If anything progressive is to come out of this current government other than disaster recovery, really focused protest must prevail. It isn’t.
This week we had the worst of all political worlds. At the beginning of the week one of our most highly qualified public servants was fired for expressing an opinion about National Party policy concerning a flagship policy of the Labour Party that they had worked on for many years, with an opinion that everyone left or right could see was correct (agreeing for different reasons of course). At the end of the week we had a student march of several thousands with no effect at all and no consequences for any policy change at all.
Neither changed anything, but united and to common purpose and effect they might have had a shot at it.
It is not that hard to identify the right targets for such common purpose. Right in the middle of the week we got a snapshot of how deep and strong the institutional bias is within the public service against mode shift in transport.
Target acquired.
In the middle age end, leftie leaders like Steve Maharey as Chair of ACC and Chair of Pharmac and Chair of Education New Zealand was easily allowed to directly criticise both National and Act in January 22 this year:
Indeed, it is hard not see the National Party in the same light as the Republicans in the US, Liberals in Australia or Conservatives in Britain. They seem more interested in the past than the future.”
ACT has pointed this out already as it worries National in government would revert to type and do nothing. This is a view perhaps reinforced by the list of large donors to National’s election coffers. Nothing about them suggests they want change. They made their money under a system that favoured them.”
Not so Rob Campbell. He was fired from two chair positions for a 3-line opinion far less trenchant than as Steve Mahrey did stating that the National Party was actually bought by its donors.
In the younger end, the school student march had specific though quite unrelated initiatives, but with no political support (other than from the Greens who weren’t quoted anywhere) and no follow-up debate, its effect sank without trace within 12 hours of a media cycle.
One Chair’s firing got a weeks’ worth of coverage and tonnes of debate, and thousands got near zip.
Far be it from me to propose the perfect formula for strong and perpetual social change, but that ain’t it.
Progessive positions have been consistently rolled in New Zealand under the steamroller of value-free politics cloaked in the camouflage of crisis and exigency. All those tens of millions of consultancy fees spent in the first 2017 term have amounted to so little. None of the reforms are complete and little of the legislation they have proposed is complete. RMA reform still has an entire bill to go. Health reform is barely starting. Tertiary education reforms a mess. The only major transport projects to complete were National’s. Welfare reforms near imperceptible. Car fuel replacement gone. Reform of immigration a perpetual tinker, broadcasting reform gone, ACC reform gone, tax reform gone, all such memory flashed away in a storm like the last 6 years was a Men In Black rerun.
And the great motherload of policy change in water reform – the only reform that would have altered our political economy for good – has had its legislative inertia killed by the Prime Minister, fired the Minister, its wounded corpse taken out the back and hit with a shovel and then covered with 2 metres of dark fetid silt.
Some forgave Prime Minister Ardern for riding twice into government with no worked out policy platform and shunting Labour hard to the right with a broad reaggregation of state power to incoherent end. Ardern’s strengthening of the state was mostly a continuation to the strengthening of state powers under Key and English for near identical reasons. Kindness as a substitute for political ideology was the mere difference, and now that difference cast aside leaves their near-zero difference naked to human eye.
It has become near impossible to criticise the Labour government or the National opposition because both stand for near-nothing except recovery after disaster.
This enables Labour to agree with National and fire the public servants who they both dislike and agree to keep the ones they prefer, which is what happened when you compare the silence attending Maharey’s article and Campbell’s firing.
Deep in our history there were public servants and elected officials with brains who were prepared to publish their own very popular books. One may have different reasons for disliking W. B. Sutch, or Roger Douglas, or Bruce Jesson, but these people were published and elected and hard thinkers and deep within public policy formation and execution. They had strong followers in their day and they changed this country. Imagine if Rob Campbell and the students had worked out a plan beforehand.
New Zealand is facing a collapse of activist power and the only way to reverse it is to connect the right people together with a plan at the right time and make good change happen.
Raise the Standard or weep.
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