Anti-Podean Journal

Them Bones Gonna Rise Again

2005-10-02T14:51:00.000+13:00

I have said goodbye to Blogger and hello to a new Wordpress blog:

Valorizing Labour

And no, the title has nothing to do with party political affiliations. Hope to see you there!

Rohan

Hucker pulls out

2004-09-01T21:47:00.000+12:00

As I predicted a long time ago, Bruce Hucker has failed in his bid to become mayor of Auckland.

It’s unfortunate. Hucker has the kind of skills that Auckland needs most. No, I’m not talking about smoothness, business sense, obstinacy or simple-minded plain speaking. I’m talking about his other career as a senior lecturer in planning at the University of Auckland.

New Zealand, and Auckland in particular, is decades behind when it comes to simple things like robust planning rules and regulation. Auckland doesn’t even keep an official list of its heritage sites. Whole buildings are built without public input and with a minimum of inspection. Without enforceable design guidelines, this city has some of the most horrendous architecture in the western world. Auckland has only barely begun to contemplate what growth will really mean for its future. And worst of all, the city has no public transport system worth mentioning.

To quote mayor John Banks, it’s pathetic.

Recent polling results have forced Bruce Hucker to pull out of the mayoral race. So-called liberal and progressive voters appear to be mollified with meusli king Hubbard’s paternalistic cereal-box Christian platitudes and willingness to listen. I’m not.

The blame lies in a few key places. Bruce Hucker’s campaign suffered from terrible strategy and some of the worst P.R. I have ever seen. It doesn’t look good for the left vote in Auckland that its mayoral candidate went spiralling down to a humiliating defeat before being able to complete a totally ineffective campaign for control of New Zealand’s largest city. What went wrong?

Well, here's a theory. For a long time, Aucklanders have tried to maintain the fiction that there are no party politics in this city, even though it is obvious that this is not the case. As a result, the left vote has been reluctant to really get itself organised, for fear of offending voters and activists who might object to the intrusion of Labour into the municipal environment. But that same lack of organisation meant that Bruce Hucker could campaign for mayor independently of the City Vision ticket. He didn’t have to win support from City Vision members, he didn’t have to undergo the scrutiny of a nomination race and crucially, he didn’t have the opportunity to build the profile that such a race would have afforded him.

Left voters didn't get an opportunity to endorse a mayoral candidate. And Hucker didn't get the buy-in that he needed from City Vision supporters.

So City Vision, and the left in Auckland generally, have put themselves in a position where they endorsed Bruce Hucker’s campaign without really supporting him. And now they’ll have to pick up the pieces. It doesn’t look good for City Vision now that their candidate is down, and as much as they’d like to console themselves with Hubbard’s loafers, he just isn’t the candidate that a left party should be supporting.

Surely Auckland is big enough to support an independent party of the centre left that is mature and confident enough to run a full slate of candidates, including one for the mayor’s seat. God knows, it’s ugly enough.

Inside the Beast

2004-09-01T11:22:00.000+12:00

Look at this: fantastic photographs of the Republican convention from Satan's Laundromat

Equivalence is not Equality

2004-08-25T13:25:00.000+12:00

I have to agree with Marilyn Waring. The Civil Unions Bill has nothing to do with equality. According to a strangely written story in The Herald yesterday,

Professor Waring… called for amendments to the 1954 Marriage Act and the 1995 Births Deaths and Marriages Registration Act to allow for same-sex marriages [saying] "Equivalence is not equality." The professor in public policy at Massey University, Albany, believes excluding same-sex couples from marriage is discrimination. She claims the bill is "inconsistent with the rights and freedoms contained in the Bill of Rights".

It’s not that I don’t agree that there ought to be something like a civil union arrangement for those who want it. Heck, it might be just the thing for me and my partner. The problem is that I am a heterosexual. Part of the dominant culture. Heterosexuals don’t need to struggle for respect and recognition of their relationships. Gays do. The fact is that they are being discriminated against, and the Civil Unions Bill does nothing to change this.

True, many of the people who support the Civil Unions Bill have been clear that the Bill doesn’t go far enough. Many people have understood from day one that the Bill achieves nothing but equivalence. But emotionally, psychically, the fight to get the Civil Unions Bill through Parliament has been all about equality. That's what the debate has been all about.

My feeling is, if you are going to fight for something, fight for it. Especially when the environment is right, and particularly when it appears that the rest of the world is slowly coming around to the fact that preventing homosexuals from marrying amounts to discrimination.

It’s been a perfect issue for Labour. By proposing a civil union, they have been able to position themselves as progressive, attracting the support of all the people who they will need to have on side as the next election looms closer. These might be the same people who lost faith in Helen after her reactionary stand toward Maori over the foreshore and seabed.

At the same time, they have given themselves waffle room. Because they can then stand up and say that the Civil Unions Bill has nothing to do with marriage. Hopefully that will deflect some of the fire coming from Labour’s socially conservative centre. It’s classic bad faith. And it’s classic politics.

It’s just a pity that so many good people have had to fight so hard to defend apartheid for homosexuals.

Welfare, Left and Right

2004-08-18T13:20:00.000+12:00

In my opinion, Just Left is writing some of the most important stuff in the New Zealand blogosphere at the moment. His latest entry is a coming to grips with questions posed by Colin James about the kinds of presuppositions that different political perspectives bring to welfare and welfare policy. Unfortunately, Colin James’ article, like much of his recent writing, is nearly irrelevant in its mushiness and dwells on ground that has been covered over and over again: moral differences deployed by the left and right in the field of welfare policy seem to have lost their traditional definition. It's typical of the wise triumphalism that many right-of-centre commentators have indulged in since the demise of the USSR. Though it is, perhaps, a little out of date.

Listen to statements like these:

…the left focuses much more on the horror childhood than on ownership of misdeeds and redemption. It reaches for state instruments to wash away the sins and create a new life. But this presumes the state can change the inner person, without which there is no absolution and renewal. The state can do that only incidentally through individual action by gifted or insightful state servants and teachers, not through systems.

Excuse me? Let's leave aside the obscurity of 'absolution and renewal' for a moment. It is the welfare state that puts systems like schools and social workers in place to ensure that gifted and insightful state servants and teachers have the opportunity to interact with the people who need help. And while it may be true that there has been a lack of moral definition between left and right in the last several decades, it’s a mistake to think that this process has only worked one way: that only those on the left have migrated to wiser moral climes. The politics of the welfare state have not left conservatism and the right unaffected. And in a very real sense, the welfare state itself has provided the political and social basis of right-wing and liberal economic activity, even if this connection has not always been explicitly stated in the writings of analysts like James. Seeing this point clearly helps us to think about the politics of the welfare state in a more nuanced way.

A good example of the right travelling to the traditional moral ground of the left is the recent emphasis on early childhood education and intervention. For years, conservative and right-wing social policy directed at children had held parents and their moral life as ultimately responsible for the success (or otherwise) the child. But in the last few years, studies and policy work have shown that life chances of children improve significantly if there are systems put in place to help parents with the work of parenting. Early childhood education programmes, parental education and support programmes are commonplace now and importantly enjoy widespread support.

But for James, the welfare state is all about welfare. About benefits for bludgers. There is an odd anachrony in James' writing, as though he had accidentally cut and pasted something from an article written years ago. Implying gently that the left is responsible for growing welfare rolls, James writes:

What is not commonsense is to palliate ever-growing welfare rolls. That is not sustainable, fiscally or politically. The left is beginning to grasp this but has not yet worked out what to do. If it doesn't, one day its core supporters will desert it for politicians who say they can.

Now, I don’t know if James has actually been paying attention to economic indicators lately, but it seems clear to me that the left has grasped this for some time, and they have indeed worked out what to do. It’s true that, due to the Lange government’s reforms, Labour in New Zealand took some time to get to the same place as Blair in Britain or the various social-democratic regimes in Europe, for example. It took the clear break of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen for New Zealand Labour to finally dispense with the political and economic disaster that was Lange. But let me spell it out: those who James would define as left have been focussing on economic growth and low unemployment. And they have been using the welfare state to do it.

This would seem to fly in the face of much conventional punditry these days. After all, hasn’t the welfare state been fatefully undermined by neo-liberalism and globalisation? Listen to Ulrich Beck:

The premises of the welfare state and pension system, of income support, local government and infrastructural policies, the power of organised labour, industry-wide free collective bargaining, state expenditure, the fiscal system and ‘fair taxation’ – all this melts under the withering sun of globalisation and becomes susceptible to (demands for) political moulding. Every social actor must respond in some way or another; and the typical responses do not fit into the old left-right schema of political action

Dire stuff. But Beck seems unable to swallow his own medicine about the mutability of left-right distinctions. More specifically, he makes the mistake of seeing the mechanisms of the welfare state solely as creations of the left. Arguments about the end of left-right politics are always posed in the context of the vanishing welfare state and the irresistable power of globalisation. The assumption is that the welfare state has nothing to do with free markets and global capital. It ignores the role that the welfare state has played in the development of modern capitalism, and in the development of globalisation itself. Other theorists are more careful. In his article Global Markets and National Politics, Geoffrey Garrett writes that

…in a world of capital mobility, there is still a virtuous circle between activist government and international openness. The government interventions emblematic of the modern welfare state provide buffers against the kinds of social and political backlashes that undermined openness in the first half of the twentieth century – protectionism, nationalism, and international conflict.

Citing the work of Polanyi and J.G. Ruggie, Garrett argues that the welfare state compromise really was a compromise, in that the mechanisms of the welfare state helped to embed economic liberalism. For too long we have seen only one side of the deal and have failed to recognise the extent to which the welfare state supported the development of open international trade and economic liberalism. The failure to see the double-sided nature of the welfare state can lead to a politics of nostalgia best seen in the work of Bruce Jesson and Jane Kelsey.

Garrett writes:

…the embedded liberalism compromise of the Bretton Woods period combined an international regime of trade openness, fixed exchange rates and capital controls with the domestic political economy of the Keynesian welfare state. The final observation that should be made about this combination is that many analysts believe that embedded liberalism was most prominent and worked best in countries characterised by strong and centralised (corporatist) labour movements and powerful social democratic parties. Centre-left parties are more likely to be sensitive to the political demands of short-term market losers. Corporatist labour movements have incentives to tailor wage growth to benefit the economy as a whole…

Now that’s not a story you read too often.

A Response to Critics, or, The Law is an Ass that tells Great Stories

2004-08-14T13:36:00.000+12:00

The questions posed earlier about the relationship of the Treaty of Waitangi to issues of sovereignty and the legitimacy of the state generated some interesting comments in the New Zealand blogosphere.

Just Left propelled things forward by usefully distinguishing two different versions of New Zealand’s constitutional history in current circulation. Version 1 is similar to the one I’d offerred earlier. The plot of this story is that the Crown was unable to exercise sovereignty in New Zealand until its agents had obtained a treaty which effectively transferred aboriginal rights to the Crown. But more on this later. Just Left summarises version 2 like this:

There's another version, which one might call Version 2. In this version, the British Crown acquired sovereignty by right of "conquest" (the North Island) and "discovery" (the South Island), as gazetted in London in October 1840. The Treaty of Waitangi did not have any impact on this, which is why in judicial decisions in the latter part of the 19th century, and into the 20th, it was often declared to be a "simple nullity." In this version of our history, the Crown has been sovereign since it asserted its sovereignty, and no legal obstacle exists to it continuing in that mode. Aboriginal title was, arguably, extinguished by the English common law that arrived with the Crown.

The problem as I see it with this version is signalled in the last sentence. Where the British empire expanded into regions inhabited by indigenous peoples, the common law dictated that aboriginal rights of sovereignty pre-existed the right of the Crown. Sovereignty could be transferred by force or by treaty, but it had to be transferred. That’s why the British were so keen to establish treaties. It took a great deal less work than pure force, and it provided great optics. Of course, individual circumstances might mean that this process was not scrupulously followed. Take, for example, the situation that occurred in Australia, where the land was declared "terra nullius" – a land without people and therefore without a pre-existing right of sovereign power.

However, the legal "story" of a pre-existing right provided the constitutional basis for another story: the right of the Crown through the transfer of sovereignty. And it’s that story that has supplied the basis for aboriginal peoples’ struggles for self-determination within the different common law jurisdictions in which they found themselves. When I say story, I am speaking of the complex of legal concepts that make up a given tradition. I’m talking about the nature of law as a tradition that employs certain tropes and characters: things like inalienable rights and sovereignty. Both Greyshade and Reading the Maps criticise my emphasis on the narrative nature of the sovereignty story. Greyshade rightly comments that:

Sovereignty is not a delegation of authority from history but a contemporary question of fact. The states of Israel or Jordan were created by a UN resolution but exercise their sovereignty today without any reference to the UN or anyone else.

Of course, this is correct. But I think both of critics have misinterpreted what I have been trying to get at. To begin with, both Israel and Jordan were created out of different story-telling traditions: there is no one-to-one relationship between international law as it developed in the post World War II environment and the internal law of different common law countries. More importantly, although sovereignty is indeed a question of fact, its legal self-description is based on a constellation of definitions and objects, many of which are necessarily fictive. You cannot enter a courtroom and argue a case without in some way employing and referring to these fictions. You can't argue a case without without entering a story. We all seem to know that laws and constitutions are based on great stories, even if practioners in the legal and juridical sphere don't. As legal theorist Peter Brooks writes:

If the narrativity of the law seems obvious to the outside observer, the law itself does not recognize narrative as a category of its thinking.

Moving on, No Right Turn challenges my assertion that the Treaty of Waitangi is the legal basis for Crown sovereignty, arguing that:

the Treaty is obviously not the legal basis of the crown's sovereignty, for the simple reason that there can be no such basis. Sovereignty does not flow from law; it flows from popular consent.

There are two problems here as I see it. The first is that in my copy of The New Zealand Politics Source Book it says right at the beginning of Part 1 that:

The legitimacy of the political system as a whole in now generally considered to rest on a compact, the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between representatives of the British Crown and many of the Maori tribes.

Secondly, it's not as though I don't agree with Idiot at No Right Turn about where the real basis of sovereignty ought to lie in a perfect world. I am no legalistic Tory willing to die on my sword for fictive constructions such as the sovereignty of the Crown or the surrender of sovereignty. Idiot's argument about the sovereignty of the people is consonant with his essential liberalism. I am, however, a marxist social-democrat. And for me, saying things like the people are sovereign comes close to identifying the state with "the people" - an amorphous concept and a dangerous one. In fact, I like the language of Crown and Right inasmuch as it makes explicit the fact that the people are not sovereign: in a society such as ours real power lies elsewhere.

What I am arguing is that if we read New Zealand's legal and constitutional history consistently, following its own internal logic, we arrive at a contradiction between the obligations set out in the Treaty of Waitangi and the legal basis of state power in New Zealand. It's a productive contradiction because it sets out in clear relief the fact that so-called "parliamentary sovereignty" is a fictional object that is no longer desirable. Such a "reading" exposes the fact that in the Treaty of Waitangi we have a partial constitutional document without a legal means to enforce it: the state, now synonymous with parliament is in breach of its obligations. But it cannot be called to account.

I think that as a result of the Treaty, parliament needs limits to its authority in the form of a separation of power. But because legal thinkers have theorised New Zealand as a unitary state, they have been unable to justify the establishment of a supreme court which might have the power to limit parliamentary authority. The problem is that to theorise in this way makes the Treaty of Waitangi invisible. There is, in my opinion, a case to be made that New Zealand is not a unitary state: rather, the obligations of the Treaty form a limit to the authority of the state in the same way that a constitution does.

The Treaty represents an authority that de-stablises the "unitary state." If this is the case, then two points follow: first, there must be a court capable of judging the interested nature of government's realtionship to its Treaty obligations, and second, the partial and limited nature of the Treaty of Waitangi invites all New Zealanders to embark on the work of completing this country's constitutional environment. The task opened by the Treaty of Waitangi is to build a real supreme court and a constitution for everyone.

