On Labour’s Enduring and Unrelenting Historic Role

Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, September 22nd, 2024 - 20 comments
Categories: labour, political parties, Politics, tax - Tags: , , , ,

The 2012 reforms of the Labour Party, which created a unitary Party, replacing a quasi-bimodal Party-Caucus model, were always, for me, a bad move. This view enraged Mr Trotter, who accused me of, sin of sins, “realpolitik”, but I remain convinced that the perverse effects of the changes were not to engender stronger member voice, but to empower the upper layer – particularly the Leader’s office and team – of an already hierarchical structure to manage downwards Party activities ever more closely. Some in the Party disagree with me on this. They would, I think, argue that the 2012 structure is fine, but it needs to operate to full democratic potential. Proof and puddings comes to mind.

Today, we adhere to a managerial, hierarchical model, akin to Piketty’s invocation of a Brahmin caste, in which, as I have been told on several occasions by the great and good, our “professional” politicians properly manage the direction of the Party, and into which the Party qua members may respectfully make suggestions. This form of politics has been studied since the “government by elites” models of 1960s Political Studies. Piketty’s is but the latest commentary on this form.

These arrangements take on an added importance now. After fifty years of neo-liberalism, the mechanisms so painstakingly and valiantly set in place in the 1930s – 1970s Keynesian period to reduce wealth differences and create accommodations, in which everyone had hope and opportunity, are dim memories. Today, one must be in one’s seventies to have experienced the Welfare State model.

Wealth is becoming more concentrated, the Capital-Labour ratio turns to Capital, work becomes more precarious, the viability of public services declines, the Bretton Woods framework erodes, geo-political insecurity burgeons, the rise of crass political populism is striking, the fundamentals of liberal democracy are under ever-greater threat. And let’s not believe that New Zealand is exempt from such changes. ACT’s recent explanation of why it doesn’t appear on “Morning Report” is not simply pique.

To borrow from “Yes, Minister”, the social democratic tradition has been “house trained” into an accommodation with this insecurity as half a century of defeats bears down on its analysis and courage. I have used before the boxing metaphor – a small target with a strong defence – in its properly Fabian sense to describe much of current social democratic politics. Do just as much as you can without rocking the boat, and, perhaps, wear down the opposition. This is no longer tenable, if, indeed, it ever was.

There is a fair response to this – look what Labour in power did. Jacinda Ardern used the “list of achievements” approach to good effect in campaigns. In recognising this, one must also understand that in the current environment, self-imposed constraints – on tax, for example, or economic transformation – limit perilously the options for Labour when in power. And, as Grant Robinson tentatively suggested, the need for economic transformation – particularly around wealth creation and distribution – is paramount.

Will Labour be bold, despite its many risks? It is no longer a simple question of winning this or that election within a three-year cycle. The challenges working people face will not be overcome by business as usual. Some simple ground rules. The nation-state is the key building bloc for an alternative. Labour must provide leadership in the development and prosecution of an alternative, It must be Labour. There is no future in splits and factions. And Labour must act proactively, in conjunction with other traditions that share these concerns. And, of course, winning matters. National will do nothing as it is preternaturally committed to growing insecurity. Wealth creation and distribution are the fundamental political issues. We can achieve little or nothing long-term without that focus. Without that focus, once the bread-and-butter of Labour thinking, the Labour tradition will become progressively weaker. A spavined centrism beckons.

Which takes me back to the Party and its deliberations. The 2012 reforms weakened the Party’s ability to act strongly and, where desirable and necessary, at arm’s length of the Caucus and Parliamentary Leader. Checks and balances work. However, a clear-thinking democratic party, true to Labour principles, is able to drive the policy shifts that are required. This requires several stages of work.

First, there is need for clarity in new policy settings. Fortunately, that work was started by ministers before the last election. Policy Council is well-placed to do further work promptly. Second, proposals must be taken through the two conferences, this and next year. Members must be well informed and mobilised. Third, Labour will have to sell, up front, new policy settings, especially around tax. Nobody thinks this is easy when National, happy in the deteriorating situation, will launch the “tax and spend” assault. As always, it’s up to Labour to do the vital hard yards of economic transformation. The earlier the message, the better.

There is a crop of commentaries from beyond the immediate world of politics – business people, tax specialists, retiring Secretaries to the Treasury – promoting significant tax changes, often focusing on the “catch-up” on CGT. National would support it tomorrow if there wasn’t short-term advantage in expressing opposition.

