"Democracy" - By Leonard Cohen

 

“I’M SENTIMENTAL, if you know what I mean. I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.” These lines from Leonard Cohen’s magisterial anthem, “Democracy”, sum up the way so many people feel about the United States of America. There are many more – and better – lines in this wonderful song. It’s why I play it so often – especially when Americans are in the process of choosing a new president. As the votes are cast, and the counting begins, why not listen to Lenny’s take on what democracy might look like – if it ever does come to the USA. Certainly, on this occasion, the song’s refrain has a special poignancy:

 

Sail on, sail on
O mighty ship of State
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on

 

May the American people find safe harbour.

Video courtesy of YouTube.

This posting is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

From Bottom To TOP.

Man At The TOP: Motivated by founder Gareth Morgan’s desire to ensure that future generations of New Zealanders enjoy the same opportunities as his own Baby Boomer Generation, The Opportunities Party (TOP) aspires to attract the support of enough unaffiliated voters to “light a fuse” under New Zealand’s lethargic and risk-averse political class.

 

BY A QUIRK OF GEOGRAPHY, we have woken up on America’s election day while the American electorate is sleeping fitfully through the night before. It will be Thursday morning (let’s be optimistic!) before the outcome of the most important US presidential election since 1860 becomes clear. So, while nightmares weigh heavily upon the breast of America’s Lady Liberty, let us turn our thoughts to the incredible lightness of being a New Zealand voter.

 

Barely five days ago, on Guy Fawkes eve, our very own millionaire gadfly, Gareth Morgan, announced the formation of The Opportunities Party (TOP). Motivated by its founder’s desire to ensure that future generations of New Zealanders enjoy the same opportunities as his own Baby Boomer Generation, TOP aspires to attract the support of enough unaffiliated voters to “light a fuse” under New Zealand’s lethargic and risk-averse political class.

 

So far, so Trumpish? No, not really.

 

Donald Trump’s extraordinary achievement was to mount a successful reverse takeover of the Republican Party. Pivotal to his success was the support of America’s most ignorant white voters. Who can forget the moment, early on in the race for the White House, when Trump was proudly listing the demographics he was winning. “We’re winning the poorly educated”, purred the Donald, before flashing his trademark grin and cooing: “We love the poorly educated.”

 

Morgan is approaching politics from a radically different direction. His openly avowed goal is to wield “undue influence” over New Zealand politics. He cannot hope to do this by enlisting the most ignorant and alienated of voters. The demographics he must win are those containing the nation’s most intelligent and engaged citizens.

 

Nor does Morgan intend to place TOP’s collective posterior on the Treasury Benches. He’s ruling out coalition agreements with both National and Labour. Instead, TOP proposes to position itself on the cross-benches, from where it plans to assemble one-off majorities for a series of overdue, but essential, policy reforms.

 

Far from becoming a permanent feature of New Zealand’s political landscape, TOP’s aim is to assemble a transient political movement dedicated to goading the lacklustre and cautious politicians seated on both sides of the aisle into purposeful action. Having ticked-off its strictly limited set of policy objectives, Morgan and his party intend to pack up their box files and go home.

 

I have to confess to being more than a little intrigued. Whether or not a political party dedicated to achieving a handful of key policy objectives, and then disbanding itself, could attract a substantial measure of electoral support is a thought experiment upon which many productive hours can be idled away.

 

Naturally, money would be crucial to the success of such a venture – lashings and lashings of money. But, lashings and lashings of money is precisely what Gareth Morgan has got. What’s more, he has spent much of his time since becoming a multi-millionaire looking for answers to some of New Zealand’s biggest problems.

 

The radical American journalist, Upton Sinclair, famously observed that: “It is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”

 

This largely explains why Morgan, the founder of Infometrics Ltd, was widely regarded as one of this country’s leading free-market evangelists. With his salary no longer dependent on preaching that old-time free-market religion, however, Morgan has shown dangerous signs of ideological agnosticism. Indeed, on matters as controversial as climate change, poverty and the delivery of a universal basic income, Morgan has shown himself to be a commendably open-minded intellectual pilgrim.

 

It’s a quality that could propel TOP a lot further than Colin Craig’s superficially similar self-funded electoral vehicle – The Conservative Party.

 

Depending on what Morgan and his fellow TOP members settle on as their half-dozen core policy objectives, the party has the potential to draw support away from practically every party currently represented in Parliament. Should this eventuate (and with proper political guidance and promotion there’s no reason to suppose it shouldn’t) it is even conceivable that TOP could achieve its goals without ever having to set foot in parliament.

