Maori Politics Are Not A No-Go Area
For many pakeha, the Treaty of Waitangi is an exclusively Maori domain. It is seen as simply a mechanism for the pursuit of Maori grievance. This indifference to our defining constitutional document means that our country is weaker and less united than it should be.
Similarly, Maori politics are seen as solely a Maori concern – so much so that non-Maori gratefully concede that it is not a topic on which they should intrude. Yet pakeha commentators are failing in their duty if they treat Maori politics as irrelevant to our wider national concerns.
We all have an interest, after all, in the success or otherwise that Maori have, not only in managing their own affairs but in making their full contribution to our national life. We all have a stake in seeing those shocking statistics for Maori health, education and employment reversed. We are all poorer and our society is more divided because we tolerate a situation in which an ethnically defined and growing part of our biculturally based country is left to languish.
When I was growing up, it was widely believed by pakeha that the future for Maori was assimilation, a process that was seen to be both painless and inevitable. We now know better. Not only have we (or at least most of us) learnt the real and continuing value of Maori language and culture, but we also understand the magnitude of the challenge that Maori have had to meet in adapting to a bicultural world. And we now know, too, that we have much to learn from the Maori world view.
Most Kiwis of whatever ethnicity will have grasped that Maori have a better chance of success in today’s world if their own language and culture are recognised as the basis of building confidence, security, self-identity and a sense of self-worth. If Maori are required to operate in a pakeha-dominated world according to exclusively pakeha values and prescriptions, it is little wonder that they will struggle.
So, there will – or should – be an understanding welcome for measures, like the whanau ora programme, that are designed to provide a culturally appropriate way of improving access to a range of public services for Maori – services whose successful delivery for both Maori and pakeha is essential to our health as a society. There is little point in providing such services but placing them behind an impenetrable cultural barrier which in effect denies them to those who most need them.
But this is only part of the story. It is right to accept that an increased role for te reo and tikanga Maori is essential to provide a secure base from which Maori can play their full role in our country. But that secure base should be just that – a base. Valuable though it is in itself, it is not the destination. It is not the endpoint. Cultural security should be the launching-pad for an assault on the real goal – the increased ability for Maori to operate successfully in today’s rapidly changing and increasingly international and multicultural world.
My old friend Robert Mahuta used to tell me that “it is time for Maori to stop looking in the mirror and to look out the window”. He was right. Maori, like everyone else, need to be looking forward as well as back – forward to a new world in which a good education, good health and well-paid employment are the crucial passports to success.
Many Maori are already showing the way. But the statistics for overall Maori health, employment and educational achievement cannot be gainsaid. Maori politicians who want to make a difference should have no difficulty in accepting that these statistics point to the correct priorities. Their concerns must, in other words, go beyond issues of Maori language and culture; Maori are even more directly concerned than the rest of us by wider social and economic issues – not least because, when those issues are badly handled, it is Maori, and particularly young Maori, who are the most vulnerable.
There is one issue above all that should demand attention. The restoration of full employment, and the chance of a job for the more than 15% of young Maori currently unemployed, would be the single most important advance for Maori that could be made. It would put money in pockets, raise living standards, improve health, lift self-esteem, encourage educational effort – and it would transform the life prospects of future Maori families.
For as long as large numbers of young Maori are excluded from the chance to play a full role in our economic life, the outlook for Maori – and for all of us – is grim. Maori leaders should be using their political clout to force a government that treats the issue of unemployment with supreme indifference to do something about it. Maori politicians should not be satisfied with a few inexpensive concessions on specifically Maori issues. Their focus should be on those wider issues that really matter, to pakeha as well as Maori, yes, but that have an especially damaging impact on Maori. It’s time that they – and we all – spoke up.
