GUEST BLOG: Bryan Bruce – The times they are a- changing

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The times they are a- changing Bob Dylan once famously wrote and while we sometimes think things don’t seem to change they do… and the announcement of Labour’s new cabinet yesterday gave me pause to reflect on some of the huge changes that have happened in my life time so far.

If we go back just 40 years to 1980, the year our Prime Minister was born, there were no cellphones in our country, just 2 TV channels, the 1981 Springbok tour that divided our country was still a year away, it would be 7 years before Te Reo would be recognized as an official language and there was only one woman in the then ruling National Government – Marylyn Waring.

Certainly if I had predicted that one day New Zealand would have an unmarried mother as a Prime Minister and her Deputy would be an openly gay man no one would have believed me – such was the state of sexual discrimination in our country at that time.

Not all change has been progressive – the adoption of the politics and economics of selfishness introduced by Labour in 1984 and put on steroids by National is something we could well have done without, but overall as I write this post, I would have to say that the diversity of ethnicity, gender and inclusiveness demonstrated in the makeup of Labour’s new cabinet gives me hope the idea that we need to share the nation’s wealth more fairly might make a comeback.

Because not everything in the past was bad.

Bryan Bruce is one of NZs most respected documentary makers and public intellectuals who has tirelessly exposed NZs neoliberal economic settings as the main cause for social issues.

7 COMMENTS

  1. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But we have a reasonable expectation now that bricks will be laid every hour, unlike the last transformational and kind term. And let’s hope Messrs Faafoi and Sepuloni are up to laying their share without putting all the load on others.

  2. Nothing has changed and that’s the problem. Neo liberalism has not been dismantled and its the core problem for people and the planet. Its an unsustainable cult of greed and destruction in the name of the almighty dollar.

    Under Labour and National I can’t see it changing either.

  3. All those ties…?
    Could have been used for hangings. What a waste.
    What a worthless cadre of swine.
    I refuse to differentiate between the natzo’s and neoliberalism. It was the natzo’s who would have come up with the surprise attack against Labour and to prove my point, the arch skunk in the woodpile; roger douglas, is still to be found haunting ACT. roger douglas and derek quigly were ACT’s founders.
    derek quigly:
    Wikipedia:
    “Derek Francis Quigley QSO is a former New Zealand politician. He was a prominent member of the National Party during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and was known for his support of free market economics and trade liberalisation.” That was because he couldn’t believe his luck to be aboard the agrarian gravy train.
    So see? There you go.
    It was a Natzo plan I’ll stake my reputation as a ranter on it.
    They cleaned out AO/NZ of it’s resources and assets paid for by the farmer whom they still rort daily under a barrage of logical fallacies and discredited Labour in the process. ( Less than a dollar a kg for wool? I mean, c’mon…? ) One could call them evil geneses. Forty years ago who would have seen the internet coming to aid in hunting those stair bound traitors down.
    Again. Labour had nothing to do with the dawn and rise of neoliberalism. Labour was simply used as a means of infection. Give a dog a bad name and all that.

  4. Sounds like Natz strategy, lazy immigration is back under Labour! Covid or no Covid, slave fishers and overseas investors buying up more of NZ galore!

    Immigration: Labour manifesto signals significant changes to border, visa rules to ‘get more people in’
    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/11/immigration-labour-manifesto-signals-significant-changes-to-border-visa-rules-to-get-more-people-in.html

    Only question is, who is going to pay for the hospitals, schools, roads, public transport, waste water, water improvements, justice, prisons and housing needed in NZ?

    That public hospital operation now looks like 2050, same as climate change.

  5. What hasn’t changed is who runs this country and much of the Western world.
    We elect a govt and they pass laws and build up momentum until they are changed to the other side who go a different way. The pattern is fairly clear but not at all obvious to those who get embroiled in the detail.