 

When Morgan was Infometrics’ leading economist he was a passionate promoter of the virtues of competition. The arrival of a competitor in any given market, he’d argue, will always produce a galvanising effect on existing market players. Is Morgan hoping that, simply by entering New Zealand’s lamentably self-satisfied and sluggish political marketplace, TOP is going get the National/Labour duopoly off its bottom?

 

This is what differentiates Gareth Morgan from Donald Trump. Rather than goading New Zealand’s ignorant pessimists into doing their worst, our own millionaire-turned-politician is inviting his country’s intelligent optimists to get the best out of their fellow citizens by offering the best of themselves.

 

In doing so, TOP may even frighten the National/Labour duopoly into giving away the safe move – for the right move.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 8 November 2016.

Why I'm Not At The Labour Conference This Weekend.

A Fading Rose: Labour’s villains have become banal, and her heroes are dead and gone. For me, the party’s annual conference no longer beckons. Fortunately, there’s plenty to keep me busy in my garden. This year’s roses are a particularly vivid shade of red.

 

I SHOULD BE at the Labour Party’s annual conference. I fully intended to attend. I’d received the usual e-mail inviting me to apply for media accreditation. But, with the deadline looming, I just couldn’t do it.

 

Wearing a media pass around my neck this year would have felt hypocritical – inauthentic. Labour conferences have never been just another journalistic assignment for me. Ever since I cast my first vote (more than 40 years ago now, God help me!) Labour’s cause has been my cause. Regardless of whether I was attending as a delegate, or a journalist, Labour conferences mattered.

 

It’s why I worked so hard to get to them. As the only political organisation in New Zealand with a realistic prospect of actually improving the lives of working people, the internal life of the Labour Party has, for me, always been a matter of huge significance.

 

As a journalist, I never found the official conference speeches of much interest. What mattered to me were the conversations with rank-and-file delegates; the policy workshop debates on economics, trade and foreign affairs [all closed to media this weekend] and the chance to get some idea of who was on the rise and who was on the way out. I never got the impression that more than a handful of the journalists in attendance were remotely interested in any of these things, but for me this annual pulse-taking was invaluable.

 

I kept coming back for more because I never went away from a Labour conference disappointed. At the grass-roots level of the party there was always a sense of optimism. No matter what the setbacks, I never got the sense that Labour’s forward march had been halted.

 

Even at the annual conference following the rout of the Fourth Labour Government in 1990, delegates could point to established leaders like Helen Clark and Michael Cullen, and to new MPs like Steve Maharey, Pete Hodgson and Leanne Dalziel, and tell me with considerable confidence that Labour’s sun would rise again. And, of course, nine years later, with a lot of help from the Alliance, it did.

 

Even with the departure of Clark and Cullen, the party’s confidence remained undimmed. Indeed, between 2008 and 2014 I detected an exciting groundswell of rank-and-file assertiveness. There were hundreds in the party who, with Clark safely ensconced in New York, were determined that their party should, once again, become the driving force of progressive change in New Zealand. These were great conferences to attend.

 

Two individuals stood out in this headlong rush for a Labour rebirth: Helen Kelly and David Cunliffe. Like those undaunted delegates in 1990, Labour activists looked to them in confident expectation of another brilliant sunrise. It was not to be.

 

Maybe that was it – the reason why, on the afternoon of Tuesday, 1 November, I just couldn’t fill in my accreditation form. Helen was gone, and now David was going. Labour’s bright sunlit morning had turned into a grey rainy day.

 

Yes, the delegates will all be there in the conference hall this weekend. The workshop debates will splutter and stutter to some sort of conclusion. Party vacancies will be filled, reports presented, and Andrew will deliver his speech. Except, this time, the political drama’s script will not have been written by a Kirk, a Lange, a Clark, or even a Roger Douglas, but by a committee.

 

Labour’s villains have become banal, and her heroes are dead and gone. For me, the party’s annual conference no longer beckons. Fortunately, there’s plenty to keep me busy in my garden. This year’s roses are a particularly vivid shade of red.

 

This essay was published jointly on Bowalley Road and The Daily Blog on Sunday, 6 November 2016.

Radicalising, Renewing & Repositioning Labour: David Cunliffe’s Impossible Mission.

