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Sunday
Labour released its campaign slogan: “In it for you.” (National’s is “Get NZ back on track.”)
In the opening episode of Mad Men Don Draper explains to the owners of Lucky Strike cigarettes that their product is identical to all their competitors so their advertising slogan is vital. He suggests they use “It’s toasted.”
Cigarette executive: But everybody else’s tobacco is toasted.
Don. No. Everybody else’s tobacco is poisonous. Lucky Strike is toasted.
Monday
There was a flood of new policies this week so it’s worth noting that in New Zealand politics, policy announcements are very aspirational. Election promises aren’t things the parties will do if elected so much as a vague notion of what they might like to do, eventually, if given unlimited time, money and political capital. And perhaps not even then. Policies need to be agreed on by coalition partners in post-election negotiations, lavishly contemplated by working groups and commissions, and even if they’re eventually passed into law, there’s no guarantee the public service will trouble themselves to implement them.
With that in mind: the Greens released a Treaty/te tiriti policy calling for a commission of enquiry into historical land dispossession, scrapping the 2008 deadline on treaty claims, opening the process up to new claims, empowering the Waitangi Tribunal to make recommendations on privately owned land, and establishing a fund available to Māori to buy private land back when it comes on the market. And National has promised a pothole repair fund of $500,000 to fix the “shocking state of our local roads and state highways” that they blame on the current government’s neglect. Labour responded that the state of the roads is the fault of the previous National government.
Tuesday
Act co-founder Sir Roger Douglas announced that he’s not voting for his own party this election, alleging that they’ve “lost the plot”. In a 22-page letter to Business Desk he revealed “While I have voted Act, in the last nine elections, since 2002 I have not done so with much enthusiasm.” A curious statement, given that Sir Roger was an MP for Act from 2008 to 2011.
His complaint is that his old party now only serves the wealthy, which might sound odd to many since the left-wing critique of neoliberalism is that this was always the point of the project. But one of the primary policy goals of the neoliberal revolution that swept the anglosphere in the 80s and 90s was the creation of “property owning democracies”. A large, prosperous middle-class who owned their own homes and invested in the stock market was seen as the most effective bulwark against the still dire threat of international socialism.
Sir Roger was not very successful at delivering that middle-class wealth – his deregulation of the nation’s financial markets led to a catastrophic crash and deep recession. But the intention was there. Today Act – and, arguably, National – primarily represent the interests of current property owners, in opposition to almost any attempt to extend the property franchise.
After spending most of the year insisting that there has not been an increase in offending and that National and Acts tough on crime rhetoric was disgusting populism, this week saw a Grand Pivot with the Prime Minister declaring he’d had a gutsful of youth crime and gangs, so he was introducing a suite of youth crime measures. With mixed results. Monday’s announcement saw additional funding for prosecutors and family conferences and a change to the sentencing laws: people who use young people to commit a crime will incur an additional sentence if found guilty.
But on Tuesday, the Prime Minister and his Minister for Children, Kelvin Davis, announced the construction of two new youth facilities. These would be run by Oranga Tamariki and house children who have committed violent crimes. Probably. Neither Chris Hipkins nor Kelvin Davis could answer the press gallery’s questions about how much these facilities would cost, when they’d be built, who would staff them or the age range of the children committed to them. Former police commissioner Mike Bush is currently reviewing the state of Oranga Tamariki’s residences and his report is due next month – so you’d think the government would hold off on committing an unknown amount of money for new facilities until then. It looked an awful lot like “policy on the hoof” – the dubious phenomenon of politicians wildly improvising new measures on their way to the media announcement rather than via a coherent process involving research or analysis.
The Speaker of the House referred former Labour Minister Michael Wood to the privileges committee after the registrar of pecuniary interests returned a scathing report on his inability to disclose his shares in Auckland Airport and other relevant companies while serving as transport minister.
The report found: “Mr Wood did not turn his mind to his interests as he should have. In so doing, he has damaged his own standing as a member and has also cast a shadow over the entire Register, and the trust and confidence that the public are entitled to expect they can have in their elected representatives.”
Wood was seen as a future leader of his party. That ambition is now very distant. But this is surely the most relatable scandal of the year. If I were a potential future Prime Minister, I would certainly self-sabotage by failing to fill in the correct forms and then steadfastly ignore the chorus of people around me desperately attempting to save my career. It’s nice to feel represented at the highest levels of power.
Wednesday
StatsNZ reports that annual inflation has fallen from 6.7% to 6% over the past quarter. Which is positive – the trend is in the right direction. But politicians will sometimes pretend that a fall in the rate of inflation means that prices are going down. On the contrary, prices are still increasing quite dramatically – food and housing especially. But the rate of increase has decreased.
The Grand Youth Crime Pivot continued today with the government introducing “the final piece of the puzzle”: a new criminal code for ram raids, which will now be punishable with a maximum sentence of 10 years for repeat offenders. The legal expert Graeme Edgeler pointed out on Twitter that “The idea that ram-raiding isn’t already a crime (burglary) that doesn’t already have a maximum sentence of 10 years is a little silly”.
But the detail behind the policy package – mostly provided by Justice Minister, Kiri Allan – was more substantive. The theory is that these combined measures will give police, Oranga Tamariki and the youth courts more options in dealing with young offenders: off-ramps for younger or lighter offences, then more serious measures for repeat and violent offenders.
Thursday
Two people were killed and five were wounded in a shooting at a building site in central Auckland. One of the wounded was a police officer. The gunman has been identified as a 24-year-old man who was sentenced to home detention for domestic assault. He died at the scene. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins praised the heroic actions of the emergency responders. The incident unfolded the same day as the Fifa Women’s World Cup kicked off in the same city, but Hipkins and other officials assured the public that there was no wider threat to the community.