Waitangi and the Separation of Power

2004-08-08T23:26:00.000+12:00

In the controversy surrounding Haami Piripi's submission to the Seabed and Foreshore Bill, it seems that an important point has been lost. What captured everyone's attention was Mr. Piripi's warning to New Zealanders that This country could be brought to its knees by internal conflict and perhaps civil war over the coming decades as a direct result of this bill.
But Mr. Piripi said a few other things as well, and in light of the current war of words between the Clark government and the new Supreme Court judiciary, it might be well worth taking a closer look at what Piripi's comments can tell us about the relationship of the Treaty of Waitangi to questions of judicial independence and the doctrine of the separation of powers. Interested?

According to the Sunday Star Times, the submission says the foreshore bill, which puts the coastline in Crown ownership and prevents Maori seeking title to it, "destroys any confidence we might have in parliament and in government to govern fairly in this country.
For the record, I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Piripi. I think that the Foreshore and Seabed Bill represents the expropriation of customary rights and the denial to Maori of due process under the law. Such an arbitrary and clearly unjust law naturally erodes confidence in the ability of parliament to legislate fairly. And it calls into question the extent to which the Crown is fulfilling its obligations to Maori under the Treaty of Waitangi. No less an authority than the Watangi Tribunal itself warns that the Clark government's Seabed and Foreshore policy is fundamentally flawed. In its Report on the Government's Foreshore and Seabed Policy, the Tribunal comes down hard: These are fundamental flaws. The policy clearly breaches the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. But beyond the Treaty, the policy fails in terms of wider norms of domestic and international law that underpin good government in a modern, democratic state. These include the rule of law, and the principles of fairness and non-discrimination.
Let us remind ourselves what is at stake. The Treaty of Waitangi is not like any other treaty. It is the legal basis of Crown sovereignty in New Zealand. If the Crown fails to honour the Treaty, it puts the rule of law and parliamentary sovereignty itself into question. The problem is that many New Zealanders have conveniently forgotten that New Zealand's legal authority to pass laws is constituted by the Treaty, and believe instead that Parliament is magically sovereign. They forget that Parliament had first to become sovereign, and under the common law, that could only happen as the result of a treaty with those in possession of the originary aboriginal title. Sovereignty, we are told, was transferred.

The question is, can Parliament be a fair judge of its highly interested relationship to Treaty obligations? I'm not sure that it can. If it is true that the Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty between two sovereign peoples, then there must be an independent authority capable of judging Parliament's fulfillment of its responsibilities. It's clear that the Waitangi Tribunal is not that authority:

Our jurisdiction is recommendatory only, and power to govern resides with the Government. We have no say in how much or how little regard is paid to our views. As a quasi-judicial body standing outside the political process, we proceed in the expectation that governments in New Zealand want to be good governments, whose actions although carried by power are mitigated by fairness. Fairness is the value that underlies the norms of conduct with which good governments conform - legal norms, international human rights norms, and, in the New Zealand context, Treaty norms.

Of course we know that the new Supreme Court will not have the capacity strike down legislation that it considers illegal or unjust. Responding to questions from the U.K.'s Constitutional Affairs Committee on the new Supreme Court, Justice Sian Elias commented that

It is a court of general jurisdiction and not a constitutional court so that does not change... We can make declarations about compatibility with our equivalent of your Human Rights Act... indeed our legislation, as you are aware, affirms parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. Parliamentary sovereignty is a concept that has been developed by judges, by judicial determination, so this system is not going to give us the power to strike down legislation.

In text-books of politics, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty is seen as the appropriate form of power in what is called a unitary state, that is, a state in which there is only one source of legitimate authority. New Zealand is, it seems, just such a country. This country's parliament does not share power with a federation of provinces or states and, like Britain, has no written constitution to which all laws must conform.

Or does it? Surely, if the Treaty of Waitangi forms the basis of the New Zealand Crown's legal authority to govern, then the obligations set out in the Treaty must actually function as a kind of constitution, in so far as the failure to execute these obligations puts the sovereignty of the Crown into question. The problem is that as a quasi-consitutional document, it is limited to the obligations of the Crown to Maori. All the other questions of rights and limits to authority live in the amorphous miasma that passes for a constitution in this country. My feeling is that this is becoming less and less tenable. The advent of a new supreme court without the ability to actually check parliamentary power is becoming more problematic. And pressure to change this is mounting, partially as a result of the government's own actions. John Hopkins of Waikato University wrote a piece the other day in which he criticised government reaction to comments made by Justice Elias on the subject of judicial independence:

The reaction appears to stem from the Government's decision to portray creation of the Supreme Court Act as a measure devoid of significant constitutional implications. Such an approach allowed it to drive the bill through Parliament without lengthy debate. It also meant, however, that many difficult questions were left unanswered in the legislation. The Government has only itself to blame. The highest court in any democratic jurisdiction is not an ordinary court. It is the defender of the constitution and champion of the rule of law. Within these limits, its word is final. This is a role that often makes such courts unpopular with governments, and in many countries this function is handled through a separate institution.

There's a difficult conjunction going on here. On the one hand we have a new Supreme Court without real independence and without the kind of legal authority that most democracies take for granted. On the other hand, there is a deepening chasm between Maori peoples and the government that calls into question the legal arrangements of the New Zealand state. In a country that is wary of dramatic political change, Labour sought to modernise the judiciary by tinkering. Unfortunately, events have begun to reveal that tinkering was not the best solution.

Yukon Territory Recognises Gay Marriage

2004-07-15T12:36:00.000+12:00

As far as gay marriage goes, the Yukon isn't the first place you'd think of. After all, it's only a small territory in northern Canada, stretching from the northern border of British Columbia all the way to the Arctic Ocean. It's home to under thirty thousand people, from aboriginal peoples to crusty miners eking out so-called livings on the gold creeks of Dawson City. But the place is surprising.

On 14 July (love the symbolism) Yukon's CBC North reported that:

The Yukon Supreme Court says the Yukon must license a gay couple's wedding this weekend. Justice Peter McIntyre says the old definition of marriage is wrong and discriminatory. He's ordered the government to change its definition to say, the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others. Following the ruling, Justice McIntyre got verbal promises form the Yukon government that it would comply by immediately issuing a wedding license for Stephen Dunbar and Rob Edge.

It's another step toward recognising the nation-wide right of Canadian gays and lesbians to marry. Already same-sex couples can tie the knot in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. According to to reports, the Yukon's premier Dennis Fentie welcomed the ruling after the judge rapped the Yukon government for making the "wrong decision":

Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie's praising the court decision. Fentie says it shows the courts can be used to extend freedoms to all Canadians. (Fentie) "I think it's great when due process can reach these conclusions and on behalf of any particular group of citizens in this country it shows that this country is very open to all views and I think that's a good thing and the Yukon's no different." The premier's not commenting on the judge's criticism of the territorial government for not issuing the marriage license in the first place.

In terms of population, gay marriage is already a legal reality in most of Canada. So while things teeter from bad to worse and maybe better in the U.S., Canada is slowly moving toward equality before the law. This means that it will be very difficult for the Federal government to even contemplate bringing in federal legislation limiting the right of same-sex couples to marry, either through an outright ban or through a civil union type arrangement such as the one that Labour has opted for in New Zealand.

Auckland Public Transport: Simply Terrible

2004-07-10T18:06:00.000+12:00

Why is Auckland's public transport system so poor? The answer can probably be laid at the doors of privatisation, a poor regulatory environment and a funding system that favours roads over the development of the kind of public transport system that other comparable cities take for granted. According to Paul Mees:

"The historic problems with [Auckland's] public transport were compounded by the institutional restructurings undertaken by the Labour and then National governments between 1989 and 1996. Under the 1993 privatisation policy, regional governments divested their ownership of public transport assets and private firms took over service provision on a semi-deregulated basis, but with public subsidies. Privatisation was the major factor in the 1991-1996 collapse of public transport patronage."

It's a good idea to make the provision of public goods like passenger transport more efficient. Sometimes this can be achieved through corporatisation, i.e., by forcing a publicly owned company to behave more like a private firm. But corporatisation is a far different matter than privatisation. Most cities with good public transport have found that private markets simply cannot provide public services at an adequate level. Jurisdictions with excellent passenger transport systems have 'corporatised' the delivery of public transit while preserving and enhancing levels of service, but the record of transit systems that have been privatised is more mixed.

In Auckland, the combination of a long institutional bias toward the automobile, a transport funding scheme biased toward roads and forced privatisation plunged passenger transport levels to extremely low levels at the same time as the city was experiencing unprecedented growth. Although privatisation was sold to the public as a way to increase the efficiency of the passenger transport system, private firms have shown themselves to be unwilling or unable to make the kind of serious and sustained investment necessary to make Auckland's public transport effective.

And on the other hand, splitting responsibility for the passenger transport system between public government and private firms has allowed the various levels of government charged with delivering public transport to avoid spending the money required for a reasonable passenger transport system. This kind of fracture is symptomatic of many exercises in privatisation, and has even been thought of as a virtue in so-called New Public Management writings. In reality the separation of public control and private enterprise has insulated public agencies from making effective changes to Auckland's transport system.

Although there has been increased demand for passenger transport over the last few years, Auckland's passenger transport is still terrible by world standards. Most observers agree that there simply has not been enough investment. Part of the reason for this may have to do with the difficulties faced by competitive firms in forward planning important capital decisions when compared to public entities with stable, long term funding. In order to help private passenger transport providers respond to increased demand, the Auckland Regional Council introduced a new system of patronage funding. Under the new policy,

"Government funding to the regions for public transport services is based directly on the patronage generated. This leaves responsibility for service planning with regional government, but encourages them to improve services in such a way as to generate additional patronage. The payment rates are based on estimates of both the user benefits and externality benefits of improving services and hence attracting additional passengers."

However, the results have been less than spectacular. Part of the problem has to do with who puts up the money for capital investment. Governments thought that they could avoid spending money for new stock through privatisation. But it seems that private operators just don't see an advantage in spending serious money on capital assets like quality buses. An evaluation by the World Bank of an ARC 'output-based funding' pilot found that 'after two years the indicative results from the two trials were disappointing to the Council in light of the lack of investment in new bus capacity by operators.' The authors of the study blamed a number of 'external factors', but noted that operators complained of the complexity of the funding scheme.

Senior transport policy wonks Ian Wallis and Jane Gayle note a similar kind of difficulty faced by the new patronage funding scheme, and come close to identifying why levels of capital investment in Auckland's transport system are so pathetically low:

"In the New Zealand context, legal restrictions on regional councils' ownership of infrastructure add to the complexity. Generally infrastructure is provided and funded through a separate local authority. This exacerbates the situation as one party puts up the capital funding, while another receives the Patronage Funding payments."

It's even worse when we consider Auckland's shabby bus fleet, which provides over 80% of passenger trips in the the Auckland region. The problem faced by government is how to pay for passenger transport while still sending 'signals' to private operators which will induce them to invest in modern and efficient buses. Experience suggests that it may not be possible to have a good cake and eat it efficiently. Writing on the deregulation and privatisation of public transport in the United Kingdom, Ian Hutton writes:

"Markets can work well; or badly. There is no 'iron law' and behind success, like that of inter-city coaches, usually lurks an institutional advantage that has been shaped by public action. But public creativity in this instance as in all others is not acknowledged to have played any part; the injunction from the centre has been to privatise indiscriminately and roll back public authority, which is deemed to be inefficient and bureaucratic."

It may be that one of the secrets of this 'institutional advantage' lies in the capacity of public authorities to rationalise the structure of agencies and mechanisms involved in the delivery of public goods. It's rarely mentioned that privatisation and deregulation has actually increased and not decreased the number of entities involved in the delivery of transport in Auckland. Simplifying the delivery of a public good also increases the ability of the responsible agency to collect and respond to information - information which will be of crucial importance in setting service levels and making investment decisions.

It's often claimed that privatisation of public services helps public authorities to concentrate on core responsibilities, in this case, planning the overall shape of Auckland's transport network. But it appears that New Zealand's public agencies aren't doing their jobs. A year after the release of the New Zealand Transport Strategy, Transfund completed a ten year financial forecast. This was the first time that the organisation had prepared such a document, and in its summation Transfund admitted that:

"Preparing it has revealed how much we know - and how much we don't know - about New Zealand's transport needs. The largest allocations (over 80%) go to the roading sector. The dimensions of road maintenance are well understood. We also have a good understanding of road construction, especially in the case of State highways, where the allocations are underpinned by a detailed plan prepared by Transit New Zealand. However, in other areas, such as passenger transport, alternatives to roading, and walking and cycling, funding policies are evolving and we do not have as clear a view of the future. For these outputs, the allocations are more provisional. (Transfund, 2003 p. 3)."

This disconnection of both funding and planning authorities from the precise informational requirements of a passenger transport service in New Zealand's largest - and most congested - city has had serious consequences.
The model of privatised passenger transport that was finally adopted in the late 1990's has proven inadequate in the face of increased travel demands and transport planning authorities' greater interest in providing better passenger transport. A long history of regulatory failure and more recently, of privatisation, is to a large degree responsible for the present poor levels of passenger transport. If as a result of increasing congestion and consumer demand, public authorities begin to see passenger transport as an essential public service, the present arrangements of funding, delivery and provision will have to be changed.

Auckland: A Failure of Imagination

2004-06-26T00:18:00.000+12:00

Today the shitty streets of Auckland claimed another victim.

I was walking along Broadway on my way toward Woolworth's when I noticed a large crowd standing on the street corner. Not just any street corner, but the one directly out front of Woolworth's. It's a busy corner, as far as Auckland corners go. And even though it's primarily used by people walking across to the mall, pedestrians are warned by signs to "give way to cars". Hey, this is Auckland. Do I need to be told to give way to cars?

But there was a young woman lying on the pavement, and a crappy old van stopped midway in the intersection. She'd been hit and there were ambulance attendants already there, moving her on to a gurney. I heard her cry as they moved her: she had her neck in a brace and the attendants had to be careful as they took her off of the asphalt.

It made me angry. There was a cop writing things down and I knew that the accident was going to be blamed on the beautiful woman who had cried out with fear and panic simply because she had tried to cross the fucking street. But here cars have the right of way. The've had the right of way for a long, long time.

The night before I had gone to hear Dr. Paul Mees talk about Auckland and cars. For those of you that don't know, Paul Mees is a lecturer in urban design at the University of Melbourne and has spent a considerable amount of time studying Auckland’s transportation problems. I'll summarise some of what I took to be his main points from both his presentations and his published work.

Auckland is an exception: according to Mees, nowhere else in the world is there such a one-sided debate about completing motorway plans drawn up in the 1950’s at the expense of public transport. No other city has built the kind of extensive motoway networks that were envisioned by early planners, because with the exception of Auckland, people realised long ago that “completing” such a network was both impossible and undesirable. Auckland is already way ahead of the game: according to research carried out by Mees, Auckland already has more acres of motorways per person than any other comparable city in the world. And while other cities plan with a bias toward public transport, such an attitude seems impossibly “radical” in the Auckland context.

Aucklanders love their cars too much: in actual fact, Aucklanders have not always loved their cars as much as they appear to now. In the 1950’s and 60’s, usage of public transport was very high. But as more infrastructure was built for the private automobile, less and less money was invested in public transit, to the point where Aucklanders had no choice but to love their cars. It wasn’t a free choice, but one that was the result of decades of bad planning and policy decisions. But it gets worse. Current planning from the ARC will do little to change this: plans in the Auckland Regional Land Transport Strategy show that already meagre passenger transport spending is set to decrease relative to roads spending over the next several years.

A future without cars is unrealistic: nobody is seriously suggesting that any large urban area will do away with the private automobile. Cars will continue to be the dominant mode of transportation well into the future. Auckland’s problem is that for decades planners have shown an overwhelming bias for the car, more so than any other city in the world. On a per capita basis, fewer people use public transport in Auckland than in Los Angeles. In order to correct this problem, there will have to be a massive spending bias toward public transport to make up for the decades of neglect shown by planners and politicians. This will not mean that people will be somehow unable to drive cars. Unfortunately, neither the spending package announced by Wellington nor the future spending plans of the ARC go anywhere near to correcting the balance.

