Subj : John Campbell: When will Hipkins stop drifting and start leading? To : All From : News Person Date : Sat Mar 02 2024 01:17 pm Opinion: Labour has a bleak history of languishing in opposition for three or four terms. If they want to avoid that fate, there is time and that time is now, writes John Campbell. What is the point of the Labour Party? Not the theoretical point. Or the aspirational point. Or the historical point, as advanced, 90 years ago, by Michael Joseph Savage, the Party's first prime minister. Their beloved, bespectacled, owl in a suit. But the actual point, now? There were moments, chunks of moments, an eternity, during Jack Tame's interview with Chris Hipkins on Q+A two Sundays ago, in which I wasn't sure whether the Labour leader could have answered that question himself. He felt like someone who'd weathered a heavy storm, and was now adrift, far from land. Tame began by asking the former prime minister what he would do differently, if he could contest the 2023 election again. The answer was a kind of meandering. An equivocation. First, Hipkins reminded us how terrible 2023 had been - Covid and its endless hangover (which isn't so much a hangover as a continuation), his own days of Covid isolation during the election campaign, global uncertainties, the spiralling cost of living, the forever rain, Cyclone Gabrielle and its heartbreaking toll. So Hipkins was right. It was an annus horribilis, to quote Queen Elizabeth II (thrilling a generation of schoolboys, who thought it was spelt with one n). But wouldn't that make leadership more important? "We need to reignite the fire of our collective spirit," Hipkins himself once said. It was 2008, and the new MP for Remutaka was making his Maiden Speech, shining like a Navy Band trumpet. He couldn't have known it then, but Labour would spend nine years in opposition. Labour could languish in opposition again History tells us, in the blunt way that history likes to impart its bad news, that there have been six Labour (or Labour led) Governments, and that after being voted out, Labour (in chronological order) have been in opposition for eight years, then 12 years, then almost nine years, then nine years, then nine years, and now. what? In other words, when Labour become opposition it's not some temporary respite, or a breather, or a recharge, it's a kind of exile. Which would galvanise you, right? Because nine years is a long time to be in opposition. You'd also want to learn from the experience of losing. And you'd want to be seen to have done so. At one stage during the Q+A interview, considering what more he might have done, Hipkins said: "We were going to do some things in the last few weeks of the campaign that were, sort of, more playing to my strengths. Things around home insulation and, you know, rooftop solar, and those sorts of things." Truly. He seemed like the Ancient Mariner. "Alone on a wide wide sea." Asked about NCEA, and the changes the new coalition Government may or may not be making, the former Education Minister replied: "I understand they've slowed some things down. I haven't followed that, exactly." Oh. The following day, as life sometimes assails you in combinations, a 1News Verian poll was released - the brutal business of being marked, like a school report you can't somehow contrive to lose on the way home. And in the "preferred prime minister" rankings, the Labour leader had fallen 10 points to 15%, a drop of 40%. Yes, defeated prime ministers do drop. That's the business. But when it's 40%, it's perhaps appropriate to not look too philosophical about it. And here's where you get some broader insight into Labour's estrangement from the duties and responsibilities of leading the country's Opposition. "We're three years away from an election," Willie Jackson said, encapsulating a general feeling that there's still plenty of time to get it right. That time is now. The essential role of Opposition The brilliant cameraman I work with most often, Andy Dalton, doesn't believe you should see his studio lights in the wide shot during an interview. I disagree - it's one of the few things we disagree on. I like the reminder that this is a constructed process, that television is made. Andy thinks it takes you through the fourth wall. Is Labour really inferring that there's plenty of time to regroup, to articulate purpose, to stand for something, and therefore that "now" doesn't matter, not really, because there isn't an election soon? If so, they've taken us through the fourth wall. Now does matter. In the face of a coalition government spanning a wild and almost arbitrary continuum, from a high wattage aspiration that sometimes feels disconnected from any delivery mechanism, through a paint-by-numbers orthodoxy, to opportunism and populism, and on, and out, towards the uncertain orbits of planet Seymour and planet Peters, the Labour Party has an essential role to play as opposition. Now. Doesn't it? What's the actual point of the Labour Party? Tame asked Hipkins how many press releases he's put out so far this year. "I don't measure our success by the number of press releases that we put out," Hipkins answered. Tame sought an exact number. "Let's be clear," Hipkins responded, "as the Leader of the Opposition I'm not going to fall into that trap of just barking at every passing car." The answer was zero. Zero. Fair point, of course. Barking at every passing car means people stop listening to your barks. Or grow tired of them. Or want to muzzle the dog. But not barking at cars, when they're driving past you carrying people on their way to rewrite the Treaty, or to disband the Maori Health Authority, or to sanction beneficiaries, or to allow the return of the military-style weapons used in the March 15 terror attacks, or to claim sobering fragility when they'd