The real tax debate is about what more, a debate given life by IRD research prior to the election. And what more is needed under the broader heading of economic transformation? This is a debate in which the Party, and civil society, should be engaged. We must trust an informed people in a strengthened democracy. The alternative is intolerable.

20 comments on “On Labour’s Enduring and Unrelenting Historic Role ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Darien Fenton 1
    22 September 2024 at 2:53 pm

    I was at the LP conference where these rule changes were debated. It was the most divisive conference I ever attended and was driven by a pro Cunliffe group and anti Shearer opposition. I remember well Helen Kelly coming to speak with affiliated unions and cautioning us. Chris Trotter was there too lapping it all up. The results in 2014 speak for themselves. There is nothing that turns voters off more than a political party focusing on itself.

  2. Ad 2
    22 September 2024 at 3:19 pm

    A weird title that is actually an invitation to talk about tax, again.

    Why does anyone in the current Opposition think they will win a public policy argument about tax in a context of rapidly rising uemployment and manufacturing contraction, near-zero economic growth, appalling delivery of public services using the tax funding we're already giving that is consistently bad for three terms, and a complete inability by New Zealand to pay its way in the world let alone pay for even more public services.

    I was at that 2012 Conference, and sure I agree the effects of those reforms haven't worked as intended.

    But if you want to have a run at tax reform, show me what your plan to improve the whole economy is. Then show me how tax reform fits inside that. Andrew Little and Robertson, for example, sold the Bright Line Test reforms really well. It can be done.

    Don't blame absence of policy ambition on constitutional reforms.

    • Nic the NZer 2.1
      23 September 2024 at 1:54 am

      Totally agree with this sentiment. Reforms to NZ tax system are about economic equality reduction, all well and a good long term policy goal, but totally irrelevant to most voters. On the other hand building up the public sector (and so reducing unemployment) will have immediate economic impacts visible to most voters. I'm going to take it as obvious that large parts of the public sector (Health, Housing, Schooling) are too small in NZ compared per capita to other first world economies. One of the main causes of NZs economic state is our inherantly stingy (cheap) natural instincts.

      • Ngungukai 2.1.1
        23 September 2024 at 3:48 am

        NZ suffers from a lack of planning, professional assessment and poor execution. We have had successive poor Governments both National & Labour who keep driving us deeper and deeper into a hole. In a nutshell we don't do anything properly in this country, even the All Blacks are struggling these days.

        • Nic the NZer 2.1.1.1
          23 September 2024 at 4:07 am

          Can't agree with that, keeping the public sector on the small side has been quite intentional policy on both sides of the isle. NZ govts planned for us to get here and those plans were duely executed.

          It might be useful to understand what you think was poorly planned and how its supposed to have been better done.

          • thinker 2.1.1.1.1
            23 September 2024 at 7:29 am

            Not directly responding to the thread, but it would be nice to vote for a government that had a well-thought-out plan to help the country bake a bigger pie, rather than the cop-out of saying that's the private sector's job and governments argue over how to divide the current pie slices.

            The idea that governments have no business in helping or promoting business started with Roger Douglas and his neoliberal 'level playing field' which stopped helping New Zealand businesses compete against often-subsidised foreign competition.

            Then, Helen Clark's Knowledge Economy was an attempt to involve government in developing sectors where we had strategic advantage, although I remember they had bottles of Evian water on the conference tables when there were NZ-grown alternatives that could have been chosen.

            Other governments have global strategies and it would be great to have that option on the table.

    • KJT 2.2
      23 September 2024 at 7:19 am

      So much wrong with that statement it is hard to know where to begin to unpack it.

      But. Austerity and inadequate funding of public services and infrastructure are one of the main causes of all the problems you mention. Effective and adequate State services are not! a charge on an economy. They add to it.

      Countries that "pay their way in the world" have effective public services, especially essential infrastructure, education and health, and support for their own industries, not just one commodity export industry, supported by an adequate tax base. Successful countries we compare ourselves with have State shares of the economy over 50%. Ours is less than 30% and it shows, in all those failures you mention.

      Right wing parties are for those who have a vested interest in the State sector failing so they can profit from the result. National's concentrated fuckups of public provision in the last several months only makes sense in that concept. Unless Labour offers an alternative to that, what is the point of Labour?

      Labour MP's don't seem committed enough to tax and economic reform, to sell it. Over the next couple of years Labour should be constantly repeating that we are in the shit because of the small Government mania and wealthy, especially house scalpers and banks, taking from New Zealand without giving much in return.

      The right wing constantly repeat bullshit until it becomes received wisdom, even with those who should know better.

      How about Labour have the courage to constantly repeat the truth about what is necessary. The half hearted support from Labour MP's has doomed many a necessary public initiative.

