Bitterness, Anger and Deep, Deep Division: Labour prepares for its 97th Annual Conference

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HOW APPROPRIATE! The NZ Labour Party’s 97th Annual Conference is being held on a former air force base. From 1 – 3 November, 350-500 delegates representing the party’s branches, Labour Electorate Committees and affiliated trade unions will join the 34 members of Labour parliamentary caucus at the Air Force Museum in Christchurch.

 

The Air Force Museum is located on what used to be the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s base at Wigram. The military setting is apt because unless some means of restoring unity in Labour’s ranks is devised before the Conference convenes, it is likely to be marred by scenes of extraordinary bitterness, anger and deep, deep division.

 

The 2012 Conference, held in the Ellerslie Convention Centre in Auckland, came very close to open warfare. What saved the day for the Caucus and their supporters was – of all things! – the breathless conviction of the attending news media that New Lynn MP, David Cunliffe, was on the brink of launching a direct challenge to the leadership of David Shearer.

 

In the resulting confusion and concern, Shearer’s staffers began spreading the story that their boss was about to make a game-changing policy announcement, and that it was imperative the country be shown a united Labour Party rallying enthusiastically behind their new leader. This made-for-the-media spectacle was dutifully provided by conference delegates (ably assisted by a couple of hundred “cheerers” rounded up from the electorates of Shearer’s Auckland allies).

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But the call for unity went only one way. In the days that followed the 2012 Conference, the Labour Party rank-and-file (now safely returned to their electorates) were required to witness some of the ugliest party-political violence unleashed in New Zealand since the dark days of Rogernomics in the late-1980s. For the crime of refusing to swear undying loyalty to his leader, David Cunliffe was stripped of his shadow portfolios and driven to the back-benches. In vitriolic language, not heard since the Lange-Douglas showdown of 1988, the Party Whip, Chris Hipkins, publicly abused and defamed a fellow MP and Labour member. Though the party membership was appalled, neither Shearer, nor Labour’s president, Moira Coatsworth, offered the slightest public reproof.

 

Disgusted by the Caucus’s very public theatre of cruelty, rank-and-file members who had attended the Ellerslie Conference began to leak stories to journalists and bloggers about the scenes they had witnessed on or around the Conference floor. There were reports of a posse of MPs hunting down those who had “voted the wrong way” on the proposed changes to the party’s constitution – especially the new procedure for electing the party leader. Back in the electorates there was an effort to identify and punish dissidents for posting anonymously on unfriendly blogs. Overwhelmingly, the impression was one of a party organisation under direct and sustained attack by its own MPs.

 

The so-called “Man Ban” proposal to secure equal representation for women in Labour’s caucus, and its eventual repudiation by Shearer, revealed the alarming dimensions of the chasm that had opened up between the Labour Party and the Labour Caucus.

 

The constitutional amendment mandating the equal representation of men and women had not been debated at the Ellerslie Conference due to lack of time. It was, therefore, held over until the 2013 annual conference. Everybody understood this. The final draft of the amendment had been scrutinised and endorsed by the Party’s governing body, the NZ Council. Whatever else the so-called “Man Ban” may have been – it was NOT a surprise.

 

And yet, surprised, shocked, alarmed and outraged was what the Labour Caucus pretended to be. While the rank-and-file waited in loyal silence for the NZ Council to defend their right to amend the constitution as they saw fit; and the Conference’s right to determine its own agenda; Labour’s right-wing MPs went on a misogynist binge, pursued at every turn by a slavering Parliamentary Press Gallery eager to broadcast every sexist outburst. Shearer’s response to the whole media-driven event was to insist that the NZ Council withdraw the “Man Ban” amendment from the 2013 annual conference agenda.

 

Now, the blunt fact of the matter is that neither Shearer, nor the Caucus, had the slightest constitutional grounds for even formulating – let alone issuing – such a demand. And it is to the immense discredit of both Moira Coatsworth and her NZ Councillors that they did not inform them of that fact in the clearest possible terms. On the very best reading, the Party hierarchy’s capitulation bought Labour nothing more than a little time. On the worst, it will turn out to have been a declaration of war.