The Party Was Behind Him - Shame About The Caucus: David Cunliffe’s unforgiveable sin – at least in the eyes of his colleagues – was being seized of the need for Labour to reposition itself ideologically. He understood that, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, social-democracy must either have a rebirth of radicalism or fade into irrelevance. It was not a message that his colleagues wanted to hear. When Cunliffe, despairing of rousing Labour’s parliamentary wing, reached out to the party membership, he sealed his fate.

 

SO, DAVID CUNLIFFE’S LEAVING POLITICS. I’d be lying if I told you I’m surprised. The toxic, soul-rotting environment of the Labour caucus is no place for a rational human-being. In fact, what really surprised me about Cunliffe was how long he managed to endure the company of those “colleagues” whose petty jealousies and unreasoning hatreds inflicted so much damage – both to him and the Labour Party he tried to lead.

 

Some on the left of New Zealand politics have compared Cunliffe to Jeremy Corbyn. Inasmuch as both men have been on the receiving end of an extraordinary amount of poisonous media invective and rank caucus disloyalty the comparison is a sound one. But Cunliffe cannot lay claim to Corbyn’s outsider status. As a highly competent and effective cabinet minister in the Clark-led Labour Government, he moved in the inner, not the outer, circles of his party.

 

Corbyn languished on the back benches of the House of Commons for thirty years, a harmless throwback to the era of Michael Foot and Tony Benn. Cunliffe’s ambition was much easier to spot. That was his undoing. As one commenter on the Labour-leaning blog, The Standard, put it: “David Cunliffe was always the smartest guy in the room. Unfortunately he knew it, and let others know he knew it.”

 

Cunliffe’s other, even more unforgiveable, defect – at least in the eyes of his colleagues – was being seized of the need for Labour to reposition itself ideologically. He understood that, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, social-democracy must either have a rebirth of radicalism or fade into irrelevance. It was not a message that his colleagues – beset as so many of them were with moral and intellectual lethargy – wanted to hear. When Cunliffe, despairing of rousing Labour’s parliamentary wing, reached out to the party membership, he sealed his fate.

 

In this aspect, also, the parallels with Corbyn are striking. Neoliberalism, it would seem, has no stronger defenders than the legatees of Tony Blair and Roger Douglas. Having defanged their respective labour parties so ruthlessly in the 1980s and 90s, the prospect of social-democracy growing a new set of teeth is one which these children of the neoliberal revolution will do almost anything to prevent.

 

It was Corbyn’s good fortune to take control of the British Labour Party a full five years out from the UK’s next general election. It’s a schedule that affords him just enough time to win the ideological and organisational battles within the party before turning to defeat Labour’s real enemy – the Tories.

 

Time was a luxury David Cunliffe did not have. He won the leadership just 12 months out from the 2014 election. Defeating his internal enemies and the National Party was simply too big an ask.

 

This was the brute fact that undid Cunliffe’s leadership. Torn between honouring his promises to the membership, and preventing his caucus enemies from moving into open revolt, Cunliffe found it almost impossible to make the crucial strategic and tactical decisions that effective political leadership demands.

 

One of the reasons Cunliffe was so reluctant to abandon the leadership in the days following the 2014 election was because he knew how vital it was to finally have the internal fight that the exigencies of waging an election campaign had postponed. By 27 September 2014, however, Cunliffe was in no shape to launch a struggle for the heart and soul of the Labour Party. Emotionally wrung-out, his marriage falling apart, assailed with extraordinary viciousness by his caucus enemies and deserted by even his closest allies, he resigned the leadership and threw what support remained to him within the party behind the candidacy of Andrew Little.

 

Part of the explanation for Cunliffe waiting so long to announce his retirement is, perhaps, that he couldn’t quite bring himself to accept that Little was never going to radicalise, renew or reposition the Labour Party. In spite of the worldwide voter hunger for a principled alternative to the exhausted philosophy of free markets and free trade, the New Zealand Labour caucus’s preference for fudging and fiddling remains undiminished.

 

So David Cunliffe is leaving. Moving back into the commercial world where, in marked contrast to the political world, incompetence is punished and excellence rewarded.

 

Walk away with your head held high, David. You gave it your best shot. The struggle continues.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 4 November 2016.

Cause For Celebration: An Entirely Fictional Exchange.

"Shhh, Sir! Walls have ears. Even Here." "No, Rachel, not here. The GCSB sweeps this place every week. We can speak freely here."

