“Old Lefties” – WTF! Simon Wilson hosts “Table Talk” at the Ika Seafood Bar and Grill

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“LABOUR – WTF?” The question said it all. And the packed-out restaurant confirmed its aptness. Laila Harré has good instincts for the mood of the Auckland Left, and “WTF?” sums up its assessment of the current state of the Labour Party with earthy directness.

Less adroit, perhaps, was her decision to allow The Spinoff to co-sponsor the event. It’s hard to reconcile the Ika Seafood Bar and Grill’s skilful courting of Auckland’s progressives with The Spinoff’s vicious attack on one of the Left’s most respected representatives – Mike Lee. That the attack on Lee could so easily have resulted in (and was quite probably intended to secure) Bill Ralston’s election to the Auckland Council merely confirmed The Spinoff’s political incorrectness.

That the choice of Simon Wilson as host of the evening’s panel discussion’s proved equally unsuitable was not something for which the Ika team could be blamed. Wilson made himself so by persuading The Spinoff to post his “Look, there goes the Labour Party – sliding towards oblivion” on the same day as the Table-Talk event.

It is a very curious piece of writing. Provocative title aside, Wilson’s posting is mostly an attempt to isolate and ridicule left-wing critics of his beloved Unitary Plan. Though no names are mentioned, it is clear that the sort of people Wilson has in mind when he castigates these “old lefties”, are people like Mike Lee.

“Their dispute wasn’t really defined by age,” writes Wilson, “but it was about modernising the progressive cause. The old argument is that when you relax the rules around building and allow more density, you create conditions for ugly apartment blocks and slums that ruin the quality of life for everyone who has to live in or near them. There might be more homes but the big winners are the developers who make a killing.

“That sounds grand, principled, insightful and historically sound. It’s been true in the past, even the quite recent past. In fact, in relation to the UP, it’s sentimental nonsense.”

But is it? Auckland’s history offers very little justification for believing that market-led intensification will produce anything other than “ugly apartment blocks” and “developers who make a killing.” More importantly, Wilson offers nothing in the way of evidence that the Unitary Plan, as approved, will ensure that Auckland’s future does not resemble its past.

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What he does do, however, is set up a straw man. He implies that Mike Lee and his allies do not understand that “a compact city, with good quality affordable homes clustered densely around a comprehensive and efficient public transport system, is essential for any fast-growing city that wants to offer a decent quality of life to all its citizens.”

This is laughable. One of the reasons the tight little clique of lawyers, land-bankers, property developers, and roading contractors that has run Auckland for the past 150 years was so keen to get rid of Mike Lee was because, as Chairman of the Auckland Regional Council, he refused to extend Greater Auckland’s boundaries. Lee was arguing for a more compact city when Wilson was still collecting recipes for Cuisine magazine. His constant and highly successful advocacy for “a comprehensive and efficient public transportation system” – especially rail – also put Lee offside with Auckland’s powerful roading lobby.

Not so laughable is the fact that Wilson knows full well that Lee is but the latest in a long-line of left-wing politicians and planners who have fought for an Auckland capable of offering “a decent quality of life to all its citizens”.

In between his stints at Cuisine and Metro, Wilson was a jobbing editor for the Random House publishing group. One of the books he edited was my own No Left Turn, which included a chapter entitled “The Auckland That Never Was”. All of the elements making up what Wilson rather grandly calls “New Urbanism” feature in the plans for Auckland’s future development that were prepared for the First Labour Government by the Housing Division of the Ministry of Works back in the 1940s! That those extraordinarily progressive plans remained unfulfilled may be sheeted home to the same private sector interests who made their fortunes by turning Auckland into a cheap copy of Los Angeles, and who now propose to make themselves even richer by turning Auckland into a cheap copy of Singapore.

