Michael Cullen taught me History at the University of Otago in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His lectures on the English Revolution were riveting. On the wall of his office he had tacked a huge Walter Crane poster showing a man digging and a woman spinning. Around the image trailed the words of John Ball, the defrocked priest whose impertinent theological and political question helped spark the Peasants Revolt of 1381: “When Adam delved, and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”
That was the Michael Cullen whose entry into Parliament I celebrated.
But then came Rogernomics, and Cullen trimmed his sails to the prevailing winds. He played a key role, as Whip, in getting GST through a succession of Labour regional conferences. Yes, he was formidably intelligent, and yes, his wit could lacerate the National Party like no other, but the reforms he will be remembered for: the Super Fund, KiwiSaver, Working For Families, were all inadequate workarounds that never seriously challenged the neoliberal orthodoxy which Cullen, in the end, accepted and consolidated. He fought KiwiBank to the bitter end, and refused to save public broadcasting.
The final betrayal, from the point of view of the student who had thrilled to his lectures on the Levellers, the Diggers and the Fifth Monarchy Men, was when the onetime radical history lecturer accepted a knighthood.
There have been many, many Labour MPs who were worse than Michael Cullen – much worse. But, equally, there were a number who were better. The tragedy, for me, is that Michael could have been one of them – but wasn’t.
Michael Cullen was the personification of the past 37 years of Labour, in both government and opposition: a nice chap who abandoned the welfare state to neoliberalism red in tooth and claw.
Michael Cullen was one of the better guys over the past decades.
He could have been exceptional but chose the neoliberal work a rounds too often, aka working for families now subsidies the low wage economy NZ, that was supposed to be John Keys vision, but seems to be turning into Labour’s.
Kiwirail was a good idea, but they filled it with neoliberal management who drove it into the ground with poor decisions aka asbestos in the trains from China. Kiwirail should be doing domestic rail and freight at scale in the age of carbon credits, but seemingly Kiwirail did not present the case they needed to for government and public, and thus the trucking brigade have the government’s ear and massive funding instead.
Super Fund was a good idea, but Natz fucked it up.
I’m not against GST because we have such a cash economy and growing with illegal workers and products everywhere, that at least we get some taxes from business avoiding company and income taxes in most cases. In NZ, unlike OZ we don’t even measure and report properly large companies that fail to pay tax in NZ. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-13/one-third-of-australian-companies-paid-no-tax-ato/10614916?nw=0 b The only thing that made many companies pay back their wage subsidies was that it was a public register!!! Name and Shame is an effective strategy.
Too many of the consultants, government and industry uses are Neoliberals of the worst sort, but they keep them on the boards and committees and management, but just add the ineffectual and seriously stupid woke to the mix who blather on about micro aggressions because they don’t have any real talent and are the Intellectual Yet Idiots of NZ (many without even the intellectual component) while the neoliberal machine rolls forward.
As for Greens, sounds like they bullied out anybody who didn’t agree with them in the party a few years ago and now they are an empty, woke, ineffectual, waste of space who are a disgrace to the Green movement and integrity.
Labour are mostly short of serious talent, naively believing and subsidising the worst of NZ industry who are laughing at them all the way to the bank. Labour need to get some really smart advice ASAP, because whoever is advising them is mostly leading a train wreck of neoliberal and woke policy, which is eroding their popularity.
I think that covers it.
Yep. Well done!
Cullen was responsible for allowing Moshe Ya’alon to continue to murder people rather than face a trial as a war criminal.
The work that human rights lawyers in both Aotearoa and England did to try and bring the war criminal to trial was exemplary and the Judge took several days before making the decision that he could be arrested whilst in Aotearoa.
The police contacted Cullen, Attorney General, who after getting advice from the Crown Law office had the possible arrest stayed. Crown law office considered the whole business in a couple of hours unlike the judge who spent several days.
Gutless gutless gutless and more Palestinians murdered because of that gutlessness.
n late 2006, while Ya’alon was in New Zealand on a private fund-raising trip for the Jewish National Fund, Auckland District Court judge Avinash Deobhakta issued a warrant for his arrest for alleged war crimes arising from his role in the 2002 assassination of Hamas commander Salah Shehade, who was killed in a targeted assassination, when an Israeli warplane bombed his home in Gaza City. About 14 Palestinian civilians were also killed in the airstrike. Deobhakta stated that New Zealand had an obligation to prosecute him under the Geneva Convention. Attorney-General Michael Cullen ordered a stay in the warrant after advice from the Crown Law office that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, and the warrant was cancelled after Ya’alon left New Zealand.
https://www.haaretz.com/1.4935114
And what will your critics say of you when your time comes?
What have you achieved?
Not having been handsomely paid from the public purse, nor knighted to boot, when Chris’s “time comes” there will no requirement for his achievements to be considered, but if there were, having told the truth about Michal Cullen might well feature among them.
Cullen?,… essentially a neo liberal enabler. Didn’t like him or Clark. Even this current govt is cruisin’ for a bruisin’ in that regard IMHO.
He was about as a social democrat of the old school about as far as one could be, without actually rejecting Monetarism.
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