previously insisted on transformative aspiration, or to back away from a world-leading anti-smoking law, or to push te reo Maori into the vehicle's back seat (or boot). To not bark, loudly, at those cars? What is the point of the Labour Party? This may seem unfair. Chippie, to use his cuddly nom de plume, stepped up after then prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced her departure, endured (as he told us on Q+A) a terrible year, sabotaged by weather, war and the global economy (and also by some of his own MPs), and is doing his very best, etc, etc, etc. Since Waitangi, I've been informally polling Labour people, including MPs (all of whom I agreed not to name) about the nature of his leadership. Some are genuinely grateful, and regard it as an exhausting, difficult and entirely unenviable role, but others told me he's clinging to it and he needs to step up. "Let just say that he's not without personal ambition", one MP told me, then laughed, as you do when you're confiding something contrary to the wider sense of someone. Nor is Christopher Luxon, of course. His personal ambition is so large it may require its own truck, which possibly explains his obsession with roads? And clinging to leadership is not a bad thing. Helen Clark clung to Labour's leadership during a period of dreadful polling and white-anting from senior colleagues. She lost the 1996 election, but won in 1999, and was prime minister for nine years. Touch‚. But Clark was resolute throughout. She understood that the will to remain in the job is not sufficient, you have to do the job, too. And people are talking. The Standard published a fascinating, although slightly strangely written piece (as if being dictated by someone on a run), last Sunday. It considered the bewilderingly - or pointedly low - placement of David Parker in Labour's Shadow Cabinet, and asserted: "Parker is the only guy left with that combination of progressive chops, huge track record, and the merest mote of charisma to be an alternative leader to Hipkins. Hipkins has sent yet another signal to Parker to retire. This leaves Hipkins free to turn the entire Labour effort into an even more ineffectual Wellington-circling w***athon taking two terms to recover from the smashing he got it in 2023." Ouch. Why does this matter? Because Opposition matters. Even more so when the Government is undertaking a programme of significant change. And, in the continuum I outlined above, the coalition Government is. Is it a fort or a hole? It's not that Luxon, himself, is a radical politician. He's about as radical as his two-piece suits, which is a bit rich, coming from me. It's that his coalition partners are niche politicians, and their niches sometimes extend into the shadows of resentment populism and identity populism. I wrote about this at the end of December. I quoted American political sociologist Larry Diamond, from a 2017 speech entitled, When Does Populism Become a Threat to Democracy? Diamond argues, "all forms of populism - even 'good' (progressive, democratically inspired) ones - harbour an intrinsic tendency to become a runaway train." Luxon is the train's driver. And even if there have been moments in which Peters and Seymour appear to have locked him in the caboose (what a lovely word), wherever that train ends up, is on him. I once made an underground fort. I would have been eight - give or take a year. And I dug a hole beside our garage, large enough for an eight-year-old to fit in if they contorted themselves into a schoolboy Houdini, and, leaving a gap for the "door", I covered most of it with plywood, or similar, put dirt on top to camouflage it, and then went to tell my friends that this wonderous thing could be found in our back yard. They followed me home. A ridiculous, incredulous, curious procession. To quote that gorgeous line from Philip Larkin, I had never known "success so huge and wholly farcical". And then we arrived. And we assembled in a small circle around this magnificence. And it wasn't a fort it was a hole with a piece of ply over it. And off they went. And I stood there. Blushing with shame. I don't know why this has come back to me. But I keep picturing Luxon telling everyone he's building a fort. Sooner or later, he's going to have to take the country home to see it. In the end, Hipkins and Luxon both face the same challenge. It's not enough to have the job, they have to do it. Which means Luxon has to deliver on his own election night promises. I wrote about them, here. How he surfed his own hyperbole. (Ride that board, baby.) That the possibilities were infinite. And the horizon was a brilliant blue. A "new day", a "new government", a "new direction". Making the country "so much better than it is", Luxon said. Taking "New Zealand forward," he said. Getting us "back on track". Come and see my fort! National's singular focus This was, of course, after the PREFU, the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update, released in September of last year. Think of the PREFU as a stock-take, or a weather forecast, or both. Prepared by The Treasury (I love the magnificence of their "The"), a PREFU is "required to be published prior to a general election", and puts on the public record a view of "the Government's financial performance and financial position over the current year and next four years". They're good and valuable things. And if we do (as people tell me) have Ruth Richardson to thank for them, then I. .um. .mumble, splutter, cough. Anyway, the most recent PREFU, a month out from the last election, contained the projection: "Treasury expects the economic slowdown to persist through 2023 and 2024, and elevated interest rates lead to a peak unemployment rate of 5.4%." There's more, including the projection that, "interest rates are expected to remain at