 

Because it is simply not credible to assume that, once assembled in the auditorium of Wigram’s Air Force Museum, Labour’s rank-and-file will not seek some sort of showdown with the Caucus. And why not? To many Labour members, Caucus comes across as an entity entirely alien to the broader labour movement. A collection of petulant egos, hell-bent on turning the annual conference into a rubber stamp for MPs over whom the party organisation no longer exercises even the slightest control.

 

 

AND, GIVEN THE AGENDA of the 97th Annual Conference, that simply will not do. This year’s conference must decide upon matters of considerably greater weight that the proposed gender equality rule. Up for discussion at Wigram is the whole, binding, Labour Party Platform. A document which, in its draft form, at least, is well to the left of the political comfort-zone of just about every member of the Labour Caucus.

 

The following Party Platform reference to equality has already caught the eye of David Farrar, the right-wing proprietor of the influential Kiwiblog:

 

Labour believes that social justice means that all people should have equal access to social, economic, cultural, political, and legal spheres regardless of wealth, gender, ethnicity, or social position. Labour says that no matter the circumstances of our birth, we are each accorded equal opportunity to achieve our full potential in life. We believe in more than just equal opportunities—we believe in equality of outcomes.

 

Farrar needs no prompting when it comes to pointing out the radicalism of this statement:

 

“People need to reflect on just how extreme this is … There is a philosophy that proposes equality of outcomes. It has been trialed in numerous countries, and failed in all of them. Without being melodramatic – it is communism.”

 

There is a great deal more radical rhetoric in the draft Labour Party Platform, including a direct and forceful repudiation of the whole Rogernomics experiment. Proof, if any was needed, that the rank-and-file of Labour remain as wedded to the fundamental socialist principles of their party as Harry Holland, Mickey Savage or Jack Lee.

 

The problem Shearer and his supporters face is how to prevent those socialist principles being transformed into policies they will be required – on pain of de-selection – to place before the electorate in 2014. With a handful of exceptions, the Labour Caucus is simply not prepared to campaign under quite so red a flag. The Party Platform, in it its present form, cannot, therefore, be endorsed by Conference. It must either be drastically revised, or voted down.

 

The Caucus, too, is on a collision course – in their case with the Party’s rank-and-file.

 

 

IF YOU NEED to defuse a potentially explosive situation, who better to turn to than a trade union official? Convinced that Labour simply cannot survive a full-scale confrontation between the Party and the Caucus, some of the wise old heads among the trade union affiliates are already attempting to cobble together some means of avoiding disaster in November.

 

What they are seeking is, in practical terms, a straightforward “unity conference”. Brushing aside the constitutional niceties, the various factions of the party must be persuaded to present an image of unity, harmony, and readiness to rule, to an electorate currently ill-disposed to accept any claim that Labour is in any way united, harmonious or capable of ruling anything – least of all themselves!

 

There are just two ways to achieve this degree of unity that are in any sense believable. Either, the Party must be persuaded to throw its support behind the current leader, David Shearer. Or, the Caucus must be persuaded to throw its support behind the Party’s favourite son, David Cunliffe (or, at the very least, someone whom Cunliffe is willing to endorse).

 

Neither of these are easy options. But people are willing to try.

 

There’s a rumour, currently being spread by Cameron Slater of the right-wing Whaleoil blog, that Helen Clark, during her recent visit, met with Shearer and assured him of her support. If this is true, it could make a real difference to the way Shearer is viewed by Labour’s rank-and-file. Clark is still deeply admired by Labour’s membership. An unstated (but still very real) appeal from Clark to rally behind the party leader might sway just enough conference delegates for those spoiling for a showdown with Shearer and the Caucus to decide to keep their swords inside their scabbards.

 

Alternatively, Shearer could make a great show of welcoming the Party’s constitutional and policy innovations and deliver a keynote speech which makes it clear to the world that Labour has returned to its roots and means to tackle National’s increasingly vicious neoliberal agenda head-on. Certainly, that would generate unity within the party. Quite what the electorate, let alone the news media, would make of such a radical declaration is much less certain. (Indeed, cynics might suggest that such a speech by Shearer would be difficult to hear for the noise of all the squadrons of pigs flying over the Air Force Museum!)

 

The other option, leadership change, would make it much easier for the public to believe that Labour had put the past (in the form of Mr Shearer) behind it. And, if Cunliffe emerged from the Party’s new Electoral College as the winner, there can be little doubt that the rank-and-file’s reception of him at Wigram would be as genuine as it was rapturous.