Congestion: contrary to popular belief, Auckland’s congestion is on par with many other cities. What is different about Auckland are the particular characteristics of its congestion as well as the fact that the city experiences a large amount of congestion relative to its size. To a large degree this is attributable to the near total lack of other modes of passenger transport. Cities with excellent public transport systems such as Vancouver have recognised that a certain amount of congestion is one of the most successful mechanisms there is for getting people out of their cars and on to public transport, assuming that good public transport exists.

Density and Urban Form: it’s often said that Auckland is too spread out and sparsely populated for public transport to be “efficient”. Even the ARC repeats these so-called “facts” in its planning documents. The problem with these statements is that they are logically flawed and not based on sound evidence. When strictly accounted for, there is no public transport system in the world that makes a profit. That means from the perspective of economics, there is no public transport system in the world that is “efficient”. Good public transit is always subsidised because people recognise that it is a social good with a wide variety of both market and non-market benefits. Arguments about efficiency put up by ARC planners and road lobbyists merely reflect the fact that some Aucklanders don’t want to pay for good public transport.

The idea that Auckland’s lightly populated and spread out urban form somehow prevents good public transport ignores evidence to the contrary. Mees demonstrates that the comparisons of density used by the ARC are based on faulty and antiquated research. Vancouver has similar density to Auckland and is also located along variagated coastal areas, with a “CBD” centered on a peninsula. But Vancouver’s planners have created an excellent public transit system that is creating the kind of densities that make public transport more cost effective. Shifting the modes of transport that we use changes the form of our urban spaces, and not the other way around.

Transferability: ARC planners blindly believe that there is such a thing as a “transfer penalty”. That is, the ARC believes that if passengers are asked to transfer at different points along a route, they will choose not to use public transit. But for Dr. Mees, the best public transit systems in the world are those which give passengers more transfer options and therefore more route flexibility. Of course, if passengers have to wait too long to transfer, the system will be perceived as inconvenient. But the solution is to increase frequencies, not to sacrifice choice and flexibility. In my opinion, the incorrect belief in a "transfer penalty" may explain the persistence of Auckland’s old fashioned and inconvenient network design sometimes called “hub-and-spoke”. This is very different from modern transport systems which are designed as a pattern of interconnecting routes, emphasising transferability and interconnection.

Privatisation: According to Dr. Mees, Auckland will never be able to get ahead of its transport problems as long as public transit assets are owned by the private sector.

Fatalism: negative arguments about density and efficiency have created a culture of fatalism about changing Auckland’s transportation environment. This fatalism is based on flawed assumptions and limited research. Worse still, this fatalism has adversely affected the very process of planning itself. Mees shows that cities such as Vancouver began their planning by asking what kind of city they would like to have in the future. Policy options were then tested against this goal to see if they would achieve the outcomes desired. Auckland’s culture of fatalism means that planners take it for granted that they will not be able to do anything other than tinker with the status quo. Thus the ARC’s transport plans fail to do what good planning ought to do: achieve socially desirable outcomes.

Politics: in most other cities, urban administrations that favoured the use of cars at the expense of public transit were voted out in the 1970’s and 80’s. Reform-minded politicians were given control of councils and used their power to replace planning heirarchies that were biased against public transport. Often these politicians were aided by civil society groups that worked to mobilise public opinion. Auckland’s public has shown a singular lack of imagination in voting for politicians who are committed to reversing decades of poor planning and terrible policy.

Slow down Kiwi, slow down...

2004-06-01T22:04:00.000+12:00

It's winter-like outside in Auckland. Relatively speaking.

Improbably, women throw ample scarves round necks in plus 15c degree weather. Narrow-lipped kiwi men walk vigorously in pea coats while gusts of warm, moist ocean air push leaves and garbage down footpaths. People shiver and turn indoors to watch bad television.

It's the time of year when all thoughts turn to electricity. And right on time, the state owned enterprise Transpower is warning that we might face yet another power crisis. Over at Fighting Talk, Lyndon Hood rehearses the good old saw about not relying on the free market to provide such goods as electricity and water. For the record, I think he's absolutley right. Between you, me and the cursor, I can't believe that we still have argue this.

Idiot at No Right Turn makes an interesting comparison between the provision of electricity and roads:

Look at the roads. Like the national grid, they're a vital piece of infrastructure on which people (and the economy) depend. Yet they're not run as an SOE. Instead we have centralised funding and planning to ensure that the network goes everywhere we want it to go and carries the traffic we need it to. It's not perfect - just look at Auckland - but the system generally works and is at least certain of its purpose: to build, maintain and upgrade the road net for the benefit of the people of New Zealand.

It's a very good point. It brings us back to the Lange government and the reforms. Economist Brian Easton argues that the reforms involved three distinct but related policy instruments: commercialisation, corporatisation and privatisation. Commercialisation refers to the use of private business as a model for organising both economic and non-economic life. Corporatisation is the process whereby publicly owned agencies are required “to behave as if it were a private corporation” while privatisation refers to the sale of publicly owned assets into private hands.

It's arguable that both commercialisation and corporatisation have had some positive effects. They have also had negative effects. But privatisation? That's another thing entirely. The problem is that back in the period of the reforms, New Zealanders seemed to get all this confused. Justin Malbon has argued that New Zealand's response to the heavy regulation and poor productivity of the Muldoon years was logically flawed:

The logical response to regulatory ‘failure’ is not necessarily to abandon regulation, but to reform it. Second, the reason that many utilities were government owned was because they were natural monopolies, which would take advantage of, rather than be constrained by, market conditions. Third, utilities offer essential public services. It has long been recognised that some services are affected by the public interest so as to require the service provider to offer the services to all, without discrimination, at a reasonable price.

The point is that New Zealand skipped regulatory reform. Intead, in example after example, this country refused the more gradualist approaches followed by countries like Australia and Canada and opted instead for full privatisation. And once utilities like electricity were placed in the magical hands of the free market, this country's strange cabal of policy wonks decided that the role of government as a regulator could also be abandoned.

And that brings us to where we are now. Looks like we'll have to go back a few steps. Back to the future.

Go back to sleep, Granny Banks

2004-05-12T09:55:00.000+12:00

I'm not one of those people who complains about media bias. I like to think that I'm more sophisticated than that. Instead, I complain about media opportunism. Opportunism explains why both the right and the left can sincerely believe that newspapers, radio and television are biased against them. The media is against them, when it works. But it also supports their causes when it sells papers.

The big problem with this kind of opportunism is that it tends to be pretty poorly researched. Sometimes it's even bigoted, myopic, sensationalist and self-contradictory. Take, for example, yesterday's editorial in the New Zealand Herald: Housing idea a recipe for ghettos . The Granny's editorial takes aim at Housing New Zealand's recently released discussion document Building The Future: Towards A New Zealand Housing Strategy and begins by outlining the well-documented pressures facing Auckland's housing market. The region hosts 31 per cent of New Zealand's population in just 2 per cent of its land area. By some estimates, this so-called "disparity" has led to a 20% increase in housing prices in the Auckland area in just a few short years.

Although the paper admits that there is a problem, the cure envisaged by the New Zealand Housing Corporation may be too much for some to bear:

[The strategy] would be the catalyst for the establishment of ghettos, complete with the array of social problems they bring. Auckland City's mayor has labelled the plan "social apartheid". He is right. This is an idea that would remedy one minor ill by creating something far worse. There is, in fact, little to suggest the illness has reached a stage where it requires drastic medicine. Or, indeed, ever will.

Really? We already know that housing affordability in Auckland is a serious problem. Rental rates in the city are ridiculous, especially when you consider this city's crappy housing stock of low density, poorly constructed and mouldy uninsulated villas. Could this have anything to do with why New Zealand has over three times the rate of asthma than any other country in the world?

As far as ghettos are concerned, Maori and pacific peoples are being pushed to the margins of Auckland, to the point where most pakeha in the city are afraid to even visit Otara market. According to the recent quality of life survey carried in New Zealand's eight largest cities, there is a close relationship between levels of household income, tenure and geographical location. Maori and Pacific people are more likely to live in cramped and unhealthy housing conditions than pakeha. There is a problem, and it does rquire medecine.

The Herald writes that Auckland's housing difficulties will be solved by 'natural' market forces, and goes on to suggest that the poor should be housed on unattractive lands, in valleys and alongside railway tracks. Let's look at some of these market-based approaches to housing. According to the NZHC discussion document:

The economic and social changes of the 1980s and 1990s introduced significant changes to housing policy. They signalled the end of the Family Benefit Capitalisation Scheme and subsidised interest rates, which had contributed to the rapid growth of home ownership throughout the previous three decades. They also led to the freeing up of financial markets, making capital more accessible; the removal of subsidies to local government for pensioner housing; the introduction of market rents for state housing tenants, alongside a widespread sales programme; and the introduction of the Accommodation Supplement as the primary form of government housing assistance.

In other words, this country's recent history of Rogernomics has reversed a long-standing trend toward greater equality of housing tenure. The marketisation of housing and planning on Auckland has led to a situation where New Zealand's largest city is a sprawling, congested and expensive mess. It's an awful city with traffic and social problems and divisions well in excess of what a city its size should be experiencing. And although the report indicates that housing inequality is a significant contributor to social and economic inequality, the document shows that New Zealand is well behind other countries when it comes to providing housing for those with low incomes:

New Zealand has a comparatively low level of social housing provision (6%) compared to many European countries where social housing makes up 25-40% of the market.

The policy instruments that the Herald accuses of leading to ghettos are in fact designed to achieve the very opposite: by reserving a portion of new developments for low income housing, the aim is to mix low income housing with higher income housing, thereby preventing the trend toward ghettoization that Auckland is already experiencing. These policies have been recognised around the world as helping to create safer and more integrated neighborhoods and cities. But maybe Banks and the Herald's editorialist just don't want to see poor people.

In actual fact, the NZHC discussion document is an excellent and timely document that envisages a range of solutions to a very real problem. It's just another example of how painful it is to drag this country back into the mainstream of social policy from the neo-liberal morass of Rogernomics.

War and Privatisation

2004-05-10T18:24:00.000+12:00

I have to say that I don't relish the thought of blogging about the conflict in Iraq. To some degree that's because there are so many others out there who are doing such a good job. But I've got other reasons too. First of all, I'm Canadian. I'm an expatriate, but I'm still Canadian. Social-democratic minded Canadians like me still have a reticence about writing on the United States, no matter where we happen to live. It's kind of political.

A prime minister of ours once quipped that the Canada - U.S. relationship was like a that of a "mouse in bed with an elephant - no matter how friendly that elephant is, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." It's an apt metaphor because it captures perfectly the strange mingling of intimacy and resentment that has always characterised the Canadian view of the relationship. As a person who has felt many twitches and grunts in my lifetime I think sometimes neglect to pay attention to what my ex-neighbor gets up to. Even when it becomes clear that the ol' elephant next door is being rather less than friendly. Or is killing and torturing innocent civilians.

It might be one of the benefits of living in New Zealand to be among people who don't mind writing about the United States. Much of the time it's fawning, but often it's incisively critical. On that side of the ledger I'm particularly grateful to idiot at No Right Turn for keeping me up to date with the events taking place in Iraq. His latest post is a link to Seymour Hersh's article 'Chain of Command' which analyses the abuse and torture that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison. While I tend to get a little sleepy following all the details, Hersh's article did contain a few things that captured my interest: civilian contractors in Abu Ghraib operate in a indeterminate legal environment.

According to the Berkshire Eagle out of Pittsfield, Massachussetts:

At least four of the Americans involved in the physical, sexual and psychological abuse of Iraqi detainees are civilian contract employees who, it turns out, are legally accountable to no one. The worst that can happen to them for the repulsive crimes they committed is the loss of a paycheck... The role of the Abu Ghraib hired guns -- some evidence points to their being ringleaders in the torture and abuse -- is another example of the lunacy of burgeoning privatization in U.S. defense programs. Turning some military jobs over to private companies began almost a decade ago when contractors were paid to feed troops and do their laundry.

And in an article in The Guardian last year, the author outlines the extent of military privatisation:

While the official coalition figures list the British as the second largest contingent with around 9,900 troops, they are narrowly outnumbered by the 10,000 private military contractors now on the ground. The investigation has also discovered that the proportion of contracted security personnel in the firing line is 10 times greater than during the first Gulf war. In 1991, for every private contractor, there were about 100 servicemen and women; now there are 10. The private sector is so firmly embedded in combat, occupation and peacekeeping duties that the phenomenon may have reached the point of no return: the US military would struggle to wage war without it.

The Berkshire Eagle summarises the history of privatisation in the U.S. Army, and comments:

In addition to investigating the specific administrative breakdowns that led to what one Army general called "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses," Congress needs to re-examine the fast trend toward military privatization and reverse it.

If Congress finds that the U.S. privatisation of warfare has led to a breakdown of accountability and has contributed to abuse and torture, the two people chiefly responsible are none other that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Again, the Guardian writes:

The Pentagon will "pursue additional opportunities to outsource and privatise", the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, pledged last year and military analysts expect him to try to cut a further 200,000 jobs in the armed forces.

...if an American GI draws and uses his weapon in an off-duty bar brawl, he will be subject to the US judicial military code. If an American guard employed by the US company ITT in Tuzla does the same, he answers to Bosnian law. By definition these companies are frequently operating in "failed states" where national law is notional. The risk is the employees can literally get away with murder.

Run silent, run deep...

2004-04-05T12:40:00.000+12:00

Not a great deal of blogging as I am:

1. grievously ill,

2. catching up with academic demands,

3. ditto work obligations.

What more can I say?

2004-03-31T13:26:00.000+12:00

No Right Turn has an intriguing post on energy policy in the wake of Project Aqua's demise. He's right to say that we've got plenty of electricity generation coming on stream to deal with demand in the short term, and what's more, he's got the figures to prove it. Unfortunately, the medium term will be problematic.

Part of the problem is that for years New Zealand relied on cheap generation, most latterly from the Maui gas field which accounted for most of this country's gas supply. As long as the cheap gas kept flowing, alternative generation didn't stand a chance. No Right Turn points out that this was one of the fundamental problems with Project Aqua; diverting most of a river promised cheap electricity and priced the alternatives out of the market.

Cheap electricity leads to wasteful consumption, a lack of emphasis on conservation and lacklustre development of environmentally sustainable generation alternatives.

I remember seeing some graffitti that read: 'can you afford free love?' It's almost the same thing here. What is the cost of cheap electricity? Despite the deregulation of electricity markets and a gradual rise in prices, New Zealanders still pay less for electricity than most other developed countries. In 2000, for example, New Zealand's average household price of electricity was U.S.$ 0.060 in comaparison with an OECD average of 0.105.

Perhaps as a result, we use more electricity in relation to GDP than most other countries in the OECD. That's a whole bunch of opportunity cost. Look at it this way: we pay less for electricity per kilowatt hour, but we use more of it in relation to our economic output than most other countries in the OECD. Not too innovative, if you ask me.

The bottom line? Well heck, where is the bottom line? Cheap electricity leads to wasteful consumption, a lack of emphasis on conservation and lacklustre development of environmentally sustainable generation alternatives.

Say, maybe the Resource Management Act is doing its job after all!

More bad news for Bush:

2004-03-30T16:15:00.000+12:00

Japan has signaled that it may stop funding U.S. debt...

A Government is only as good as...

2004-03-30T14:16:00.000+12:00

Read these two questions in Parliament following from the recent decision to scrap Project Aqua:

Dr DON BRASH to the Prime Minister:Does she have confidence in the Minister for the Environment; if so, why?

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS to the Minister of Energy: What additional steps will he be taking to promote energy efficiency, energy conservation and renewable energy following the cancellation of Project Aqua?

There's an adage in parliamentary politics that a government is only as good as its opposition. That's because when an opposition party does its job well, it's able to help direct the response and energies of government.

Opposition parties can try to take advantage of populist sentiment, or they can engage in intelligent and constructive criticism of government policy.

To do this, opposition parties can try to take advantage of populist sentiment, or they can engage in intelligent and constructive criticism of government policy. Sometimes they try both, but considering the stakes many parties opt for the former over the latter.

