded the ministry guideline of 50mcg per cubic metre for a 24-hour period. Scientist Judy Warren said the particulates, “will be creating an adverse effect on members of the public who live and work in the area”.

    “The air quality at this site is unacceptable by national and international standards. Steps should be taken to improve the air quality,” she said. Noise-level readings reached 73.5 decibels average background noise levels (the maximum is 63).

    We asked National’s Napier candidate Wayne Walford to meet us at the HB Expressway urban location. He declined, saying what we have with truck gridlock in urban areas is “an urban myth”.

    This should give you a clear choice of who to vote for this election, as rail will not be around next election if current trends continue. NZ First, the Green Party and Labour have all pledged to fix our rail and improve the services.

  5. A quite wonderful outcome of a Green National alliance is that Key gets sent packing and National descends into a squabbling mess leaving the Greens looking as the stable element in government.

    That would really change how the country views it’s political environment

  6. Some interesting points here but “at the end of the day” I just don’t believe Key is fit to govern. Too many lies, too little respect for NZ as an independent country.

    • I agree. The suggestions by Keith Rankin ignore the fact that the Greens would have to align themselves with one of the most corrupt National Governments ever. Why should they want to take the risks?

  7. FJK BE GONE!!!

    Vote left for the CHANGE.

    Any vote for Winnie is a wasted vote. He slithers from post to post – cannot be trusted.

    GREENS/Labour/IMP.
    This would work, because they will all keep each other in line – for the good of the people of NZ, rather than for the US and all the international spying and fearmongering crew that are cronies of our current tits-on-a-bull govt.

    Opinion.

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