    To give a clear example we need to look at the Witlam Labour Govt in Australia 1972-75. They implemented many socialist leaning policies aimed at peace and welfare of the Australian people as well as claiming back sovereignty of the country and rights of the Aboriginals whose land was stolen.
    Whitlam made many changes.

    “Establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China was under way by Wednesday, December 6, with talks in Paris; the Australian ambassador in Taiwan was recalled. Various measures against the illegal regime in Rhodesia were adopted; Australian-born communist journalist Wilfred Burchett was offered an Australian passport. The Afghanistan government was asked to bring to trial or release an Adelaide journalist jailed since early October.

    It was also announced that the remaining Australian troops in Vietnam would be withdrawn within three weeks; another announcement related to ratifying international conventions on nuclear arms, racial discrimination and labour.

    In addition to terminating national service, there was a range of activity on the domestic front. The equal pay case before the Arbitration Commission was reopened and Mary Gaudron was engaged as counsel for the Commonwealth. London-based lawyer Elizabeth Evatt was appointed to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission; sales tax on contraceptives was removed and steps were taken to have them included in the National Health Scheme list; proposals concerning assistance for colour TV receivers were referred to the Tariff Board; and there were several measures relating to land rights for Aborigines.”

    This all happened in the first week of govt. Whitlam went on to reorganise ministries and remove dead wood and provisions binding the country to positions the new ALP saw needed change to build a progressive march towards serving the people rather than the existing power hierarchy.

    All looked good and the people of Australia ( particularly the younger generation ) welcomed the break from stiffing constraints of the defeated coalition and rejoiced at the horizon of new hope.
    Enemies were gathering their forces.
    The opposition kept deferring the bill for money supply and the Governor General John Kerr and Whitlam discussed measures to overcome the blockage but Kerr “ambushed” Whitlam, dismissing him.

    After Kerr sacked Whitlam, the House of Representatives met in the afternoon. Kerr’s newly-appointed prime minister Malcolm Fraser was defeated in a “no confidence” motion.

    By the afternoon, the Senate passed supply, resolving the money supply crisis.
    Kerr’s recently released papers show he was seeking advice on using the “reserve powers” to dismiss Whitlam long before was previously revealed.

    This included consultations with Prince Charles, the Queen, and the Queen’s private secretary, Martin Charteris.

    The Palace offered to delay Kerr’s recall to help the governor-general sack Whitlam before Whitlam could sack him.

    The Palace didn’t counsel Kerr to consult with Whitlam, nor did it contact Whitlam. Kerr took this as a green light.

    Release of papers more recently show that there was collusion for some months between the Governor General and opposition to sack the Whitlam Govt, totally in opposition to the constitution.
    Later research reveals that the CIA and London were in discussions about the Whitlam Govt and may well have driven it. .

    Whitlam had tries to break free from London and the US to make Australia a sovereign entity. How dare he. The price was paid. Democracy was over ridden by the real powers behind the system.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence

    A salient passage
    “Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had “reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution”. Whitlam ended his nation’s colonial servility. He abolished royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported “zones of peace” and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

    Although not regarded as on the left of the Labor party, Whitlam was a maverick social democrat of principle, pride and propriety. He believed that a foreign power should not control his country’s resources and dictate its economic and foreign policies. He proposed to “buy back the farm”. In drafting the first Aboriginal lands rights legislation, his government raised the ghost of the greatest land grab in human history, Britain’s colonisation of Australia, and the question of who owned the island-continent’s vast natural wealth.”

    Whitlam was aiming at kicking the CIA out of Australia. The CIA had infiltrated widely in unions as well as setting up organisations similar to NED and running Pine Gap Spy Station.

    Well researched detail:
    https://www.crikey.com.au/2015/11/25/rundle-proving-the-cia-backed-conspiracy-that-brought-down-whitlam/

    The CIA and London have oversight and power to change the Govt in NZ as well so Ardern and company know the drill and so so does NACT who will be in closer communication with their masters.

