To Remain The Same, Everything Must Change.

ByChris Trotter

CONSERVATIVE NEW ZEALANDERS are up for grabs. Not since the early-1990s, when Winston Peters and Jim Anderton harvested thousands of votes from deep inside National’s heartland, has there been a better time to engineer a profound realignment of this country’s politics. If Jacinda Ardern, Labour and the Greens play their cards right (or, more accurately, centre-left) New Zealand could become a social-democratic haven to rival Scandinavia.

Let’s begin by acknowledging the upwards of 250,000 former National Party voters that Labour already has in its column. The pollsters of both parties have confirmed that most of these switchers are women aged 45 years or older. Obviously, a large number will also be mothers with deep and abiding concerns about their children’s future. Already, by shifting their vote from National to Labour, they have signalled their openness to new economic, social and environmental priorities. Though very far from being radicals, they do recognise that if the conditions they value most are to remain the same, then everything will have to change.

This is the political mood that gives rise to the oxymoronic concept of “radical conservatism”: a state of mind distinguished by a willingness to embrace new strategies to achieve old goals. A middle-class concerned about preserving its own social status, and determined to prevent its children being forced to occupy a lower level of the socio-economic hierarchy than themselves, will do just about anything. Given sufficient incentives, it can be persuaded to vote for the Left. Given a big enough fright, the middle-class will flee in panic to the Right.

The left-wing Chilean academic, Ariel Dorfman, who worked closely with the 1970-1973 administration of Chile’s socialist President, Salvador Allende, makes some important observations about the middle-class and how it should be treated by left-wing activists. In his 1999 memoirHeading South, Looking North, he writes movingly about the way Allende’s young followers simply “evaporated” those who did not accept their vision of the future:

It was difficult, it would take years to understand that what was so exhilarating to us was menacing to those who felt excluded from our vision of paradise. We evaporated them from meaning, we imagined them away in the future, we offered them no alternative but to join us in our pilgrimage or disappear forever, and that vision fuelled, I believe, the primal fear of the men and women who opposed us … [T]he people we called momios, mummies, because they were so conservative, prehistoric, bygone, passé … [W]e ended up including in that definition millions of Chileans who … were on our side, who should have been with us on our journey to the new land and who, instead, came to fear for their safety and their future.

If Dorfman’s words strike a chord with observers of contemporary New Zealand politics, it is surely because so many of our own young leftists evince a similar degree of impatience with those who refuse to adopt immediately, and without reservation, their own “woke” vision of paradise. It is one of the biggest challenges that Labour and the Greens will face: learning how to communicate with conservative New Zealanders. How to reassure them that the Left’s goals and their own are congruent – not conflicting.

The most obvious issue around which a large measure of unity can be built is housing. For middle-class families, the inability of their offspring to enjoy the independence and security that flows from having a place to call one’s own is deeply disturbing. A state-funded and executed programme to construct not only state houses but also state apartment buildings would draw off a significant amount of pressure from the housing market, flattening prices and expanding the supply of affordable houses as rents fell and landlords offloaded their properties to first-home buyers.

Such a dramatic expansion in state-owned, rent-controlled properties (built by the state’s own construction corporation and workforce) would also have an immediate impact on the poverty and inequality afflicting working-class New Zealanders. The money freed up by significant reductions in rent; the educational and health benefits flowing to children from the provision of permanent, well-constructed and healthy places for their families to live in; as well as the employment opportunities provided by the state’s crash housing programme; all would go a long way towards rapidly improving the living standards of the poorest New Zealanders.

Another means of cementing-in the support of professional middle-class New Zealanders, and small-business owners, would be to embark on a comprehensive expansion of tertiary and trade-training across New Zealand.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the extent to which this country relies upon foreign (read cheap) labour to keep a multitude of its industries running smoothly. A strong commitment to “indigenise” the New Zealand workforce: firstly by training the necessary numbers of workers required; and, secondly, by requiring employers to pay all New Zealanders a living wage in working conditions conducive to lifting productivity across the board. A subsidy could be paid to small, under-capitalised employers, to ease their transition from the old system to the new.

The pandemic has similarly exposed the tertiary sector’s reliance on full-fee-paying foreign students. A reduction in the number of New Zealand universities, the abolition of student fees, and a strict limit on the number of foreign students would restore a measure of sanity to these necessarily elite institutions. They could once more become places of higher learning and public-good research, bringing to an end their tawdry existence as over-priced and commercially-driven degree factories.

