Can Labour Win Next Time?
There are never any final battles in politics. No one should begrudge John Key his moment of triumph on Saturday, but – as he will be well aware – the campaign for the next general election has already started.
A 48% share of the votes cast was, on the face of it, an outstanding achievement. But we should bear in mind that fully two-thirds of New Zealanders eligible to vote did not give their support to National, either failing to register or vote, or voting for someone else.
This was not, in other words, a coronation. Not everyone loves John Key. Yet we can already see the “elective dictatorship” syndrome in John Key’s claim that he has a mandate for asset sales, despite the incontrovertible polling evidence that the policy is opposed even by National voters.
The election campaign was at times an unhappy experience for John Key. It revealed to his supporters, both amongst voters and in the media, a politician whom many may not have seen before. The images of an uncomfortable and defensive John Key, clearly irritated at being challenged and having to answer questions he would prefer to have ignored, will remain in the memory for a long time.
Nor is it the case, as some have suggested, that Labour’s poor showing means that the next election is already a lost cause. We should not forget that, in 2002, National’s share of the vote dropped to just 22%, yet three years later, under the leadership of that “strange fellow” Don Brash, National very nearly pulled off a win.
None of which means that there is any disguising the mountain Labour has to climb if it is to mount a real challenge in 2014. The first casualty of their failure has been their leader – rough justice in a sense, since Phil Goff emerged from the campaign with an enhanced reputation.
The lesson that Labour must learn, though, is that elections are rarely won on the strength of a four-week election campaign. Labour worked hard through the recent campaign but they made virtually no progress in undermining the image that John Key had projected over the preceding three years.
The truth is that Labour lost the election because they were, for most of the parliamentary term, an ineffective opposition. They did not work hard enough. They left their run, such as it was, far too late.
Labour’s new leader needs to think hard about the politics of being in opposition. If they are to do better this term than last, there has to be a carefully planned, developed and staged strategy so that, by the time the next election campaign starts, the groundwork has been properly laid.
The first objective must be to help voters to look behind the smile and the photo opportunities, and to ask the hard questions about exactly what the government is doing, what it has achieved, and – above all – whether the Prime Minister can be trusted to tell the truth. The goal must be an electorate that is ready to examine John Key’s words much more critically, and media that do their proper job of ensuring that voters are properly informed.
A classic example will arise early in the life of the new government. John Key has so far avoided giving a straight answer to concerns about the foreign ownership of the assets that he intends to sell – concerns that are hardly surprising in a country that has already sold a higher proportion of its assets into foreign ownership than any other developed country.
He hints that he will somehow ensure that shares in those assets will remain in New Zealand hands. Yet John Key knows (and Bill English has tacitly admitted) that the trade agreement with the United States and others that is currently being negotiated in secret is almost certain to make it illegal to discriminate against foreign investors when those assets are sold.
The task of an opposition is to make sure that, on this and other similar issues, the Prime Minister cannot simply smile and shrug – and make up an answer that doesn’t quite mean what it seems to mean.
The Labour front bench must also think harder about how and when to launch policies that are needed but contentious – policies like a capital gains tax, raising the retirement age, and extending the emissions trading scheme to agriculture. Policies like this should not be launched at the last minute, leaving little time for them to be properly understood.
The policies that should appropriately be launched near or during the election campaign are those that will have a wide and immediate popular appeal – policies like raising the minimum wage or using the dole to subsidise youth employment.
There are, in other words, three stages in a successful campaign. First, changing – through hard work and relentless pressure – the public perception of John Key as a leader who can be trusted. Second, taking enough time – well before the election – to build support for policies that opponents can easily misrepresent. And third, launching vote-winning policies so as to generate momentum through the election campaign.
A new leader and a strategy like this could make for a very interesting election in 2014.
Bryan Gould
28 November 2011
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 30 November
Free Trade or Self-government?
In the final weeks of the election campaign, the question of whether or not to sell some of our key assets remains, for many voters, a defining issue. Yet, while that question is hotly debated, a related issue of equal if not greater importance is sliding by under the radar.
That asset sales should raise real concerns is hardly surprising in a country that has already sold a higher proportion of its economy into overseas ownership than any other developed country. For many, it raises fears, not just about the loss of control over our economic future, but about our powers of democratic self-government as well.
Yet, while those issues rise to the top of the election agenda, Bill English will – this weekend in Hawaii – give consent in our name to the broad principles of a new multilateral agreement which will pose an even greater threat to our continued existence as a genuinely self-governing democracy.
He will do so without ever consulting us. Not only that – we will not be allowed to know what is in the agreement, and even the record of the negotiations themselves will be kept secret, it seems, for up to four years.
Parliament will not be allowed a say until the deal is done. There will be no scrutiny by a select committee. The government – in the persons of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and the Trade Minister – will make these secret decisions for us.
