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Declaring for Camp Cunliffe: here’s why

Morgan Godfery
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10

The Americans distinguish between disjunctive presidents and reconstructive presidents. Disjunctive presidents manage the political, social and economic regimes they inherit. Reconstructive presidents remake the regimes they inherit. FDR was a reconstructive president. Reagan was too. Clinton was a disjunctive president and Obama is (arguably) one too.

In New Zealand, reconstructive prime ministers are said to lead “big change” governments. The first and fourth Labour governments were big change governments. The fifth Labour government was a disjunctive government.

David Cunliffe could be a reconstructive prime minister and lead a big change government.

Gordon Campbell explains:

Telecom… wielded its power without compunction for at least 15 years, ever since Richard Prebble turned a state monopoly over to the tender mercies of Telecom’s new owners for peanuts, and without putting any safeguards for consumers (or for business) in place. It was a situation that couldn’t last. The Lange government had created a monster, and National’s Maurice Williamson sat by idly watching this out of control corporate beast pile up the profits at everyone else’s expense, for the entire 1990s… [Telecom] was finally outfoxed by David Cunliffe and his Boy Scout wiles.

Cunliffe demonstrated a level of interventionism (and political skill) that was in short supply in the disjunctive Clark government. There wasn’t an aversion to taking tough decisions. In 2008, as the then Minister of Health, Cunliffe dismissed the Hawkes Bay DHB over political, financial and conflict of interest troubles. I’m not convinced Grant Robertson is or wants to be a similarly reformist:

Labour Party deputy leader Grant Robertson has moved to try and reassure financial markets that its sudden lurch to favour central planning in the electricity industry is one-off.

Robertson says: “Labour makes no apology for stepping in to fix problems in the electricity sector. But this is not a signal that Labour is going to intervene elsewhere in the economy.”

DPF helpfully (and rightly) divides ministers into leaders, administrators and bumblers. Leaders impose their policy priorities, administrators manage the existing consensus and bumblers bumble. I’ve no doubt Robertson could lead a new consensus, but he seems to fit within Clark’s culture of incrementalism rather than, say, the first Labour government’s reformism.

Cunliffe doesn’t (I think). In a  positioning speech in 2012, Cunliffe attacked the neoliberal consensus and expressed his belief in the need for change. In 2012 he told Guyon Espiner:

[Cunliffe believes] The left will no longer play second fiddle to the right as it has these past three decades. “The left of politics had to really adapt. You got Clinton’s Democrats. You got Blair’s Third Way, which to some extent had to accommodate and triangulate on triumphal markets and the Washington Consensus, and then the great crash of ’08-’09 happened and I reckon – we reckon – that that changes things again,” he says. “That gives not only the necessity but the freedom for us to ask big questions about do those policy settings, pre-crash, fit our people well for the future? And the answer in many cases is no.”

This afternoon Cunliffe also announced he would change New Zealand’s tax settings. The Labour Party must decide between what sort of party it wants to be. An extension of the fifth Labour government- and that’s what I think Robertson represents – or rejection of the fourth Labour government – that’s what I think Cunliffe represents. Disjunctivism (Robertson) or reformism (Cunliffe). I’m picking reform.

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Post-script: I could be wildly wrong about this. Cunliffe might tack well to the centre and abandon any notion of reform if he secures the leadership. Robertson – who I think is more than capable to lead a successful government (but my second choice) – might actually be the reform candidate. Though I see no evidence for that belief. Also, I’ll discuss Shane Jones’ candidacy at Maui Street over the next few days.

Normalizing participation

Efeso Collins
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I don’t normally read the Herald but today a kind person politely offered me a copy at the café I was having breakfast at. Unsure of what to do with the thing I have major distaste for, I went to the back section and found the official notices of people duly nominated to stand for vacancies in the upcoming local body elections. Admittedly I looked for my own name to make double-sure that my nomination made it and alas, it did. My interest was then taken by the people elected purely by virtue of there being the same number of nominations as there were vacancies on Council, namely Orakei and Howick. Immediately I thought of my days at AUSA when you could tick a ‘no confidence’ option. Pity.

