Tricky Customer: Why is Matthew Hooton accusing John Key’s government of lurching to the left?

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MATTHEW HOOTON is a very tricky customer. To hear him tell it, Bill English’s seventh Budget represents a decisive break with the policies of Roger and Ruth. Effectively, the end of the neoliberal settlement. It’s nonsense, of course. But that only makes me wonder why he’s saying it.

There are only two probable explanations for Matthew’s latest foray into the realms of make-believe. The first is that he actually believes what he is saying. The second is that he is saying it for effect.

To hear for himself just how silly he sounds, he has only to answer the following questions about Bill English’s Budget.

  1. Did the Budget foreshadow the repeal of the Reserve Bank Act?
  2. Did Bill English signal his government’s intention to resuscitate organised labour?
  3. Did he announce New Zealand’s imminent return to trade protectionism?
  4. Did he raise the top marginal rates of income tax?
  5. Did he abandon his goal of returning the Government’s accounts to surplus?

The answer to every one of these questions is, of course, a resounding “No.” There is absolutely no question of this National Government abandoning the neoliberal settlement of the past 30 years. For Matthew’s benefit, however, let us briefly enumerate the key features of that “broad policy consensus”:

  1. Price Stability.
  2. Labour Market Flexibility.
  3. An Open Competitive Economy.
  4. Broad-based, Low-Tax Structure.
  5. Government Surpluses and Debt Repayment.

To strengthen those key features, successive neoliberal governments (both National and Labour) have pursued at least one – sometimes all – of the following policy goals:

  1. The steady elimination of progressive taxation – to the advantage of the wealthy.
  2. Permanent downward pressure on both the size and scope of the public sector.
  3. Continued privatisation of state assets.
  4. Creating incentives for beneficiaries to move off benefits and into training and/or work.

The very most that Matthew could say, in terms of Bill English’s Budget moving away from the Neoliberal Settlement, is that his decision to increase some benefits by up to $25.00 per week (after 1 April 2016) represented a marginal reduction in the incentive to transit from welfare into work. That said, however, and given the fact that even that bastion of neoliberal rectitude, The Treasury, was prepared to acknowledge that the gap between benefits and wages had grown so wide that tens-of-thousands of children were suffering actual hardship, one can only wonder what Matthew would rather Bill English had done.

Should the Finance Minister simply have ignored all those children careless enough to have been born into poor families? Should the cumulative long-term effects of childhood poverty have been similarly disregarded by this present generation of politicians – leaving the butcher’s bill for all its entirely predictable social pathologies to be paid by the taxpayers of the future? Matthew doesn’t say.

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Let us, then, turn to the second probable explanation for Matthew’s curious obituary for the Neoliberal Settlement: that he is saying it for effect. What effect could that be?

The most likely effect which Matthew is striving to produce is the general public acceptance of his proposition that the National Party, under John Key and Bill English, has moved sharply to the left. So dramatic has this shift been, Matthew told Radio New Zealand–National’s Kathryn Ryan, that National “is well to the left of the Clark Government, and well to the left of the Greens.”

Now, why on earth would a radical conservative like Matthew want to persuade ordinary centrist voters that John Key was slowly-but-surely turning the National Party into a socialist outfit more radical than either Labour or the Greens? Let’s allow the man, himself, to answer the question. This is what he said to Kathryn Ryan on Monday, 24 May 2015:

“I think that [Labour is] in the most terrible trouble – perhaps in their history ….. Look, [these] are their choices: John Key is chasing them to the left, there is no doubt about that. As I said, Helen Clark didn’t do anything this radical. They have to accept what’s happening here. If they think that moving left is going to help them, then John Key is just going to chase them. So, I think they’re going to have to – and I don’t know how they’ll manage this – but they’re going to have to trump National to the right, somehow.”

Kathryn Ryan asks Matthew if he’s suggesting that Labour do what it did in the 1980s.

“Well, exactly! That was forced upon Labour, wasn’t it? When you had Muldoon going so far to the left, in that third term, in particular, the incoming Labour government had no alternative – because there was no position or place in the political spectrum for it.”