their current level over the next year in order to reduce inflation. High interest rates are expected to constrain economic growth to a quarterly average of 0.4% over the next year, and the unemployment rate is expected to rise to 5.4%". National knew this. (They campaigned on Labour's economic "mismanagement".) Everyone who read the PREFU knew this. By my count, including tables, a peak unemployment rate of 5.4% is mentioned in it eight times. The Reserve Bank knew it, too. In October 2022, Reserve Bank Governor, Adrian Orr, speaking to the Institute of Finance Professionals, stated: "Returning to low inflation will, in the near-term, constrain employment growth and lead to a rise in unemployment." And then, in December last year, the new Finance Minister, Nicola Willis announced, "the coalition Government has met its 100-Day commitment to return the Reserve Bank to a single focus on inflation". If you're not quite sure what that means, think of the Reserve Bank as a very good Antarctic sledge dog, charged with pulling just the one thing - inflation. Labour had asked it to pull two things. Again, it's useful to quote Willis here (from that same December press release): "In 2018, the Labour government amended the Reserve Bank's governing legislation to introduce a new secondary objective of achieving maximum sustainable employment, sitting alongside the prior focus on inflation." So, unemployment and inflation under Labour. Under National, a return to a single focus on inflation. One more quote from Willis: "Risking higher inflation in the pursuit of unsustainably high employment, just creates the conditions for a more severe hike in interest rates later on to bring inflation back under control." (My italics.) Yes, "unsustainably high employment" - that isn't a typo. There's no "un" in front of "employment". We're talking too many people in work. In a way, that's fairly conventional monetary policy. Up go interest rates, down go jobs, down, hopefully, goes inflation. But, essentially, this also tells us that if you're one of the people who's lost your job, or are about to lose your job, there are factors at work beyond your control. On February 18, a fortnight ago, Luxon made his State of the Nation speech. In it, the Prime Minister said: "We'll do everything we can to help people into work, but if they don't play ball the free ride is over." Free ride. 'Curbing the surge of welfare dependency' Here's where we must deviate, like one of those very good sledge dogs I mentioned earlier, if it saw a delicious chicken and escaped to chase it. (Are there chickens in Antarctica? No matter, this is an opinion piece, in case anyone missed that. Lol.) I'll keep the deviation brief because there's work to be done. But it's worthwhile. This is how the Welfare Expert Advisory Group described what people told them about life on a benefit: "Their stories were often harrowing, and we were shocked and saddened by the extent of the suffering and deprivation that is occurring." Just one bit more: "Living in poverty often results in long-lasting, poor outcomes for benefit recipients, their children, families and whanau, and society. Evidence is strong of the negative effects that poverty has on a wide range of children's outcomes, including cognitive development, school attainment, health and social, emotional and behavioural development." Free ride, baby. The day after the PM resuscitated one of the oldest tropes in the Tory playbook, the Social Development and Employment Minister, Louise Upston, announced: "Government begins reset of welfare system." "The Coalition Government is taking early action to curb the surge in welfare dependency that occurred under the previous government by setting out its expectations around employment and the use of benefit sanctions." "Make no mistake - there will be consequences", the Prime Minister said in his State of the Nation speech, to people enjoying the "free ride". "Make no mistake." "Consequences". "The state of the nation is fragile", he said, perhaps preparing us for his own under-delivery, after what Matthew Hooton described in the NZ Herald as having, "imprudently promised more than needed to win power. Luxon now knows the economy is smaller than forecast and likely to remain flat for longer, that inflation is more deeply embedded and interest rates likely to stay high all year, and that the mere fact of his election won't magically fix either." Excuses, excuses. Unless you're unemployed. What about those tax cuts? Yes, as people are losing their jobs, and as "the unemployment rate is expected to rise", the coalition Government was going to market with a policy wrapped in language implying there are jobs aplenty, and unemployment is a lifestyle choice, and the lifestyle is a free ride. In the context of all we've seen from Treasury, the PREFU, the Reserve Bank, and even the new Government itself, the PM's language felt like victim blaming - in advance of there being more victims. A pre-emptive strike, on people already being struck. It also felt like a prioritisation. In an environment of restraint, cuts and closures, with the OCR being held up, with inflation retreating only very slowly, in an environment so "tough" that the PM used that word 10 times (!) in his State of the Nation speech, are tax cuts still on the table? (What Hooton called the "unaffordable and inflationary tax cuts programme".) Is tax support for landlords still happening? And if so, are our poorest subsiding that? "Tough" for who? Which brings us back to Labour Where were the Opposition while all this was happening? Here are Labour's press releases from that period. And neither the sanctions, nor the wilfully pejorative language they came packaged in, are mentioned once. Again, dogs barking at every passing car are dogs no-one likes. But