Bryan Gould
1 December 2012
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 10 December 2012
Submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Manufacturing
SUBMISSION FROM BRYAN GOULD TO THE PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO MANUFACTURING
Introduction
This inquiry is timely and important. I suggest that there are three main questions that should be addressed. They are:
1. Do the recent history and current state of New Zealand manufacturing give grounds for concern?
2. If so, do the difficulties experienced by manufacturing matter to the wider economy?
3. If so, can anything be done about it?
I suggest that the answer to each of these questions is in the affirmative.
Is New Zealand Manufacturing in Crisis?
1. There can be no doubt that New Zealand manufacturing is facing a crisis. This is partly a reflection of the recession induced by the global financial crisis and of the failure to achieve anything other than a faltering and partial “recovery” since then, and partly an intensification of a longer-term comparative decline.
2. The statistical evidence for this is compelling. Manufacturing output has fallen sharply from 2007 levels and – unlike other sectors in the productive economy – has yet to return to those levels. The most recent figures show that little improvement can be expected; in the immediate future, further decline is at least as likely as a recovery in manufacturing output.
3. Pessimism about the output figures is strongly supported by the statistics for manufactured exports and imports, for investment levels in manufacturing and – most worryingly – for employment in manufacturing. The trade figures show that imports of manufactured goods continue to grow faster than exports and that, as a consequence, the trade gap in manufactured goods continues to widen; that gap will only widen further as consumption recovers and reaches new levels.
4. Investment in manufacturing, and particularly spending on research, are at low levels and reflect a continuing low level of confidence in the sector. These factors all show that the basis for any recovery in manufacturing continues to weaken and to be further eroded.
5. Perhaps the starkest and most significant piece of statistical evidence is the loss of jobs in manufacturing. While attention is often directed to other statistical series, such as the Household Labour Force Survey, there is no doubt that there has been a substantial loss of actual jobs in manufacturing over recent years. According to NZ Statistics, the loss of manufacturing jobs in the four years since 2008 has totalled around 40,000 – a hugely worrying rate of attrition. Recent announcements by major manufacturers of job losses in a range of important industries suggest strongly that the loss is set to continue and to intensify.
6. Paradoxically, the one small scrap of supposed better news in the past month – a slight rise in manufacturing productivity – is merely further evidence of the rapidity of decline. As weaker parts of manufacturing are forced to lay off workers or close down altogether, the short-term statistical effect is to boost productivity for the remaining workforce, at least for a short time. To welcome this is rather like congratulating a cricket team on an improved batting average, achieved by shooting the tail-end batsmen.
7. The most worrying aspect of these most recent tribulations is that they are further evidence of a long-term decline. Manufacturing as an element in our productive economy has been declining in importance for three decades. In 1972, manufacturing accounted for 26% of GDP; by 2009, that figure had dropped to just 12% and it will almost certainly have declined further since then.
Does It Matter?
8. Many developed economies have experienced a comparative decline in manufacturing, though few have seen a decline as sharp as New Zealand’s. Policy-makers elsewhere, like ours, have pinned their hopes on developing other parts of their economies in the attempt to make up for the loss in output that has been the consequence of manufacturing’s decline.
9. They have all discovered that the loss of manufacturing capacity cannot be made up for by other activities. Perhaps the most striking of these instances has been the British development of a world-leading financial services industry to help offset the decline of British manufacturing. They discovered, with the global financial crisis, that much of the supposed wealth-creation from financial services was an illusion and that, even at its peak, it delivered benefits to only a very small part of the population.
10. In New Zealand, so far as we have a policy at all, we seem to be pinning our hopes for an improved economic performance on areas like mining and exploiting hoped-for oil and gas reserves, and on making films which will help to stimulate tourism. Our own experience and that of other countries strongly suggest that these developments are very unlikely to match the value of the output and employment we have lost as a consequence of manufacturing’s tribulations. In countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the advent of North Sea oil did little to offset the loss of manufacturing capacity, and even in Australia, the mining boom has demonstrated the downsides of a two-speed economy.
