LOOKING BACK over the five years this government has been in office, it’s hard not to feel depressed. Given the mess the Baby Boomers made of New Zealand between 1984 and 1990, it was assumed that the first Generation X government would, at least, know what not to do. Having learned their trade at the feet of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen, Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins should have been immune to the allure of grand ideological schemes; and known better than to make promises they couldn’t keep.
“Under-promise, and over-deliver.” That was Helen Clark’s mantra for the 15 years she led (that is to say utterly dominated) the Labour Party. In a nation still enthralled to neoliberalism, the formula made perfect sense. Full-on social-democracy, as the Third Labour Government discovered, was verboten – even in the hey-day of Keynesianism. Thatcher and Reagan made social-democracy even harder.
In its essence, Rogernomics represented Labour’s complete capitulation to the new economic and political order. Henceforth, the best social-democrats would be able to offer were limited programmes which, while mostly making life easier for capitalists, occassionally scattered a few crumbs in the direction of the poor.
By under-promising and over-delivering, a Labour government could present itself as both sensible and competent. Not much might be on offer, but if you said you were going to deliver – and you did – then your voters weren’t just grateful, they were impressed. The days of big dreams might be over, but Clark’s clear-headed grasp of her own and her party’s limitations, made it possible for some of the people’s smaller dreams to come true.
What was it that persuaded Jacinda Ardern to exactly reverse Helen Clark’s strategy? Even with the winds of history at your back, over-promising the electorate is a silly thing to do. No government should ever attempt to defy Murphy’s Law, especially in circumstances where its supposed servants feel morally obliged to wreck any attempt to change the status-quo. If anything can go wrong with an unorthodox left-wing government’s policy, its neoliberal public servants are going to make damn sure that it will.
It is astonishing that Ardern, Robertson and Hipkins never appreciated how many of the Fifth Labour Government’s achievements required only a modest reconfiguration of already existing administrative machinery. Clark and Cullen avoided, wherever possible, projects that required a major reshaping of the physical world. They would never have been so foolhardy as to promise the construction of 100,000 “affordable” houses. Who was going to build them? More to the point, who was going to pay for them? Neoliberalism had shut down the active state, it wasn’t about to start it up again.
And yet, Ardern and Robertson did nothing but raise expectations. New Zealand was going to be “transformed”. Kindness and wellbeing were going to replace neoliberalism’s watchwords of “effectiveness” and “efficiency”. Poverty, itself, was in the Prime Minister’s cross-hairs. After 30 years of the dismal science’s overcast skies, the sun was poised to break through. It was going to be a beautiful day! Labour’s whole front-bench seemed to be on Ecstasy.
But just as Labour’s big promises were on the point of being revealed as hollow, effectively scuppering the Government’s chances of re-election, big events intervened to restore its fortunes. It is hard to come up with a better example of ill winds blowing a floundering government so much good. Certainly, Ardern’s response to the Christchurch Terror Attacks, and then to the Covid-19 Pandemic, drove Labour’s failures from the public mind.
The Government’s performance was aided immeasurably by the neoliberal playbook being uncharacteristically thin on how to deal with terrorist horrors and killer viruses. In extremis, Ardern and her advisers fell back on ideas and responses inimical to the radical individualism of the neoliberal ideology. People were suddenly introduced to the spiritual and material benefits of collectivism and solidarity. “They are Us” proved mightier than the Aussie gunman’s semi-automatic. It felt good to be part of a team of five million.
Ardern, Robertson and Hipkins, with their colleagues holding on for dear life behind them, rode these mighty exogenous tidal-waves all the way to an absolute parliamentary majority – which turned out to be just about the worst thing that could have happened to them. Absent Winston Peters and his white-knuckle grip on the political hand-brake, Labour lost little time in showing the country just how important NZ First’s restraining influence had been. Over the next two years, convinced they were ten-feet-tall and bulletproof, Ardern’s government proved itself unsafe at any speed.
At the heart of Labour’s political delinquency was its conviction that the events of 2019 and 2020 had conferred upon the party’s leadership an unchallengeable moral authority. That the groups it was marginalising and (in their own eyes) persecuting: conservative Pakeha males; the militantly unvaccinated; traditional feminists; fundamentalist Christians; believers in freedom of expression; supporters of the National and Act parties; homeowning Baby Boomers; just might, together, add up to a majority of the electorate, did not slow them down.
Indeed, the refusal of these deplorables to acknowledge the Government’s moral superiority made its members very angry. Labour found the anti-vaxxer occupation of Parliament Grounds in February-March 2022 especially confronting. The naked hatred and contempt directed at them by some of the protesters left many parliamentarians convinced that such people needed to be silenced. The defenders of free speech were allowing crazed conspiracy theorists and the spreaders of misinformation and disinformation to poison the public wells. A line needed to be drawn.
