Drama at the South Pole
A few eyebrows will have been raised at reports that the Prime Minister intended to take a personal bodyguard with him on a helicopter flight from Scott Base to the South Pole, for fear that an assassin might be lurking when he got there. But there is more to the story than meets the eye.
On the day that the announcement was made, a select few trusted journalists were invited to a secret briefing given by the Controller and Overall Boss of the Prime Minister’s Personal Security Department – at a time of across-the-board cutbacks, the only government department to have escaped the axe and to have trebled in size. The Controller, known only as “Q” (though some of those in the know are confident that he is really Jonathan Coleman, the Minister for Defence), spoke from behind a screen.
“Very few realise the scale of the operation now needed to ensure the Prime Minister’s safety,” Q began. “The Prime Minister’s security needs are now so pressing that 70% of this country’s defence effort must be committed to the task if those needs are to be met. And, when a crisis is imminent, it is literally all hands on deck.”
“Our first indication that something was afoot was the Prime Minister’s fainting fit in the Christchurch restaurant. Our suspicion immediately fell on the red wine that the PM was enjoying that evening. We feared that the enemy had found a way of getting to the wine and lacing it with poison. When tested, it tasted a bit odd, but in the end there was nothing wrong with it, other than it was corked – it was just that the PM hadn’t noticed.
We then suspected that he may have been struck by a poisoned dart. We were keen to have the PM undergo a full body search, to see if we could find any puncture marks, but unfortunately the PM declined unless we could get Liz Hurley to conduct the search. She was, however, otherwise engaged.
The episode was enough, however, to put us on full multi-coloured alert. The general public would be amazed to know the extent of the precautions we are compelled to take in such circumstances. When, for example, the PM’s wife, Bronagh, goes to board the helicopter with him, we will intercept her and ensure that she has a DNA test to make sure that she is who she says she is – it’s frightening what skilled plastic surgeons can do these days and the PM might easily be fooled by a skilled impostor. And when the target is a major world figure like the PM, you can’t be too careful.
The real cause for concern, though, was the intelligence reports we had received from our security services, courtesy of our friends in the CIA. They had picked up a well-founded report from one of their best informants on the “other side” that a well-known polar explorer had been “turned” and – following an epic journey across the frozen continent to the South Pole – was already in waiting, armed and dangerous, hidden under an ice floe at the foot of the Pole and disguised as a polar bear.”
At this point, it is fair to say, there was a murmur from the back of the room. “But there aren’t any polar bears at the South Pole!” someone said. All eyes turned to the interjector.
Q sounded a little discomforted but quickly regained his composure. He was not amused. “It shows how little you understand about these operations. The element of surprise was of course essential to the audacious plan. The unexpected was the key. It was intended that the PM would be so surprised at meeting a polar bear at the South Pole, or indeed anywhere, that he would fall back into default mode. It’s easy to imagine that the PM might, for example, invite the impostor to do a spot of gangnam dancing or some such, thus making himself an easy target for a lethal assault.”
“Or ridicule,” someone murmured.
“The PM, after all, is not entirely ignorant of the natural world,” Q continued, “and well understands from the films he has seen on the Antarctic that animals there – penguins and suchlike – have happy feet and enjoy dancing.
We are confident that, having rumbled the plan, we are now on top of the situation. We believe we have foiled this dastardly plot. Any polar bear, whether real or in fancy dress, presenting itself to the PM at the South Pole can expect the full force of New Zealand military might to be brought to bear. The PM, I can assure you, is in safe hands.”
Q cleared his throat, something Jonathan Coleman could perhaps do more often. “That’s it gentlemen,” he said. “I’m sure I can rely on your discretion. I leave it to you to decide how best to get across to the New Zealand public just how seriously we take these challenges.”
Bryan Gould
19 January 2013
The Government’s Economic Report Card
As we enter the fifth year of this government’s term, and the sixth year of bumping along on the recessionary bottom, we now know enough to make an informed judgment of the government’s stewardship of the economy.