11. The most successful economies of the last decade or two have followed a quite different path and – like Japan, Singapore and Korea before them – have understood that there is no substitute for the great advantages that success as a manufacturing economy uniquely delivers. China, India, Brazil and other rapidly developing economies have focused on building strong and competitive manufacturing industries which enable them to exploit huge world-wide markets for efficiently manufactured products. As these economies demonstrate, the ability to compete successfully in the internationally traded goods sector is the single most important determinant of economic growth.
12. In almost all developed economies, a strong manufacturing sector is the principal engine of growth and economic development. International statistics show that it provides the greatest scope for rapid productivity improvements and for employment growth in the form of relatively well-paid and secure jobs. A successful manufacturing sector will stimulate innovation, research, technological advance, and skill training across the whole economy. A high level of good-quality and well-paid manufacturing jobs will lift purchasing power; the corollary is that the loss of manufacturing jobs will have a deflationary impact on other sectors. An economy that cannot compete in international markets for manufactures must resign itself to high levels of unemployment and to declining living standards in comparative and possibly absolute terms.
What Can Be Done?
13. The importance of manufacturing to the whole economy is such that we cannot afford – as we are doing at present – to deny or dismiss its current weakness. We need to analyse the reasons for that weakness and to make policy decisions that will address them. It is not good enough to let things slide. Policy mistakes need to be corrected and a strategy developed for re-building our manufacturing capacity in the interests not only of manufacturers themselves but of the economy as a whole.
14. Manufacturing is declining and manufacturing jobs are being lost because New Zealand cannot compete with more efficient manufacturing economies in international markets, including our own. This is partly for reasons, such as our small size and remoteness from markets, that are said to be beyond our control. It is easy to overstate the importance of these factors, however; other small economies, such as the Scandinavian countries, manage better than we do, and – if we had been able to wave a magic wand to offset the problems of remoteness – we could not have done better than invent the internet.
15. The main reason that manufacturing is declining is that our costs of production are too high to allow us to compete successfully. Despite their publicly stated aim of “closing the gap with Australia”, the government’s response to this issue is to try to drive down wages and therefore labour costs through a variety of measures in the vain hope that this will improve our competitiveness. It is no accident that our Minister of Finance touts New Zealand’s low wages to Australians as a competitive advantage to doing business here.
16. That is why benefits are cut and entitlement to them is made more difficult, labour laws are changed to reduce protections for workers, the real value of the minimum wage is held down, employers who fail to pay the minimum wage are allowed to get away with it, young workers can be taken on at less than the minimum wage, and tacit support is given to major employers who want to break unions and hold wages down. The intention is that these measures will force the unemployed back into the jobs market, not to take jobs that are currently unfilled, but to displace and compete with the low-paid for the reducing number of jobs that they currently hold. This, it is hoped, will drive down wages at the bottom end of the scale, and so exercise a downward pressure on the whole of the wages structure in this country.
17. Not only is this strategy socially destructive, in the sense that wages, as distinct from profits, top salaries and property values, would bear the whole brunt of adjustment; but even if it could be driven through with sufficient ruthlessness and for long enough to have a real economic impact, it would be economically disastrous. Lower wages across the board would have a damaging deflationary impact and drag the economy lower, making it smaller and weaker and leaving as the only remedy to the competitiveness problem an ever more savage attempt to drive wages down. The government’s fixation with this slow-motion race to the bottom, however, seems to preclude it from any understanding of the urgency of our situation.
18. The paradox is that current policy (indeed, policy as applied for the last three decades) has not only failed to address the real problems in any effective way but has actually and deliberately made them worse. The obvious and well-tried remedy for an economy that finds itself to be uncompetitive is to devalue the currency. A lower dollar in our case would immediately, comprehensively and fairly (because it would affect everyone) improve our competitiveness and would provide a secure base from which we could begin to sell more, earn better margins on our sales, re-invest in improved capacity, employ greater numbers and generate a higher level of economic activity.