 

Whether his elevation would put an end to the factional strife within Labour’s caucus is much less obvious. The bad blood among Cunliffe’s colleagues is now poisonous enough to make even the characters from Game of Thrones blanch.

 

And, as with all things in nature, action begets reaction. Doing the rounds of the blogosphere is a very slickly produced 43 second video, supposedly authorized by “The Labour Rank and File”, demanding that the Party “Sack Shearer”. Tellingly, it is set to the music of Billy Bragg’s version of a stark old union ballad about loyalty and choice – Which Side are You On?

 

Clearly, disunity continues to be a great deal more pervasive in today’s Labour Party than the unity it so desperately needs. The 97th Annual Conference promises to be – if nothing else – memorable.

29 COMMENTS

  1. Oh shit…the annual train wreck is on the horizon. The Civilian should begin advertising for some extra writers. Captain Stumble-Face will be spending the next 2 months working on his speech. He is New Zealand’s Sarah Palin. Would be funny if I didn’t have to live here

  2. There’s a rumour, currently being spread by Cameron Slater of the right-wing Whaleoil blog, that Helen Clark, during her recent visit, met with Shearer and assured him of her support. If this is true…

    Oh FFS Chris…

    • There’s a rumour, currently being spread by Cameron Slater of the right-wing Whaleoil blog, that Helen Clark, during her recent visit, met with Shearer and assured him of her support.

      Over the weekend there was a memorial function celebrating the life of the Hon. Warren Freer QSO. It was held in his old electorate of Mt. Albert and both Helen Clark and David Shearer were present. There was the usual mix and mingle afterwards and no doubt Helen and David had a pleasant and very friendly chat.

      I smell the usual destructive and vindictive misinterpretation of an event from that manic individual, Cameron Slater.

  3. Why would anyone believe what Whaleblubber says? Clark openly chose Cunliffe when she resigned by tapping him (regally) on the shoulder after her speech and deftly acknowledging Goff’s legitimate claim at the same time.

  4. The Labour Party should be eviscerating Shon-Key and his posse of pond-scum.

    All I have heard lately, was some mild agreement with the “Govt.” regarding the Fonterra fiasco…

    How about a performance based, salary system for our representative’s?.

    How about a parliamentary system that votes on policy and not party?

    How come we are still entangled with a chain-dragging, quasi-FPP reality in WLG?

    Labour wake up – get a “Leader” who can string together a number of multi-syllabic words together in a sentence – without a cue-sheet or tele-prompter?

    I’ll give you a hint – try: oratory, rebuttal, raconteur, etc.

    How about a little diction, enunciation and projection while you’re at it?

    BTW – has anyone tapped Shearer’s electronic communication to find out how Shon-Key is covertly instructing him to perform so lamentably?

  5. Now here is how I see what’s going to happen. Coatsworth has 2 months to roll her sleeves up & lift her game or the first blood letting will be Moria  falling on her sword. Trotter your right, as the party president she was missing in action over the unconstitutional process that removed the gender equality vote. Shearer & his allies in caucus have opened him & themselves up for a revolt. Luck or karma? in reference to Key & National, is currently their saving grace. Shearer has 2 months in which to champion housing, economic stimulus, employment & every other issue National haven’t done or have fucked up. Or off to conference we go & it’s out with the old & tired, and in with the new. Cunliffe & Parker i’m picking will be the new crew. And there is going to be openings for academically bright women to replace the ‘we all know who’s.’ then it’s onwards & upwards to remove this corrupt regime.

    • “Cunliffe & Parker i’m picking will be the new crew…”

      This makes good sense, these two could take on Key, Joyce, Collins etc and represent Labour strongly, no doubt about it.

      However I suspect that this is not going to happen before election 2014. Shearer has so many obvious weaknesses while Cunliffe has so many obvious strengths, if the ABC crew were going to suck up their own ego’s and do the right thing for the broader Labour Party, they would have already done it.

  6. “HOW APPROPRIATE! The NZ Labour Party’s 97th Annual Conference is being held on a former air force base” – more appropriate that it’s being held in a “Museum”.

  7. “Equality of outcomes”.