Yet we already know that the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement is certain to raise issues of the greatest importance. We already know that the government is so convinced that “free trade” is a good thing that it will be prepared to sign away almost anything for the chance to sell to our trading partners the products that – in a food-hungry world – they want to buy anyway.
We know that our government will roll over at the mere sight of a dollar bill. Who can forget the unseemly haste with which we gave away huge tax advantages and changed our labour laws at the behest of Warner Brothers? Hardly the action of a government or a country with any self-respect.
Little wonder that there is a real concern that the American pharmaceutical industry will insist that the role of Pharmac – the government agency that has used its buying power to keep down the price of prescription medicines and has accordingly saved New Zealanders hundreds of millions of dollars – will have to be reduced so that the drug companies can extract much greater profits from us.
On this, as on other similar issues, Ministers give us general assurances – and by the time we discover what those mean, it will be too late.
It is now clear, however, there is an even more insidious and threatening danger at the heart of this secret agreement. One clause that the Americans will insist on (as they have done with other similar agreements) is a provision that would allow foreign private corporations to sue our government (including all future governments) if they saw any sign that the terms of the secret agreement might not be adhered to.
The legal action would be brought, not in our own courts, or even in a properly recognised international court, but in special tribunals set up specifically for the purpose. It would be necessary to establish these courts especially because they would be dealing with very unusual cases – cases where privately owned companies could sue a sovereign country to enforce treaty provisions to which those companies were not even parties.
Let us be in no doubt what that would mean. It would mean that an American corporation would have far more extensive rights against our government than any New Zealand company would ever have. It would mean that a future government, perhaps elected to change policy in an area like environmental protection or health and safety, could be prevented from doing so by a foreign corporation suing that government in a special tribunal.
It would mean, in other words, that concessions made in secret by today’s government could never be claimed back. We, as a country, would be locked into a marketplace controlled by foreign corporations.
This is not mere speculation. American and European companies investing and trading overseas have regularly enforced these rights arising from similar treaty provisions.
Ironically, the history of this kind of provision has begun to attract attention because it has come back to bite those who created it. The Germans, some decades ago, began to insert such provisions in treaties with third-world countries, so that the interests of German investors in those countries could be protected. Such was the power of German investment, and the weakness of the recipient countries, that no one took much notice.
Now, however, with the crisis in the eurozone and the growing investment of formerly third-world countries in Europe, the boot is on the other foot – and European countries are suddenly crying foul at the prospect of being sued by private companies from China or Korea.
Before New Zealand gets embroiled in similar proceedings, could we at least get a clear answer to a simple question? Does the TPPA, to which Bill English nodded assent this weekend, contain a similar provision?
Bryan Gould
11 November 2011.
UNESCO – A Missed Opportunity
The decision this week by the UNESCO General Conference to admit Palestine to full membership has cast an unaccustomed light on an organisation that usually flies pretty much under the radar.
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation was the first UN agency to be established. It was set up immediately after the Second World War to strengthen the international bonds of mind and spirit in the hope that this would help to create a world that would be free from hatred and war.
New Zealand was just the second country to step forward and put its signature to the UNESCO constitution. In the early years of the organisation, our country played a leading role; luminaries such as Doctor Clarence Beeby were rightly regarded as among the most significant of its founding fathers.
Sadly, over recent years, New Zealand’s commitment to UNESCO has faded – and this at a time when, in the light of the global financial crisis and the consequent recession, UNESCO’s message that there is more to international relations than trade and the bottom line, and that international peace and progress depend on better mutual understanding, was surely needed more than ever.
We have, however, turned our backs on our distinguished heritage as a consistent and valued member of this important agency. It is a process which I have observed with increasing dismay as the departing Chair of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO. As my three-year term ends, I can only regret and deplore the neglect (I wish I could say it was benign) shown by our government towards this important aspect of our international relationships.
Our formal commitment to UNESCO and its Paris headquarters has now been downgraded to just 5% of the time of a single diplomat in our Paris Embassy. Our own NZ National Commission (a body comprising experts in their fields who give much of their time on a voluntary basis) has been allowed to languish, with the terms of four of its five members lapsing and no replacements being appointed – thereby negating one of the greatest assets of UNESCO, its ability to use experts across the globe to extend its message far beyond what would normally be possible with its own meagre resources.
The small secretariat which has for decades been the executive arm of the National Commission has been merged into the Ministry of Education and required to undertake further duties. The result? Our capacity to draw on UNESCO’s expertise to improve our performance in the fields of education, science and culture, not only in New Zealand but throughout the Pacific, has been sadly diminished.
New Zealand’s National Commission has been regarded for decades as a model of its kind, providing leadership to smaller Pacific states which have the will but lack the resource and expertise to play a full part.