Labour's chief opposition is the newly reactionary and simple-minded National party under Don Brash. The determination of Brash to play the race card or the recent attack on grants (the Social Entrepeneurship scheme) given to people who don't happen to members of the elite are examples of spinning issues in a purely negative and populist way. It's a strategy that works best in an opportunistic media environment and when government fails to articulate why such programmes or policies are fair and reasonable.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what Labour has chosen to do, most likely because it fears that the middle ground of New Zealand's political landscape has shifted to the right. Where the middle goes, Labour will follow.

But if there is no credible political voice defending the policies that have been subjected to populist attack, we have to ask how the electorate is able to make an intelligent decision about them? If there is no-one to articulate the need for a policy, how can we really say that the electorate feels one way or the other about that policy? More to the point, what justification is there for Labour to abandon and review programmes without first doing the basic work of defending these programmes as based on sound policy?

The problem for Labour is this: the more it fails to articulate its programme, the less popular that programme will be. The less that Labour demonstrates why policies like the social entrepeneurship programme are a good idea, the more that National will be able to demonstrate that such policies are a bad idea. The more that Labour responds to National's attacks by announcing reviews, the more we begin to feel that Labour's entire policy approach lacks credibility.

I can't think of a better way to move New Zealand's political centre to the right.

It's a good thing, right?

2004-03-24T16:10:00.000+12:00

This week came news that the Cairns group of nations will try to break the deadlock at the WTO by working with the G-20, a group of poorer developing nations that rather famously held out against the Europeans and Americans in the last round of negotiations at Cancun, arguing that before they could accept things like free trade in services the E.U. and the U.S. would have to end subsidies to domestic agricultural producers.

The idea that the Cairns group, which supports an end to agricultural subsidies, would team up with the G-20 would appear to be a good thing, if we assume that the final result of such an arrangement would be torpedoing subsidies which make products from the rich countries cheaper than those from poorer nations. This all sounds good, right?

It’s clear that the costs of free trade are shared unequally. Workers in developed nations lose out more than say, finance capital.

Well, maybe not. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that such an arrangement would pave the way for international de-regulation of trade in services, even the Americans are starting to realise that the benefits of free trade have been over-hyped, while the costs have yet to be adequately studied. Only a few days ago an article appeared in the New York Times warning that free trade had the potential for more negatives than positives:

In general, most economists believe that the "consumer surplus" that results from lower prices far outweighs the cost of lost jobs or lower wages. In other words, there are many more winners than losers. But recent research suggests that the magnitude of this advantage has been exaggerated. Also, the plight of the losers has clearly been sorely neglected in the economic literature.

Oh yeah. Let’s not forget that business groups lobbying for free trade deals don’t like to spend a lot of time studying losers. I guess it’s not really part of their job. But as the article by Jeff Madrick illustrates, it turns out that academics have been been amiss when it comes to studying the potential negative impacts of multi-sector free trade arrangements. Interestingly, the literature that has focused on the costs of such deals (on workers, for example) has generally failed to take into account other effects, such as technological change or unemployment.

Ground control to economic orthodoxy: free trade does not work in a vaccuum.

Speaking of the potential impact of free trade arrangements on the U.S. domestic economy, Madrick writes that

the basic tenets of free trade assume that the economy is operating at full employment - in other words, almost everyone who wants a job can find one. Not enough research has been done on the trade effects in an economy with persistent unemployment, which has characterized most of the last 30 years.
What is entirely clear, however, is that the losers from free trade require more of the nation's attention. And their numbers are growing as trade and job migration expand.

Now if the rich countries stand to lose productivity growth and employment as a result of free trade arrangements, there is a case to be made that the loss of certain kinds of jobs to developing nations is a good thing, rather like exporting economic development to those areas of the globe that have been excluded from western capitalism’s dizzying success. And to that extent, I agree. It is a good thing.

But a couple of thoughts keep popping up in my head.

It’s clear that the costs of free trade are shared unequally. Workers in developed nations lose out more than say, finance capital. It's important that there be sufficient programmes and services in place to help workers in an economy faced with restructuring as a result of free trade. Ironically, it's these same programmes that anti-globalisation activist Jane Kelsey seems to deride as "neo-statism".

Secondly, while ending subsidies that penalise cheap goods from poorer countries is a good thing, de-regulation of trade in services may not be. Not for us, or for the developing world. Remember that these services include things like water and power utilities as well as some pretty basic government services. A cross-sector de-regulation of trade in such services can have an impact on the delivery of public goods and services that is not always benign.

And last? O.k., it’s a cheap one, but if the costs of free trade have been poorly studied in the developed world, then I would guess that the costs for the developing world have received pretty scant attention.

Roger Kerr and contemporary Marxist theory

2004-03-21T23:49:00.000+12:00

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing abounding in metaphysical subtleties (Marx Capital Vol. 1).

Marxist theory has faced many difficult challenges throughout its history, not the least of which has been the disastrous example of the Soviet system with its terrible authoritarianism and repression. In this new century, we in the west seem to be well away from the world of Marx's Capital, with its emphasis on production, workers and things. For a contemporary Marxist theory to survive it needs to be capable of explaining the new economy of international financial markets, globalisation and post industrialism.

I think that Marxism still has a great deal to say about contemporary society, simply because I think that we have been led to believe that the contemporary world is qualitatively different; that the new economy is somehow beyond the explanatory ability of traditional Marxist categories. But to what extent is this really true?

To answer this question we need to peer into what Marx felt that capitalism was all about: the production of commodities. And we need to be able to understand the new economy as simply producing new kinds of commodities in addition to boots and hammers. If we can do that, then we can show that Marx's analysis of capitalist production might still be relevant today.

Fortunately, Marxists aren't the only people who see the "new" economy as a continuation of the old. Roger Kerr, the head of New Zealand's influential Business Roundtable sees things in pretty much the same terms. Speaking on the nature of the knowledge economy the arch neo-liberal Kerr underlined the essential continuities of the new economy:

An enormous amount of nonsense was talked by politicians and pundits about knowledge-intensive industries, the new economy, the information revolution and so forth. Painful lessons have been learnt as the high-tech bubble burst and investors discovered that the so-called new economy was subject to the same economic laws as the old? But there is nothing fundamentally new going on here. Knowledge is what hunters and gatherers needed to survive

If it is true that the new economy is still producing commodities, what is the nature of the contemporary commodity? What does it mean to think of knowledge as a commodity in the context of a global information society? According to Marx, to see a commodity as just a thing obscures the social relations of production:

A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men?s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves but between the products of their labour (Marx, Capital Vol. 1).

What's new is that global digital technologies have brought together finance, production, consumption, and mass communication in a nearly seamless web.

In old-fashioned Marxist theory, relations of production in capitalist society enabled capitalists to appropriate surplus value as profit from workers. These workers received a wage that appeared to them as a fair exchange for the sale of their labour, but, according to Marx, it was the contribution of labour power to the process of production that was responsible for the production of surplus-value.

How relevant is this model for today? To what extent is the new informantion commodity the result of a classical labour process? A commodity is the result of a productive combination between a worker, an owner of capital and what are called the means of production. In classical Marxist theory, the commodity is exchanged for money, allowing the capitalist to accumulate profit and generate more capital. What is relevant for us now is that the commodity is a social product arising out of the relations of production. The social, or shared nature of the commodity is appropriated by the owners of the means of production. And most importantly, the production and consumption of a commodity reproduces class relationships.

The new capitalism is characterised by the dominance of capital flows over trade flows, of a global economy based on information rather than on trade and production of basic commodities. The extent to which Marx's analysis of the commodity can inform a critique of the new economy depends on the extent to which knowledge and information can be thought of as commodities. A useful starting point for such an analysis begins with an examination of the information economy. Can the qualities that determine this economy be usefully understood as the result of the saturation of commodities with information, of knowledge with commodities?

Following Kerr, it's important to see that the new economy is in many ways continuous with the old. For all the talk of the information revolution, we must remember that there has been no revolution. In the developed world, computerisation and digital technology has led to a transformation of the capitalist economy, replacing and augmenting machine-based manufacture as the engine of capital production. What's new is that global digital technologies have brought together finance, production, consumption, and mass communication in a nearly seamless web.

Although the new economy appears to create money without producing real goods, global financial flows rely on speculation in money markets and on access to privileged networks of communication. A worldwide surplus of commodities and attendant low rates of profit have pushed capital toward the expansion of money markets and trade in services in an effort to secure greater returns on investment. Digital technologies bring together inherently social products such as money, information and economic activity, at the same time as technology creates the conditions for the private ownership of the new vectors of capital.

If we are to think of a commodity as reproducing the class relations out of which it is formed, in this case by reproducing capital, it is important to see that the new vectors of digital and communication technology are not independent of the social and political demands of capital accumulation. Although the virtual world of the new global economy may appear infinite, i.e., as capable of transcending modern capitalism, in reality the new, virtual economy is bounded by political and social relationships. Critic Fredric Jameson points to problems associated with understanding the new world of virtuality, knowledge and networks as anything other than a manifestation of capitalist relations:

We must avoid the implication that technology is the ultimately determining instance either of our present-day social life or of our cultural production. I want to suggest that our faulty representations of some immense communicational and computer network are themselves but a distorted figuration of something even deeper, namely, the whole world system of a present-day multinational capitalism (Jameson 1991, p. 37).

Thus knowledge and information become commodities in as much as being social products, they are produced, appropriated and exchanged by capital as factors in its own reproduction and extension. As these products circulate along the new vectors of the global economy they reproduce not only capital, but also the social relations of capitalist production, constantly re-creating the conditions of capital accumulation for owners of the (new) means of production and distribution.

Thanks, Roger. You really helped me sort this out.

Auckland Public Transport

2004-03-16T12:23:00.000+13:00

There was a rather curious seminar given the other day in the Department of Marketing at the University of Auckland. I can only hope that the politicians responsible for this city's transportation system could attend:

Extreme Service Failures: Betrayal and
Recovery.
12noon Commerce B 115.

This paper reports a programme of research
examining extreme service failures. Based on
critical incident data, we identify and
differentiate extreme service failures from
other failures. Consumers perceive extreme
service failures as service betrayals with
dramatic consequences for consumer
satisfaction, intentions and behaviour. Next,
drawing on depth interviews we differentiate
commercial from interpersonal betrayal.
Commercial betrayal is similar to interpersonal
betrayal in several respects, but also has
unique characteristics. Finally we report
results of two experiments directed at
understanding whether and how service
providers can recover from service betrayal.

I read about this seminar on extreme service betrayal at the same time that I heard that the Auckland City Council (ACC) was asking for feedback on its vision for Auckland's 'Central Business District' (CBD). The vision that they have come up with makes me think of a neurological disorder from the pages of Oliver Sacks. Like some kind of abnormality that makes people see things upside down but experience this inversion as normal.

It's about ranking and list order. Here is the way that the Auckland City Council prioritises its 'vision':

In the next 10 years Auckland's CBD will grow and consolidate its international reputation as one of the world's most vibrant and dynamic business and cultural centres.

To realise the vision the Auckland CBD will be:

- recognised as one of the world's premier business locations
- a high-quality urban environment
- the most popular destination for Aucklanders and visitors in the region
- a world-class centre for education research and development
- a place that feels like the heart and expresses the soul of Auckland.

Now it seems to me that one of the things that makes Auckland such an awful city is the fact that it has focused on business at the expense of nearly everything else. The result is that Auckland's CBD is dull, grey and devoted to the automobile. It's not uncommon for sidewalks to disappear, for intersections to have no visible means for a pedestrian to cross, and for entire blocks to be given over to carparks. It turns out that I am not the only person who feels this way. According to research carried out for the ACC by De Beer Marketing and Communications:

The CBD is currently seen as 'unfriendly, disjointed, unrelated, lacking in personality, hardened, dowdy, no elegance, concrete and glass, grey, lacking in green spaces, and suffering from a lack of planning'. The absence of any reliable and convenient transport system, traffic congestion...are preventing access to the CBD. Building developments within the CBD have created limited or no visible connection with the harbour, and the CBD is perceived as 'over-developed, lacking in identity, and expanding with no direction'.

In light of these findings it's rather interesting that the emphasis on heart and soul comes dead last, preceded by education which is we all know one of Auckland's most important economic sectors. Note to John Banks: ACC's own figures show that the education sector is the leading occupier of floor space in the CBD. And according to a study by Informetrics the international education sector alone contributes $930 million per year, or the equivalent of holding an America's Cup each year. God forbid.

But back to this CBD project. There is a section that discusses the problem of access to and around the CBD with masterful understatement:

We have the roads we need in the CBD but the congestion at peak times suggests that we need to make better use of them. This congestion affects the CBD's attractiveness as a place to work, live, visit and invest.

But it's when the document pauses to consider the impact of public transport in the CBD that the prose becomes truly, well, sublime:

Passenger transport has become more popular in recent times, especially with the introduction of bus-priority measures on arterial roads leading to the CBD, and the introduction of newer buses.

There is a detached and inactive quality to this writing, as if the ACC has really had nothing much to with public transport. As though an integrated public transport system was really only a matter of consumer choice, rather than as a result of, say, proactive planning. Unfortunately, it seems this has been the case.

The document ends with a discussion of the problem of congestion in Auckland's CBD. Note the emphasis on the lack of a 'direct route to and from the eastern suburbs' even though through traffic represents only 15% of congestion and I suspect that the vast majority of through traffic is to the north shore, not the eastern suburbs:

Two main contributors to congestion in the CBD are through traffic (traffic neither originating from nor heading to activities in the CBD) and low car occupancy. Through traffic now accounts for 15 per cent of CBD traffic and can be partly attributed to a lack of alternative options for accessing other parts of the city (eg the absence of a direct route to and from the eastern suburbs). In addition, private cars coming into the CBD carry an average of 1.2 people, which, on an international scale, is relatively low.

Why not visit the site yourself and have a say. There are at least two problems here as I see it. The one is about using the active voice, while the other is about actively solving the problem of too many cars.

Iraq: One Year Later

2004-03-15T12:33:00.000+13:00

No Right Turn has an excellent post summing up the conflict...

If It's Global It's Bad

2004-03-15T00:42:00.000+13:00

The marxist in me has always been a little suspicious of the term 'anti-globalisation'. Of course there's the old line that it's a label invented by the political right. But as anyone who has actually been at an anti-globalisation rally knows, there are a few people for whom the term seems altogether too generous. There really is a rather large cohort of folks out there opposed to anything that looks like trade and economics.

Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that there is really something wonderful about capitalist productive capacity. If only it wasn't run so badly.

On the other hand there are writers like Jane Kelsey who have neatly turned globalisation on its head by working in solidarity with 'third world' groups such as farmers and peasants just coming to grips with corporate globalisation. But I am never quite certain what the object of such an excercise might be. Is the desire to be in 'solidarity' with the oppressed in the developing world based on a sense of despair for the prospect of social change in our own?

Certainly, Kelsey and her mentor Bruce Jesson both appear to have been deeply traumatised by the advent of Rogernomics, and Jesson in particular seemed deeply nostalgic for a kind of prehistoric New Zealand that sounds like it was a pretty awful place to live. Listening to Kelsey deliver the Fourth Annual Jesson Lecture a few months back I was surprised to hear her criticise Labour's neo-statism for doing away with 'declining industries like the clothing sector and supporting new ones, such as export education.'

Kelsey delivered that last sentence with a kind of ironic sneer that elicited a laugh from the audience. It was a very strange moment. A sad nostalgia for a rather tatty past and a smirking disdain for a pretty important new sector of this country's economy. And one that I happen to work in and enjoy.

At any rate, it got me to thinking about how important globalisation is, or at least, how important it is to think critically about what we are gesturing to when we use the term globalisation. From LeftCenterLeft comes this article by the American economist Paul Krugman called In Praise of Cheap Labour. Krugman's thesis is that the growth of export industries with relatively cheap labour in the third world is something that is both relatively new and critical for growth in these very same economies. Understood as merely a growth in the extensity of world trade, Globalisation really is exporting jobs and growth to those areas of the world that have been excluded from progress for much of the last hundred years:

In the mid-'70s, cheap labor was not enough to allow a developing country to compete in world markets for manufactured goods. The entrenched advantages of advanced nations--their infrastructure and technical know-how, the vastly larger size of their markets and their proximity to suppliers of key components, their political stability and the subtle-but-crucial social adaptations that are necessary to operate an efficient economy--seemed to outweigh even a tenfold or twentyfold disparity in wage rates.