The usual economic indicators do not paint a pretty picture. Unemployment remains stubbornly high, manufacturing is weaker, the balance of trade is deteriorating, overseas borrowing is on the rise, the government deficit remains a problem, and poverty is increasing.
There is one bright spot, however – productivity. Not productivity in the usual sense of greater output per worker, which is still stuck at relatively low levels, reflecting no doubt equally low levels of investment and skill training; but the government has been remarkably productive in conjuring up excuses to explain our poor performance.
The first and main excuse is the “global economic situation”, which should certainly be a cause for some concern from a global viewpoint. But, paradoxically, the travails of the global economy have so far had little impact on us.
That is for a number of reasons. First, the global financial crisis left our Australian-owned banks virtually unscathed and they are still able to borrow with relative ease and at reasonable rates. We have quite simply avoided the huge burden imposed on other economies of having to re-build the credit-worthiness of their banking systems.
Secondly, our two major export markets and trading partners have been China and Australia, both of which (despite a recent Australian slow-down) have motored on through the global recession and maintained a pretty satisfactory rate of growth and therefore appetite for our goods.
Thirdly, and as a corollary of the second point, global commodity prices – particularly for our primary products – have been at high levels and have paid us (pace the overvalued dollar) a good return.
While future uncertainty (largely generated by the Germans who insist on imposing on the euro-zone a harsher version of the same policies as we have had to suffer here) is never helpful, there is actually little in the international situation to explain why we continue to bump along on the bottom.
But the government has a second ready-made excuse – the Christchurch earthquake. No one would have wished such a disaster upon us, but as an excuse for poor economic performance it suffers some limitations. Indeed, while it certainly means that we have to invest in re-building our asset base, it is also – often in the same breath – touted correctly as a major boost to the level of economic activity; without it, and the investment it necessitates, we would be in even deeper doldrums.
The truth is that the government’s excuses offer a convenient story to tell, but the real reasons for our sluggish performance lie elsewhere – at the government’s doorstep. High unemployment, manufacturing’s decline, and growing poverty, are a direct consequence of the priorities they have adopted.
The first mistake was the momentous decision to focus on the government’s own deficit, as though it arose somehow in isolation from the rest of the economy. By adopting this priority, the government ensured that other pressing problems – like unemployment, the country’s overseas borrowing, manufacturing’s difficulties – would remain unaddressed and get worse; and – paradoxically – the decision also ensured that the government deficit (made worse by the tax cuts given to top earners) would be more difficult to deal with.
The surest way to get the deficit down, after all, would be to get the economy moving again, so that less is paid out in unemployment benefits and more is paid in tax revenues by workers, consumers and businesses.
The government’s decision not only means that these issues are left neglected; by cutting spending, and trying to drive wages downwards, so that there is less money in people’s pockets, they have unwittingly done their bit towards creating a smaller and weaker economy overall.
Worse, they have made no attempt to counter or correct the real problems that have made life difficult for us over recent decades. They continue to preside over a policy that encourages the value of the dollar to rise, so that New Zealand workers are priced out of jobs and New Zealand goods are priced out of international markets.
They continue to focus on inflation (to the exclusion of problems like unemployment) and to use the single instrument of interest rates to deal with it, whatever the consequences for the real economy.
Alarmingly, they are content to “solve” our growing economy-wide indebtedness by selling off assets and allowing the control and income streams from our most important productive industries to pass into foreign hands – a certain recipe in the longer term for worsening our balance of payments, increasing our need to borrow, and losing control of our own economic destiny.
Even when the long-delayed recovery from recession does materialise, in other words, we will be heading straight back to the same old – but this time intensified – weaknesses. But, when these long-term failures do their inevitable damage, someone else will have to carry the can; this government will be long gone. It’s hard to think of a better definition of short-termism.