How someone in possession of this knowledge could, nevertheless, attempt to paint Mike Lee as someone guilty of failing “a bedrock test” for progressive urban planning, is utterly beyond me. But, then, I found it no less puzzling that the same man who could write: “one way or another, everything benefits the agents of capitalism. If you’re a progressive, or a social democrat, or a socialist, you have to suck that up”, was, somehow, able to begin last Wednesday’s (19/10/16) Table Talk discussion by quoting the late Helen Kelly’s emphatically anti-capitalist vision of the Labour Party.

Obviously, Wilson’s definition of “progressive”, “social democrat” and “socialist” is somewhat different from my own.

The rest of the evening was full of depressingly similar contradictions.

Only a very few minutes had expired before the Labour Party President, Nigel Haworth, took on the expression of a man who realises he would have been a lot wiser not to come. Keeping out of the public eye has been something of a fetish for Haworth, whose principal motivation in taking on Labour’s presidency appears to have been quieting down the party’s frequently restive rank-and-file. Having to admit that, had he been in Britain, he would not have voted for Jeremy Corbyn, was almost certainly something he would have preferred to keep under his hat.

Deborah Russell, Labour’s candidate for the Rangitikei electorate in 2014, told us she would have voted for Corbyn. That becoming a Corbynista would have put her offside with a fair swag of her putative caucus colleagues did not appear to occur to her. Which says a lot about her understanding of the party she defended with such enthusiasm throughout the night.

Chloe Swarbrick’s reputation for straight-talking was in no way diminished by her participation in the Table Talk panel. When asked what it would take to make her join the Labour Party, her quick-fire response, “an invitation”, raised eyebrows and hopes in almost equal measure.

Head-and-shoulders the most acute political thinker on the stage last Wednesday night was, however, Andrew Campbell. Formerly the Green Party leaders’ chief-of-staff, and now – impressively – communications director for the NZ Rugby Union, Campbell’s insights into the workings of contemporary New Zealand politics were refreshingly candid. That, in his estimation, “politics is a PR game” might be a bit depressing for “old lefties” like me, but only a fool would argue that, in New Zealand, in 2016, our politics is very much of anything else.

12 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks Chris. I am glad someone critiqued that article of Simon Wilson’s. It also appeared to me to be another attempt at Labour bashing. Not sure why he was invited to this event, but hope he was challenged on the night.

  2. Chris – This could not be more wrong!! Mike Lee has always been on the side of Land-bankers , Environment Lawyers and Planners. He now is stopping intensification in Ponsonby. He will go down in history as leaving a terrible legacy for the young wanting to buy a home.

    • Thanks honest, I too am sooooo concerned that Property mogul Michael Friedlander and QC Marie Dyhrberg and the many others who bought in heritage areas as speculators will now be able to bowl over their villa investments and make millions on selling them to developers. Luckily with the support of everyone in the know, the unitary plan has gone ahead and it is bonanza all around. The other day a historic art deco Takapuna house was bowled which is real progress as we have too much heritage in Auckland and the 1980’s and 1990’s mansions are back in style, we need to modernise and keep consumption up!

      With apartments in the CBD making up to 11 million dollars per apartment, I’ve had sleepless nights that the unitary plan is not able to provide enough profit for owners as well as depriving an offshore billionaire ghost house owners another property bolt hole/glass brick investment opportunity. Sky City is running out of high worth gamblers to boot and apparently China is cracking down on Chinese money launders. Think of poor John Key with his sizeable Parnell mansion, the land is now worth a lot more, in case of times of hardship.

      Prior to the unitary plan it was such a disgrace that old run down villas, were bringing down the tone with flat share occupancy and worse, boarding houses and back packers and the renting class being able to afford them. Worse too, are home occupiers who can’t afford to renovate and leave them as 3 bedroom and 1 bathroom properties, lowering property prices and allowing screaming babies into the area as neighbours in the sizeable gardens without even a pool! I mean get a dog for god sake or at least a nanny! Think of the neighbours!

