Editorial, Tuesday August 19, 2014

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

Posturing and faux outrage

It's hard to believe that for the big parties the 2014 electoral campaign is only now getting under way. They seem to have been at it forever, and while what we've heard so far has been highly entertaining, we should remember that, by and large, we've heard it all before.

National reckons we will go to hell in a hand basket (faster) if it isn't returned, Labour is indulging in its traditional display of amnesia and is promising to spend we don't have on additional lashings of social welfare, the Greens are undertaking to save the planet at our vast expense with no regard for how we are going to earn our living, the Maori Party and Labour are engaging in their own tit for tat, NZ First is raising the spectre of the Yellow Peril, ACT is counting on Epsom electors casting their votes strategically, Internet Mana is preaching values when it doesn't have any, the Conservatives are offering a return to old-fashioned values, and a few loopy new ones, and UnitedFuture quietly maintains its confidence in the voters of Ohariu.

There's nothing much new in any of this, but then much of the posturing and faux outrage is for the benefit of a select few, the swinging voter. Nothing is likely to sway the committed voter, whether he/she be blue, red, green or some other hue, but that doesn't make the insincerity on display any less galling. Any pretence that our political system has a skerrick of dignity has long flown out the window, but at least we aren't being promised a grand plan this time.

It isn't that long ago that we were girding our loins to launch the Knowledge Economy. Remember that? New Zealand was going to become the Silicon Valley of the South Seas. To be fair there have been some spectacular success stories, albeit more attributable to our continuing ability to produce free thinkers, despite successive governments' best efforts to beat thinking out of us, than any political wizardry.

The fact that we are once again agonising over our public education system, and whether we'd be better off reducing class sizes by three kids or employing exceptional principals and teachers to lift the performance of schools that could do better, suggests that we have yet to achieve a cerebral transformation.

The greatest contributor to developing a Knowledge Economy might well be the steady trickle of New Zealanders back from Australia. Not so much because everything is suddenly coming up roses here as because things are going pear-shaped on the other side of the Tasman. It is tempting to suggest that those who fled overseas when the going got tough here should stay there, but we will probably benefit from their return, and it would be churlish to suggest that even the most selfish of them shouldn't be allowed back.

Then there was diversification, sort of an adjunct to the Knowledge Economy. That's been a roaring success. The only real diversification has been from Jerseys to Friesians, although we do now have a movie industry of sorts, even if it comes with accusations that Hollywood has the government in its pocket. Critics don't see jobs, tax revenue or free publicity, only tax breaks and legislation designed to advantage film makers. At least cows don't have unions. Or the vote.

Mind you, wealthy foreigners are good for more than turning the heads of our politicians. They are also queuing up to buy farms here, an issue that has once again been shamelessly exploited by Labour and NZ First in particular. Both parties, and specifically David Cunliffe and Winston Peters, have presided over significant land sales to foreigners in the past, but are now staunchly opposed to it. Maybe expats aren't the only people who are susceptible to the occasional epiphany.

And speaking of changes of heart, wasn't Winston Peters one of the architects of our free trade agreement with China? An agreement that includes the guarantee that Chinese who wish to buy and sell property, including houses, in this country will enjoy all the rights and privileges of New Zealanders? Now, with an election looming and no prospect of generating enough popularity to actually win an electorate, Mr Peters is once again warning of an Asian onslaught that, in his words, will see us become tenants in our own land.

At least he's not pointing the bone at an Immigration Department that has to have major competence issues given the rate at which immigrants, not a few of them Asian, and at least one German, turn feral one way or another and are quickly branded as having slipped across the border thanks to political interference. No party seems to want to see too much scrutiny of that particular display of ineptitude.

Diversification, therefore, has largely proved to be another illusion. In 2014 we still depend upon the national dairy herd for much of our income, and while other industries are earning more than they used to they tend to be of a primary nature. Our economy has hardly diversified at all since the whalers went out of business, despite the lofty goals preached by politicians who really know not of what they speak.

And don't forget Closing the Gaps, Labour's short-lived catchcry of 2005. Shortlived because it turned out that the only real gap was between Maori who were doing well at one end of the spectrum and those who weren't at the other. There were also dark mutterings about how well some Maori were doing out of government sinecures, for want of a better word, and how little benefit was accruing for those who were supposed to be getting help.

If there is no grand plan on offer this year we are no worse off for it. Grand plans don't seem to come off in this country, probably because they are cynically devised for no other reason than to win an election.

At the end of the day there would seem to be two choices on September 20 - another three years of slow but hopefully sure economic recovery after a major global financial meltdown and some very unkind tricks played by nature, or expansion of the welfare state as the solution for those who are struggling, and plenty who aren't, seasoned with some Green lunacy that will either become irrelevant on September 21 or will drive us all into penury.

In the meantime we should get one thing straight. Winston Peters' witty observation that two Wongs don't make a White might have been puerile but it wasn't racist.

Two myths regarding racism seem reluctant to die; racism is the belief that human abilities are determined by race, and/or the belief that one race is inherently superior to another. Wongs and Whites don't score under either definition. Nor, as are regularly told, is racism the preserve of a racial majority. Racism can be expressed by a minority of one.

So Winston should not stand accused of racism. Opportunism, perhaps. Playing to people's prejudices and fears, undoubtedly, but not racism. Of greater concern is the apparent rise of anti-semitism as something of a sidebar to our electoral cycle. Some have put that down to stupidity and ignorance rather than genuine antipathy towards Jews. Perhaps. But the election campaign of 2014 might be remembered for the year that we began to see the ugly side of this country's politics.

Vote wisely, and be careful what you wish for.