These are but two proposals that could be described as middle-class and conservative friendly. A government prepared to listen to its people would be certain to hear many more.

The restoration of New Zealand to its former status as a “property-owning democracy” – a goal as enticing to its working-class as it is fondly remembered by its middle-class – holds out the promise of a political journey upon which the overwhelming majority of voters can embark together. Making home ownership something to which all New Zealanders could aspire, transformed National into the “natural party of government” for nearly four decades. By making it available again, Labour can acquire the time it needs to transform New Zealand into the Sweden of the South Seas.

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18 Comments

  1. An interesting column, with just three policy prescriptions on housing, vocational training and wages. Minimum wage of $25?
    Is this column much different to that of Matthew Hooton in today’s Herald? I would say, not that much.
    Will this level of “conservatism” satisfy those on the Left who want to substantially shift the overton window? The likes of Bradbury will want a much more left wing government and will be seriously and stridently advocating for that. However, that is not how Ardern campaigned. As both Trotter and Hooton identify, the 2020 campaign was much more minimalist, intended to reassure centre right voters that Labour could be trusted. At least in my view, campaign commitments are a fundamental covenant with voters.
    I know from experience how wearing it can be constantly fending off those who want more radical prescriptions. However, longevity in government requires it. Electoral success is the means to stave off agitators.

    1. Do you mean that getting re-elected is more important than the majority that voted them in?

    2. “the 2020 campaign was much more minimalist, intended to reassure centre right voters that Labour could be trusted.” Its all very nice to promise “minimalist” policies but what use is that when global warming is happening right now? Its too late to be cautious!

  2. The deplorable state of NZ hosing and Jacinda’s failure to act have hit the international headlines:

    ‘New Zealand house prices soar despite Covid recession, worsening affordability crisis
    Property market posted an 11% rise in median values, masking rising homelessness and a widening social divide, critics say

    The United Nations has described the housing shortage as “a human rights crisis”. “They allowed the perfect storm, and that’s successive governments, UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Leilani Farha told the Guardian during a visit to New Zealand this year.

    She was surprised that New Zealand had such entrenched issues with homelessness, housing affordability and poor-quality homes despite its progressive left-leaning government led by Jacinda Ardern.’

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/29/new-zealand-house-prices-soar-despite-covid-recession-worsening-affordability-crisis

    The money-printing that is currently holding up the system can never be the answer because money-printing is at the heart of so many aspects of our collective predicament.

    And the stampede of people rushing to get here to escape the ever-worsening conditions overseas adds to the pressure on the almost-completely-broken system.

    With deposit interest rates at close to zero and the share markets at the bursting-of-the-bubble stage, where does money go? Into the housing market, inflating that bubble even more!

    ‘New Zealand, which already had some of the most unaffordable housing in the world, saw median prices rise 11.1 % in the year to September, while the median price in Auckland reached nearly $1m (US$660,000). Prices rose 2.5% across the country in September compared with August.’

    We may dream of past times that were better but there is no way NZ can re-establish those ‘halcyon’ days. Far too much damage has been done over the decades since Muldoon’s idiotic ‘Think Big’ mania was rammed down the nation’s throat.

    In the real world, everything is collapsing: the stable climate of the Halocene; the biodiversity that kept the web of life intact; the capacity of organisms to endure the pollution we constantly pour i to the atmosphere and oceans; even the capacity to extract fossil fuels and refine them.

    So. as the infrastructure of civilisation gradually breaks down -led by the US, of course- and as the capacity to produce and distribute food declines and the economy collapses, the ‘middle-class concerned about preserving its own social status, and determined to prevent its children being forced to occupy a lower level of the socio-economic hierarchy than themselves’ are in for a rude awakening. Quite soon, in fact.

    They cannot say they weren’t warned. But they probably will.

    Here’s food for thought:

    ‘The dominance of Big Tech monopoly platforms has created new fields for the exploitation of ordinary labor in the low-paid gig economy and fulfillment centers. The traditional neofeudal fiefdoms (retail outlets, hospitality and restaurants) have been hit by the pandemic pullback in consumer spending, and the other low-wage fiefdoms (fast food and domestic service) have been in structural decline for years.

    Meanwhile, the owners of the Financial Nobility’s fiefdoms and Big Tech monopolies have enjoyed unprecedented gains in income and wealth (see charts below) as wages’ share of the economy has declined for decades, in effect transferring trillions from labor to the Financial Nobility.