Stripped of all its fanciful historical analogies and preposterous ideological comparisons, Hooton’s analysis reduces down to this bleak electoral proposition.

National can only hope to continue in office by conceding more and more ideological ground to the Left. But, in terms of internal National Party politics, the scope for many more such concessions is rapidly narrowing. The only hope of holding the neoliberal line, therefore, is to persuade the Labour Party to embrace the very principles that National has already identified as electoral poison.

Why would Labour do that? – As opposed to endorsing, and then extending, the left-wing political gestures upon which National has pinned its hopes of re-election? What could possibly persuade Labour to refrain from forcing an electorally fatal split in National’s ranks, in order to adopt a suite of policies guaranteed to re-open the bitterest divisions within its own?

Sadly these are not rhetorical questions. Labour’s caucus already contains within its ranks a number of MPs to whom neoliberalism still presents itself as the solution – not the problem. Strengthen the hand of these individuals by orchestrating the same sort of media about-face that sank the National Government of Rob Muldoon; heap praise upon Andrew Little for having the courage to “think the unthinkable” (and let him know that he can expect strong media backing for silencing the Labour Left) and History could very easily be persuaded to repeat herself.

And if she does, then you can bet that Matthew Hooton’s PR firm will be writing her media releases.

 

25 COMMENTS

  1. It’s smoke and mirrors Chris and hide the pea under the walnut shell.

    Hooton pretends that the current oligarchs aren’t true Natsies because the ruling one-party state and its beloved leader are becoming socialists, communists and tree-huggers – (ironic cough).

    Joe public, looks up from his diet of Nanny Herald, Seven Sharp (Mike Hosking and his mirror and a vapid cheerleader next to him), Paul Henry Live (prescribing what we need to know and not know, liberally sprinkled with blue-tinged fairy dust) and thinks that Blue is Red and Black is White – a la George Orwell’s 1984 Doublethink

    http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

    “But in any case an elaborate mental training, undergone in childhood and grouping itself round the Newspeak words CRIMESTOP, BLACKWHITE, and DOUBLETHINK, makes him unwilling and unable to think too deeply on any subject whatever……. Big Brother is
    omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big
    Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need
    for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as DOUBLETHINK. ”

    Hooton is part of the Party machine and propaganda machine of National, no doubt about it, as are Henry, Hosking, Slater, Weldon and Christie. He’s a remora, but a different sub-species.

    • 1000% WINNIE,

      You are bang on there.
      Chris,

      What confuses the hell out of all us on the NatZ abused East Coast HB regions is that this NatZ Government is not opening our regions up to competition at all and this is what is killing our two east cost regions.

      Your point number three says;
      “An Open Competitive Economy”

      We all wished this was a true national Government but they are not promoting “an open Competitive Economy at all here.

      For instance we have the HB Regional Council tasked with providing both a clean environment & a secure land transport competition service for business of both the regions of Gisborne & HB by offering a proposal to pay to take over the rail service Kiwirail have mothballed since 2013.

      This Government wont help to bring about this Private public partnership to the party to get Kiwirail to play ball here, as you expect a Tory government to give blessings to????

      So our producers are now being strangled by a cartel road freight policy with rising transport cost which is killing our regions.

      Why are national doing this two our two east coast regions?

      Have you got any rational for their lack of “An Open Competitive Economy” policy potential here in our east coast forgotten provinces???

      We are all totally confused at National lack of PPP free market policy here.

  2. Great analysis Chris.

    Hoot’s is telling ‘moreporkies’ yet again. Akin to drinking his own kool-aid.

  3. Simple enough – English is clearly in trouble – failing to deliver surpluses and with no prospect of surpluses before 2019 (frankly never). The global environment is depressed and unlikely to rescue him.

    So the useful Mr Hooton is trying to produce with his mouth what English’s policy can’t deliver – results and improving public confidence.

    He ought to know better – but it is an encouraging sign of far-right desperation – when they sacrifice their credibility the end is well underway.

  4. Its an interesting generalization though not always does it happen that ideologies such as this neo liberalism flourish well before a major recession…or depression….but that when the proverbial shit hits the fan…

    A restless and increasingly volatile public force these govt hacks to go very silent, put on their thinking caps and arrive at the conclusion that the peasants are growing restless ,- and we’d better do some placating.