 

A PRIVATE DINING-ROOM in an exclusive Wellington restaurant. Seated at a window table and reading a newspaper is JULIAN, a well-dressed senior officer in the NZ Security Intelligence Service. The door opens and a waiter ushers in RACHEL, a much younger officer.

 

RACHEL: That’s not The Guardian I see you reading, is it Sir? Tsk, tsk! What would the Minister say?

 

JULIAN: Well, yes, I’m afraid it is, Rachel. I’m keen to discover exactly how much they actually know about our SAS deployment in Iraq.

 

RACHEL: Shhhh, Sir! Walls have ears! Even here.

 

JULIAN: No, Rachel, not here. The GCSB sweeps this place every week. We can speak freely here.

 

RACHEL: Well, that’s good to know because I’ve just received some very interesting intelligence from one of our more reliable sources in the Labour caucus.

 

JULIAN: Hah! I’m relieved to hear that at least one of them is reliable! What have you been told?

 

RACHEL: It’s your old friend, Mr Cunliffe. He’s leaving Parliament.

 

JULIAN: About bloody time!

 

RACHEL: I thought you’d be pleased.

 

JULIAN: More relieved than pleased, Rachel. Cunliffe was a real problem.

 

RACHEL: For a while.

 

JULIAN: Oh, for more than a while, I think. From the moment he began to grasp the implications and ramifications of the Global Financial Crisis the man’s been a bloody great thorn in our side. Vaunting ambition armed with a convincing explanation. Nothing is more dangerous to the status quo than a man in a hurry with a story that makes sense.

 

RACHEL: Not that very many people ever got to hear it.

 

JULIAN: No, that’s true. But we were forced to rely on the media to an extent that made me distinctly uncomfortable.

 

RACHEL: But it worked, didn’t it? Our journalistic assets made sure that Cunliffe’s message never got taken seriously.

 

JULIAN: Oh yes, it worked. But the media is an unreliable ally. All it takes is for someone like Cunliffe to say something on live television or radio that resonates with the electorate. Something that can’t be edited out. Something that sets people on fire. When that happens the bloody journos just can’t help themselves. A story – is a story – is a story.

 

RACHEL: But Cunliffe did just the opposite, didn’t he? I mean, if we had worked night-and-day for a month we couldn’t have come up with anything half as good as “I’m sorry I’m a man.”

 

JULIAN: Heh-heh! No. That was way beyond even our most sanguine expectations!

 

RACHEL: And even if Cunliffe had said something … inconvenient … we were still covered. Didn’t you tell me that there was plenty up the Service’s sleeve if the campaign looked about to tip Cunliffe’s way? Something about a woman? Or was it two women?

 

JULIAN: Oh yes, there was plenty in reserve if something was needed to “shift the narrative” – as our academic friends might say.

 

RACHEL: Like a $100,000 bottle of wine?

 

JULIAN: Like a $100,000 bottle of wine.

 

RACHEL: And then there were the ABCs – although they never needed much in the way of encouragement from us!

 

JULIAN: No, they didn’t. But it was good to know they were there. Nothing turns the voters off faster than the spectacle of public disunity – let alone open revolt.

 

RACHEL: They would really have gone that far?

 

JULIAN: Rachel, my dear, they would have gone as far as tearing the Labour Party into bloody little chunks on the six o’clock news if that was what it took to prevent Cunliffe becoming Prime Minister. These are seriously unpleasant people – even by our rather loose standards.

 

RACHEL: Well, I suppose we only have to look at what’s happening in the UK to get some idea of what Labour MPs are prepared to do to ensure that a socialist never becomes prime minister. I had no idea MI5 had so many of them in its pocket.

 

JULIAN: No, neither did I. It has really been quite an impressive demonstration.

 

RACHEL: Corbyn’s still there, though.

 

JULIAN: For now. We, on the other hand, have something a little closer to home to celebrate. Some Champagne, I think.

 

RACHEL: Excellent idea, Sir! But, before we celebrate, I’d like to know why you think it took Cunliffe so long to take the hint – or should that be hints?

 

JULIAN: Do you know, I think it can be put down to his misplaced faith in Andrew Little. He really did believe that the man he helped to install as leader was a politician after his own, rather soft, Anglican heart. That although Little had to pretend to the ABCs that he shared their loathing of him, Cunliffe was convinced that, deep down, what Little really shared was his ideas. That, when victory came, there would be a prime, if not a prime-ministerial, job for him in the new Labour-Green cabinet. It’s taken him two years to realise that, in the highly unlikely event that Labour does win the 2017 election, there will be nothing for David Cunliffe. Nothing at all.