Bryan Gould
29 December 2012
When A Minister’s Luck Runs Out
It is said that Napoleon, on being told of the impressive attributes of a new general, asked, “But is he lucky?”
Napoleon, it seems, understood that in war, as in politics, luck – and timing – are everything. Most politicians will ride their luck while they can but will come unstuck when their luck runs out. That is why Enoch Powell once said famously, and with only slight exaggeration, that “all political careers end in failure.”
A case in point is that of Hekia Parata. She is a politician who enjoyed a meteoric rise. The problem with meteoric rises, however, is that it is all too easy. There isn’t time to develop the calluses, the scar tissue, the thick skin, that will be needed when the going gets tougher.
Ms Parata had everything going for her. She had had a successful career outside politics. She attracted attention by fighting a skilful by-election campaign in a hopeless seat so that she was a shoo-in for a National list seat and an apparently effortless rise – after effective spells deputising for others – into the Cabinet.
In John Key’s new Cabinet, she seemed a natural for the hitherto problem portfolio of education. But just a year into her brief, she is in trouble. What went wrong?
The short answer is that her luck ran out and the attributes that had served her well on the rise were not enough to sustain her when she came under pressure. But the story is a little more complicated than that.
Such is the flak she is now taking that it is easy to forget that her predecessor, Anne Tolley, had an equally difficult time. Those tribulations afflicting two education ministers in succession reflect not so much the particular deficiencies of the individual ministers as the deep flaws in the education policy pursued by the Government as a whole.
The Key government has quite deliberately set out on a policy that flies in the face of our long and largely successful experience in creating an excellent education system in this country. The government has preferred to play upon the fears, prejudices and just plain ignorance of some parents and – in the course of putting in place policies such as national standards – defied the evidence and the accumulated expertise of education professionals and experts from both at home and overseas.
Little wonder that tensions and conflict have been the leit motiv of education policy and that education ministers have found it tough going. Hekia Parata was on a hiding to nothing, but – anxious to please – she did not have the political weight to defy the Prime Minister and avoid the obvious bear traps.
In this, she was not helped by the fact that she was saddled with a chief executive whom she had had no say in appointing. Lesley Longstone was a victim – as were we all – of a syndrome that is now well entrenched – the apparent belief that a half-way competent UK public official with little chance of reaching the top in Britain (as witness the willingness to come to New Zealand) would be good enough to do a wonderful job for us.
Never mind that knowledge of New Zealand and of our particular requirements might be lacking. The only criterion that matters, it seems, is that the appointee should have demonstrated commitment to the correct ideological positions – should (in Mrs Thatcher’s term) be “one of us”. If actual experience applying “free-market” policies could also be shown, even if that experience had demonstrated the failure of such policies in the UK, so much the better.
So, Hekia Parata found herself leant on from above and pushed further in the same direction from below. And, to make matters worse, she found herself committed by no less an educational expert than John Banks to an education experiment with so-called “charter” schools that even the Treasury has condemned as unwise.
When things turn sour, everything is seen in a bad light. When the minister ventured to hope that teachers might pronounce their pupils’ names correctly – something that, as someone whose surname is consistently mispronounced, she no doubt felt strongly about – that was seen as arrogant and inappropriate.
And, as she came under pressure, she might have done well to recall the story told by Harold Macmillan, the former British Prime Minister. As a young MP, he revealed to a senior colleague that he was extremely nervous about speaking in the House of Commons, with “the enemy” facing him across the Chamber. “But,” said the senior man, “those aren’t your enemies. They’re your opponents. Your enemies sit behind you.”
Those who rise quickly will inevitably arouse less than generous feelings in those whom they overtake. As Hekia Parata‘s bubble has burst, it is equally inevitable that there should be some schadenfreude on the part of others and perhaps less disposition to help and support her.
So, the minister is pretty much on her own. Politicians, whether going up or down, don’t usually attract much sympathy. But they are, after all, human. As Shakespeare might have observed, if you prick them, do they not bleed?