More rational, but equally problematic, was Labour’s Māori Caucus’ determination to take advantage of the party’s parliamentary majority to quicken the pace of decolonisation and indigenisation. This was necessary, they told their Pakeha colleagues, if the party was serious about forging a credible partnership between Māori and the Crown. Unwilling to risk accusations of racism, most of Labour’s caucus acquiesced. Any misgivings they may have harboured about co-governance, Three Waters, He Puapua and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, remained unacknowledged and unvoiced.
Only Labour’s steady decline in the opinion polls offers the slightest hope that the almost manic quality of its parliamentarians’ behaviour might be recognised for what it so clearly is: electorally suicidal. If not, then Roger Hall’s description of the Labour Party in his 1977 stage play, Middle Age Spread, may yet be applied to the bizarre mixture of febrility and fortitude that characterised Jacinda Ardern’s manic ministry:
“Honestly the Labour Party remind me of a documentary I saw on television about sleeping sickness. All these people who’d been half asleep for twenty years were given this new wonder drug and they all came alive and sang and danced around for a bit … and then the drug wore off and Zap! Back to sleep for another twenty years.”
I definitely view our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, as a very hard worker who has achieved some very positive results for this country in some areas. I think that John Key was similar to this, and Helen Clark at times too. It’s simply the fact that these PM’s deliver in different areas.
What people misunderstand about Clark was that she actually delegated a lot, and took a lot of credit for a very hard-working caucus. For example, Michael Cullen, her Finance Minister, spearheaded the Cullen Fund and saved Clark’s bacon on at least four budgets. She promised a lot, you see, not the little amount people are now saying she promised, and Michael Cullen had to find the finances to fund it all.
The issue is that Ardern appears tired and over it all. At times, rather grim. We see the resemblance to a defeatist attitude. If she doesn’t really want a third term, then she shouldn’t campaign for it.
Daniel Lang. Michael Cullen was a different generation from Ardern, much better educated, and more intelligent than most of today’s intake. Not as likeable or up on the PR jargon, but in retrospect more palatable compared to the present patronising preachers wondering why we’re not bowled over by them.
Cullen refused to increase benefits, build more state houses, or even try and reverse some of the damage that National did. He kept spending down and refused to expand public services.
Yes. The downside in appealing to a younger demographic is that you may not be equipped enough or have enough support to gain a third term. This is why I simply don’t understand why Ardern didn’t change tack once elected, and start appealing to a wider demographic.
Actually to some extent I agree with you about Ardern having achieved some stuff for NZ
Another day another Labour Bash on TDB.
One wonders what some of you are going to post if the dirty filthy Natzos attain office in 2023–I suspect many of will simply slink away, your work done.
Some of us still battle for working class solidarity, union strength and in community organising and direct action when necessary. Rare is the day when writers on TDB call for a fighting central labour organisation or the reboot of a united NZ Communist Party–two essentials if progress is ever to by made by the boomer successor generations.
The political position of NZ Labour is well documented and evidenced by the party’s actions in Govt. Not News. News would be doing something about it rather than being passive moaners, just along for the ride.
A fair critique, TM, but the objection I would raise is that some (many?) of those venting their spleen on TDB have tried “doing something about it”.
They walked away from Labour in the late-1980s alongside Jim Anderton. The worked hard for NewLabour and then the Alliance. Or, they simply voted for them, which is, after all, the point.
Unionists tried hard to keep the spirit of resistance alive, but were forced to watch their smaller, fighting unions swallowed-up by the likes of Andrew Little’s “moderate” Engineers Union.
You know all this, mate. Hell, you were there!
When the cupboard is bare of flour, eggs and sugar, it isn’t all that helpful to demand a cake. What is forgivable, however, is veteran leftists’ fury at a Labour Party which threw out the ingredients – and, to this day, steadfastly refuses to replace them.
Yes, he said ruefully…I started out my political career during Norm Kirks brief reign, castigated with mates in front of the school for protesting outside Mt Albert ANZAC ceremony re Vietnam war, and then…well we soon enough had RD Muldoon and Robs Mob. I was hoping to not still be fighting Torys in my gold card years, but so be it and I will!
With anonymous online debates I guess you don’t really know who is as you describe Chris, those that may have done their bit previously for the left, and those taking the Michael, or snooping…
The are little victories though–the first Far North District Council Māori Mayor–young Moko Tepania, he did not win without a number of Pākehā supporting him. And that is the hope, that new gens will come through and boot Rogernomics.