 

RACHEL: Good to know that Little can be relied upon to do the right thing.

 

JULIAN: Yes, it is, isn’t it? Cause for celebration. See if you can find that waiter, will you.

 

This sketch was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 2 November 2016.

New Zealand’s Only Middle Eastern Exit Strategy – Leave Now.

Kiwi Boots On The Ground: To Arab eyes, New Zealand’s continuing presence in Iraq must signal a depressingly familiar message. Since the late-nineteenth century, this country has happily marched in the long imperial columns that have trudged their way across the dry and dusty places of the world.

 

WHY ARE NEW ZEALAND TROOPS in the Middle East? Our soldiers have been there for so long we’re in danger of forgetting why we sent them in the first place. And, since New Zealand’s contribution can only ever be token, what is this country’s apparently permanent presence in the world’s most dangerous region intended to communicate?

 

To Arab eyes, New Zealand’s presence must signal a depressingly familiar message. Since the late-nineteenth century, this country has happily marched in the great expeditionary columns that have trudged their way across the dry and dusty places of the world. From the South African veldt to the Sinai desert, the Kiwis’ broad-brimmed hats have dutifully bobbed along behind the pith helmets of their Imperial British mentors.

 

Numerous speeches have been delivered this year commemorating the grievous loss of young New Zealanders in the muck and fury of France and Flanders during the First World War. The Defence Minister, Gerry Brownlee, was in France only recently intoning the doleful register of our sacrifices at the Battle of the Somme. Not as much is being said, however, about the considerably less muddy and bloody exploits of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles in what was then the Ottoman Empire.

 

All New Zealanders know about their country’s role in the invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. Less well known is the role that Kiwis and Aussies played in driving the British Lion’s blood-stained claws into the carcass of the Ottoman Empire’s Middle Eastern provinces – especially Palestine – between 1916 and 1918.

 

The New Zealand Government’s reticence about drawing Arab attention to the role this country played in the emergence of the State of Israel is entirely understandable. What purpose would be served by reminding Arab historians about the Kiwi and Aussie troops responsible for the deaths of more than 200 Palestinian men and boys in the tiny village of Surafend in 1918? Or about the fulsome vote of thanks delivered to the Antipodeans by residents of the nearby Jewish settlement of Richon Le Zion?

 

Dredging up these historical incidents might prompt Egyptian historians to investigate the role played by the New Zealand and Australian mounted infantry in suppressing the Egyptian nationalist revolt against British domination which exploded in the final months of 1918 – a task made much easier by the Antipodeans’ already fearsome reputation for brutality against Arab civilians.

 

Questions might be asked about whether or not New Zealand’s behavior towards the Islamic world has changed all that much over the course of the past 100 years. True, the British Empire is no longer the dominant global superpower, but its American successor would appear to be no less persuasive when it comes to drawing the Antipodeans back into the marching columns of imperial adventures.

 

Indeed, if Nicky Hager’s book “Other People’s Wars” is to be believed, members of the NZ Defence Force were more-or-less begging the Americans to allow them to participate in the pacification of Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Perhaps it was this country’s soldiers’ enthusiasm to get back in the imperial game that prompted US Secretary of State Colin Powell to inform the world that the USA and New Zealand had, once again, become “very, very, very good friends”?

 

The only serious diplomatic spanner which New Zealand has ever dropped into the works of her imperial allies was the one let slip by Helen Clark in 2003. The Fifth Labour Government’s refusal to invade Iraq without the approval of the United Nation’s Security Council did not go unnoticed by the Arab world. For the first time in its history, New Zealand had declined to join its traditional allies: Australia, Britain and the USA; in a military enterprise. It could have marked the beginning of a new era in this country’s foreign affairs and defence policies. Sadly, it was not to be. Clark’s government was soon “persuaded” to step back into the dry and dusty places of the world.

 

Where, it would appear, we intend to stay. New Zealanders were assured that our assistance to the Iraqi government came with a clear exit strategy. Our troops would be engaged in training the Iraqi army – nothing more. But now, the “mission creep” historically inseparable from these ostensibly limited engagements has our government contemplating extending the NZDF’s training role to the Iraqi police. The Guardian newspaper is, further, reporting the involvement of our Special Air Service in combat operations against Islamic State. These claims have been strenuously rejected by John Key. But then he would say that – wouldn’t he?

