THE QUESTION IS, can they pull it off? Can the National Party do to Jacinda Ardern what Labour tried, but failed, to do to John Key: destroy their opponents’ most powerful political asset? The other question is: If this is National’s intention, then how deep does the conspiracy go?
“SHALL WE MAKE A START?”, said the man from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, ostentatiously rearranging the pile of documents stacked in front of him and glancing up sharply at the five other participants seated around the polished Rimu table. The meeting-room windows overlooked the parliamentary complex below. A howling Wellington southerly sent raindrops clattering, bullet-like, against the glass.
THE PRINCIPAL OF Hamilton’s Fraser High School, Virginia Crawford, has been roundly criticised for warning her students about the strong correlation between truancy and failure in the world beyond high school. The push-back against Crawford’s address culminated in a walkout by around 100 of Fraser’s senior students on Monday 24 September 2018. But, what if she was telling the truth?
New Zealand is by no means exempt from the effects of this unravelling neoliberal hegemony. In this country, also, there is a large colonised population presided over by a distant and hated elite. We, too, have constructed an underclass whose full citizenship and personhood is routinely denied in overcrowded prisons; at the counter of the local WINZ office; and by “unconsciously biased” teachers, medics and cops.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Where did she go? The Jacinda Ardern who rocked our world? Where did she lose her sparkle and her stardust? What, or who, took from her the qualities that had so decisively interposed themselves between the centre-left and almost certain defeat?
The crucial political failure of Labour and the Greens is that they have yet to appreciate that without the realisation of the radical conservatives’ programme, the chances of a radically progressive programme succeeding are nil. Until the slums of neoliberalism have been cleared, a New Zealand fit to live in cannot be built.
NEW ZEALAND GOT POPULISM early. If you count Rob Muldoon as this country’s first no-holds-barred populist, then the start-date is 1974. If, as most people do, you date the rise of populism in New Zealand from the advent of the NZ First Party in 1993, then our populist-in-chief is Winston Peters – and he’s been kicking around for a quarter-century.
The rights of working people will thus be traded back and forth like chips on the political poker table. Neither National nor Labour are really interested in hearing how workers themselves would prefer the modern workplace to be organised, or in ways that the twenty-first century economy, with all its technological miracles, might be so regulated as to ensure that the benefits of robotics and artificial intelligence accrue to the whole population – and not just the shareholders of the transnational corporations who own the patents.
GEORGE LIFTED HIS HAND in greeting as Martyn entered the bar. At two o’clock on a rainy afternoon in early September the place was virtually empty.
The New Zealand Government has repeatedly offered to take at least 150 of the refugees marooned on Nauru. The Australians have brushed aside all such offers with sneering contempt. After all, what can the Kiwis do about it? What can the Kiwis do about it? Nothing. What could the Kiwis do about it with a radically re-configured and re-equipped NZDF? Plenty.