    So what follows is a period of concessions that actually mean nothing, usually – like this latest budget..offering something that at the outset looks ground breaking and generous but is nothing more than a sly , cynical move to shut up the critics.

    But we can see the writing is on the wall.

    And, …usually once the situation has drifted out of control through years of plundering the public purse…that govt is ousted. And often , but not always…a more Left wing govt with social policy that mimics public feeling arises.

    This Hooton outburst seems nothing more than the sort of thing a ‘ concern troll ‘ would do. Its a fabrication , a red herring ,….in short …a load of rubbish.

    What we are going to see in future is the growing disenchantment with Key and this Nat govt. The signs are already there.

    The trick is when it finally collapses , is to have successfully neutered the neo liberals in Labour.

    When that happens we will finally have cleared the last obstacle in achieving a more equitable and democratic process.

    It is then , however, that the hard work of reformation begins. This current lot will tumble. It is simply history. The damage done is the major problem , but as a public who finally says enough to this arrogance ,…any true centre Left govt may have an easier run at reformation ….

    Until then , expect more of this sort of insidious positioning by characters like Hooton.

  5. Did you happen to notice how Matty Dear began by preaching how the NATZIs out-shone themselves with CORPORATE welfare (i.e. private corporate, rather than the gubbamint corporate) – THEN proceeded to argue National was shifting left. Muldoon was also apparently ‘left’ on the basis of his subscribing to Keynsian principles supposedly – AS OPPOSED to his simply being a total control freak in all matters social and economic.

    I appreciate the left-right political axis descriptors are no longer really that valid (as the political compass people argue), but that appears to be something Matty Dear struggles with.
    It’s also a shame the Political Compass has got the vertical axis labels wrong too – in so much as the opposite of ‘authoritarian’ should really be ‘democratic’ rather than ‘libertarian’.

  6. Good grief, at my time of reading there are 5 comments and none of them are from Mathew himself! The last time they made a post about the man himself on The Standard he managed to scoop the 1st comment position, and a great many thereafter as well.

    I watched him debating people over definitions of poverty and other semantical nonsense and wondered what he was up to. He seemed to be spending a large part of his day indulging in pointless arguments trying to push quite absurd propositions.

    Was he using the experience to refine his attack lines? to find out what angles would produce an emotional response from lefties and which would floor them? He certainly was able to drag a heck of a lot of people into wasting their time debating with him and as a piece of trolling it was top notch but maybe he was just enjoying the debate – either way he’ll still have honed his ability to make the absurd sound reasonable.

    My response was (and still is) that if you’re making semantic arguments about the definition of poverty you are nothing other than an apologist for inequality. Anyone else would be discussing solutions – or heaven forbid actually doing something about the problem.

    It intrigues me too that he doesn’t waste much time on TDB, it’s probably harder to induce readers here into long and pointless debate – but at least we’re still talking about you Mathew 🙂

    • Yeah…in the same sort of way Vlad the Impaler was….ie: in a negative light…but really,…not that very often as no one here gives a shit about a thing he has to say anyway.

      • Not true @WK, from time to time I have the occasional lapse of judgment and consider the virtues of neoliberalism.
        Five minutes of Matthew Hooton on Nine to Noon puts me straight back on track from any errings – to that end, personally speaking, he performs a great service.

  7. Bear in mind that you are thinking along the lines of how a ‘normal’ person may think.
    Hooton , Key , English et el are anything but normal.
    They all show strong traits that on a psychologists graph would put them in well into the pathic zone .
    Without the empathy or embarrassment gene life is easy and you really are capable of anything without a backward glance.
    This is a really hard concept for most people to grasp with comments like, “surely not”, or “how could they do that ,” when pondering on what they have just witnessed.
    Hooton is a recidivist bullshit artist probably trained at the same Chicago School of Economics as Key.
    If not maybe he did the correspondence course.
    Money Traders are selected for their psychopathic personalities . Just look at the the level of corruption with the latest Barclays Bank (and others) currency trader revelations.
    Hooton , like Key gravitate to these ‘gravy train’, ‘ticket clipping’ vocations where easy money sticks to their grubby little fingers.
    It’s what get’s them out of bed in the morning. Without it their lives would be empty vessels!
    However, what I want to know is, who made the decision to allow him to inveigle his way onto National Radio and have my hard earned tax payer dollars pay him to talk crap !!!