The puzzle is that the government continues to pay our (modest) membership subscription to UNESCO but seems determined to extract only the minimum value from our membership. This is seen at its most inexplicable in the refusal to take up a seat on UNESCO’s Executive Board.
Membership of the Executive Board would give us a voice in establishing the direction the organisation should take. Members are elected to the Board, and New Zealand – historically – has been keen to fulfil the responsibilities that go with membership and has been seen as a valued member of the Board. Despite the fact that a seat is virtually guaranteed to us, so that there would be no need to go to the expense of running a campaign for support, we have declined the opportunity – much to the disappointment of many friendly countries who insist that they would value our contribution to the Board’s business.
As Chair, I found this so inexplicable that I wrote to the Prime Minister with a detailed proposal, showing that we could – by utilising the possibilities of modern electronic communication – meet our responsibilities in this regard at no additional cost; we might even have saved some money since the cost of any travel to Paris as Executive Board members would be met by UNESCO. The proposal was dismissed out of hand.
To be fair to the Prime Minister, he was no doubt acting on advice. That advice would have come from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Murray McCully, who has often demonstrated his lack of interest in international engagement.
The decision was, however, all the more paradoxical given the Prime Minister’s declared intention to seek a seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2014. One might have thought that uppermost in the minds of those voting on candidates for that seat would be the question of which of the contenders had shown itself to be the best UN citizen. Our cavalier disregard of both the opportunities and responsibilities of UNESCO membership cannot be expected to improve our chances.
As I leave the National Commission, I am proud of what has been achieved, but disappointed at missed opportunities. I can only wish my successor as Chair, my friend Neil Walter, better luck than I have had. The National Commission, and UNESCO itself, deserve it.
Bryan Gould
1 November 2011
After Forty Years, Why Not Debate Europe?
In 1964, I joined the Foreign Office and was assigned to Western Organisations and Co-ordination Department, the department responsible for our relations with Europe.
Eighteen months later, I was sent to Brussels on my first overseas posting. I was briefly involved in the arrangements for the Brown/Wilson tour of European capitals – an effort to circumvent the Gaullist veto that was frustrating our renewed attempt to join what was then the Common Market.
Throughout this period, I accepted the prevailing consensus that what was already described as “Europe” was Britain’s destiny. But by the time I returned to Britain and began to think of a political career, I had begun to think again.
I was not immune from the pervasive sense of idealism and internationalism that animated the enthusiasts for the Common Market. But, as I learned more of it, I realised that it was not “Europe” but a particular and practical economic and trading arrangement which could hardly have been less in our interests.
It required us to give up a powerful advantage in an increasingly competitive post-war world – our ability to set food prices according to the lowest world levels. We instead had to raise food prices to the levels required by inefficient European production, and pay a subsidy to boot to those inefficient producers.
In addition, we gave up our preferential access to Commonwealth markets for our manufactured goods and had to face up instead to direct competition from our most dangerous competitors in Europe.
And, as the Common Market became the EEC and then eventually the European Union, even these economic considerations were dwarfed by other issues. As the new Europe took new powers, admitted further members, developed its own institutions, and moved inexorably to become a nascent super-state, it became increasingly necessary to ask questions to which warm fuzzy feelings about the rightness of our European future did not provide adequate answers.
Was this “Europe” or just one version? Was it what the people of Britain and Europe really wanted? As power moved upwards to European institutions, what would happen to our democracy? What power to determine our own economic policy would be left to us in a single European economy? Above all, could the whole top-heavy arrangement possibly work?
We can now begin to see what the long-term answers to those questions might be. Yet, over the four decades of our membership, those who dared to ask these questions were decried as “anti-European”, drummed out of the ranks of the bien pensants – and, at times, treated as moral delinquents or intellectually deficient.
I vividly remember at the time of the 1975 referendum being interviewed by the BBC’s excellent political correspondent, Charles Wheeler. When I expressed concerns about some aspects of our membership, he accused me of being – like other “anti-Marketeers” – ignorant and prejudiced. When I mentioned that I had spent years in the Diplomatic Service on European issues, and had taught constitutional law at Oxford – also covering European aspects – he had the good grace to apologise immediately.
Things have not changed greatly since then. While there has been a sea change in public – and even business – opinion (and who could be surprised in view of recent developments), the political and media establishment remain determined to deny the need for any re-consideration.
The Observer, for example, opines that the case for review has no basis since opinion polls demonstrate that people are not concerned about Europe as such and are focused much more on issues of the economy, employment and public services. But people are not as silly as that.
They do not see Europe as a discrete issue that is separate from their other concerns. They rightly recognise that it impinges on all of the issues – the economy, our democracy, our international relationships, the environment – that they think are important. It is surely not surprising that, after 40 years’ experience of membership and understanding that the whole project is now in danger of foundering, we might wish to pause and consider whether a top-down, top-heavy Europe imposed by a political elite is what we want.