19. Policy-makers in western countries have for a long time steadfastly refused to take this obvious step, advancing manifestly false arguments that devaluation will inevitably cause inflation which will quickly erode the competitive advantage – arguments that are conclusively debunked in a comprehensive study to be published in the New Year by Palgrave Macmillan and written by John Mills, a former co-author of mine. Politicians are of course always reluctant to give up the short-term advantages produced by over-valuation – the cheap holidays and imports – and hope that voters won’t notice the long-term and debilitating effects on living standards and purchasing power.
20. It is noteworthy, however, that many western countries have now abandoned this traditional stance in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and have engineered – through measures like quantitative easing and with varying degrees of subterfuge – substantial devaluations. New Zealand, however, not only blithely ignores these competitive devaluations and their impact on our own competitiveness, but proceeds undeterred with policies that directly and remorselessly drive up the value of our currency so that our competitiveness is further reduced. A government that makes every effort to drive wages down is remarkably unconcerned, it seems, that its own policies drive up not only labour costs but all domestic costs, and thereby price us out of internationally traded markets. In this way, our policy-makers compound our natural disadvantages of remoteness and small size, and ensure that our manufacturing base continues to be eroded.
21. A manufacturing economy that has to struggle into the headwind of an over-valued currency finds that all of its costs are translated into international prices that are too high to be competitive. There is then a choice for manufacturers who want to sell into export markets or who want to resist competition from cheap imports at home; they must either maintain their prices so that the costs of production are covered and a reasonable return on investment is produced, with the result that they lose market share and are eventually forced to abandon the market to competitors; or they must cut their prices so as to remain competitive, with the result that they do not generate a good enough return to make it possible to re-invest in the new technology and equipment, skill training for the workforce, new product development, after-sales service, advertising, and so on, so as to keep up with competitors who are constantly raising their game. On any of these scenarios, the inevitable outcome of an overvalued currency is a weaker and smaller manufacturing sector, as enterprises try to cut costs by laying off staff, reducing capacity, moving overseas or selling to foreign owners, and in the end closing down altogether.
22. We are constantly told, however, that nothing can be done about the overvalued dollar. This is completely wrong. While flows of “hot money” across the foreign exchanges are so massive that they would immediately swamp any attempt by the Reserve Bank to rig the market, the real reasons for overvaluation lie in the perception that we will continue to offer an interest rate premium to short-term foreign speculators who will also then expect a capital gain as well. It is this constant inflow of “hot money” seeking a quick return that explains an exchange rate that is not remotely justified by our economic performance or by our balance of trade. If we stopped pursuing such an irrational policy, the exchange rate would fall significantly.
23. We are committed to this irrationality because we insist that the only goal of macro-economic policy is the control of inflation, and that controlling inflation requires interest rates to be raised at the slightest sign that prices might rise – a sure recipe for keeping the value of the dollar – and unemployment – high. We could end this damaging policy stance by re-focusing and correcting the mistakes which cause the problem.
24. As other countries have demonstrated, there are other steps, too, that we could take that would reduce the demand for our dollar – a currency that, incidentally, is one of the most traded in the world and is traded in volumes out of all proportion to the size of our economy and volume of trade. A more relaxed fiscal and monetary stance would not only stimulate activity and demand in the domestic economy but would also (say it softly) reduce the “confidence” of foreign investors – that same “confidence” that leads them to take a one-way punt on our dollar.
25. The alternatives to the current policy mistakes are not hard to find. We should, following the example of successful economies like Singapore, focus on full employment and competitiveness as the central goals of policy and indicators of success. We should address the real causes of inflation – the huge increase in bank lending for non-productive purposes – by regulating the scale and purposes of bank lending, thereby allowing interest rates and exchange rates to find their natural market-clearing levels. We should allow the resultant lower exchange rate to stimulate growth, employment, profitability, investment and productivity, and to encourage saving and exports rather than consumption and imports.