Detractors of globalisation often argue that the process has led to a growth of inequality between the developing world and our own. What they mean to say is that while there may be some growth in poorer countries, it is more than offset by the accumulation of wealth in the richer countries. But the evidence for such arguments often comes from a simple comparison of GDP, which may not show us the extent to which social and economic growth has improved in the developing world. Using other measurements, there is some evidence to show that there has been a decline in the overall level of international inequality. Professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago Philip Nel has studied human inequality across the globe. In a paper delivered in 2003 to the New Zealand Political Studies Association called International Inequality: has it increased or not, and so what? he shows how important it is to use the right kind of indicators. As Marilyn Waring has shown, GDP simply doesn't capture all those intangible and invisible relationships and things that underpin real economic activity. Through a critical use of the human development index used by the United Nations Development Programme, Nel has been able to determine that there has been an overall drop in 'levels of human development inequality' over the last twenty years.

What this means is that "globalisation" may involve at least two different processes, and it's useful to distinguish between the two. On the one hand there is an accumulation of wealth in Western countries, while on the other hand there has been a decrease in inequality around the globe.

If we accept that there has been a worldwide decrease in inequality, we still need to ask as Nel does if these findings mean that globalisation is good for the poor? Are the processes of growth set in motion by corporate globalisation entirely beneficial for the developing world? Not necessarily:

Defenders of the neo-liberal, pro-globalisation ideology can get little sustenance from these findings. If we accept for the sake of argument that there is some causal connection between neo-liberal policies to promote globalisation, and the improvement noted in our results, then the obvious question is how come the results are so meagre?

It's a sophisticated and compassionate argument. Nel notes that levels of international inequality are too high as they are, and warns that such disparity will have serious consequences for the co-operative provision of global public goods. Finally, he concludes by emphasising that:

Global equity can be said to be a public good in its own right. In addition, high levels of international inequality, especially when it overlaps with power and cultural differentials, do make world politics more prone to fractionalism and conflict than would otherwise be the case. Most important of all, international inequality of the magnitude that we have in the world today is simply morally indefensible in light of the view that we have the resources to do something about the poverty-related consequences of inequality.

It's The Opportunity Cost, Asshole

2004-03-11T22:50:00.000+13:00

My thoughts on the proposed Eastern Motorway. It's nice to see that the nearly moribund Campaign for Better Transport has finally decided to do something. Even if it's just issuing a press release.

Fortunately Bruce Hucker seemed to grasp the point about opportunity cost with great clarity. Calling it a road to nowhere, he also put out a press release:

The latest plans for the Eastern Corridor are hugely expensive, won't ease congestion and would stop us spending on real transport solutions, says Bruce Hucker, leader of the City Vision group of Auckland City councillors.

And he dispensed with the bullshit promise of bus lanes thusly:

Proposing a busway alongside the present railway defies the principles of good transport planning", he said. "The busway sets up the bus and rail to compete rather than having buses feeding off the railway as they should.

Fortunately, the Eastern Motorway will not be built.

Unfortunately, there is no way in hell that Bruce Hucker will get anywhere near the behind of the mayor's desk. What is it about City Vision that makes them think that can win a mayoralty race? What makes them think that they have to?

The role of mayor is both a political position and a symbolic one. Because the mayor's fight is so high profile, it's less likely that anyone openly associated with the left can take the seat, particularly in Auckland. But on the plus side, if a mayor is opposed by the majority on council, there is very little that he or she can do. Therefore it is symbolically important to get rid of Banks and politically necessary to maximise the progressive hold on council. Good politics often comes down to a question of realistic expectations. If you are a democrat it means doing what you can to make the situation better, not worse. Sometimes that can mean that ending up in some kind of alliance with someone that you don't like in order to get rid of someone that you both hate.

A preliminary analysis of the 2001 Auckland election shows that the mistake of the left was that they got greedy and refused to join forces against Banks. They split the vote. Badly. In addition to Fletcher, the left decided to run two candidates for mayor, Matt McCarten and for the Greens, Metiana Turiana. Matt was running for the Alliance. Check out the breakdown:

Banks: 47059

Fletcher: 31699

McCarten: 15785

Turiana: 2213

Look at it this way: the non-Banks vote was 49,697 to Banksie's 47,059. Remember that local body elections are not based on proportional representation. It's just winner take all. Once you realise this, you are faced with a few key questions:

Q: Do we have a realistic shot at the mayoralty?
A: No.

Q: Could we win a few council seats by not wasting our resources on the mayor's seat?
A: Maybe.

Q: Well, then who do we think we can work with, considering that we have now rationalised our resources and may be able to win some council seats?
A: Fletcher.

Q: O.K., then who do we really need to get rid of?
A: Banks.

The only thing that has changed is that City Vision is now in the picture. On the surface it appears as a rationalisation of the left vote. But by running against Fletcher, City Vision are effectively splitting the anti-Banks vote again. Even though Fletcher is a former National politician, she has still shown herself to be more progressive on public transport and easier to work with than Banks.

My prediction: Banks wins again because of City Vision. Eastern (Transit Corridor) Motorway fails to get necessary funding. And only the part for cars gets built.

NZ Reserve Bank: Back To Reality

2004-03-11T12:32:00.000+13:00

You might have missed it, but NZ Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard quietly announced his intention to quietly demolish another part of New Zealand's bizarre experiment in neo-liberal economics.

Along with his announcement that there would be no change in the official cash rate, Bollard has asked Finance Minister Michael Cullen to give the Reserve Bank the capacity to intervene in the currency exchange market to protect the New Zealand dollar from the vagaries of foreign traders. It was enough to set at least one Herald business writer on edge, predicting that "The mere request will be a shock to the currency market".

I think it would be best not to panic. The paper is often a zealous defender of New Zealand's sado-masochistic relationship with Chicago school economics and is easily spooked by anything that seems to run counter to theoretical orthodoxy. The business section of The Herald is so committed to the tarnished dream of perfect markets that the prospect of New Zealand dealing with its economy in the same manner as the rest of the world sends that august group of commentators into gloomy fits of prophecy.

At the same time it would be a mistake to think that Bollard's request is unimportant. Those who believe that government can play a more active role in the regulation of things economic should take some heart from today's announcement. It represents another opening in the ideological conservatism that has gripped this country since the days of Roger Douglas. And it signals that there was much more than just idle speculation behind Cullen's musings a few months ago that government had a few different weapons in its arsenal to deal with excessive currency valuation.

He wasn't just musing. He was floating a trial balloon.

It puts me in mind of an article by Brian Easton that appeared a few months ago in the Listener. In his article Easton tries to show that the policies put in place by the Rogernomes in the 1980's represented a failed revolution. If I read him right, Easton seems to be saying that the Clark government may be what the revolution ought to have looked like. It's a difficult thesis, but it helps Easton to think about Cullen and Clark as revolutionaries, albeit smarter ones:

Will history record 1999 as a year of revolution? The previous ones were associated with periods of long political stability. (The Liberals were in power for 21 years, and Labour first for 14.) The political stability seems to have been associated with strong economic growth. Post-1999 economic growth has been above the OECD average. However, the economy faces the same danger as it did in the 1980s, when the exchange rate was allowed to rise, stifling the external engine of growth. The Rogernomes did not care then ?? and the economy stagnated. This time the government sees the threat.

I am not certain that Easton's speculations make the picture clearer. Much of his argument hinges on the ambiguous use of the word revolution. And I am not sure that he gives Clark and Cullen enough credit for breaking with the disastrous policies of the Lange government. Someone who does is economist Kieth Rankin. In his 2002 article Cullen v. Brash Rankin carefully illustrates the differences between the neo-liberalism represented by Brash and the fiscally tight Michael Cullen. In an interesting passage, Rankin writes that Brash's entry into politics will give Cullen an opportunity to break with the neo-liberal monetary and fiscal policies seen in New Zealand since the mid 1980's:

Former Reserve Bank governor Don Brash's entry into politics has given Finance Minister Michael Cullen a windfall opportunity to criticise the management of monetary policy. Hitherto, at least since 1989, Finance Ministers had been expected to stoically wear the policy actions of the nation's most influential (yet unelected) policymaker.

With Brash taking Labour's rival National toward the neo-liberal right, Cullen has shown that it is now easier for him to carefully pick apart the accretions of the Douglas era. Let's hope that Brash keeps up his good work.

When Small ‘c’ becomes Capital ‘P’

2004-03-08T13:41:00.000+13:00

I’m starting to get a little worried about Labour. It seemed pretty clear from the beginning that its response to the Court of Appeal’s decision regarding the Marlborough Sound was a little hysterical. You have to wonder not ‘what were they thinking’ but were they thinking at all?

Or perhaps they thought that they could afford to pick a fight with Maori and force through some short-sighted and fundamentally flawed legislation. That makes sense to me. Only a few short months ago, Labour was high in the polls and National was nowhere in sight. Columnist Colin James wrote that Labour’s strength was its ability to govern as a small ‘c’ party precisely because it lacked any real opposition. Now that it is faced with a popular National leader, that comfortable small ‘c’ conservatism has begun to climb the alphabet into capital ‘P’ for panic.

And Pugilism. Although Clark’s Hikoi of Hope speech appeared to move Labour back to the terrain of the left, the conservative Cullen undermined any warm feelings for Labour from progressives, activists and Maori by attacking the Waitangi Tribunal. We have to remember that warm feelings among these groups are pretty important for a good election campaign. Activists, both party and those just outside, are the engines of any political campaign. These days they are almost more important than anything else. Party activists need to be motivated by something other than just staying in power. I don't think that trashing Maori and the Waitangi Tribunal is going to help much in this department.

As No Right Turn has commented, Cullen’s criticims of the Waitangi report into government’s seabed and foreshore legislation are seriously flawed. But it’s worse than that. It is simply not appropriate for a minister to condemn a finding of the Tribunal in such terms. Just in terms of the optics, who was the idiot who gave Cullen that message box? Talk about challenges, speak about ‘important issues’ or better yet, shut up. Because Cullen has made trashing the Tribunal a legitimate exercise. Now Nelson Mayor Paul Matheson can look relatively sane when he comes out slinging at the Tribunal, calling it a ‘Kangaroo Court.’

It makes me wonder about dissension in Labour. Not the dissension of Maori M.P.'s, but between Labour's left and right. Already, rightists are feeling miffed by the recent cabinet shuffle which appeared to favour the left wing. For Cullen to come out so strongly against the Waitangi Tribunal with such a poor understanding of its findings can only undermine Clark's efforts at reconciliation and force her to the right. Is Cullen merely flexing his muscles or is he trying to undermine Clark's position in the face of the first bad polls in years for her Labour government? If so, I think it's a bad idea.

Antipodean Pain: The Psychopathology of Don Brash

2004-03-02T20:28:00.000+13:00

Thus the ego…repulsed by reality, struggles to master its economic task of bringing about harmony among the forces working in and upon it; and we can understand how it is that so often we cannot suppress a cry: ‘Life is not easy!’ If the ego is obliged to admit its weakness, it breaks out in anxiety – realistic anxiety regarding the external world, moral anxiety regarding the super-ego and neurotic anxiety regarding the strength of passions in the id.

Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

This is going to hurt. Over the last few weeks, it’s been getting easier to see how pathological much of Don Brash’s Orewa speech and the reaction to it has been. By pathological, I mean a mental disturbance, a condition that has thrown up delusion and fantasy on to the screen of New Zealand’s political life. If I am right, this disturbance is related to a widespread feeling of psychic pain, and the episode of Brash’s speech is nothing but a symptom of this pain. All people and all societies experience psychic pain, but perhaps New Zealand’s particular circumstances have given rise to a kind of pain that is, for various reasons, closer to the surface than in other, comparable societies. Analysing this current of psychic pain gives us some insight into the politics of Maori, Pakeha and New Zealand’s cultural identity.

The idea that the event of the Orewa speech is symptomatic of psychic disturbance is suggested by the most striking aspect of Brash’s speech and its aftermath: the insistence that Maori enjoy both privilege and special legal rights. Brash articulated this fantasy of special privilege and legal rights for Maori in two key passages of the Orewa speech. The first invoked the imaginary of Maori privilege, while the second fantasized about greater legal rights for tangata whenua:

1. "There can be no basis for special privileges for any race, no basis for government funding based on race, no basis for introducing Maori wards in local authority elections, and no obligation for local governments to consult Maori in preference to other New Zealanders."

2. "One principle above all others guides my thinking: The Treaty of Waitangi should not be used as the basis for giving greater civil, political or democratic rights to any particular ethnic group…"

It is insufficient merely to dismiss the fictions of Maori privilege and special rights as deliberate falsifications. Insufficient because to see Brash’s speech as just a cynical manipulation of public opinion would be to ignore the extent to which the fictions of Maori privilege and special rights were readily believed by many Pakeha New Zealanders in the face of the facts.

We should look quickly at some of these facts, bearing in mind that the present political and cultural circumstances require a more thorough analysis of Maori deprivation and exclusion relative to Pakeha than I can offer here. Provisionally, the spectre of Maori privilege can be dismissed by trolling through a few socio-economic indicators courtesy of Geoff Cumming in The Herald:

Unemployment: in the past six years, Maori unemployment has fallen from 19% to 10%. Meanwhile, Pakeha unemployment went from 8% in 1991 to just 3.3%.

Incomes: Maori remain concentrated in low-income occupations. Median incomes for Maori stand at $37,700 compared to Pakeha at 39,600. Meanwhile, Te Puni Kokiri states that Maori are significantly underepresented in the top 20% income bracket.

Living standards: three years ago, 39% of Maori families lived in low-income households compared with just 22% of the general population.

Education: only 6% of Maori have a tertiary degree compared to 14% among Pakeha…

And the list goes on. Colin James, in his article The indigenisation of Aotearoa-New Zealand: the politics of the Treaty of Waitangi underlines the importance of this dislocation and exclusion to New Zealand’s society as a whole:

"New Zealand has to get it right. Maori are around 15 per cent of the population and increasing. They underperform on all social and economic indicators. The coherence of this society and its economic wellbeing require Maori to feel wholly part of this society and be full participants in an internationally competitive economy."

The figment of special rights appears more complicated by the presence of the Treaty of Waitangi, which floats in Brash’s nightmares as a document which has been twisted out of its original context in order to establish a special legal and juridical order for Maori. In reality, both the Treaty of Waitangi and Maori rights to customary property form the basis of New Zealand’s legal foundation under the common law tradition. That tradition is a body of jurisprudence that is by definition one law for all.

Most of the writing about the Don Brash’s Orewa speech and the response to it have either credited or criticised Brash with having tapped into something underneath the surface of New Zealand’s society. Some have called it frustration, some have called it anger, while others have called it racism. I think Brash’s speech event has revealed all of these things. What is more interesting to me is the source of these feelings. The question is: what accounts for the mass fantasy among Pakeha of Maori privilege and special rights?

A few months ago I came across a paper by the Australian psychoanalyst Craig San Roque called Coming to Terms with the Country. The paper is a careful self analysis, both of himself and his culture in the context of the aboriginal presence in Australia. As Roque puts it, his essay is an attempt “to come to terms with living and working together in a country which is impregnated with Aboriginal mind, experience and consciousness.”

For Roque, psychotherapeutic practise in Australia must come to understand the particular qualities of Australian psychic pain if it is to be effective at all. As he writes:

"We must study the Australian culture, its psychic history and its contemporary distress in order to arrive ( continually ) at diagnostic positions which recognise the specific nature of the ‘national psyche’ as well as the individual disorders of psyche. We have to attain a cultural meta-diagnosis; and re develop (perhaps) our practice methods accordingly. The psychological dynamics of Australian social systems are not simple. Many institutionalised assumptions about the causes and cures of contemporary psychic ills may require rethinking".

The starting point for such an analysis is to discover the origins of what Roque calls Antipodean psychic pain, the formation of which is related to the presence or absence of what he calls ‘potential space.’ Potential spaces are human spaces, areas of intimacy between oneself and an other. Critically, these spaces of intimacy and potential are key sites in the formation of self-identity.