    This neofeudal arrangement is about to change as Universal Basic Income (UBI) or its equivalent becomes the accepted status quo solution to neofeudalism’s soaring inequality. Since there’s no limit to how much currency can be created by the Federal Reserve, then why not distribute enough “free money” to the serfs to tamp down the brewing revolt?

    What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp (due to their complete disconnect from neofeudal daily life) is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. No matter how meager the UBI, permanent unemployment, stimulus or whatever the political class calls the distribution of “Fed free money,” ALICE will find a way to escape the bonds of neofeudal serfdom.

    As I’ve noted here many times, the cash / informal economy beckons. All sorts of labor arrangements can be made on ALICE’s terms, not the Big Tech monopolies’ terms. No wonder the Financial Nobility is so desperate to eliminate cash. But other currencies may fill the need if the Neofeudal Overlords try to eliminate cash dollars.

    Liberty and freedom are not just lofty academic abstractions; what matters is being freed of the neofeudal chains of Big Tech monopoly platforms and the Financial Nobility’s other fiefdoms.’

    https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

    1. Housing is controlled by an open market and supply is unlikely to flatten or reduce prices alone.
      We have a massive backlog of immigrants, overseas workers, off shore speculators and a legacy left by the jonkey hidden policy of increasing consumer numbers for investor profit at the behest of Business NZ, off shore investors and banks.
      Regulation is needed around housing not a bigger unfettered open market.

  3. ‘I’ve just discovered George Carlin.’

    Where have you been, countryboy? I’ve been posting George Carlin on TDB for years, having been introduced to him more than a decade ago.

    This one from the early 2000s pretty much sums it all up in the US. And NZ is little different.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guQw3nSkXMY&t=3s

    I presented it, word for word, to NPDC about 8 years ago. Not what they wanted to hear, NPDC being a corrupt organisation, hellbent on extracting money from ratepayers and spending it on tourism promotion -now well and truly down the drain, of course.

    And now that ‘the planet is burning’, this has a kind of black humour appeal:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GKVFGYcCy0

  4. No we don’t want to be like Sweden Andrew. And it ain’t only the Muslim men that commit rape. And Acts leader kept saying ‘poor little brown kids’ re- charter schools, yet he wants to get rid of all the other state assistance that is helping them and their parents to survive. Its no good having a good school to go to when you have no home or decent income to live of, or food to eat. But you can have a big gun to shoot rabbits can you see the irony.

  5. Some years ago we hosted a Romanian refugee. He had been a bad boy in Romania by with his brother ,several times swimming across the Danube at night into Bulgaria and thence through Europe to Belgium where he could work. At modest wages in Belgium he earned enough in 2, 6 month stints to buy his sister an apartment in Bucharest i think was the city. The exchange rate between the euro and whatever the Romanian currency was made wages earned in Europe a fortune in Romania.
    Though the exchange rates operating between the NZ$ and the countries the Russian sailors and other temporary immigrant workers are probably not as dramatic as this example it will undoubtably explain why these workers are willing to work consciously for wages that do not attract local workers. Those wages will represent a much better income for someone domiciled in their country of origin than here. That’s why Kiwis don’t want those jobs. They are poorer wages in NZ than at home. It is just the reciprocal of manufacturing jobs being exported to China or Bangladesh because the wages there are so much less. They aren’t less really when converted to living costs, The exchanged NZ dollar equivalent would not support life here . It does support life there.
    The relevant point is that our so called floating currency exchange rates do not remotely equate the true relative values of currencies. They are determined entirely by speculators.
    When will some common sense return to the world?
    D J S

    1. I just did a bit of homework… So the average wage in Russia 2019 was just under 50 000 rubles a month. a Ruble NZ$ exchange rate is just under .02 rubles to the NZ$, so 2%. So average wage in Russia is $1000 per month or $250 per week. $20/hr would be $800 per week.
      Go figure why Russian sailors get employed instead of NZ. They can live on an income an New Zealander can’t live on.
      D J S

  6. Ah yes labour. They finally increased income tax for the rich (well promised). What are they going to spend that new money on?
    Paying teachers, doctors, nurses and civil servants a half decent wage?
    Ending homelessness.
    Opening education to everyone?
    Sustainability?
    Quality of life?

    Nope! It’s going to spent on encouraging parents to spend lest time with their kids and go back to work in order to earn more money, buy more crap and pay more tax. We’ll then pay other people to look after their kids. Earn more money, buy more crap and pay more tax.

    Wealth redistribution, but to whom?

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