      Luckily with a lot of money and a wonderful strategy, we secured the unitary plan. Now we just have to make the poor pay for transport so that we in Herne Bay and Ponsonby can keep them out of the city as much as possible so we don’t get the congestion from the unitary plan and immigration just the benefits to our property portfolios and shares.

  3. “Provocative title aside, Wilson’s posting is mostly an attempt to isolate and ridicule left-wing critics of his beloved Unitary Plan. Though no names are mentioned, it is clear that the sort of people Wilson has in mind when he castigates these “old lefties”, are people like Mike Lee.”

    I wonder how many dinners and perhaps drinkies Mr Wilson and The Spun Out of Control writers of that online publication have had with Mr Mark Todd from Ockham Holdings?

    I heard a Mr Grieve chat on RNZ a week or so ago, and admitting he had a few chats with Mr Todd, and was “very impressed” of the developer’s ideas or vision.

    I can really imagine how these urban liberals of their ilk rub shoulders with quasi neoliberal entrepreneurs, and have fancy discussions about how nice apartment blocks can look like.

    The fact that they hardly offer anything under half a million a piece, that is for ONE BEDROOM dwellings, that does not seem to worry them.

    I wonder how long the South Auckland shiftworker at 16 bucks an hour will have to work and save to get such “affordable” housing, while also paying overpriced rental costs and so forth, on the present market?

    Urban liberals like these “professionals” are the very types who left Labour and have even given up on the Greens, and in some numbers have gone to vote the tax cut promising Mr Key.

    As he now agreed to pay half of their passionately loved Inner City Rail Link, fast spinning out of former projected cost calculation territory, they all now seem to think John the Not So Holy Baptist Key is the brighter future they so desire for a compact Auckland.

    Let us wait and see, they will not be having to live in the slums of tomorrow, the Simon Wilsons et al.

  4. Yes , politics in N.Z 2016, 15 ,14 , 13 , 12 ,11 , 10, 9 has been a P.R game all right….Perennially Rigged.
    Only a fool would think otherwise !!
    Mike Lee is a clear thinking visionary. Therefore not suitable for N.Z.muddled malaise.
    Countries like Denmark would utilize his and your kind of thinking in a heart beat.
    Auckland has a lot of geographical limitations.
    It should not and cannot be allowed to become a big population city.
    It’s an utter shambles already and I see they are still allowing land to be sold and commercial buildings built within meters of the northern motorway , allowing no room for future transport systems to be developed.
    This is the same mistake made 50 years ago when suburbs were built backing directly onto motorways….no room for future transport infrastructure
    A lot of long time Aucklanders are now leaving….they can see the writing on the wall.
    Our new immigrants however are used to living in shambolic cities.
    The race to the bottom continues…..

  5. It is abundantly clear that the only thing that Auckland is likely to produce anytime soon, apart from an exodus of NZ-born residents, as opposed to “new” New Zealanders (are the 800 people who arrived this week “new” “new” New Zealanders?), is riots and ethnic violence. Auckland is rapidly approaching canary in the coal mine status, and I don’t think the canary is faring too well.

  6. Great post. It is clear that both the Spinoff and other hanger on’s are using the ‘left’ to pursue the National agenda. How can you stop it? Both right and left lobbyists rushed through unitary plan, brainchild of National and the way they got Salvation Army, Poverty groups, lobbyists like Generation Zero and Transport Blog to flood every aspect of the media debate to cheer for their unitary plan, drowned out any dissenting voice. Genius.

    The big bucks game in town in property and development and National needs that to continue. Without that, National’s sad legacy over the last 8 years will be revealed and it is clear that they needed to force through emergency undemocratic measures to keep the illusion of prosperity in place for the next election through the unitary plan.