"Potential space is a mysterious, invisible yet utterly palpable space of interaction between one human and another. In this space, play begins and continues until it is transformed into shared culture. People of a shared culture live within a mutually created and maintained ‘potential space.’ Its continuous existence forms us and informs us. The ‘potential space’ between intimate people is full of potency, imagination and psychological transformation".

But what happens when we are cut off from each other? What happens when the promise of an intimate potential space is denied or abandoned? For Roque, the answer is that we experience pain at the loss of something that we all desire: intimacy. Although we live everywhere with the potential of this intimacy, it is, in our present circumstances, always receding from us. We may have never experienced this intimacy, although we appear to share the same landscape with others with whom we desire a closer relation. In the face of this loss, we begin to fantasize about about ourselves and the our place in this world as a defense against the pain we feel. Germaine Greer has gone so far as to diagnose european Australia as psychotic in the way that it has tried to deny the pain of its dislocation from Aboriginal reality. Roque, I think, would agree:

"We have to ask ourselves about the nature of the ‘potential space’ which is being formed here, in Australia. There is an optimistic fantasy generated that, between us, we can create Australia as a place to play; with money and land, sun and sand, freedom and opportunity. But there is another dimension to the space we are making. In the dark matter of the Australian universe, there has been shaping itself, for the same number of years, a culture of psychic pain. Certainly, something less than promising has formed between the original inhabitants of this country’s spaces and those who are coming later. It has been stunningly difficult to construct a ‘potential space’ between the indigenous and non indigenous cultures".

It is important to see that this dynamic is not peculiar to Australia. In fact, what Roque calls Antipodean psychic pain is really only a subset of a larger experience of psychic pain that is shared by all societies with a history of settler colonialism. Although there are many differences in the way that Australia and New Zealand have shaped the spaces between europeans and those who came before, when we compare the socio-economic indicators of Maori and Pakeha it is clear that the conditions of our ‘potential space’ are unequal. It is obvious that the same dynamic of pain and dislocation exists here.

Dislocation and Identity

If it is true that Pakeha culture desires a greater intimacy with Tangata Whenua, we must ask why we have not been able to come together more closely. Looking at Don Brash’s ‘episode’ we could ask why there is, in fact, a resistance to being together. Why there is so much emotional resistance to policy processes that are designed to bring Maori and Pakeha together as equals? Why are these policy instruments actually represented by many as contributing to the separation of Maori and Pakeha?

I would like to suggest that much of the pain related to these resistances arises from feelings of guilt. This fundamental guilt is associated with the original transgressions of colonialism and the way in which the process of colonialism displaced Tangata Whenua from the land. The relationship between transgression and guilt, dislocation and pain circulates and grows. As a defense against these feelings of guilt, and as a defense for the obvious privilege that Pakeha now enjoy as a result of colonialism, many in the Pakeha community have come to feel that modern processes of redress and recompense threaten Pakeha identity. And to the extent that Pakeha identity is actually composed of the elements of pain, dislocation and privilege, this is probably true.

Psychotherapeutic practise shows that defenses against feelings of anxiety often involve the repetition of the very conditions which give rise to feelings of pain and anxiety. This repetition is a kind of trauma response that seeks to master anxiety by staging it over and over again. Such a response helps to explain the depth of the emotional resistance on the part of Pakeha community to the very processes that might contribute to the easing of our psychic pain. A striking example of this repetition and resistance can be found in the account of the Treaty of Waitangi given in Don Brash’s Orewa speech:

Today I want to speak about the threat which "the Treaty process" poses to the future of our country.

In Brash’s speech there is a fear of the Treaty as something that could be active, as something that might exercise any kind of effectivity in the present. The intellectual effort that has been expended to paint the Treaty as something that is no longer active, as something which should not be included in New Zealand's jurisprudence (as if that were possible and legal) shows us that the Treaty ‘process’ actually threatens to bring us together, not tear us apart. By denying the reality of the Treaty, could it be that we are actually trying to re-stage the conditions of our pain and anxiety as a defense against the threat that the Treaty as a process represents to our identity? And might it not be the case that New Zealand can only become culturally mature when we have ceased to re-stage our trauma and can accept the possibility of a future of justice and equality with Maori?

Should Wiser Heads Have Prevailed

2004-02-25T14:54:00.000+13:00

You can't help but think that much of the current crisis facing the New Zealand Labour government is the result of the terrible mishandling of the Seabeds and Foreshore issue. Remember that? Back in June, the Court of Appeal ruled on the case brought forward by South Island iwi on the status of the seabeds and foreshores in the Marlborough Sound.

The Appeal Court found that the Maori Land Court had the jurisdiction to decide on the status of seabeds and foreshores in accordance with the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act of 1993. That is, the Court said that the Maori Land Court had the capacity to decide whether Maori claims to customary property rights along the seabeds and foreshores of the Marlborough Sounds were valid or not.

Reversing previous decisions, Justice Elias argued that the so-called transfer of sovereignty widely assumed to be the substance of the Treaty of Waitangi did not erase Maori rights to customary property in seabeds and foreshores:

The transfer of sovereignty did not affect customary property. They [customary property rights] are interests preserved by the common law until extinguished in accordance with the law. I agree that the legislation relied on in the High Court does not extinguish any Maori customary property in the seabed or the foreshore.

The Court also found that the entire question of who actually owns the seabeds and foreshores was up for debate.

Unfortunately, the Court's decision touched off a spiral of anxiety. Led by the New Zealand Herald New Zealanders were told to expect the worst: this country's sacred beaches could fall into the exclusive hands of Maori. In the face of widespread panic, Helen Clark decided to legislate away the rights of Maori to have their legal claims investigated by the Maori Land Court. How? By putting the seabeds and foreshores into what government called the 'public domain' and unilaterally limiting the definition of customary property rights. Somewhere at the Cabinet table, it must have seemed like a good idea.

The move caused a storm of controversy for the Labour ship. Maori were angry that their rights to due process were being taken away. National and the political right criticised the nebulousness of the concept of 'public domain.' The debate snowballed into arguments about Maori 'privilege' and opened up the psychological space for Don Brash's Orewa speech. Looking back, it appears as though Labour were stuck on the foreshore between a rock and a hard place.

But was it?

There was another option. The Clark government could have let South Island iwi take their case to the Maori Land Court. The Court of Appeal decision specified that Maori claims to customary property rights in the seabeds and foreshores would have to be based on rigorous standards of evidence. Justice Elias cautioned that the process would be difficult. Read: time consuming.

Hey! Did someone mention time? Now, there's a valuable political commodity!

Instead of pissing off Maori and exposing itself to right-wing and anti-Maori political fire, Labour could have simply allowed the South Island iwi to have their day in court. That day would have been many, many months into the future. Government could have deflected questions by saying that the matter was being decided by the courts, while at the same time it could have used the breathing space to negotiate with Maori groups in good faith. Clark could have used the time and goodwill from these negotiations to come up with legislation that would have vested ownership of seabeds and foreshores with the crown excepting those areas that could be proven in court to be subject to customary property rights.

And contrary to the alarmist hysteria perpetrated by the Herald, it's pretty clear that those areas would not have been overly large. Where Maori claims overlapped with subsequent freehold property owners or with popular beaches, Labour could have undertaken to negotiate and compensate in a process so complex it would have bored everyone to tears.

And maybe, just maybe, Don Brash's Orewa speech would have fallen on uninterested, mid-summer ears.

And if you think that this is all hindsight 20/20 stuff, read this.

I Give Up

2004-02-17T16:28:00.000+13:00

As a committed advocate of public transport, it pains me to say that as a result of the Auckland Regional Council’s (ARC) poor planning and service delivery, I have given up on using public transport in Auckland. I have bought an inexpensive car that’s cheap to operate and will get me to where I need to be quickly and reliably. That’s more than I can say for the service operated by the Stagecoach company and the Auckland Regional Council.

My travel needs aren’t all that grandiose. Thankfully, I live near the downtown area, so I generally walk to work. But two to three times a week, I have to get to Massey University’s Albany campus on the North Shore to attend evening classes. It's really not that far. By the highway it takes about twenty to twenty-five minutes from my house. By bus? Sometimes as long as two and-a-half hours.

Although the ARC claims to be concerned about the growth of education related travel, estimated to make up 40% of all travel in the Auckland region, the organisation has shown little initiative in providing efficient and reliable service to the region’s educational institutions. Is it any wonder that so many of these institutions are relocating to Auckland’s central business district (CBD)?

Albany campus has between 5000 and 6000 students enrolled in its programmes, not including staff and faculty. Current estimates are that enrollment will grow by 500 new students per annum. Additionally, the Albany area is experiencing significant residential and commercial growth. So you’d think that the ARC would provide a decent bus service to the campus. Well think again.

The 895 – 9 bus services originate from Albert Street near the expensive and nearly useless Britomart station. The downtown stop is, of course, badly signed and lacks even the rudest bench or any other amenity. There has been no attempt to provide any clear information for the many english-as-a-second language students who attend classes at Albany campus, let alone those who understand english perfectly well, but find the ARC’s needlessly complex routes and the information about them to be just so much hieroglyphics.

Let’s look at these routes, using the the 899 as an example. That is, the 899 is one of the buses that gets you near Massey. Very confusingly, the only return bus is the 847. Anyway, back to the looking at routes. Operating roughly every hour, the 899 features some of Stagecoach’s rudest and most reckless drivers. I like to think that they got this way trying to get the bus through the ARC’s utterly incompetent route plan and schedule. Even though there are already dozens of buses that serve Takapuna, North Harbour and the Wairau valley, the 899 wanders through these suburbs and others, getting stuck in traffic or careening at dangerous speeds through suburban streets in an attempt to be on time. And it never is. What should be a twenty minute or half-hour ride is scheduled by the ARC to take fifty minutes. I have never been on a bus that has arrived on time. Coming back, the ride is usually 15 – 20 minutes late.

Now all this I might be prepared to live with. But the final straw for me came when I finished an evening class at 9:00 p.m. and walked to the bus stop on the Albany Highway. During the week (when several hundred students attend evening classes) there are no buses returning to Auckland between 8:18 p.m. and 10:23 p.m. It makes me wonder if the ARC even bothered to check with Albany campus to find out when evening classes finished before they scheduled the route.

I’m told that everything will be better when the North Shore Busway is built. The date for this project has been rolled back to 2008. I was told that there was a plan to begin interim services in 2005, though it now appears as though that date has been rolled back as well. I was told consultation for proposed north shore routes would begin in February 2004. I haven’t seen or heard of any such consultation yet. Could this have been rolled back as well? And will there be any effort made to involve the students at Albany campus in this exercise?

It doesn’t matter to me now. I have got a car and I’m willing to use it. I tried and tried to use Auckland’s public transport system, but the system doesn’t work. We keep hoping that politicians will fix the problems, but we don’t do a very good job of making politicians listen to us. As Aucklanders, we’re all pretty good at complaining, but we’re not very good at coming together as users and as citizens to make sure that we have a public transport system that works.

Don Brash and the Politics of Equality in New Zealand

2004-01-31T17:33:00.000+13:00

For people active in politics, there comes a point at which you stop focusing on changing other people’s minds, and concentrate instead on building a community of people who share your principles. Think of it as a sign of maturity. Arguing about politics with people who don’t share your values can be a frustrating experience. Working with people who do can be very rewarding. The big advantage is that you don’t have to spend all your energy arguing back to your first principles every time you embark on a political project.

But every once in a while a political event irrupts into your daily life. It’s the kind of event that gets you off your couch and back into the business of arguing with other people. Maybe it's because you feel that an important principle is at stake. Or else you realise that the buck stops with you. Nobody else is stepping up to the plate. Either way, you feel compelled to respond.

Such an event for me was the recent speech given in Orewa by Don Brash trashing the politics of justice and reconciliation between Pakeha and Maori. It’s not because I think that Brash made a particularly powerful speech. As John Armstrong noted in his Herald column, Brash’s efforts lacked “the fear factor.” I think it was the lack of the fear factor that started to get me worried. It was the sense that there was a very large and receptive audience for the things that he was saying that worried me. In a sense, he was just saying what was politically obvious. And as Armstrong says, easy.

The speech, as we all know, attacked Labour’s so-called policies of “racial separatism” in the context of the foreshore and seabed debate. By attacking Maori rights, Brash was effectively moving the perimeter of his political community to the right. It’s a pretty crowded part of the spectrum here in New Zealand, so many observers who found his comments politically obnoxious sought comfort in the fact that Brash is taking National away from the powerful political centre.

But Brash’s speech also criticised New Zealand’s feeble attempts at justice and reconciliation towards Maori. And to the extent that this kind of criticism forms part of the milieu of common sense in New Zealand, I think that it is important for people who support the rights of tangata whenua to now clearly articulate what the project of justice and reconciliation is all about.

Reconciliation and the Gesture

In his speech, Brash attempted to acknowledge historical injustice to Maori. But in doing so he attacked the Waitangi Tribunal, one of this country’s chief institutions for redressing this injustice. Although he acknowledged that there had been things done to Maori "that should not have happened" he also argued that the only legitimate answer to such injustice was what he called the gesture at recompense.

“Let me be quite clear. Many things happened to the Maori people that should not have happened. There were injustices, and the Treaty process is an attempt to acknowledge that, and to make a gesture at recompense. But it is only that. It can be no more than that.”

It’s a very clever use of the word gesture. Because in a sense, all justice operates at the level of the gesture. Anyone who has ever been the victim of a crime knows that no judgement or punishment ever fully restores what has been lost. There is no restitution that can restore an inequity caused by injustice.

So what, then, do our attempts at justice seek to achieve? On one level, justice is concerned with equality. Justice cannot be satisfied with punishment. It must seek restitution. But in addition justice must seek to alter conditions which cause injustice. In so doing, justice knows that it cannot alter the past, but that it has the capacity to open up the possibility of a future free of injustice.

This is the real meaning of the phrase gesture at recompense. It is a gesture towards the future. But this is not what Brash means by the gesture when he claims that there is "a limit to how much any generation can apologise for the sins of its great-grandparents". Not only does Brash telescope a complex and ongoing history of injustice into a single moment which has passed irredeemably into history, for the leader of the National Party there is no possibility of a future of equality. By denying responsibility for injustice we close the possibility of a futural justice. And although this assignment of responsibility for injustice towards Maori appears to be related to the sins of the past, in reality it is more complicated.

No matter how much the political right tries to spin it, the gesture at recompense that is at the heart of processes of justice and reconciliation like that provided for in the Waitangi Tribunal is not about finding contemporary Pakeha personally responsible for the "sins of our grandparents". Instead, it is about acknowledging that contemporary Pakeha are the beneficiaries of a history of injustice directed towards Maori. To the extent that we fail to redress this imbalance, we become personally responsible for the perpetuation of this injustice in the present day and into the future.

Denial, Reconciliation and the Future

In his essay Denial, Acknowledgement and Peace Building Through Reconciliatory Justice, Robert Joseph points to the way in which a process aimed at redressing the injustices of the past must work toward securing reconciliation and a just future; i.e., a future in which two communities live together in equality and justice:

“Reconciliatory justice focuses on the building of appropriate relationships by recognising and addressing past grievances and exploring future relationships at the post-settlement governance and grass roots levels.”

This is exactly the framework envisaged by the Waitangi Tribunal, though some might argue that its efforts are hampered by a lack of real power to enforce its decisions. For the Tribunal, the gesture toward justice is inherently a gesture toward the future:

“The Waitangi Tribunal's vision is that, having reconciled ourselves with the past and possessing a full understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi, Mâori and non-Mâori New Zealanders will be equipped to create a future for two peoples as one nation.”

For Joseph, the first step in achieving a just future of equality and reconciliation involves acknowledging the injustice of the past. Cultural differences are one thing. But it is critical to recognise the very real inequity that exists between two communities has its roots in an historical injustice. So there is a quality of denial when Brash maintains that there is no real difference between Maori poverty the poverty of other groups:

“It is the bottom 25 per cent of Maori, most of them on welfare, who are conspicuously poor. They are no different to Pacific Islanders or other non-Maori on welfare; it's just that there is a higher percentage of them in that category.”