26. We should stop kidding ourselves that we are such an economic powerhouse that we can cheerfully face up to “free trade” deals with some of the most powerful and efficient economies in the world; “free trade” in such cases usually means simply absorption into those larger economies. We should recognise that we are no longer by international standards a “developed” economy but are much more akin to a “developing” economy – the kind of economy that has usually found it advisable to ensure that domestic industries are not entirely wiped out by powerful competition from overseas. Today’s new economic giants have all travelled this kind of path in order to reach their current dominance.
27. Sadly, ideological prejudice has convinced our policy-makers over three decades that commonsense policies are somehow dangerous and irresponsible, and no amount of evidence that the real danger – the danger of long-term decline – comes from the current orthodoxies will induce them to change their minds. By the time, they are finally compelled to do so, we will have no manufacturing industry left and will largely have lost the power to do much about it.
Bryan Gould
30 November 2012
A Win for Labour and Democracy
It is very much to Labour’s credit that they have put in place a more democratic set of internal rules across the board and that the outbreak of democracy now applies to the election of the leader as well. The events of recent days, however, suggest that the party has yet to understand fully or feel comfortable with the new procedures.
The new electoral college, which extends the power to choose a leader to party members and affiliated bodies as well as to MPs, is modelled fairly closely on the procedures of the British Labour Party. In the UK, though, the leader faces an annual election; and it was the need to protect the party against frivolous or vexatious challenges to the leader that led to the requirement that a challenger would have to secure the nominations of at least 20% of the parliamentary party. It was that requirement I had to meet when I made my own bid for the leadership in 1992, following the resignation of the then leader, Neil Kinnock.
In both the UK and more particularly New Zealand, though, MPs have given up their exclusive power to elect the leader with some reluctance. The fear is always that the wider party electorate could saddle the parliamentary party with a leader who did not enjoy the confidence of MPs.
We saw something of this in the provision put to last week’s conference to the effect that the new democracy would apply only if 60% of MPs agreed that there should be an election. It was always unlikely that this restriction would survive long. You cannot show the dog the rabbit and then expect it to accept, as the rabbit is put back in the hat, that it was only for show. Delegates to the conference were virtually certain to twig that, under the proposed rule, the caucus had retained for itself the virtually unassailable power to decide whether democracy should apply or not.
When the eminently predictable happened, however, and the delegates asserted themselves by demanding a lower barrier to the new democratic process, many people – and most of all the media – were apparently taken by surprise. The result was that a state of extreme excitement was engendered overnight. Suddenly, what had seemed a distant and uncertain prospect became – in the minds of many – a virtual certainty; there would be a challenge to David Shearer’s leadership.
Sadly, many who should have known better enthusiastically played the roles assigned to them by slavering media. Victims and villains were quickly identified and condemned. “Strong” action was urged. Personal antipathies and grievances were widely aired.
No better case for a wider electorate than just the caucus could have been made. On this evidence, a significant role for the party membership is long overdue, since they are less concerned about their career prospects or personal rivalries and more likely to focus instead on the need to elect a Labour government.
Let us remind ourselves of where we have got to. There will be, irrespective of whether there is any actual or potential challenge, and as the rules provide, a vote in February to confirm or otherwise David Shearer’s leadership. On the back of his achievements so far, and the fact that he enjoyed a good conference and made an excellent speech, he should and will feel confident about the outcome of that vote.
But the provision that there should be such a vote at least once in three years is there advisedly. The fact that it is to take place is in no sense evidence that a challenge is imminent. But, at the very least, it provides a kind of safety valve – an opportunity for any disaffection to be expressed in a secret ballot. As with any secret ballot, the participants have no obligation to disclose their intentions to the media, and certainly not three months in advance.
If and when David Shearer is endorsed in that vote, the absence of any disaffection will have been established. Only in the unlikely event that the leader loses that vote will be there be a new election and only then will we know which contender (or more likely contenders) would put their names forward. And let us remind ourselves that harbouring leadership ambitions is hardly in itself a hanging offence.