 

To the peoples of the Middle East, the first step towards securing peace in the region is extremely simple: the nations of the West must leave. That includes New Zealand. We have aided and abetted the forces of imperialism for far too long. It’s time to go.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, November 01, 2016.

Forgotten Lessons: Has Labour Just Chosen To Lose Hutt South?

Best Man Or Mandatory Woman? Are Labour’s compulsory gender quotas dictating the party’s candidate selection processes?

 

SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE THE LEFT is incapable of learning anything. Why leftists forget every lesson History teaches them – even those of the recent past – I simply do not know. Mistakes, it seems, are for repeating – endlessly.

 

Twenty-seven years ago the NewLabour Party, full of energy and idealism, decided to institute a gender quota. Half of its candidates had to be women. Had to be, you’ll note. None of this “strive to ensure an equal number of women candidates” malarkey. Fifty percent meant fifty percent. Sorry fellas.

 

The NLP women grinned and the NLP guys puffed out their chests. Theirs was a party of real democratic-socialists – completely unlike those devious traitors in the Old Labour Party. If the NLP leader, Jim Anderton, had reservations, then he kept them to himself. Or, maybe, he knew enough about working-class voters to let them do the talking for him.

 

And talk they did. Canvassing Dunedin’s working-class streets I was taken to task on doorstep-after-doorstep by a succession of narrow-eyed matrons as suspicious of my rounded middle-class vowels as they were contemptuous of the NLPs affirmative action policy.

 

“I don’t agree with quotas”, I was told over and over again. “You should pick the best person for the job.” With impressive prescience, these hard-bitten mothers and grandmothers demanded to know what the NLP would do “if your quota isn’t filled and you’ve got to choose between a really good man and an unsuitable woman? Are you really going to tell the best man to bugger off? Because if you are – then you needn’t bother coming around here asking for my vote.”

 

Not that anyone paid much attention. Even in the democratic-socialist NLP, the idea that the political leadership should be guided by the views of those whose votes they were seeking got precious little traction. If working-class women were sceptical (if not downright hostile) to the gender quota, then it was only because they had yet to throw off the dead weight of patriarchal thinking. Nothing that a little feminist consciousness-raising couldn’t fix.

 

Always assuming that those working-class women wanted their consciousness raised, which, by-and-large they didn’t. Or, at least, not by democratic-socialists so utterly unaware of how patronising they sounded. If the choice was between being talked down to by a middle-class feminist, or represented by a working-class bloke who’d grown up in the same neighbourhood as themselves, then the best man was always going to win.

 

With the NLP long since deposited on the ash-heap of history, you might assume that the Labour Party would be wary of repeating its mistakes. But, you’d be wrong. Feminism is one of the progressive traditions which Labour has never turned its back on. The support of the Women’s Council of the party thus remains indispensable to any attempt to re-write Labour’s rules. Or un-write them. As David “Man Ban” Shearer discovered when he attempted to attenuate the Women’s Council’s constitutional efforts to ensure gender balance.

 

Over the past three years, those efforts have been crowned with success. And now Labour’s mandatory gender quotas are dictating the party’s candidate selection processes in precisely the way those shrewd Dunedin working-class women foresaw nearly thirty years ago.

 

Last weekend, Labour members in the Hutt South electorate gathered to choose a successor to their long-serving MP, Trevor Mallard. The choice they faced was between a popular local lawyer and city councillor, Campbell Barry, and a well-connected party insider, Virginia (Ginny) Andersen. Barry, who attended Wainuiomata High School, easily won the support of the Hutt South members present at the meeting, but he failed to convince the selectors representing the party’s New Zealand Council. By a narrow majority (4-3) the selection panel voted to install Ginny Andersen.

 

Bear in mind that Mallard holds Hutt South by just 709 votes, and that in 2014 National won the Party Vote by a margin of 6,745 votes. National’s candidate, Chris Bishop, is a strong campaigner and will only be prevented from lifting the seat in 2017 by a Labour candidate capable of putting a large and enthusiastic team of volunteers in the field. That is very hard to do when the local membership believes “Head Office” has ignored their preferences and imposed an unwanted “outsider” on the electorate.

 

Once again, I’m recalling that doorstep dialogue of thirty years ago: “I don’t agree with quotas. You should pick the best person for the job. What do you do if your quota isn’t filled and you’ve got to choose between a really good man and an unsuitable woman? Are you really going to tell the best man to bugger off? Because if you are – then you needn’t bother coming around here asking for my vote.”

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 31 October 2016.