But this denial goes further. It turns into a denial of the Treaty as a treaty, that is, as an agreement between two peoples. As John Armstrong writes in the Herald, Brash’s view is that Maori “…have no special status as descendants of precolonial occupants who made a treaty with the British Crown, accepting its government in return for its protection of their territory, treasures and tribal mana. Dr Brash believes the Maori signatories at Waitangi gave up exclusive legal rights and became, in the words of Hobson, "one people" with Pakeha.”

Brash cites a statement spoken in “the halting Maori” of Governor Hobson as evidence for this view. But if it is true that Hobson spoke in a halting voice, it is equally true that Hobson had a halting understanding of what iwi meant when they signed the Treaty of Waitangi. Brash is unable to recognise that there may be differences of interpretation over the meaning of the Treaty because from his point of view we have ceased to be two peoples living together in agreement. So politically, the statement "we are all one people" must always be read as an abrogation of the Treaty, which is an agreement between two peoples.

John Armstrong worries that Brash shows an inability to comprehend that others may hold a different view of the document. But should Brash ever be in a position of power in regards to the Treaty, he will have to contend with the fact that international jurisprudence has recognised that it is the indigenous interpretation of a treaty that takes precedence.

From the recognition of past injustice and its repercussions into the present day, Joseph outlines several key principles that should guide a process aimed at justice and reconciliation between New Zealand’s two communities. It’s clear that we have a long way to go:

Recognition - truth finding and telling of the injustices;

Responsibility and remorse - acknowledgement and apology for the injustices;

Restitution - of Maori land and power to determine its use;

Reparation - for injustices in financial terms recognising that ethnocidal and genocidal harms are really incompensible in this way;

Redesign - of state political-legal institutions and processes to empower Maori to participate in their own governance and the government of the state."

Spinning to Win

Obviously, the project of justice and reconciliation is an ambitious one. And in the face of a growing culture of xenophobia in this country, you can understand that politically, it's a messy pot to put on the front burner. Even though New Zealanders put great store in the myth of racial harmony, it's easy to see that huge tensions exist. So how do we advance a programme of justice and reconciliation in a cultural context of jealousy and fear?

I think that the belief in the myth of racial harmony, misguided as it is, shows that there is some desire for reconciliation between Maori and Pakeha. The problem is that it won't be easy. There cannot be reconciliation without justice, which means that there are going to be some hard decisions to make. Any party that wants to tackle reconciliation seriously has to deal with the fact that for Pakeha the demand for justice appears as an assignment of personal responsibility for the sins of the past. That is how the right has spun it, and it's been easy for them because justice for Maori does indeed call upon Pakeha to bear responsibility.

But, and this is critical, the project of justice calls us to be responsible for a future, not for the past. It is this futural element, a promise of reconciliation, justice and freedom, that contains the language necessary for securing the goodwill and support of the Pakeha community.

The Herald, Dogville and the problem of the Gift

2004-01-27T23:38:00.000+13:00

It’s old hat here to criticise the New Zealand Herald. So old hat that it’s rarely done. In addition to the infantile puns that question the sexuality of certain Labour politicians, there is the poor coverage of international politics, the unlovely editorials and the small-minded letters to the editor. But even worse are the pages dedicated to the arts. We all know about New Zealand’s anti-intellectualism. But why is The Herald so content to merely reflect this country’s lack of interest in culture?

Why am I saying this? A few weeks ago I went to see Lars Von Trier’s Dogville in a packed cinema here in Auckland. Dogville is a disturbing work that is also a wonderful film. My partner and I couldn’t stop talking about Dogville, and later in the evening we decided to read some reviews online to get a better idea of what other people had thought about the movie. By some freak accident, we happened to read The Herald’s review. It was pretty depressing.

Culturally, The Herald shares in the Pakeha colonial abhorrence for anything Continental. The worst thing in the world is to appear "post-modern" in New Zealand. It's like saying you think that Helen Clark might actually be a decent human being. Unfortunately, reviewer Peter Calder seems to be enmeshed in this cultural miasma, if his writing on Dogville is anything to go by. And that disdain has made the ethical heart of Dogville completely invisible to him.

In his review, Calder claims that the film is evidence of Von Trier's "desiccated misanthropy" and tries to situate the problematic of the film on the same level as Golding's Lord of the Flies:

Readers of Lord of the Flies will find nothing new here. The film, drenched with unsubtle symbolism, is interesting more for its stagey form than its rather melodramatic content, and its characters are more cyphers than identifiable individuals.

It's striking that Dogville's moral content should be so invisible to so many people. But to me at least, the whole mode of the film signals that its primary content is entirely ethical. A few moments later, I found a post from an anonymous writer on Wikipedia. Surveying several possible interpretive responses to the film, the writer ends with a suggestion that there may be a conflict between ethics and economics, giving and the expectation of return.

Some have called Dogville an anti-American movie because it seems to imply that America does not care for the weakest members of its society and worse, that they are exploited whenever people think they can get away with it. The images of homeless Americans of different eras flashing over the screen during the credits, accompanied by the song Young Americans by David Bowie, have done little to dispel that interpretation.

A more extreme view is that von Trier advocates the use of violence to punish those who do not help others. That interpretation is called into question by the fact that Grace, at the end of the film, has become as monstrous as those who mistreated her, ordering to kill even children and a baby in front of the eyes of their mother.

A perhaps more likely explanation is that von Trier wants the viewer to understand the use of violence by those who are oppressed and exploited, and offers as the only salvation true altruism without the expectation of a return on investment. In effect, the film portrays quid pro quo arguments as a slippery slope that leads directly to slavery and sexual exploitation.

What is a Gift?

In light of Calder's comments about Von Trier's misanthropy, it's interesting to note that the film begins with an urgent ethical problem. The character of Tom Edison believes that the townspeople of Dogville need to better understand how to receive. If, as many critics have claimed, Dogville is an anti-American tirade, then it seems curious that the “Americans” in the film have a problem with receiving. After all, as the global superpower and the foremost economy in the world, how difficult can it be for citizens in the United States to receive? Isn’t the problem actually one of giving, or even of receiving too much?

Dogville is obviously more than just an allegory about the United States. Instead, the film explores the structure of giving. In this, the film explores the work of such writers as Marcel Mauss, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida. All three writers locate the act of giving and the gift as one the most important features of humanity's moral life. Mauss's analysis revealed that gift giving in most societies constituted a sophisticated network of economic and social exchange, while both Levinas and Derrida analysed the gift as part of the ethical relationship to the other. Critically, many observers have noted that the peculiar thing about the act of giving is the sense in which it creates a situation of indebtedness on the part of the receiver. But if the act of giving creates an obligation of return, how then is it possible to give a 'free' gift?

Reading this stuff you begin to realise that there is a funny and terribly problematic relationship between economics, ethics and the meaning of the gift. Alan D. Schrift, in his book The Logic of the Gift expresses the structural points of similarity and difference between gift giving and economic transaction perfectly, beginning with a quote by the anthropologist C.A. Gregory:

"Commodity exchange establishes objective, quantitative relationships between the objects transacted, while gift exchange establishes personal qualitative relationships between the subjects transacting"

Schrift then adds that:

"Where commodity exchange is focused on a transfer in which objects of equivalent exchange value are reciprocally transacted, gift exchange seeks to establish a relationship between subjects in which the actual objects transferred are incedental to the value of the relationship established."

I'd suggest that the citizens of Dogville resent the gift of Nicole Kidman's character; they resent the gift of her time because they feel indebted to her. And in an effort to relieve themselves of this debt, they misrecognise her gift as their gift, and subject her to a series of economic transactions in order to free themselves of the sense of moral indebtedness that her arrival in Dogville creates.

Ethics and Film Form

Many people are used to reading films as a structure of contrived symbols. But can we read the stripped-down style of Dogville merely as a rigid allegory studded with symbolism? I think that Dogville is doing something a little different, something that recalls an earlier mode of stoytelling. The clue for me is established at the beginning of the film, when the central problem is located on the terrain of ethics: the problem of receiving. If it is true that the film is concerned with ethics and moral knowledge, then I think that the film’s structure looks to a completely different kind of aesthetic construction, a kind of structure pioneered by the Soviet film maker Andrei Tarkovsky: the parable.

A parable is a mode of moral instruction; instead of proceeding primarily through symbol, the work of the parable is achieved through example. A parable should communicate a moral truth.

Tarkovsky's style of filmmaking was highly personal and deeply evocative. His concern was humanity’s relationship with God, a relationship that Tarkovsky felt was an ethical one. If cinema was to address ethics in a meaningful way, i.e., in a way that contained the possibility of spiritual redemption, it had to leave behind the didacticism that underlay the more usual approaches to cinema. For Tarkovsky there was a parallel between a subject’s moral life that unfolded through time and the cinema, an art form that he likened to “sculpting in time.” Cinema could create an experience that allowed for a personal relationship with a profound moral reality.

Contemporary theories of montage and image placed too much emphasis on the pre-given meaning of film. The experience of cinema became circumscribed by the use of carefully constructed symbols. For Tarkovsky, this kind of symbolic construction work risked plunging film into tendentiousness. A rigid symbolic order in a work of cinema abandoned the capacity of cinema to create spiritual understanding through the possibility of multiple readings. “The aim of art” said Tarkovsky, “is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.” You don’t have to be religious to appreciate his project of opening up the experience of cinema to the possibility of broader, multiple truths:

An image cannot be a symbol… Whenever an image is turned into a symbol, the thought becomes walled in so to speak, it can be fully deciphered. That's not what image is. A symbol is not yet an image. Although image cannot be explained, it expresses truth to the end... Its meaning remains unknown. … [A]ny time I attempt to explain, I notice everything loses its meaning, it acquires a completely different sense than intended, moves away from its rightful place. I could only say a bird would not come to an evil man but that's not good enough. A true image is an abstraction, it cannot be explained, it only transmits truth and one can only comprehend it in one's own heart. Because of that it's impossible to analyse a work of art by utilising its intellectual significance.

What's Wrong With Indymedia Aotearoa?

2004-01-17T01:13:00.000+13:00

Indymedia Aotearoa (AIM) has to be one of the more depressing indymedia projects in the entire world. Too often it’s the preserve of the loony left, arguing about Starhawk or the opression of bicycle helmets. Sometimes you can even shiver in the terrible language of the cold war when some comrade from an unreconstructed communist group climbs aboard.

I don’t spend an awful lot of time over there, but from time to time, I find myself going through the postings looking for the semblance of a political discussion. Why? Well, I need to go somewhere. At heart I’m a left social democrat. In my native environment, I almost flourished. Here in New Zealand, the social democratic project seemed to die as a result of the reforms in the mid-80’s. All that’s left are creepy people who roam the internet with the bitterness of those who lack a political home.

I go on sneaking about, looking for what sustenance I can find. Often you have to pick through some rather distasteful stuff. A good example is some pretty disgusting anti-semitism that was posted on Indymedia Aotearoa recently. Although AIM is alleged to be one of New Zealand’s most popular political websites, these anti-semitic comments passed almost without criticism. For me, it calls into question the entire ethos of the Indymedia project, an ethos that both recalls the circumstances of the project’s birth and the conditions of the internet at the time. Writing in the anarchist webjournal Infoshop News, a guy named ChuckO puts it like this:

It was a great idea when the Independent Media Center opened up its first website for the Seattle anti-WTO protests in December 1999. The first IMC website came out of years of alternative and grassroots media activism. By a strange quirk of fate, the Seattle IMC also included something called the "open newswire," an experiment that allowed every reader to be a reporter, if they wanted to get involved in DIY, participatory media production.

Think about this. It was five years ago. The internet was a very different place. Broadband hardly existed. People still relied, by and large, on the corporate media. So the idea of an independent network of sites devoted to community activism sprang out of a condition of media scarcity, a time when the culture of D.I.Y. was relegated to comics and cassette tapes. It was only natural, then, that the pioneers who staked out this part of the web were a little doctrinaire about the right of free speech. Everyone who had been denied the right to speak were now given access. Indymedia wasn’t just a site. It was a movement.

The insistence on the right to free speech meant that the indymedia sites became subjected to harrasment from the right wing, and as access to the internet grew, from the fringes of loonieville. Racism, particularly anti-semitism, began to find a place on the indymedia network. It became normalised. ChuckO watched as the activist spirit of the indymedia project ran headlong into the abstract demand for the right to free speech:

…the inability of the IMC network to take aggresive action against racist and anti-semitic posts further damaged the Indymedia's reputation with Jewish people and people of color. We understand that some pro-Israel extremists think that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic, but the IMC network became a hotbed of just plain anti-Jewish articles, opinions, and comments. Part of the problem within the IMC network is that most activists refused to stand up to the free speech totalitarians within the network, who argued that everything posted should stay visible to the public.

The growth of these kinds of posts led to struggles within the indymedia network between people who wanted to preserve free speech and those who wanted to ‘moderate’ hate speech on the indymedia sites. The proliferation of anti-semitic posts resulted in the discrediting of the entire indymedia project. Fights over hate speech led to the disintegration of several indymedia collectives, most recently in San Francisco.

What these ‘free speech totalitarians’ didn’t understand was that the internet in just a few short years became a very, very big place. When the indymedia project began, weblogs hardly existed. Only a small, hard core of computer-savvy geeks participated in usenet discussions. Five years later, and it’s a different virtual world. And because that world has changed, it’s vital to change the ethos of the indymedia movement. What is important now is to support left-wing and progressive politics in the welter of the internet, now no longer a new place, but just as corporate and as commercial as any other media environment. I think this is especially critical in New Zealand.

I call it editing, some call it moderation, while others call it just plain censorship.

Muddled Thinking on Fiji Announcement

2004-01-04T16:01:00.000+13:00

Either Deputy P.M. Cullen doesn’t know what he is talking about, or he is signaling a profound change in New Zealand’s policy toward Maori peoples and their right to aboriginal title and (gasp) self government. I wish it were the latter, but I suspect it is probably the former. Cullen was responding to a recent announcement by the government of Fiji giving indigenous peoples ownership rights to particular coastal areas. According to the Weekend Herald,

...Dr Cullen backed the Government's duty minister, Annette King, in distancing New Zealand from the Fijian plan. He said Australia and Canada were more likely overseas models for this country over issues of indigenous people's rights.

Now I don't know much about the situation in Australia, but I do know a little about the situation in Canada. Let's just say that if New Zealand were to follow Canadians in their approach to aboriginal title, people here would be in for a very big shock.

To begin with, it's important to note that unlike New Zealand, the public ownership of the seabed and foreshore is an established fact. It has been for years. And further, private exclusive title to areas adjacent to coastal lands cannot include any rights to the seabed and foreshore. Those rights belong to the Crown, either with the federal government or with the various provinces. Development of coastal areas and resources is carried out through the granting of leases and licences. Public bodies such as management boards oversee the granting of such instruments, and they often are comprised of several levels of government, including the First Nations.

So what about aboriginal rights to the seabeds and foreshores? First, we need to look at the kinds of aboriginal rights that are at play in the Canadian context. They include both the right to title and to self government.

To begin with, in Canada the courts and legislatures have determined that aboriginal title cannot be arbitrarily extinguished by the Crown. And in 1997, the Delgamuukw case decided that aboriginal title was both more than fee simple ownership and more than hunting and fishing:

...Aboriginal title, the Supreme Court of Canada said, was not a right similar to "an inalienable fee simple" (the term that describes full ownership at common law). Neither was it, as the Crown had argued, simply a bundle of aboriginal rights to use land for traditional purposes. "Aboriginal title", the Supreme Court said, "is a right in land and, as such, is more than the right to engage in specific activities which may themselves be aboriginal rights. Rather, it confers the right to use land for a variety of activities, not all of which be aspects of practices, customs and traditions which are integral to the distinctive cultures of aboriginal societies".

So not only does aboriginal title preexist the common law, it is also not confined to the customary uses practised at the time of contact: the courts recognised that traditional cultures had the right to change and develop over time while exercising control over their resources.