    This is a storm in a teacup. Anyone who has studied moral or political philosophy knows what is meant.

    It’s just a term used by people who think fairness ought to be manifested in results rather than just procedures. Labour aren’t proposing that everyone be equally wealthy or have the same car – they are just proposing that material equality be assigned some positive weighting and be considered along with other principles held dear by modern social democrats. Respecting some of those other principles will require compromises on equality in practice, but compromises on material equality in practice is distinct from ignoring it altogether.

    After all, if you are a social democrat, you presumably believe that a society with less material inequality is preferable to one with more (ceterus paribus, of course). What self respecting left winger doesn’t believe that?

    Trying to explain this to the Neanderthals who post at Farrar’s blog is a hopeless task. They are to a man (and they are almost all men) incapable of understanding anything that isn’t consistent with the idea of Labour being some form of crypto-Stalinist enterprise.

  8. What a load of bullshit I wish so called supporters of the left would get on with the real task of getting rid of the most right wing anti worker undemocratic govt this country has ever seen. If you bloggers would keep ya bullshit comments to yourselves we might just be able to get rid of John Key and his nasty friends.

  9. If as much energy was put to the evisceration of Key et al
    As you put to the same for David Shearer then perhaps
    Labour would look a much more strategic option
    to enhance and promote NZ
    The energy of self emoliation eventually runs out but
    there isn’t much left!

  10. Sorry Chris, to me Labour are DEAD, none else, no matter how much you spend thinking of them and writing on them. I really wish it was different, but the last few weeks put the last nails in the coffin of a deceased corpse, that is my resume.

    Sad, really sad, depressing, but I have given up on a lost cause.

    Look for brighter shores and options perhaps.

  11. Hearing Hipkings speak so loudly on the value of work, jobs and so forth in yesterdays debate, and sounding like a soft kind of Nat Party MP, I have just been reminded, what this Labour Party now stands for, him and the Shearer brigades, supporting the same.

    Labour has not said anything about welfare, not since the radical, draconian reforms by this government were passed. The truth is, they are not much shy of National, and they are not that socially minded at all, and that is where Hipkins comes from. Ardern has been observed to make a similar shift to the right. Questions asked yesterday were not serious, superficial and hollow.

    She is like Hippie a career Labour politician, growing from the ranks, being groomed, but having lost all touch with the base. They are traitors to the working class, of the worst kind, they care none for you and me, that are sick, disabled and incapacitated for instance, they want us to face “workfare”, like in the UK, and they are not actually opposed to the welfare reforms the Nats forced in.

    I am totally unconvinced of the Labour Party. Any decent Labour minded person would abandon that lot and start a true Labour Party, yet again. Sad really but it is all dead and lost.

  12. The Labour party has been running on empty for far longer than expected, real fuel rather than fumes is needed in the tank. David Cunliffe (with beard) needs to be installed as leader at that conference and start ripping into Key and National/ACT/MP/Dunne. And engaging the non voters rather than denigrating them (e.g. the roof painter).

    I can imagine the usual suspects among the affiliates that are pushing some wall papering unity line. Unity at all costs, or on dubious grounds will be a flat tyre to continue the automotive theme.

    The conference is the time to change leaders. An opportunity will be lost if this does not occur a year out from the next scheduled election. The torys and neo libs in Labour play for keeps, it is beyond time for Labour members to do the same and take back their party.

  13. Hey Marc you can sit on the sideline abusing your team, or you can put on your boots and get amongst it. I choose the later and am a part of the team, you can only change the culture from within. You need to wake up & realise National & their cronies are heading out the door, a third term National Government simply won’t get the numbers in 2014. You think another 750,000 are not going to vote in 2014? They’ll come out in the hundreds of thousands, if only to vote these pricks in power out the door. So stop your grizzling and play your part, just like the rest of us grafters who really care.

    • Sometimes sticking with what you know is the worst possible action. This is one of those times.

    • Good luck, BERTIE!

      “I choose the later and am a part of the team, you can only change the culture from within.”

      I have been waiting for that culture change now since Shearer was selected to follow Goff. Now, where is it then? It has so far only surfaced now and then, but not displaying much substance.