If these are recognised as the outcomes that are presumably desired and intended and they are handled with calmness and good sense, the Labour party has nothing to lose and much to gain from the new procedures. The party will in February most probably confirm that they have the right leader to lead them into the next general election, or will elect a new leader who they think could do a better job.
In either event, the focus must be on replacing a government whose tribulations in 2012 and parliamentary arithmetic both strongly suggest is there for the taking. Party members should breathe through their noses and enjoy the process that they have ordained; it is, after all, democracy in practice.
Bryan Gould
21 November 2012
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 23 November.
Unemployment Makes Us All Poor
Last Thursday’s jobless figures – the worst in thirteen years – show that the four years since the global financial crisis plunged the world into recession have seen New Zealand unemployment get worse, not better.
And, as is always the case in a recession, the official figures inevitably understate the numbers of those seeking work. In a more buoyant economy, improved employment prospects would bring many of those currently resigned to being out of work back into the jobs market.
In the wake of the grim news about factory closures and lay-offs over recent months, the figures were only to be expected. Indeed, the warnings about a crisis in manufacturing have been coming thick and fast, and from all quarters.
There was, though, one person, it seems, who was blindsided by the bad news. The Prime Minister, we were told by the television news, was “taken by surprise”. The only explanation for this is that John Key has paid little attention to the unemployment issue over the past four years, despite its destructive impact both on individuals and their families, and on society as a whole.
Over that whole period, I and others have warned consistently that the policies currently being followed would inevitably see unemployment rise. This was entirely consistent with the low priority given by the government to the problem – apart from an ineffectual “Jobs Summit” in the government’s opening months, unemployment has been left to look after itself.
But that neglect has been anything other than benign. The government has deliberately put in place policies to restrict benefits and cut their value, and to slash wages at the bottom end of the scale, so as to force those without work back into a non-existent jobs market.
The object has been to make people compete for the few low-paid jobs available by offering to work for lower and lower wages, so that there is downward pressure on the whole wages structure. There, in a nutshell, is the government’s strategy for dealing with unemployment – don’t bother about creating more jobs by getting the economy moving again, but force down wages in the hope that people will price themselves back into work.
Even if this strategy were to work in its own limited terms, lower wages would mean less purchasing power and lower demand. How would this help to get the economy moving?
The government has reinforced its strategy by cutting public spending and throwing public servants out of work, so that they add to the competition for the dwindling number of jobs. This leaves the obvious question – where is the increased demand needed to create more jobs to come from if the government, instead of stimulating economic activity, makes its own contribution to closing the economy down?
Are they unaware that the IMF, taking fright at last at what austerity is doing in Europe, has published a new assessment of the powerful multiplier effect of cuts in government spending on the level of economic activity? Even the government’s supposed central goal – eliminating its deficit by 2014/15 – is made much more difficult if high unemployment and a flat economy generate an equally flat tax revenue.
What is really depressing, however, about our current plight is that even if by some miracle the economy were to get moving again, we would have done nothing to re-balance the economy towards saving, investment and exports and away from consumption and imports.
We are about to start another familiar and vicious circle – an overheated Auckland domestic property market, fuelled by unrestrained lending by banks whose sole concern is easy profits, leading to higher interest rates, producing an overvalued exchange rate that prices our production out of international markets and cuts our margins, so that we are forced to borrow more from overseas and sell our remaining assets to foreign owners. Little wonder that those fortunate enough to have money to spare see domestic housing as the only sensible investment and making and selling things into international markets as a game for mugs.
The chances of breaking out of this destructive cycle seem slimmer than ever. The new Governor of the Reserve Bank has wasted no time in abjuring the hints of greater flexibility issued by his predecessor and instead nailing his colours to the mast of an orthodoxy that has now been doing its destructive worst for three decades. We see not a scintilla of new thinking from either the government or the Reserve Bank; surprisingly the only hint of the need for a new approach now comes from the Treasury.