Bryan Gould
23 December 2012
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 26 December.
Do What’s Right
What are those of us – I assume a large majority – who do not have time to read the Binnie Report to make of David Bain’s compensation claim and the legal tangle that Judith Collins has got herself into?
We can surely have some sympathy for the Minister; she will be damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. But there are at least a few salient points that can help us – and her.
First, there can be no doubt that David Bain – following the quashing of his earlier conviction by the Privy Council and his acquittal at his re-trial – was found not guilty of the crime. No one with any respect for our justice system should dispute that outcome. The conclusion is unavoidable; David Bain should never, on that basis, have spent a day in jail, let alone thirteen years. A claim for compensation should, in principle, be entirely justifiable.
There are, however, complications. In most cases where a conviction is overturned, there is clear (often DNA) evidence to show that the accused person did not commit the crime. In the Bain case, it seems that the evidence still leaves room for doubt – and there is the further complication that, on the facts of this particular case, if he is innocent, there was only one other person who could have done it.
But David Bain does not have to prove his innocence, or that someone else did it, nor is he responsible if his acquittal casts suspicion on someone else. The real complexity arises, however, because the legal test applied to the question of whether or not he is entitled to compensation is quite different from the one that determined his guilt or otherwise.
David Bain was acquitted because the test in a criminal case is whether or not there was a reasonable doubt about his guilt – and the jury found that there was. His claim for compensation, on the other hand, falls to be considered under an “extraordinary circumstances discretion” by which Cabinet will consider “claims on a case-by-case basis, where this is in the interests of justice”, and in circumstances where these terms are not defined.
Simon Power, the Minister who appointed Justice Binnie to report on this issue, specified that “innocence on the balance of probabilities is a minimum requirement”. The onus was on David Bain therefore to establish, on a balance of probabilities, his factual (and not merely technical) innocence as a condition of his receiving compensation. Justice Binnie’s conclusion is that, following a review of all the evidence, David Bain discharged that responsibility and is entitled to compensation. It is that finding that Judith Collins has chosen to question.
The Minister is of course faced with a dilemma, and one that arises because public opinion, as far as one can tell, is divided on the issue of whether David Bain can be regarded as “innocent” on a balance of probabilities, and not merely “not guilty”. The Minister fears that if she advises Cabinet that compensation should be paid, a substantial body of opinion will accuse her of unjustifiably paying out taxpayers’ money to someone who does not deserve it.
Yet, if she does not do so, what basis can she claim for that decision? Short of a full and further judicial hearing, which is surely out of the question, does she claim to know better than the courts, and to believe that David Bain is guilty? What does she claim to know that eluded an eminent Canadian jurist engaged to give an authoritative opinion on precisely the issue of Bain’s innocence and that now leads her to assert that David Bain, on a balance of probabilities, committed the crime?
It is precisely because she can have no sound basis for unilaterally reaching for such a conclusion that she has cast around for someone else to get her off the hook. But going back to the Solicitor General, who is surely parti pris, or asking for further opinions until – presumably – she gets one she likes, cannot resolve her dilemma for her.
What, therefore, should she do? The two possible outcomes both carry with them the risk of serious injustice. On the one hand, to pay compensation to a David Bain who had killed his family would be to reward a criminal at the taxpayer’s expense. But, on the other hand, to deny an innocent David Bain compensation for thirteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit would be to add insult to injury, in the dual sense that fairness had been denied to the victim of a terrible wrong, and that he had been left with an ineradicable stigma in the eyes of his fellow-citizens – a stigma that our courts felt themselves not justified in imposing.
There is surely no doubt that the latter outcome carries the greater risk of injustice. Judith Collins should set aside political calculation and concern for what some elements of public opinion may think, and reach the only decision that can minimise potential injustice. She should support her own justice system and the report commissioned by her predecessor, and advise Cabinet accordingly.