  14. Definitely a view from the sideline. But if any current Labour leader can’t achieve more than guaranteed voter support that Labour will always get, what’s to be lost by trying someone new? Sooner or later that rational will force a leadership change.

  15. I’m a boomer, and a longtime Labour voter, but not at the next election, unless there’s radical change in the Party and the policy platform it offers to voters. It needs to return to its roots: nothing else will do.

    The last straw for me was the mishandling of the mischaracterised “man ban”. I was infuriated by it: how could the caucus and the party leadership have been so bloody pusillanimous in their response to publicity about it? This is a proposal with empirical evidence to support it: what on earth were they doing, letting the whale and other right-wingers set the tone of the debate? Grrr!

    Labour will get my vote again when it shows some courage. It needs to change the leader for someone who both looks and sounds – and acts! – like a leader. Cunliffe is my choice, with Parker for deputy.

    Then it needs to radically differentiate from National with regard to policy. Enough with the beneficiary-bashing already! And for crissakes make an unequivocal stand in support of gender equality. Stare down the right-wingers and the cohort of male voters who oppose it: the evidence is on the side of such a policy.

  16. When are we going to abolish political parties, and reform the way we form laws to guide the country? Vote for people who can, have, do, and will – not ‘parties’.

    Parliament isn’t even ‘good theatre’, and the actors are mostly hacks or walk-ons.

    Why not three or four years of predominantly ‘progressives’ to make advances? Then the same of conservatives to consolidate, test and revise?

    And at least require aspirants to governing to have pertinent qualifications and experiences. (No smarmy smarty shouty people need apply.)

    • When are we going to abolish political parties, and reform the way we form laws to guide the country?

      That’s impossible to achieve for a couple of reasons:
      1.) People are sociable animals and tend to congregate and associate with people who are like them
      2.) Being a politician is a full time job and, unless they’re in parliament, it’s unpaid. This means that they need a large support base that supports the few who are working full time (Labour seems to have forgotten this)

      What we need is the people voting on the policies and not just the politicians.

  17. “People need to reflect on just how extreme this is … There is a philosophy that proposes equality of outcomes. It has been trialed in numerous countries, and failed in all of them. Without being melodramatic – it is communism.”

    If Farrar is parroting that line, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is, then he really needs to get a clue. Communism hasn’t been trialed anywhere. Top down dictatorships similar to the average corporation have been trialed and they failed as can be expected but not communism. The heart of communism is participatory democracy and I know of no country that has tried such. There are a few highly successful businesses run upon such lines though – the cooperatives. They make collective decisions and pay well above minimum wage to all their workers but I doubt if Farrar or others of his ilk like them due to the fact that a few people don’t get paid well into the millions for work that anyone could do.

    The failure is top down hierarchies – Capitalism.

  18. I don’t disagree with much of what you say here, Chris. However you are wrong about Moira Coatesworth. Without her bold leadership we would not have had the Organisational Review that resulted in the changes brought in at last year’s Labour Party Conference — the Party membership and affiliates having the majority say in who is our leader (subject to Caucus triggering a contest), and the Policy Platform developed by Party members binding the Caucus.
    The Selection Working Party to achieve greater representation of women is still working its way through internal Party processes, and there is little disagreement about achieving 45% and 50% women MPs by 2014 and 2017 respectively. It’s just about how we do that.
    Moira’s consensus style of politics is not played out through the media as the changes we are seeking in our Party are internal matters, to be debated at branch meetings, regional conferences and then the National Conference in November.
    It is unfortunate that some members of Caucus do not respect the members’ right to determine their Party’s processes. But ultimately it is the Party that decides who gets a shot at being in the Caucus through electorate and List selections!

  19. It is great to see some debate about issues;however at the moment it’s rearranging deckchairs on the titanic..
    We need new ideas, new issues,and more input from ‘ordainary’ NZ ers..none of which are currently visible.
    Until a genuine alternative raises the flag, it’s a case of voting the bastards out, rather that voting anyone in.
    Remeber George Pattons line ‘There is no such thing as an insurmountable problem…only an insurmountable opportunity’….

    • I agree John, and am in the process of setting this up! Simon Says I need ALOT of help to do this however, which makes it a tedious task at best, and this average New Zealander also helps support a family, so my time is limited due to financial obligations (like the av Joe). Website up soon. You see the obstacles here right?

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