Written By: - Date published: 4:50 pm, December 21st, 2007 - 45 comments
Categories: humour, labour, national -
Tags: humour, labour, national
I have glimpsed the future. I know how Election 08 will play out. It will be a thriller, going down to the wire. The election home straight, like that at Flemington in Melbourne, is a test of champions. In the end it is about class and staying ability. Helen Clark starts the year well off the pace. John Key canters along in front. Slowly but surely, however, Clark gathers him in. Key starts to feel the pressure. He races greenly, pulls hard at the bit, showing his lack of experience, stamina and preparation. Right on the line, Clark appears to nab him. The result is not clear and there is an anxious delay. But after what seems an inordinate amount of time, the numbers are confirmed. Clark has made it, by a short neck – known as a Hide. The Green stable belies their odds and feature strongly in the finish. The old brumbie Turry’s Fury has also rattled home gamely. They’ve helped the Labour thoroughbred to her fourth successive title. Winston’s Way crumbles in the run home and is immediately transferred to the knacker’s yard. The roaring of the crowd drowns the wailing of the hollow men.
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Scoopit!
Phil: “For the Maori party, they would be a shoe-in for Maori and PI portfolios”
Too right Phil – kapai-deadly as we used to say in the works.
And Pita for Deputy PM.
In a Labour-led government: the most progressive government the western world has yet seen – building on a proud history of fearless social advancement and principle, and once more putting godzone at the vanguard of the historic trend towards inclusion, emancipation and univeral fraternity.
Too fanciful? Nah Phil, it’s just that my grandkids deserve the best – and your depressing fantasy is just too pessimistic to envisage at this time of the year.
“Remember also that these painful reforms were voted for by the public! When the traditional left element wrestled back power from the economic bloc of Labour between 87 and 90, they were convincingly trounced by the Nat’s at the next election, and failed to return to power for a decade.
That, by my reconing, is hardly a howl of public disapproval for those policy platfroms.”
Someone please shoot me before my brain melts at having to read another word of this garbage. The *only* remote example of the public approving the reforms was in 1987, and that was iffy at best (Lange was riding the anti-nuclear wave, while the stockmarket crash was still a few months away). 1990 was an emphatic rejection of Rogernomics; the public were desperate for the pain to stop, and were prepared to go with an apparently moderate National Party promising a return to normality and a Decent Society (my, my, doesn’t that sound familiar?). Of course, they got a sadistic maniac as Finance Minister instead. In 1993 National (thanks to an economic upswing) managed to squeak home with 35% of the vote; Labour got 34%, the Alliance got 18%, and NZ First got 8%. Hardly a ringing endorsement, is it?
Gaaaad yes DS, and God bless you! I’d forgotten the disgusting details of National’s gerrymandering past – to all believers in the inherent goodness of humanity, go and watch “The Castle” again, renew your faith in your fellow man and woman and return to fight the good fight that has carried us so far!
And Tories: may you discover deep in the roots of your Christmas trees, more money than you can spend in a million years.
ak,
It was Brash who promised removal of the Maori seats and ended up in the ‘removal’ business himself. Key has come forward hard against many of the things that Brash represented and has not endorsed the get-rid-of-the-seats idea.
The Maori Party is basically a right of centre party. They are essentially conservative. Theirs has always been a party that National has been most likely to ally with. It was a National minister, Sir Douglas Graham, who in the 90′s was instrumental in implementing Treaty payouts. No Labour party minister is more closely aligned to such activity as he is.
Tell you what, it’s worth a flutter.
Conservative is a funny old word.
It gets used a lot these days as a label for a bunch of policies that might be more accuratly labelled as reactionary. Though I’m not suggesting that’s what anyone here is doing.
For example if you think about what your basic ‘conservative’ platform is in the states, going by the administration, the Repub candidates, and what is said in places like the National Review, then the following things are “conservative’ in the States:
- A strong Executive branch that doesn’t need to answer to the congress, can abrogate treaties signed by previous presidents and ratified into law by congress, and can withold any and documents from oversight as it pleases. (see torture, geneva, sunny gauntanamo, numerous ‘signing statements’)
- Tax cuts as a matter of principle, even in war time.