Labour deserve “bashing” or to be more precise the current Labour lot deserve bashing! I’ve voted Labour eight times but am unlikely to vote Labour in the future. Chances are that National would represent aspiring home owners, wage & salary workers and small business owners better than Labour going forward. Current Labour are too consumed with ideology and seem incompetent. They have also become “Orwellian” and make black mean white. e.g. we will be the most “open and transparent Government ever” etc. I am very uneasy about the authoritarian streak they possess which manifested itself for all to see during covid.
National will never represent the interests of workers.
Indeed they constantly smear low wage workers as lazy, and useless,opposing every single attempt to protect them or lift their wages
(see all attempts to get Fair Pay Agreements/UI through).
They also want us to pay more for healthcare.
How can a party that opposed minimum wage, oppose increase in sck pay etc represent the worker?
Labour has not been labour since 1984.. this current iteration is even worse than the 4th labour govt… Douglas and the fish and chip brigade sold NZ down the river but at least they were smart. Todays politicians on both sides are total idiots.
labour has long ceased being representative of the working class. They are completely all about the middle class woke academic class. They are driven by bureaucrats who hate the working class, and are all about stoking their little culture wars than addressing real problems or formulating proper policy.
They use Māori as their virtue signalling instrument to cut through any political obstacles in order to get them further down the road to …. nowhere, they have no common sense they have no solutions.. and now it’s clear … they have no morals.
To be given a majority and unparalleled support labour has wantonly destroyed themselves and this country all for … nothing. I have never witnessed a more comprehensively stupid government as this in NZ before.
Winston Peters is going to Hoover up a whole bunch of disaffected labour voters, and I and I think many others will be very comfortable with that.
The working class decided that it wasnted to become more reactionary, and tax cuts mattered more than across the board pay rises.
I can tell you this right now, the white working class doesnt care about solidarity anymore. They would throw their brothers and sisters in the services sector under a bus if it meant a tax cut.
Pity we can’t give upticks for comments in this forum! I could add that Winston (and NZ First of course) will probably do a lot better in the next election than most commentators expect. If he acts as a handbrake to either side then that’s not such a bad thing in my opinion.
Winston has jumped fully on the anti vax bandwagon. Plus he has supported privatisation in the past
Surely somewhere there a Black Lives Matter protest millsy that you should be attending?
And you an insurrection James.
Maybe he can bring Liz Gunn along as his health spokesperson.
Yes. 100-%
kirk28 You have provided a supreme summary of our present dilemma. Now if JA stepped back, could Labour get up in the polls with a person who has some charisma and old Labour nous and values? And would know of some wormhole in the policy and implementation galaxy to flash through and carry out an obvious helpful government action supporting the masses! Might have to break through the time-space quantum barrier etc to do so.
From my Brit graffiti book –
The only good Tory is a lavatory.
Short, succinct. What catchphrase would apply now to Labour?
JA is no Norman Kirk.. no matter how much she prefaces him.
When Chris and his followers trot out their preconceived ideas, they are noticeably not informed by anything to do with the conception and development of these ideas which are well documented.
Labour today is living out its life span in much the same way that it was conceived in 1916 as the antidote to an organised and militant labour movement.
As that labour movement has been tamed over the generations, by the escape of wage workers into self-employment and middle class expectations, it was always accompanied by the Labour party and its philosophy of NZ as the property owners paradise reconciling classes out of existence.
But capitalism is subject to periodic booms and busts and and a long-term decline that means that class conflict never goes away.
The end of the post-war boom meant that Labour had to face a growing economic decline expressed as a crisis of falling profits after the 1970s.
It was Labour that under Douglas and Co launched the neo-liberal counter revolution to open up NZ to the chaos of the global market.
Ironically it was Muldoon who fought the nationalist rearguard action against it.
Labour had become the party of open counter-revolution and has never repudiated the logic behind its historical destiny.
Under Clark and her pupil Ardern Labour settled for a liberal centrism managing NZ capitalism.
But this Blairite thirdwayism was always a hopeless utopia as since the 1990s economic stagnation, global warming, and then pandemics, disrupted economies and exhausted the capacity of states to regulate stability.
Despite a massive transfer of wealth to capital at the expense of workers over this period, capital is in crisis and demands more and more profit to prevent the devaluation of its piling up of wealth and debt.
The NACTS openly advocate a naked market driven state so that the propertied gentry can milk every last dollar before the planet burns.
Labour is trapped in its anachronistic Blairite liberalism and is a barrier to NACTS rip shit and bust future.
At the same time it piously performs the best practice US dollar dominated world order that is plunging into imperialist wars.
Today’s impasse was already laid down in NZs history of colonisation and the inevitable demise of capitalism as a social system.
The institutions of capitalism including its bourgeois state are now bankrupt and redundant.
We need a revolution that understands the fundamentals of human social evolution so that we can create the conditions for survival by collective, democratic, will and action, rather than to give in to chaos and submit to extinction as a species.