Bryan Gould
14 December 2012
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 17 December.
Can We Trust John Key to Fight Our Corner?
Ask yourself a simple question. If John Key had come to power before our non-nuclear policy had been decided, would he have initiated it on his own account? Or would keeping in with the Americans have been his first priority?
The question is worth asking because New Zealand Prime Ministers are constantly faced with striking the right balance between protecting our own interests on the one hand and pleasing powerful external forces on the other.
The answer to the question is surely obvious. The Key government has shown itself repeatedly to be keen to meet the demands – whether commercial or political – of outside interests. Whether it be reducing the rights of New Zealand workers at the behest of Warner Bros – described by the New York Times as John Key being “bent to the will” of the film studios – or denying the right to protest on the occasion of a visit from the Chinese Vice-President, or following the US lead in abandoning the Kyoto Protocol, we can have little confidence that our government will stand up for us when they come under pressure.
The issue arises again in the context of the negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership. Once again, we need to know whether we can rely on our government to resist the pressure to sell us short.
Typically enough, the attempt is being made to define the debate about the TPPA in the black and white terms of being either for or against free trade. If only it were that simple. Most people, me included, would see – all other things being equal – considerable advantages in an extension of free trade. But we might also observe that many countries – especially smaller and weaker ones – have prudently avoided opening up their economies to powerful competitors until they are confident they can handle the challenge.
It is sensible to ask, therefore, whether we are strong enough to face direct competition in our own backyard from the world’s most powerful economies; and, if there is doubt about that, should we not realise that what is presented as a free trade agreement might really just be a recipe for absorption into those selfsame economies?
The TPPA also raises a number of specific issues. It is agreed by experts in international trade law – even by those who are in favour of the TPPA – that New Zealand will need to pay particular attention to at least three of those issues which, unless satisfactorily resolved, could adversely affect our interests.
First, the powerful US pharmaceutical industry has attacked Pharmac – the state agency for drug purchase that has saved us billions of dollars – as a barrier to the kind of profits they want to see. The danger here is that, even if Pharmac is not targeted for actual abolition, its powers may be scaled down to make it less effective. On the same principle, other public and cooperative mechanisms, such as Fonterra and Zespri, could be challenged as unacceptable to the concept of “free”trade. And, ironically, the kind of tax sweetener we provided to Warner Bros could also be struck down as a distortion of trade.
Second, it is recognised that attempts to restrain the buying up of our assets by foreign interests would be opposed as contrary to the “free trade” encapsulated in a TPPA. Nor would discriminating in favour of local New Zealand suppliers in preference to overseas companies be tolerated. When it comes under pressure on this issue, our government will be reduced to asking for special exemptions – something sure to be strenuously resisted by the Americans and others.
A third area which warrants concern is the “investor protection” provision – typically found in this kind of “free trade” agreement – that allows overseas corporations to sue our government in special tribunals, even though they are not parties to the TPPA and even though a later government might have been elected to put in place a totally different policy on a given issue. Again, the unduly optimistic language in the face of this threat is that of the need for “mitigation”.
The Herald’s advice – that we need not worry about these issues because we could always break the treaty if it turned out badly – is not guidance that should be offered to or accepted by a responsible government.
No one disputes that the Americans will push these issues hard and will expect to win. Whether we can defend our interests will depend entirely on how strongly our government fights our corner, and whether it is prepared to say no.
Hence the question with which I started. Do you have confidence that John Key will stand up to the pressure? I fear that the best we can hope for is a fudged outcome that will in reality be a capitulation on each of these issues. Our confidence cannot be helped by the fact that the negotiations are being conducted in secret and that, by the time we know the outcomes, it will be a done deal that cannot be changed.
And all of this gambled on the hope that the powerful US dairy industry will welcome the tariff-free entry of our dairy products into the US!
Bryan Gould
9 December 2012