- A foreign policy predicated on the idea that the US can and must establish itself with, and thereafter maintain itself with, ‘full spectrum dominance’. Everything, everywhere is an American interest and no other power or collection of powers can be allowed to challenge the US. (see PNAC, Iraq, Iran, Missile shields)
- Pandering to religious bigots who think that any and all social problems stem back to the fact that most Americans, if their actions are any guide, do not believe in a particular style of Christian belief. (see various thinktanks, social engineering policies about who is allowed to get married, revisionist and false ideas about the influence of Christianity on the Republic and so on)
None of this is ‘conservative’ in any real sense of the word. Particularly in the States, which is a nation founded on Enlightement principles, with a constitution set up to be genuinely conservative in the sense of being slow to change and deliberative in it’s politics. What they’ve got from the repub’s is a radical reaction against the Liberals, that lacks the defining conservative characteristic of hesitating to change longstanding traditions. By any measure the Liberal reforms of the early and mid 20 century should be being held in some regard by real conservatives. Creative destruction, roll back, unitary executive and the like are not conservative ideas.
So the idea that the Maori party is ‘conservative’ is true, for some meanings of the word, and not for others. The same can be said for the Labour Party, the Green Party and the National Party.
In fact I would argue that it is the Labour Prty in NZ that is most truely ‘conservative’ in the old, preservationist and pragmatic sense of the word. In this sense reforms like Civil Unions are progressions of the law based on principles of equity and pragmatism. If these structures work for many why should not the benefits be spread to all, sort of thing.
Conservatives don’t hate change, they just hate change based on passion, (which includes religious passion, nationalist passion, and fear), and change that doesn’t take into account the reasons for the thing you changing being they way it is, (nb Welfare reform, Maori seats, privatisation etc).
No-one can argue that the Clark govts have been radical in any economic sense, in fact the criticisms they get from both the Left and the Right have been that they are too conservative and reform resistant.
God that was long, rambling and moved off topic in a major way. But I’m not going to delete it and say what i intended to say when I started typing, instead I’ll just post it, and promiss not to comment again untill the New Year or so.
Have a good one all, in whatever way you traditionally spend the season, be it conservative or radical, liberal or otherwise.
bookie
absolutely pb, there is precisely nothing that’s actually ‘conservative’ about neo-conservativism, it’s actually quite a radical departure from traditional conservative principles.
Oh, dear, who’s deconstructing the meaning of conservative then? I just thought that it meant people more inclined to preserve the status quo rather than change it, compared to progressives who wish to enact change.
Oh, well, happy new year anyway, bookie.
“The Maori Party is basically a right of centre party. They are essentially conservative. Theirs has always been a party that National has been most likely to ally with. It was a National minister, Sir Douglas Graham, who in the 90′s was instrumental in implementing Treaty payouts. No Labour party minister is more closely aligned to such activity as he is.
Tell you what, it’s worth a flutter.”
The fly in your ointment is that grass-roots Tory and Maori supporters hate each other (hint: who do Maori Party supporters tend to give their party vote to?). An enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend deal between National and the Maori Party would be suicidal for both parties.
I’m going bush. Back in February.
Merry Christmas to friend and foe alike!
Interesting thread…
Surprisingly nobody has explicitly mentioned that the political spectrum is multi-dimensional. Social and economic are the two convenient perpendicular axes.
That aside, liberalism and conservatism have lost pretty much any real meaning.
When you reform a market towards freeness is is ‘liberal’. Same as when you reform a market towards statism. Both these things are ‘liberal’. Likewise, resisting a change towards a free market is technically ‘conservative’, and resisting a change towards statism is ‘conservative’ also.
The terms are by-and-large nonsense when taken out of their traditional context of benefiting the landed (conservative – keeps things good (the same) for the aristocrats) versus benefiting the proles (reform for the worker’s benefit).
And I am talking about the big picture of democracy here. Kings and subjects, moving very slowly over hundreds of years towards direct democracy, with input from the majority (the serfs/proles/scum).
Changes to the social-economic matrix from the dark ages until around the mid to late 1900s were by-and-large designed to benefit the proletariat. These were all due to popular unrest – not aristocratic charity, as some may wish to believe.
Now this all becomes confused when the free-market/globalisation gains currency as the way-of-living de jour…
The conservatives then wanted to liberalise the markets, now that a globalised economy seems like a good thing for them… (?!?)
So…
People just need to be honest and say whether they want their economic policy change to benefit capital or labour.
Now Labour (big L) is by-and large honest about it’s intentions. National not so much. There is often an Orwellian doublespeak, that as workers you can benefit from Policy X as the part-owner (shareholder) of some capital. In fact, the West is an ‘ownership society’ right?… with all that this idea implies.
‘Freedom’ is also another doublespeak favourite. You’re ‘free’ to spend your extra $5 to $10 dollars a week tax cut on uncapped doctor’s bills, or unsubsidised tertiary education. Joy!
The obfuscation unfortunately works on a lot of people.
Just a little history and sociology lesson for big-picture challenged…