Peter Dunne and Ross Robertson – the smug and the useless

9
13

peter_dunne_51a5547d03
RossRobertson-Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

 

 

Two of our longest serving MPs should be out of parliament by the next election. Neither will be lamented.

New Zealand doesn’t do spectacular in politics so it’s ironic that Peter Dunne’s unexpected demise in his 29th year in parliament has been so impressive. Like a dud firework quietly fizzing away he suddenly exploded with a startling flash and with any luck he’ll be gone forever in a whiff of charred morality.

He’s being referred to as a great survivor but is better described as an unprincipled opportunist – a political chameleon. Starting with neo-liberal Labour in 1984 he has changed shades numerous times in the search for a comfortable place to park his political bum. Most obviously he has worked for the upper middle class, promoting such things as income splitting for couples to try and wrest a bit more economic advantage for the already comfortable constituents of his electorate.

I rarely drink but if I’d had a bottle of bubbly in the fridge I’d have probably opened it to celebrate his downfall on the strength of his support for asset sales alone.

On the other hand the unspectacular Ross Robertson, Labour MP for Manukau East, will leave parliament as quietly as he has done his 27 years of parliamentary service. By this I mean he has served parliament rather than his electorate.

Despite some occasional boundary changes he has nominally represented the working class areas of Otara and Papatoetoe but he’s been missing in action for close to three decades. He will argue he’s been a strong local MP with huge parliamentary majorities each election but this is a Labour vote which has been taken for granted.

Throughout his time as MP his electorate has suffered through unprecedented attacks on New Zealand’s lowest income families. Robertson has been a silent witness to such things as high unemployment, emerging health crises and degraded housing while the parasites on poverty – unregulated loan sharks, fast food joints, pokies and booze shops – have preyed on the most vulnerable. Has Robertson done anything about any of these things? If he has there’s no public record of it. In reality he has coasted through the years without leaving a ripple.

It’s to Labour’s shame that they allowed this MP to continue in a safe seat without challenge for so long. In reality it suited them to have Robertson keep this seat warm without making ripples because Labour’s neo-liberal policies held no prospect for real change and the party preferred to keep the electorate quiet with the stifling muzzle of low expectations.

Robertson will leave with his fat parliamentary pension while most of his electorate struggles to maintain dignity and self-respect under enormous economic and social disadvantage.

One could argue in Dunne’s case that he has represented his upper middle-class constituency faithfully. In Robertson’s case there is no record of any representation – unless it’s as patron to the many local sports clubs which appears to be his only claim to fame.

His departure opens an important opportunity for the electorate.

9 COMMENTS

  1. South Auckland political representation…. Hooking the megaphone up to the car cigarette lighter, sign writing the car for 2 months out of every three years.

    Get elected, find your political mould, then fabricate a facad of doing the public good, for your own benifit, all while insulating your conscience from the people. How else could someone stay in office, knowing the injustice & accentuated innequalities that occur in south? Mr Robertson would do well to take stock of the statistics of his electorate over his tenure, he might just apologise?

    You might be able to get more to vote, by getting loud & pretending to party; some choose to get angry. But what would be the point, without facilitating their participation in our governance? Honestly WTF kind of democracy can exist without participation?

    Our decision makers are far to detached from reality, it’s a coping mechanism.

  2. Dunne has been reviled in my circles ever since his deal with the Clark government finished off any chance of long overdue drug law reform in that term. Arguably, Dunne single-handedly condemned a number of my friends to spend time in prison, for nothing more than selling a bit of cannabis to other friends. When I ran against him for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party in 2008, I saw a streamlined political operator who talked up the many contributions he’d made to the local electorate (like supporting the Transmission Gully motorway project), said nothing about his joke “party” or its policies, and pointedly refused to discuss the cannabis issue. In 20122 ALCP activists dogged him with a “Flush the Dunney” campaign.

    If he does crash and burn in 2014, there will likely be as many people sparking a joint in celebration, as pouring a glass of bubbles 😉

  3. Dunne is just a slimy opportunist like most of them, but Robertson is symptomatic of something much worse. Labour has a history of lip service to safe seats, by putting in a time server. They take the votes for granted and only really try when they’re after the better off swing voter. They use their voters in safe seats to be able to have numbers for stuff like Rogernomics, privatisations, and terrorism laws.

    I would love to see Mana and Greens develop more of a collaboration to get some of these seats off Labour. Let Shearer chase the strumming and surfing mid-life crisis vote and give working class electorates a real choice. It must be possible. It has to be.

  4. Ironically, Ross Robertson has held his seat with thumping majorities, and every one knows that the large South Auckland turnout was key in ’05. Much as I wish Robertson was more useful than he is, he would appear to be really fucking good at appealing to the folks in Manukau East (all 19,399 of them), and a lot more attractive to them than John Minto, who could barely scrape 500 votes.

    Maybe there’s room for introspection here, rather than a slightly toys-out-of-cot complaint that the world just isn’t good enough for you?

  5. John Minto quoted as above:

    “He’s being referred to as a great survivor but is better described as an unprincipled opportunist – a political chameleon. Starting with neo-liberal Labour in 1984 he has changed shades numerous times in the search for a comfortable place to park his political bum. Most obviously he has worked for the upper middle class, promoting such things as income splitting for couples to try and wrest a bit more economic advantage for the already comfortable constituents of his electorate.”

    Delightfully described this is, I must say. That is so fitting and true, I fully agree. Dunne voted for assets sales, the most radical and ruthless welfare reforms to come into effect from the middle of next month, and for many other law changes, that this National led government introduced.

    Yes, I did celebrate his resignation and will celebrate when he will hopefully resign as MP also, very soon, as I expect him to. He will be facing a barrage of pressure, of challenges and question, by opposition members in Parliament, and the media. He will be hounded over coming days and weeks, and he will not handle it. So once can start the count down, and then we have at least a by-election, if not an early general election.

    What worries me most is, that Labour is not prepared for it, especially not with the present leader or much of the front bench. It will likely be to National’s advantage to have an early election, and I fear they may just get enough seats to govern alone. So after a wasted year last year, half way through this year with hardly any major policy announcements, and with the same lame leader, it looks grim for Labour and especially for those amongst us so desperate for a change of government.

    Ross Robertson is also described appropriately here, he did a rather good job as fill in speaker in the House, but otherwise one never read or heard anything about the man. I pity the people in his electorate, who may not have had much of a guy stand up for them.

    There will be others going too, so the new Parliament will bring some changes, I can only hope some for the betterment of representation, but I am very cautious re that, really.

    That damned “sickness benefit roof-painter” story still sticks in my mind, and I have some terrible feelings in my gut re the man that spent months of media training to string a few more words together.

    At least there are a few other options. Bring it on, Key’s days are also numbered now.

Comments are closed.