Good summary of the shit creek we are collectively up. Rich and poor alike cannot escape climate change. An issue as always is the ratio of reactionary forces to those supporting a progressive future. “Groundswell”, anti vaccinationers, and white supremacists will, going by history, attack organised workers and anti imperialists well before they ever take on the capitalist class.
Most self employed and farm workers are actually working class! SMEs are under the thumb of the Australian and other banks, their aspiration, and ‘be your own boss’ methodology obscures their class reality of exploitation.
I would say that this labour government is indeed a politically left government. They’ve proven that with the rises in benefits. They have a socially liberal agenda which has always served this nation well. Jacinda Ardern has represented the country well, too.
The reason I often mention the Prime Minister’s apparent tiredness and lack of vision is not personal. They are real observations. Clark and Key both displayed these during their last days in their respective second terms. Clark had money available to fund promised tax cuts. Key had his ongoing popularity. What does Ardern have?
She does have experience now and the support of her caucus, many of whom are considered long serving MP’s now. But is it enough? We simply cannot ignore the fact that this Prime Minister looks absolutely wiped out of energy reserves due to the various crises she’s faced while in government.
Transformational change from neoliberalism wasn’t assisted by well known left wing commentator wringing his hands and decrying any actual propositions or moves for change, frequently asserting that they’re too radical or threaten to spook the electorate, leading to an election loss.
How to have your cake and eat it.
Which transformational changes, aimed squarely at neoliberalism, did this government put forward that I and other left-wing commentators decried as too radical?
Was it their proposal to renationalise the energy sector? Or restore compulsory unionism? Perhaps I was out of the country when they advanced their plans to ditch the disastrous State Sector Act.
Do let TDB’s readers know just how radical this government could have been, if only Chris Trotter’s posts hadn’t prevented them – a party with an absolute parliamentary majority – from practicing the democratic socialism still enshrined in the Labour Party’s constitution.
Honestly, I can’t decide who is sillier – Richard, or Christie.
i am considering voting for Winston after he called out the woke nonsense of NZ Sport allowing the possiblity of trans women (ie. male bodied people ) competing in women’s sport. Good on ya Winston
Beautiful historical political essay of the Times Chris.
An essay to refer to for all political and history students now and into the future.
I think it’s a very accurate and encompassing record of what happened and what the ‘thought’, hope, motivations, delusions and mistakes of those involved were.
And still are at the moment it seems!
Thanks Chris – Great mind, thinker and writer!
I despise NZ “elites” which is why I cannot vote for their protectors…. Lab, Nats, Greens, Maori Party only care about themselves. NZ needs a working class party, what Labour was supposed to be before turning rogue.
Chris Turncoat was it?
I really like this from Shona: ‘I expect violence, more heartbreaking tales of Dickensian abuse of our young and gross arrogance and wankery and generalized theft by the new government.’ The only consolation from this jeremiad is that watching Luxon as prime minister will produce exquisite comedy. Watching the American satirists trying to ply their trade when Trump was in office was awkward. Both the satirists and the television audiences knew that they couldn’t be as funny as Trump himself, who parodied buffoonery far more convincingly than the satirists’ script writers. Luxon will be superb television/internet farce. Small consolation I know, Shona, but it’s all we’ll have.
LOL – it’ d be funny if it wasnt true. I’m voting Winston. Better the handbrake you know ….
…And 3 waters had just passed it’s 3rd reading, it only now needs the rubber stamp from the GG.
Listen, Labour faithful, can you hear that bell tolling in the distance?
Yes, they were headed for defeat in 2020 for sure, until the mysterious Covid came along and our government, with soothing tones, locked us safely away from the threat. But that was pre Omicron that just 3 months after the election trashed the government’s response. Then came Aucklanders locked away from the world for nearly 4 months in an act of futility and unjustifiable overreach and the wheels completely fell off. Covid you say? The PM dare not mention it!
They are headed for defeat now but it looks like it will be an election day number that makes David Cunliffe look like a superstar in retrospect. Not only the entrenched non achievement across the board but the massively divisive ideological 5 Waters law they have passed without giving a flying shit what the majority think.
I don’t think I’ve seen a government so inept as this or so hell bent on, as you say, electoral suicide and possibly electoral destruction. The electorate is unhappy for a multitude of reasons, cost of living being a large part, and crime another, blind ideology yet another, but as an ineptness coup ďétat, they’ll whack taxes back on fuel just the same as yet another and possible final example of how they totally fail to read the room. And voters will then throw Labour to the wolves.
And to think I voted for these idiots!
meh – the unionists are reliant on the bourgeoise for their existence as is the “working class” – you’re all baked in to the system
Debating team blue or team red is just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic
Jacinda Ardern just won the hearts and minds of all intelligent women in NZ. She is truly a heroine!
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