      Doing something about the mess that is overpriced privatised and corperatised power, from the Bradford fuckup, would be a good start. And easily sold to businesses and the public at the moment.

      New Zealand is NOT a high taxed country, though the tax does fall disproportionately on middle income workers, income tax and GST, making it seem that way. So many times Labour has started heading in the right direction, only to balk at the hurdle and allow a right wing meme to take over the dialogue.

      As i’ve said many times before. Time Labour got out of the comfortable your turn, our turn in “power” and grows some guts.

      1984 Labour started the fuckup. Only Labour can fix it. You can be sure National won’t.

      • KJT 2.2.1
        23 September 2024 at 7:33 am

        I may add that actually standing for something, and having a narrative of improving peoples lives with.. is more likely to get votes than just being a slightly kinder version of National, that just builds less roads.

      • Tiger Mountain 2.2.2
        23 September 2024 at 7:49 am

        Agree KJT. Labour are doomed really unless they adopt some basics–re-nationalisation of power generation and supply (compensation only if the Gentailers go quietly), a revised Ministry of Works and Infrastructure (bye bye Fulton Hogan), more funding for local Govt., Capital Gains and Wealth taxes for starters.

        The NZ Labour Party even in its social democratic form pre ’84 had some problems with the attitude to working class matters but did well in many areas such as State Housing. Rank and file party members have long been subservient to the “Parliamentary wing” and Fraser House functionaries.

        • Ad 2.2.2.1
          23 September 2024 at 9:54 am

          No NZ party is proposing to go back to a pre-1984 state.

          It's 40 years ago. Get over it.

          • Tiger Mountain 2.2.2.1.1
            23 September 2024 at 11:34 am

            Political history is not strictly linear–there are zigs and zags–one step up, two steps back.

            The fork in the road really is…growth, unbridled capitalism and climate meltdown, or…sustainable energy and some form of socialism. No one imagines that is easy but it is an objective scenario if you trust in science.

          • KJT 2.2.2.1.2
            23 September 2024 at 1:31 pm

            And we are still dealing with the damage.

      • Ad 2.2.3
        23 September 2024 at 9:48 am

        Labour showed spectacular "guts" in its last two terms and the public simply hated it.

        Labour jammed in massive reforms into 6 years and also dealt with a series of emergencies, and the public hated them so much they put in the most right wing government we've had in a century, so almost all of the reforms from Labour have simply been reversed.

        Guts as a policy argument. Please.

      • Ngungukai 2.2.4
        23 September 2024 at 7:06 pm

        "Nuts and Guts Required" IMHO.

  3. Mike the Lefty 3
    23 September 2024 at 9:59 am

    I have never fully forgiven Labour for their 80s sellout. It was a disgrace to the Labour Party founders, done through indifference, self interest and kowtowing to big money.

    When they go back to their roots they will earn my support again, but it probably will never happen.

    • tc 3.1
      23 September 2024 at 11:01 am

      Agree with the sentiment but the reality is they are a party of mostly centrist steady as she goes types now.

      Still contains elements of what I'd like to see but the identity politics and duds like chippie unable to articulate 3 waters against the misinformation lost that election.

      His continued leadership of a party that lost seats it should've won (new lynn, mt roskill) is a bonus for the coalition.

      Coalition strategists must just love the loser still being there.

    • thinker 3.2
      23 September 2024 at 5:47 pm

      I think the elements of Labour that created the 80s sellout eventually (MMP) had to show their true colours and moved to their natural home, to the extreme right (of National).

      I think what you're speaking of is the vacuum inside Labour that enabled an essentially extreme right wing party to fill that socialist (Douglas and ilk quickly taught the country that the word is synonymous with communistic tendencies, which it isn't) vacuum with ultra -right policies masquerading as left.

      IMHO, that vacuum was only filled by the likes of (inside Labour) Clark and Ardern, maybe a few others, but when you can count on one hand the number of really socially-strategic leaders over a now-40 year period, it's not enough to say the vacuum has ever been properly filled.

      So, I think Labours current problems are not with the ghost of Rogernomics, but rather a 40 year perpetuation of the policy vacuum that allowed Rogernomics to take root.

  4. Michael who failed Civics 4
    23 September 2024 at 11:25 am

    An economium to middle class smugness. Labour has shot its bolt and Haworth shares a lot of the culpability.

    • Incognito 4.1
      23 September 2024 at 1:55 pm

      All you do in your comment is lashing out and taking a swing at the Author.

      Let us know when you have something useful to add to debate here.