A recent RadioLive poll showed that Auckland’s incumbent Mayor Len Brown will be difficult to knock off his perch with close to 50% support. He is followed by Palino, Minto and to my pleasure and surprise, Uesifili Unasa. Palino has ‘cash to burn’ and is throwing it at this campaign so I expect him to register on the polls. Minto – a man I have enormous respect and admiration for – has a high public profile and I expect him to be doing as well as he is. Brown is the incumbent. He’s got huge support from those of us out south having been a ward councilor and Manukau Mayor. Our local Labour electorate committee of which I’m a part of also endorses Brown. But it’s Unasa’s performance that has caught my eye.

Unasa has publicly stated that he has little resource to commit to his campaign and is therefore running a grass-roots race through local, community networks. I attended his launch as a family relative and heard one of the most inspirational, passionate and moving speeches I’ve heard in a long time. It was reported in the media that the launch was so well attended that it had to be moved out of the auditorium and onto the street because of sheer numbers. I saw many Pasifika people arriving to the launch straight from church, dressed in Sunday-best. I also observed many of our older people – our parents and grandparents generations – in tears as he spoke. They were overcome with the emotion that one of their sons was seeking the highest office in the city.

Last week on Native Affairs, Toeolesulusulu Professor Damon Salesa of the University of Auckland said that Unasa’s candidacy was the first step in normalizing Pasifika participation in the electoral process. His suggestion was that whilst Unasa may not win the mayoralty election, his participation alone suggests a coming of age for Pasifika because it would be regarded as ‘normal’ for us to seek this office. Underpinning that idea is the belief that the wider Auckland population would now be ‘open’, ‘willing’, ‘acceptable of’ a non-Pakeha Mayor. And to use Unasa’s own words and really stretch the context he used them in… “a representation of the new Auckland.” Whatever our politics: Unasa is undoubtedly pioneering the way forward for Pasifika people, ethnic people and minority groups to have every confidence that they can stand just like anyone else, for the highest office in the city. On that note, the mayoralty has already been won – regardless of who ends up taking office on Oct 12.

 

Constitution to the people: “fix me”

Morgan Godfery
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Here’s a thought experiment: think of every constitutional document, convention and principle you know of and design a situation that will do as much violence towards those documents, conventions and principles as you can. The chances are you’ll do no better than the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill (No 2).

The bill (soon to be Act) legislates against the Atkinson decision. The Courts held that the distinction between family carers and non-family carers for the purposes of remuneration amounted to discrimination under s19 of the Bill of Rights Act. The bill (soon to be Act) legalises that distinction and goes further still: the Courts are not permitted to review the bill (soon to be Act).

Professor Andrew Geddis thinks that “National just broke our constitution”. He’s right, but it isn’t the first time a government has pissed on the constitution – i.e foreshore and seabed. Enough said.

The great tenet of Westminster constitutionalism is that the best check on “representative and responsible government” is the ballot box. The scholars and the democratic romantics cling to it, but it isn’t always true.

Too often constitutional violence is committed against minorities. Be it Maori, workers or family of the disabled. But minorities, by definition, can’t punish a “representative and responsible government” at the ballot box. Minorities must find recourse in Treaties, Bills of Rights, upper houses, head of state vetoes and so on. Majority rules, after all.

In the Cabinet Manual 2008 – the document that sets out how Ministers should do their job – Sir Kenneth Keith wrote that:

 

“A balance has to be struck between majority power and minority right, between the sovereignty of the people exercised through Parliament and the rule of law, and between the right of elected governments to have their policies enacted into law and the protection of fundamental social and constitutional values”.

 

We don’t have a balance well struck. There is only one check on Parliamentary sovereignty: the ballot box. However, that check is never exercised where “minority rights” are subject to unjust exercise of “majority power”. How many voters are going to punish the government for assaulting one of the most vulnerable groups in society? History answers not enough. The balance between minority rights and majority power is better struck with a supreme law bill of rights.

Westminster democracy – even with all its flaws – works well when the balance between minority rights and majority power is well struck. In New Zealand, the balance is weighted towards the tyranny of the majority. Maybe the scholars should rewrite the constitutional textbooks and insert the only principle that matters: governments do what they can, when they can get away with it.

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