This is especially so when it is clear that Europe’s leaders have learned no lessons from the current difficulties. They insist that it is not their blueprint, but the people, that are at fault.
The issue is, as it has always been, not whether Europe but what sort of Europe. The often posed question as to whether or not we are “part of Europe” has always been a nonsense. We are of course in every sense – geographically, historically, culturally, economically, politically – part of Europe.
It is not anti-European to say, as part of that Europe, that our European partners are going wrong, and are in reality destroying the chances of effective European cooperation. It is not anti-European to insist that Europe should be democratic, not just in the formal sense that elections are held, but in the substantive sense that people should consent to be governed by the institutions to which they elect representatives.
It is no longer possible to keep a lid on this debate or to frustrate it by describing those who want to participate as knaves or fools. It is time to seek – and provide – the answers we should have had all along.
Bryan Gould
27 October 2011
Where’s The Leadership?
My decision to leave British politics in 1994 and return to New Zealand reflected both the pull of my home country and my failure to convince my colleagues in the British Labour Party that they were embarking on a mistaken course.
I had become increasingly despairing of the determination of those who eventually became New Labour’s leaders to embrace policies that I believed were fundamentally flawed. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and their allies were convinced that Britain’s economic future lay in the financial institutions of the City of London. They were persuaded that the market should not be second-guessed and would always get the right answer.
They were, as Tony Blair told Rupert Murdoch, “all globalisers now.” They were “intensely relaxed”, as Peter Mandelson notoriously asserted, “about people becoming filthy rich” – with the corollary that they were equally relaxed about widening inequality. They accepted that government should treat economic policy as a largely technical matter of controlling the money supply that could safely be left to supposedly non-political bankers.
They welcomed the asset bubble and the conspicuous consumption of the rich as evidence that these policies were working. And, though public opinion deterred them from joining the eurozone immediately, they remained convinced that a single European superstate – insulating so-called free-market policies against popular scrutiny – could be imposed on the people of that hugely diverse sub-continent.
My decision to return to New Zealand was for me and my wife a good one. But it was disappointing to find that New Zealand had abandoned its long-standing commitment to social justice and community and had become the standard-bearer – lauded by The Economist – for the “free-market” policies that were expected to produce a new era of unparalleled prosperity.
Like everyone else in the developed world, we were constantly assured that there was no alternative, and that the huge wealth amassed by a tiny minority would eventually “trickle down” to provide at least some benefit to the rest of us.
These simple certainties were, however, stood on their head by the global financial crisis. We learned that asset bubbles would burst, that markets could not be relied on to get the right answers, and that only governments could step up to the plate to save us from disaster.
But the cheerleaders for (and beneficiaries of) the policies that had produced such a disaster were not to be deterred simply because all experience showed that they had been wrong. So, in the United States, for example, political leaders solemnly assert that – in the general interest – tax cuts for the rich must remain sacrosanct, while the unemployed must fend for themselves.
In Europe, the architects of the eurozone insist that the Greek people must shoulder the burden of the inevitable meltdown. And, right across the globe, our policy-makers defy all common sense by pushing austerity as the only remedy for recession.
Our political leaders in New Zealand offer no exception to this sadly defective performance. They, too, plod wearily along the same well-worn track, providing yet one more proof of Einstein’s famous dictum that to go on repeating the same process while expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.
Yet, we have good reason to expect better. This should be a time when New Zealand’s great advantages can be brought to bear. We have the huge benefits of climate and geography, we are politically stable, we have an educated workforce, we provide a safe and welcoming context in which to do business, and we have access to the world’s fastest-growing markets for the products we are uniquely skilled at producing. What more do we want?
Yet our government continues to give priority to its own finances. All the talk is of financial orthodoxy, of getting the government’s own (perfectly manageable) deficit down. Little attention and even less action is given to our real problems, getting our people back to work and reducing our propensity as a country to borrow from overseas – even though those are the issues that have led to the credit downgrades that we were told had to be avoided at all costs.
Those who practice what I call “politics by label”, however, judge arguments not by their weight but by their provenance. For such people, facts can be ignored if they appear in the mouths of the wrong people.
In pointing out what a depressing document is the Treasury’s pre-election forecast (even with the by now obligatory element of over-optimism), I do not merely draw attention to the wasted three years during which we have barely lifted our heads above the recession-imposed parapet.
What I do is re-affirm the arguments I have made over 35 years in public life. I bemoan the lack of ambition and leadership shown by this and other governments. I regret the failure to understand that economics is no longer (if it ever was) just a matter of the bottom line. It is, as Keynes said, “a behavioural science”; it involves how people lead their lives, how they interact with the natural world, and how they live and work together in society.
Where can we find the courage to break the shackles of a barren and discredited ideology? Where can we find even a glimmer of new thinking?
Bryan Gould
26 October 2011