    • Yes….who really DID make that decision?

      And is Hooten REALLY that good ?

      Is he a WASTE of the tax payer dollar?

      If so…perhaps we need to have an audit and a means test to determine if in fact this character is value for money from the taxpayers perspective.

  8. Its interesting that we can’t talk about poverty in new Zealand we can only talk about “child poverty” This devalues the concept, narrows the focus on the problem and denigrates the huge number of “grown-ups” who face poverty every day.
    Also can someone explain to me how Muldoon was a left wing socialist. I always thought he was a plain old fascist who became increasingly dictatorial

    • Considering that poverty impacts on children the hardest, I don’t think the term devalues it at all. Quite the opposite, I believe it to be a very apt description.

    • It is possible to be a left wing socialist and a fascist. In reality, Muldoon was neither, although perhaps he came close. Someone once said labelling Muldoon either was an insult to both socialists and fascists. I tend to agree.

    • He ran a centralised command economy based on national ownership of infrastructure and assets, coupled with a lot of government intervention.

  9. One Joseph Goebbels would look almost with envy upon one Matthew Hooton, who does not need to shout and scream, he is such a smart political manipulator and strategist, he achieves the same as Goebbels and other propaganda ministers did, with simply talking calmly, and repeating lies and BS incessantly and endlessly, in every opportunity he is given by any media. He plants thoughts into people’s minds, that he nurtures, with repetitive comments of the same kind, so they do grow and take a firm hold.

    It fits so well too, to label the PM John Key, raised in a STATE HOUSE, with “left leaning” tendencies. It is a smart tactic, and some will believe Hooters.

    I listened to Nine to Noon and the Political Commentators on Radio NZ today, and he is on there all the time. The stuff he commented was such bizarre nonsense, but even Kathryn Ryan was left flabbergasted or even doubting her own rationality.

    By shifting Key and Nats to the “left”, the supposed “left”, Hooton achieves the put to focus on the right, the extreme neoliberal, libertarian, Milton Friedman adoring right.

    On Radio Live today Rodney Hide equaled such audacity, calling himself a (libertarian) “anarchist”, who rather wants NO state at all.

    Now there seems to be a new strategy, by those preparing either Judith Collins or the young aspiring Minister that is tipped by some, the “smart” part Maori careerist sitting behind the PM, Simon Bridges, to take the helm after Key goes.

    The whole political landscape in NZ has shifted so far to the right, it is only not noticed by the majority in the populace, because the also very right of centre media we have now, has made the “right” the “normal”, yes the supposed “centre”.

    Now calling Key and his government “lurching to the left”, that prepares a further shift, to the right that will try to get rid of all remnants of significant state influence, to one day reduce the state to the night watchman, or something of that kind, and NO MORE.

    It is extremely worrying, the status quo, where Labour, Greens, and their leaders get attacked on a regular basis, get totally discredited, have personal aspects exposed and have them being made look incompetent, untrustworthy and stupid, by too many in our media. At the same time John Key and his ministers mostly get away with anything.

    We should all be very worried, about Hootons new spin, his new attempts, to lull the “sleepy hobbits” into thinking, Key is “left”. What the bloody hell will be his next trick up his sleeve?

    • So true.
      Every last word Mike.
      Hide is yet another who is allowed to espouse his simplistic rants unchecked.
      Remember the garbage he talked about showerheads.
      Remember he was the self appointed perk buster that got busted for rorting the system.
      Has he been relegated to the cant be trusted pile. The hall of shame.
      No he hasn’t. Instead there he is , polluting people’s minds with his parallel universe pontificating , because, apparently , like Banksy, he’s a real character.
      Yes N.Z has got major, major problems with who the media scrape together for comment and you can just tell how those from the left compromise their opinions and pull their punches because clearly they must feel that to really tell it how it is would result in a DC M slip being issued.
      And that is the beginning of the end !!