what cars is Labour barking at? Or are they saving their bark for nearer the election? Some of Labour's Shadow Cabinet are starting to look intent on holding the Government to account: Ayesha Verrall, Peeni Henare, Willie Jackson (who appears to have sensed the time is now). And Labour's tribal supporters, and their loyalty is as singular as my commitment to the mighty (cough) Hurricanes, will insist that even a subdued or disconnected Labour is better than National. Is that the bar? Labour's problem is not only a kind of abandonment of its literal and moral purpose, it's that politics abhors a vacuum. Te Pati Maori won an extraordinary six out of seven Maori electorates. Labour's only victory was courtesy of Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, a brand new politician, whose deep connection to her community existed well before, and outside, Labour's spluttering machinery. The Greens had their best election, ever. The result, in part, of a highly mobilised ground campaign, but also of discernibly standing for something. Of not being focus-group cautious, or meekly centrist, or absent. If that isn't a clarion call for Labour, then what will be? There's another thing Labour need to consider - and it's this. While Luxon is not (yet) the natural politician he appears to believe himself to be, and he's capable of remarkable errors of judgement (using the world "entitled" to justify receiving a $52,000 optional allowance to live in an apartment he owns - before pulling a U-turn), he is the Prime Minister. And the difference between eight-year-old me and a voluble PM is that if the latter says "it's a fort" often enough, people may start to believe him. Even if it is a just hole. Politicians sometimes bite their own arse. At the end of Luxon's State of the Nation speech, after his free ride through clich‚-ville, powering the Tesla that isn't his along all the new roads National is somehow going to magic (at bargain basement prices) out of the land, he lists some of what's good about New Zealanders. "This country is jam-packed with ambition and empathy," the PM says. "Extraordinary people who keep the gears of their community moving through the power of their individual contributions. Running the footy club. Volunteering at the food bank. Trapping pests." You what? Was it ironic, that reference to food banks? Is the PM's speech writer a subversive leftie? Because if the sanctions really do kick in, food banks will be even busier than they are now; and the foodbanks themselves, let alone the people they serve, are already struggling. Three days after that speech, the Child Poverty Action Group, CPAG, whose work on child poverty is expert, rigorous, fact-based, and actually (as opposed to rhetorically) aspirational, issued a media release saying the PM was on track to break his election promise on child poverty. CPAG spokesperson, associate professor Mike O'Brien, said they had "tried to reach out to the new Government to share evidence-based solutions that would help ease constraints on families struggling to make the very basic of ends meet but the Prime Minister had declined to meet with the group". Maybe he was volunteering at a food bank? Or building a fort? It's exactly the sort of detail an effective Labour opposition might pick up on. If we had one. And on it goes. The coalition Government on full steam ahead. to where? Labour sometimes feeling as inexplicably absent as the crew of the Mary Celeste. Outcomes to improve outcomes Speaking of absent, so were Maori, from Luxon's State of the Nation speech. (We love the haka and the koru, though, eh?) The published version of the PM's speech is 3200 words long. The word "Maori" appears in it twice, and both times in the same sentence: "Soon we'll introduce legislation to disestablish the Maori Health Authority - because we want to see better results for Maori, not more bureaucracy." How, exactly, will disestablishing the Maori Health Authority achieve "better results for Maori"? I thought the Health Minister himself might tell me, and he did, in cabinet papers attached to his announcement that, "Legislation that will disestablish the Maori Health Authority will be introduced in Parliament today". One of the documents released contains one of the greatest lines in the history of New Zealand politics: "There is no question that we need to improve Maori health outcomes. I intend to do this by improving outcomes." That's not a fort - it's a hole. Labour can rise this this challenge, or not. But if they don't, what is the point of the Labour Party? The Maori response to it, and to the Treaty Principles Bill, and to the relegation of te reo Maori, is already up, running and declaratory. Six of seven Maori seats going to Te Pati Maori, yes. But even more remarkable than that is the profound and unified sense of a new mana motuhake, which doesn't need party politics, and which wilfully exists outside it. I was at Turangawaewae. I was at Waitangi. That was a fort Maori were building. And it doesn't require the Labour Party. These are strange, "tough" times. Holding governments to account is part of how we ensure our response to the strangeness and the toughness is fair, proportionate, constructive and right. We are losing voices that do that. Efeso Collins, who had the extraordinary, human capacity to be admired by even the people whose use of power he was questioning. Newshub, whose voice, and the questions they asked with it, have helped us better understand ourselves, and our governments, for the past 35 years. And Labour? What, now, is the point of the Party of Savage, Nash, Kirk, Lange, Clark, Ardern, and even, yes, Hipkins? Are they a fort or a hole? --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Windows/64) * Origin: S.W.A.T.S BBS Telnet swatsbbs.ddns.net:2323 (63:10/102) .