Chris Trotter on evening the odds
Veteran left-wing commentator Chris Trotter has a fascinating column in the Independent. As their links only last for a week I’ve included the story over the break.
Trotter makes several points:
* The Opposition’s newly erected billboards speak eloquently of a quantum shift in National’s propaganda capability.
* A fortnight ago rumours flew around the capital that the Prime Minister’s hitherto highly effective propaganda team was on the verge of mutiny and, some whispered, disintegration
* Six years of unprecedented spending on health and education have not produced the anticipated results.
* New Zealand’s bureaucratic structures would appear to have an inexhaustible capacity to absorb taxpayers’ dollars
And best of all is this gem:
The more forthright critics of this creeping bureaucratic paralysis have even given it a name. Rather unkindly, they call it “Mahareyism.”
Evening the odds
Chris Trotter
Six months ago political commentators rated the chances of a National Party government at little better than 60:40 and Labour supporters spoke enthusiastically about their Government winning not just a third or a fourth, but maybe even a fifth and sixth term.
Today, no one is writing off the possibility of a National-led government by Christmas.
The Opposition’s newly erected billboards speak eloquently of a quantum shift in National’s propaganda capability.
The pop-Manicheism of Red versus Blue, Helen versus Don, Iwi versus Kiwi, and Tax versus Cuts points to a right-wing campaign of uncharacteristic sophistication.
There is growing speculation that National has tapped into what one left-wing wit has dubbed the ‘con-intern’ (conservative international) and is furiously seeking inspiration and ideas from a range of Australian, British and American consultants.
Elsewhere on the Left, old-timers mutter darkly about the election campaign of 1975, recalling the intervention of the US animation company Hanna Barbera and the boost it gave to National’s propaganda.
Even after 30 years, National’s 1975 advertisements (check them out at the 1970s exhibition at Te Papa) have lost nothing of their devastating quality.
The cartoon sequences alone were probably enough, but it was the second half of the advertisements, where a scarily authoritative Rob Muldoon bored his simple messages straight down the camera’s lens, that closed the sale.
Is Labour in any fit state to counter this sort of thing?
The answer would appear to be “no.”
A fortnight ago rumours flew around the capital that the Prime Minister’s hitherto highly effective propaganda team was on the verge of mutiny and, some whispered, disintegration.
Helen Clark’s long-serving media chief, Mike Munro, was said to be on the point of resigning over the politicians’ refusal to share the overall Budget strategy with his spin-doctors.
While that particular rumour has yet to be confirmed by Munro’s departure, at least two important questions about the way the Budget was handled remain unanswered:
First, did the level of secrecy insisted upon by Clark and Cullen indicate a degree of sensitivity over the Budget’s contents?
Second, was that leadership sensitivity evidence of a growing level of dissatisfaction and discord within the Labour caucus, or even – dare we say it – the Cabinet?
Most Labour parliamentarians hail from professional, middle-class backgrounds and, not surprisingly, have a good many professional, middle-class friends.
They would, therefore, have grown all-too-familiar with the gripes of households too well-off to benefit from Labour’s Working For Families package, but not wealthy enough to carelessly wave away the extra cash.
Having witnessed Clark’s spectacular 180-degree, hand-brake turn on race relations in 2004, this group was confident that on 19 May Cullen would deliver them a delicious Budget Surprise.
Whether it took the form of an immediate and generous movement in the tax brackets or an outright cut in the top rate of personal income tax, they didn’t much care.
The government failed to register that the top 20% (no longer the top 5%) of full-time wage- and salary-earners paying 39 cents in the dollar were expecting something.
And so – apparently – was the Labour President, Mike Williams.
His flippant comment to The NZ Herald’s Ruth Berry, that the Budget contained a “deep dark secret,” suggested even the party was expecting the bracket-creep adjustments promoted by United Future’s Peter Dunne to be picked up.
Whatever the cause of Williams’ verbal slip, there can be no doubt as to its effect.
Senior press gallery journalists – all of whom now find themselves paying the top rate of tax – seized upon the Labour president’s comment as proof that the Amazing Dr Culleno was about to pull another rabbit out of his hat.
When the bunny failed to materialise, and their keenly anticipated tax cut suddenly disappeared in a puff of fiscally conservative smoke, the hacks were as pissed off as everybody else earning more than $60,000 a year.
What Labour appears to have forgotten is that a fair chunk of its traditional working class constituency now falls into that “high income” category.
In an environment of acute skilled labour shortages, electricians, carpenters and plumbers are coining it. While some of these trades-people may run their own small businesses and, therefore, be grateful for the commercial tax relief provided in the Budget, most do not.
For these Labour voters, Cullen’s failure to provide any meaningful tax relief must rankle.
Also feeling aggrieved will be the tens of thousands of solo mums for whom the Working For Families package has become little more than an exercise in humiliation and exclusion.
Rationally speaking, these voters cannot afford to support anything other than the parties of the Left.
The problem for Labour is that when people feel angry and alienated they often vote irrationally, or – worse still – decide not to vote at all.
For Labour’s campaign strategists, it all adds up to a massive propaganda challenge.
The memories of Jenny Shipley, Bill Birch and Ruth Richardson have faded.
Higher taxes are no longer viewed, as they were back in 1999, as the price that New Zealand’s better-off citizens should expect to pay for improved social services.
Six years of unprecedented spending on health and education have not produced the anticipated results.
Even on the Left, there is a growing sense of frustration that no matter how much money gets spent, nothing seems to happen.
New Zealand’s bureaucratic structures would appear to have an inexhaustible capacity to absorb taxpayers’ dollars, along with an indefatigable propensity to divert, discourage and delay any and every attempt to bring about even the smallest of administrative changes.
The managerialist model imposed upon the public service by the State Sector Act has turned out to be extremely good at generating reports, and reports on reports, and assessments of the reports on the reports, and inquiries into the inadequacies of the assessments of the reports on the reports.
But it has been singularly unsuccessful at providing the effectiveness and efficiency it was intended to guarantee.
The more forthright critics of this creeping bureaucratic paralysis have even given it a name.
Rather unkindly, they call it “Mahareyism.”
The net effect is paradoxical. Expenditure cuts in health and education – formerly the clearest evidence of the mendacity of the New Right, and the most compelling reason for backing the Centre Left – are beginning to be viewed in a very different light.
No longer are they seen as an all-out assault upon the institutions of the welfare state, but heretically – and just possibly – as a way to make our micro-managed bureaucrats do more with less.
What kind of answer can Labour provide to these Red versus Blue policy dichotomies?
Having ruled out tax cuts, and with the threat of expenditure cuts no longer guaranteed to push even the Centre Left’s panic buttons, what is Labour going to put on its billboards?
Social democracy? Even if it could (and it can’t) define the term’s meaning, it wouldn’t dare.
Social liberalism? Been there, done that (and Tim Barnett has got the T-shirts).
Social justice? Tell that to Ahmed Zaoui and the children of solo mums.
Biculturalism? Oops, that was before the Maori Party and Te Wananga o Aotearoa.
What else have they got?
My suspicion is Labour will eventually come down in favour of the “hard-working and competent” slogan that Helen Clark trots out whenever one of her ministers gets caught in the Opposition’s cross-hairs.
The problem, of course, is that after the NCEA debacle, the failure of the 111 system, David Benson Pope’s allegedly imaginative approach to classroom discipline, and the abject failure of the fifth and ninth floors of the Beehive to sell the 2005 Budget, will “hard-working and competent” be enough?
Chris Trotter is editor of NZ Political Review