    The NZ Govt is but the second level of power which can be over ridden at any time. We vote for holders of this deputy power only, and the real power is in the hands of more international players who hold us hostage. We are allowed the sham of democracy to manage details of operation but not any fundamental change that may influence wealth distribution.

    During the depression the USA /UK were too busy dealing with local control and avoiding rising of the masses, so NZ was able to sneak through a raft of socialist legislation, but the Labour movement had to push their leadership to move on much of the gains we enjoyed for many decades. Then neoliberalism and power of off shore wealth infiltrated Labour and continued with their ally National.

    The three tier structure in NZ is:
    The wealthy power brokers.
    The elected govt
    The voters being mainly workers who actually make the countries wealth.

    You will only see the bottom two layers.

    The same structure controls the UK, Canada, Australia, the USA and all the colonies and allied states.

    China has a very different 3 tier structure.

    The Central control of China is through The Politburo Standing Committee. It controls the Communist party and the military. The government has many tiers of administration and peoples representation.

    With a population of 1.3 billion people, direct elections of national leaders in China would likely be a task of Herculean proportions. That’s why Chinese election procedures for its highest leaders are instead based on an elaborate series of representative elections.

    The National People’s Congress, or NPC, is the supreme organ of state power in China. It is composed of deputies who are elected from various provinces, regions, and government bodies across the country. Each congress is elected for a five-year term. 

    China’s representative elections begin with a direct vote of the people in local and village elections operated by local election committees. In cities, the local elections are broken down by residential area or work units. Citizens 18 and older vote for their village and local people’s congresses, and those congresses, in turn, elect the representatives to provincial people’s congresses.

    The provincial congresses in China’s 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities directly ruled by the Central Government, special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao, and armed forces then elect the roughly 3,000 delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC).

    The National People’s Congress is empowered to elect China’s president, premier, vice president, and Chair of the Central Military Commission as well as the president of the Supreme People’s Court and the procurator-general of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
    It can also remove any of those from office.

    I have included a rough run down of the Chinese representative system to show how democracy works there and note the power of removal controlled by The People’s Congress.

    You may muse on which system is the most democratic or representative and able to control power at all levels which Western “Democracy” cannot do.

    A modified version of the Chinese approach may well suit NZ much better and we would have our Sovereignty to make independent decisions and policies.
    The US frigates would be at our door as we are very infiltrated with CIA in the parliamentary system.

  6. ” I would have to say that the diversity of ethnicity, gender and inclusiveness demonstrated in the makeup of Labour’s new cabinet gives me hope the idea that we need to share the nation’s wealth more fairly might make a comeback.”
    The fact is that in New Zealand over the past forty years increasing “diversity of ethnicity, gender and inclusiveness” has gone hand-in-hand with increasing diversity of wealth. So there is no reason to suppose that this “diversity of ethnicity, gender and inclusiveness” might encourage “the idea that we need to share the nation’s wealth more fairly” or that “an unmarried mother ..and .. an openly gay man” will be key to restoring the levels of social equality that prevailed in the days of the homophobic patriarchy.
    This “diversity of ethnicity, gender and inclusiveness” has been predicated on a neo-liberal ideology and hence acts to reinforce the neo-liberal tendency in the state and society. That is a problem for people such as yourself who want to retain the social side of neo-liberalism while dispensing with its economic aspect. It is not an insoluble problem, but you will have to think more deeply about things if you are to come up with any useful answers.

  7. John W
    By way of reference to the fate of Gough Whitlam in Australia, you make the valid point that the de jure British crown has sovereignty over the Realm of New Zealand, and that de facto the great powers of the Five Eyes determine the policies of the Realm, particularly in the area of foreign relations but also in domestic affairs.
    However you then go on to propose an alternative Chinese model of government.
    Well, the fact is that we don’t need it. We have our own system of governance, rangatiratanga, which serves us well and will continue to do so in the future as the colonial system is progressively dismantled or overthrown as the case may be.

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