Planet Key is apparently a sunlit place of leisure and fun. The real world, at least the part of it for which John Key has some responsibility, is a much harsher place. The plight of the unemployed makes us all poorer. Without changes in policy, we face the grim prospect of national decline, despite the advantages we enjoy of political stability, an educated workforce, a supportive context in which to do business, and access to growing markets for the premium products we are uniquely expert at producing. Sadly, that is all outweighed by the mistakes that our leaders are determined to go on making.
Bryan Gould
12 November 2012
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 14 November.
Batshit?
It is the sad fate of leading politicians in a democracy to be heartily disliked, whatever their personal merits may be, by a substantial proportion of the voting public. That is as true of John Key as it was of his predecessor, Helen Clark.
It is not usually the case that it is the personal qualities of the political leader that are at issue, although those who disagree with a politician will often project their political opposition on to the supposed personal deficiencies of the object of their hostility.
But in most cases, even in the case of a political opponent, people are quick to close ranks when it comes to supporting a political leader, particularly a Prime Minister, as a representative of our country overseas. Whatever the controversies and disputes domestically, most of us want to see our Prime Minister performing with distinction and earning respect when it comes to the international arena.
I recall an occasion when I had the privilege of being present when Helen Clark, as Prime Minister, met leading members of the Chinese government. Some members of the New Zealand delegation would almost certainly have been opposed to the Prime Minister in terms of domestic politics (and even I did not agree with her on some issues), but we were all impressed with the way she conducted herself, and proud of the obvious respect in which she was held by her hosts.
Even on those occasions when she said something she perhaps later regretted – as on the occasion when she suggested that, if Al Gore had been US President, there would have been no Iraq invasion – it was on an important issue on which she was entitled to hold a well-considered opinion. The standing she enjoyed in international terms was confirmed, of course, when she was offered the UN’s third most senior post in 2009.
It is therefore disappointing that John Key, whatever his other qualities, has not projected an image overseas of which we can be equally proud. He is beginning to establish something of a reputation in the international media as someone who is at best not to be taken very seriously and at worst prone to gaffes and mis-statements.
His gratuitous and rather coarse insult concerning David Beckham was hardly serious enough to cause a diplomatic incident; but it did receive worldwide coverage and made the front-page headlines in some British tabloids – and it is, sadly, the case that the person who came out of the episode with damage to his reputation was not David Beckham but the New Zealand Prime Minister.
This minor mis-judgment may not matter much in itself, but it may be symptomatic of an increasingly casual and flippant attitude taken by the Prime Minister to the responsibilities of his job. On the same day as the Beckham comment, John Key – presumably in an attempt to show that he was “one of the boys” – ventured an ill-judged “joke” (this time on New Zealand radio) that managed to use the word “gay” as an insult.
The increasingly numerous “brain fades” that John Key has suffered in recent months, and the number of times that he has shuffled off responsibility on to other agencies when his government has been found at fault also suggest a political leader whose mind is not entirely on the job.
And it is of course disappointing that – when he is occasionally reported in the international media – his profile is so indistinct that he has in recent times been described as “David” and “Geoff” Key , or as John “Kay” or John “Keys” – clearly not someone who is making a big impression.
“’So what?” will be the response of many of his supporters. Who cares what foreign journalists make of him, so long as he is doing a good job for the people at home? But representing New Zealand with grace, dignity and authority at international gatherings is very much part of his job, and the country suffers if it is not done well. As a small country, we are in more need than most of a leader who can punch above his weight.
The suspicion must be that John Key, by preference and temperament, sees himself more as a populist domestic politician – a role where his lapses matter less and are more easily forgiven – than as a serious international figure. It may even be that he is someone who is more attracted by popularity than power. But do we really want a Prime Minister who would rather be Paul Henry?
Bryan Gould
6 November 2012
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 8 November.