    • Very good mike it was an accurate assessment of NatZ next deceptive move to do, what nobody will believe they are capable of planning secretly next.

      Strange thing is with the budget plans coming out nobody there knew ahead of time of their plans that were also so secretive as the NSA so perhaps these policies are being hatched from afar?

  10. Wee Matty has His nose a little bent out of shape by the scrapping of the $1000 contribution by Government into an individuals Kiwisaver,

    As wee Matty told that ”we are not a Labour Party mouthpiece”, the Standard a while back, He enrolled both His kids in Kiwisaver not with the intention of using His own money to build their savings, simply to get the $1000 of free money,

    It doesn’t matter to the wee Matty’s of the world, and, there are lots of them, that by the time the kids start working and presumably begin to contribute to their personal kiwisavers that inflation will have decimated that $1000 of free money…

  11. I think Grant you just don’t like anyone from the right of the political spectrum having a platform for airing their point of view. In short you are all for freedom of speech so long as it is the sort of speech you approve of.

    • Hmmm.
      An interesting deduction which assumes the premise that we have exact, equal and fair media coverage for all sides of the political spectrum.
      And if that were true you would have a point… However, we don’t.
      Let’s just look at what we have got to listen to and watch at peak times.
      TV BREAKFAST SHOWS
      …TV3 Paul Henry. Tried (and failed) to win a seat for the National Party. Self confessed John Key groupie.
      …TV1 Rawdon Christie. Will say anything to please his right wing paymasters and keep his 6 figure salary.
      BREAKFAST RADIO… National Radio : Guyon Espiner. Well known National Party supporter and defender of right wing ideology.
      1ZB Mike Hosking: Self confessed John Key and National fanboy and hater of anything progressive.
      Leighton Smith Act Party supporter and defender of neo- liberal ideology.
      LATE AFTERNOONS : Larry Williams. Self confessed National Party Supporter .
      Radio Live mornings: Paul Henry yet again.
      : Sean Plunket. Well known National Party Supporter and defender of right wing ideology.

      Late afternoon. :Duncan Garner. Tries to have feet in both camps, but when push comes to shove stays on message for his National Party Paymaster who happens to be ex- head of the stock exchange and personal friend of John Key.
      EVENING TV: TV 1 7 Sharp: Mike Hosking yet again.
      TV3 Campbell Live : John Campbell . Proper investigative journalist. Not liked by Helen Clarke or John Key because he does his job properly. Soon to be made defunct .
      NZ HERALD :Main political Journalists :John Rougan. Wrote John Keys autobiography.
      ClaireTrevitt. Known for her right wing ideology.
      John Armstrong. Relentless John Key , National Party supporter.

      I could go on and on but I would be here all day.
      Please feel free to show me the balance!

      • Here’s a quote from Al Gore’s inconvenient truth that sums up Grant’s claims

        You know more than a hundred years ago, Upton Sinclair wrote this: “It’s difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.”

        No relation to Simon Upton, but hits the nail on the head about Judas broadcasters, spouting the party line for 30 pieces of silver.

  12. When are you left-wing leeches going to realise your agendas are rejected, as is your foul doctrine. Even bent Morgan polls shoot you scum down in flames.

  13. How significant Matthew Hooton is remains to be seen. In reality he is of less substance than he seems and serves the function of a right wing blogger and lobbyist TV commentator, who provides the illusion that the Nats are still neo liberal, much like Don Brash. If Hooton actually believes half his own writing he could be classified as a useful idiot.
    The reality is that by the end of Jenny Shipleys term NZ was a 24/7 with a party all night in the main centres. Shops and supermarkets in many significant cases remained open 24/7.All this is now almost entirely gone. In the 1990s the favoured policy as in Britain was it was cheaper to have people unemployed than in artificial work and huge numbers were transferred to the invalids benefit, just like Britain.
    The remnants of the neoliberal society finally died with the 2011 Earthquake and other events that year like the World Cup and the election of Celia Wade Brown. High Employment and the Paula offensive simply reflects that work in NZ is now about collective punishment and has nothing to do with productivity of either party.

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