    Where was affordability in the unitary plan through? Where was clean energy? It is a mockery for the Greens that their movement can be hijacked by a plan for a cycle lane (only for the rich inner city suburbs of course) and a PPP that taxes cyclists and walkers aka Sky path that goes to the North Shore (another rich suburb). The rest of Auckland will be charged for their commute so those working families who have been forced to live further out will pay for the vision of the inner city hipsters. Those living in richer areas like Herne bay will not be effected by this charging and can enjoy the new walking amenity and the richer youths can buy the 500,000 one bedroom Ockham apartment with $4000 body corp fees and $2000 rates and sneer at those families in Wellsford commuting in while punishing them for being poor and not being able to live closer in.

    Just like leaky building, Kiwi’s were told that speed and deregulation was essential. The unitary plan is the “resource consent’ phase of the deregulation that occurred in the building phase in the 1980’s.

    Laila Harré and other lefties that have integrity from their long history of left wing politics should be very careful about who they choose to hang out with. She was more on the money with her punt on technology being a driver for change with the Internet party.

    Technology is the third largest export in NZ now. To go green, the lefties need to look at this area for change, as this area will create jobs, will create better transport and will create ways to monitor the environment and polluters. They need something concrete for change and PR and spin is not cutting it with the voters who saw through the unitary plan for what it was, an undemocratic poorly designed leap for wealth by government and lobbyists that has succeeded. The left has backed the wrong horse and alienated voters yet again.

    The old left need to look past the wannabes that suck off and want power and seek to exclude. When do you ever see true public hero’s like Luther King, Mandela and Gandhi preach Fuck you NIMBY as part of their strategy.

  7. Great article Chris. I particularly liked “the same private sector interests who made their fortunes by turning Auckland into a cheap copy of Los Angeles, and who now propose to make themselves even richer by turning Auckland into a cheap copy of Singapore.”

    It’s high time people such as yourself woke up to the Spinoff’s hidden agenda – such thinly veiled attacks on Labour and any critic of the Unitary Plan are par for the course for groups such as this happy to take developer money and compromise the tiny shred of principles they have left.

    It’s clear the UP will do nothing for urban design or affordability. For Wilson to claim that things will be different now and we won’t repeat the abominations created in areas like Nelson Street is laughable.

  8. BTW, bought No Left Turn a few years ago and read it cover to cover. Great book, and I particularly enjoyed to chapter on Auckland that never was.

  9. From our lobbyists for AT – transport Blog…

    “No Councillors on AT Board, perhaps not a bad thing…

    Auckland Transport spends more than $1 billion a year running the city’s roads and public transport network, and for the last two terms councillors Christine Fletcher and Mike Lee have been paid directors on the agency’s board.

    Mr Goff said removing the councillors would improve accountability, but he would keep the roles open in case it did not work out.

    “The feedback I have to date is that [having councillors on the board] has not been the strongest form of accountability,” he said.

    As I understand it, some elected members were quite annoyed they weren’t told earlier by their colleagues who sit on the AT Board but those two board member simply weren’t allowed to tell them without breaching their board responsibilities. What’s the point of having them there if the rules prevent them from reporting back to council….”

    Simple way to improve transparency Phil .. have councillors reporting back to the council about what they are doing!!! Not rocket science! AT is not a dictatorship it’s a council controlled organisation, only not controlled by the council.. more gobbledygook from the corporates who give us third world transport at first world prices.

    http://transportblog.co.nz/2016/10/26/no-councillors-on-at-board-perhaps-not-a-bad-thing/

  10. So is this a full on conspiracy or is it a bunch of ideologues who think the unitary plan will save the world and they’ll do anything to push it through?

    • @ Aaron I think the unitary plan is known as ‘group think’ – from Wiki

      Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.

      Groupthink requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the “ingroup” produces an “illusion of invulnerability” (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the “ingroup” significantly overrates its own abilities in decision-making and significantly underrates the abilities of its opponents (the “outgroup”). Furthermore, groupthink can produce dehumanizing actions against the “outgroup”.

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