Finally, the right of First Nations to self government was enshrined in Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution in 1982.
Bear in mind that the text of the Constitution does not create either the inherent right of title or of self government; rather, it explicitly recognises both as prior rights already given in law. The recognition of self government given in the Constitution has provided the basis for both federal and provincial policy:

The Government of Canada recognizes the inherent right of self-government as an existing Aboriginal right under section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. It recognizes, as well, that the inherent right may find expression in treaties, and in the context of the Crown's relationship with treaty First Nations. Recognition of the inherent right is based on the view that the Aboriginal peoples of Canada have the right to govern themselves in relation to matters that are internal to their communities, integral to their unique cultures, identities, traditions, languages and institutions, and with respect to their special relationship to their land and their resources.

The Canadian courts have repeatedly urged the various levels of government to settle issues of aboriginal rights and titles through negotiation, rather than litigation. The result has been uneven. In some jurisdictions, particularly in the far north and in British Columbia, settler governments have responded to the new environment by negotiating far reaching agreements that have resulted in the creation of entirely new levels
of government. In other jurisdictions, negotiations have stalled, forcing aboriginal groups back to the courts to have their rights affirmed.

But do these rights extend to the seabeds and foreshores? Some light was shed on aboriginal rights to coastal areas and resources in Marshall vs. Canada 1999. A member of the Mi'kmaq First Nation,

...Marshall was acquited of fishing without a license out of season and the Court gave the opinion that Mi’kmaq Indians in eastern Canada have the right of fishing at any time, even forcommercial purposes. While these rights were later interpreted by the Court to be subject to government fishing regulations, the scope for dispute... still exists.

There have been as yet no firm court decisions on the full extent of aboriginal title in regards to seabeds and foreshores. But in the light of the Marshall decision, and with rights of aboriginal title and self government recognised in both the Constitution and in law, the trend has been towards the negotiation of robust, participative co-management regimes over coastal resources.

With the Foreshore and Seabed proposal on offer from Labour, I don't think that Cullen has any of this in mind. It's too bad. He and Clark could have taken this opportunity to save New Zealanders from decades of expensive litigation and ill-will as Maori fight the illegal and arbitrary denial of their rights.

We Wish It Were True, But...

2003-12-31T00:13:00.000+13:00

When New Zealand's paper of record (sic) The Herald isn't busily encouraging anti-Asian sentiment, it does find the time to comment on weighty international affairs. Today's editorial on Iraq takes on that tone that newspapers always do at the end of the year, blending a kind of wise survey of history with an attempt at prognostication that in this case misses the mark. The funny thing is that I wouldn't have noticed why the editorial was so perfectly wrong if I hadn't happened to be reading Hardt and Negri's Empire a little later on the evening.

The editorial contends that the invasion of Iraq may have made the world a safer place, not because of the toppling of Saddam, or the removal of the mysterious weapons of mass destruction, but because it has taught the United States a valuable lesson:

Finally, it appears to have dawned on Washington that it has blundered into a quicksand and that it does not have the resources to extricate itself, or to enter lightly into other such adventures.

When I first read the piece, I nodded my head sagely and paused to appreciate the gravitas of the piece. There was a tone of moral remonstrance in the editorial that I couldn't resist. I told you so, the editorialist seemed to be saying. And I agreed with the writer because I wanted it to be true. I wanted to believe that the situation in Iraq has taught the mighty U.S. to respect the will of the international community, to resort to diplomacy before war, etc., etc...

Negri and Hardt's work offers an interpretation of the contemporary world order that should give us pause to reconsider the analysis given in The Herald. Their book theorises the new form of global domination in the post-Soviet era as Empire, a "permanent state of emergency and exception justified by the appeal to essential values." Empire can also be characterised as a perfection of capitalism, the contemporary form of which entails the radical extension of control and exploitation into all areas of human life. What is of interest to us here is their analysis of war as a tool of empire. Pointing to the way in which war is both normalised and exceptionalised, they write:

The traditional concept of just war involves the banalization of war and the celebration of it as an ethical instrument, both of which were ideas that modern political thought and the international community of nation-states resolutely refused. These two traditional characteristics have reappeared in our postmodern world . . . Today the enemy, just like war itself, comes to be at once banalized (reduced to an object of routine police suppression) and absolutized (as the Enemy, an absolute threat to the ethical order).

The point is that war is used as a tool to construct ethical consensus by minimalising armed aggression as a police action, while at the same time justifying military action as ethically positive. If it is true that war is a tool of consensus building, then we need to look differently at the ways in which the various national and international actors (France, Britain, the U.N.) have responded to the situation in Iraq. We need to see that the United States has defined a situation of exceptionalism (Iraq as a rogue state) in order to justify military aggression and, having done so, redefined the occupation as a banal police action requiring international co-operation.

It doesn't matter that the U.S. has failed to secure the participation of the leading military powers in the day-to-day business of the occupation. What matters is that, having created a situation of disorder, they have secured the legal framework from the international community for an ongoing police action that serves the interests of Empire.

Hardt and Negri challenge us to understand the contemporary global order beyond the viewpoint of any particular political entity, such as the United States. Whereas the old imperialism was defined by a rivalry between great powers in conflict over the world's undeveloped spaces, the new Imperialism is a dense fabric of production, communication and control, aimed at colonising the totality of human existence. So in terms of the conflict over Iraq, there is in fact more in common between the Western powers than what may appear to separate them. Empire seeks moral legitimation and consensus for its growth through the mechanism of conflict.

All conflicts, all crises, and all dissensions effectively push forward the process of integration and by the same measure call for more central authority. Peace, equilibrium, and the cessation of conflict are the values toward which everything is directed... This preconstituted movement defines the reality of the process of the imperial constitutionalization of world order - the new paradigm.

Off for the Holidays

2003-12-22T18:06:00.000+13:00

I'm heading out of town for Christmas, so I wont be posting for a few days. Have a good time, and for Christ's sake, Kiwi, SLOW DOWN!

Read All About It

2003-12-19T14:46:00.000+13:00

Te Ope Mana a Tai is an excellent website for understanding the seabed and foreshore from the Maori perspective. It will only get better in the next few days as new material gets posted.

I especially like Ngati Kahungunu's advice to Helen Clark regarding the issue. In an essay called Time - If We Only Had Time Ngati Kahungunu have some gentle words for Clark:

"Don't panic, Helen. Slow down. Breathe through the nose. Don't allow the drunkeness of power or opportunity blind you to proper and fair process. Don't make eunuchs of our Maori MP's. Don't force us to be anti-government and anti-social."

It's the same kind of cool advice that Tapu Misa offered in her excellent column a few days ago.

With all these calm, cool and above all, reflective commentators in the Maori community, who is really looking like the hasty radical?

Labour's Big Stick in the Sand

2003-12-18T13:15:00.000+13:00

Labour’s new seabed and foreshore policy is a fine example of using a rather blunt tool for a very delicate job. While there are many positive elements in the package, the government has resorted to moving unilaterally when it comes to the definition of what Maori rights to the seabed and foreshore might mean. The “proposal” on offer in some respects resembles a very big, clumsy stick, when maybe what we all need right now is a table and two chairs. Oh, and that spirit of partnership that everyone talks about.

I really can't see how Maori could accept this latest government proposal. And as far as I am concerned, anyone in the pakeha community who is serious about fair treatment under the law should make it clear to government that this proposal represents an unilateral dimunition of Maori rights.

The plan government has hatched is controversial enough that Labour may not be able to muster enough votes to get the necessary legislation through Parliament. And considering the relative strength of Labour in the polls to date, it makes you wonder why Clark would risk the ignomy of having to withdraw a very, very important government initiative. Unless government is prepared to move some considerable distance, there is no way that this proposal is going to make it through the house. Either that, or Labour feels that it can ram this through despite the opposition of Maoridom. That could be a big mistake.

Some clues to Labour’s heavy-handedness were revealed by Michael Cullen’s interview this morning on Nine to Noon. Cullen underlined the substance of the government’s approach when he said that the decision of the Court of Appeal in the Marlborough Sound case did not recognise in any way the concept of Maori sovereignty. Now, while this is true, it is also true that the case put before the Court of Appeal was not about sovereignty. It was about customary property.

By subtly defining the debate over the seabed and foreshores as a struggle over sovereignty, government is allowing itself to use a very heavy hand to deal with an issue that should really be treated with a bit more delicacy. The judgement of the Court of Appeal found that under common law and subsequent legislation, Maori customary title remains to be disposed of and may or may not give rise to rights in such areas as seabeds and foreshores. As a result, the question of customary rights to the seabed and foreshore is a matter for the Maori Land Court to decide. But the proposal actually predetermines the scope of the rights to be decided upon by the Maori Land Court.

In effect the government “proposal” unilaterally defines what those rights to customary property are. I don't think that is a respectful way of dealing with a treaty partner. There are some pretty narrow definitions in the government proposal. For example, the continuity provision makes it clear that any Maori claims must be for activities that are practised continously until the present time. But that means that Maori groups that have been excluded from customary activities for whatever reason are out of luck.

While I applaud the decision to put seabeds and foreshores in the public domain, the unilateral nature of the government’s response is a little frightening. If the legal basis of New Zealand really is founded upon a partnership between Maori and Pakeha, the question of customary property and rights should be arrived at through a process of negotiation. And by the same token, Maori participation in regulatory processes should move toward a model of effective co-management rather than in the nebulous “veto” that is being offered.

More on Film

2003-12-06T00:11:00.000+13:00

Following up on my last post, I came across commentator Russell Brown musing on the virtues of tax incentives for film production. Writing in his
Hard News he says: "The last time tax advantages had a lot to do with movie production decisions here, all we got was Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence."

The problem with this argument is that cinema production has become a much more globalised industry since 1983. Back then, there was no such word as run away production. If anyone wants to see how effective a system of tax incentives can be for the development of a very lucrative industry, look at the British Columbia Film Commission. The scheme in place there encourages film, television and animation production in BC and is specifically targeted to helping studios hire B.C. labour.

And it works.

"In 1978, the film and television industry spent $12 million directly on production in British Columbia. In 2002, the film and television industry spent over $994 million, creating an economic impact of $2.5 billion. On average, more than 90 percent of the production crews are British Columbians. About 50,000 British Columbia residents rely on the industry for their livelihood."

So while New Zealanders argue about whether the Lord of the Rings did or didn't need an incentive to come to New Zealand, they're missing the point. Big productions like Jackson's are not as important as all the other smaller productions, the movies of the week that keep everybody in work. Those are the productions that are most sensitive to things like labour costs.

If you want to have the work, ya gotta stop arguing about orthodox neo-liberal economics and get on with creating the conditions for a viable, sustainable industry.

I'll be away for a few days. Please post a comment or two. I know you're out there.

Industry and Art Are Two Different Things

2003-12-03T13:47:00.000+13:00

This morning on Radio NZ’s Nine to Noon, Linda Clark interviewed veteran Kiwi filmmaker Gaylene Preston about her work and the state of the film industry in New Zealand. It was a telling conversation.

Preston argued that the lack of tax incentives in New Zealand means that the film industry in this country will never amount to much. That’s because the major studios look for more than scenery. They have become used to an international system of tax rebates to help lure projects away from California and to new centres like Vancouver, Australia and Britain. Although Preston was critical of major studios (she is after all an independent, creative director) she had to admit that relocating major projects to places like New Zealand helps to develop opportunities and skills for people in this country.

If you are reading this from “overseas” as they say here, please be patient. This is all very new in this country.

Predictably, Linda Clark was hostile to the idea of giving corporations a tax incentive. And what was really interesting was Linda Clark’s inability to distinguish between major international projects (the “industry”) and lower budget, local films that told New Zealand stories. Her argument went like this: if the studios aren’t going to tell our stories, why should we give them anything? It’s a typical Kiwi attitude, one that fails to see the connection between using tax incentives for key industries (such as film and television) that directly and indirectly help to foster local, independent production.

Notably, Linda wasn’t too concerned that there wouldn’t be anywhere to show such films, since New Zealand has no publicly funded national television broadcaster.

New Zealand’s neo-liberal ideological climate is so pervasive that, as I have argued before, there are many on the left who are utterly opposed to the idea of tax incentives. This country’s “neutral” tax structure, lauded by the OECD and conservatives, also finds its supporters among those who should be defending the ability of a democratic state to intervene in the economy for the benefit of its citizens. Lack of tax incentives has led to a dearth of investment in sectors of the economy that are critical to Labour’s project of building a knowledge economy.

Now comes news in the New Zealand Herald that government is considering resorting to tax incentives as a way to boost New Zealand’s pathetically low level of investment in information and communication technologies (ICT).

The Herald, no friend of the kind progressive economics practised everywhere else in the world, gave the story the bizarre headline: “Government taskforce promotes politically incorrect tax incentives.”

It just shows how skewed the debate is here. Let’s hope that the recommendations of the ICT taskforce provide a focus for reasoned policy that emulates the successes of other jurisdictions.

Everybody's a Socialist

2003-11-28T13:54:00.000+13:00

It’s gotta be tough being a socialist in New Zealand these days.

The problem may not be so much about politics in the post-Rogernomics era, the prevailing cultural predilection for libertarian grumpiness, or the virtual invisibility of organised labour. No, the real problem is who you have to share the bed with. All sorts of people call all sorts of other people socialists. And the very few people who call themselves socialists don’t tend to be a very happy or progressive bunch of campers.

I’ve got a theory that politics in Aotearoa have been so traumatised by the Labour/National reforms of the 1980’s and 1990’s that the political spectrum itself has been distorted beyond recognition. Here’s how the theory works. A nominally social-democratic party that calls itself Labour brings in a series of right-wing, neo-liberal reforms. Shocked lefty voters abandon the party and National takes command, finishing what Labour started and going even further.

Cue economic stagnation, growth of poverty and crumbling public infrastructure.

So here’s how the process of trauma works itself out. People who used to identify themselves as democratic socialists are so ashamed of themselves that they cease to participate in the kind of social democratic politics that are fairly successful (in varying degrees) in most other western countries. And they stop calling their politics socialist.

Meanwhile right-wingers are so shocked by Labour’s adoption of all their pet projects, and so fearful of an ensuing loss of identity, that they take up the rhetorical device of naming Labour as socialist. It’s nonsense, of course. And it’s a tricky standpoint to maintain, given that in reality there is little significant difference between a National government or one headed by Labour.

That may change as a result of Brash.

So now we have a situation where nobody self-identifies as a socialist, but everybody calls anybody who has the faintest social conscience a socialist. Witness Media Cow ( yet another liberal commentator ) calling Russell Brown a “neo-socialist.” Now I like Brown’s stuff. I read it regularly. But even he is the first to deny that he has a socialist bone in his body. And he’s right. Liberal left might be a more appropriate term. Or just critical.

The problem is that there are no social-democratic politics in New Zealand. And that absence has created a crisis of definitions.

Foreigners at Our Borders

2003-11-25T13:12:00.000+13:00

It is obvious that there is a great deal of difference between being international and being cosmopolitan. All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. G.K. Chesterton

Last Friday I walked into Borders, a giant chain bookstore in downtown Auckland. That’s because Friday is the day that I buy a copy of the Guardian Weekly for some weekend reading.

The Guardian Weekly is a wonderful thing; it has that strange post-empire concern for the global, for stories from all the other countries and continents that we never seem to hear about unless they are the object of military actions from the United States.

And living in New Zealand, with its not-yet-post-colonial cultural imagination, there is something rather quaint about buying and reading a U.K. paper. Buying a cultural product from overseas makes me feel as though I am finally “fitting in.”

Walking to the back of the store, I discovered that the shelf of international papers had been moved. I asked a passing employee for help.

“Excuse me,” I said, “can you tell me where The Guardian is?”

In that great tradition of Kiwi retail performance, he wordlessly conducted me down a flight of stairs, along a hallway, down another flight of stairs and around a corner where he suddenly stopped.

“All along these shelves,” he said. I knew somewhere he was trying to be friendly. I looked at the books. I couldn’t see what I was looking for. I told him so.

“The Guardian,” he said, “I thought you said Gardening. Is that a foreign paper?”

“I guess so,” I said, disturbed by his use of the word foreign. “There used to be a whole shelf of international papers…”

“We don’t sell foreign papers any more,” he said, looking bored.

“Why?” I blurted. “Don’t you like foreigners any more?”

“They don’t sell enough, I guess. All I know is that we just stopped selling all the foreign papers.” And with that he moved silently away.

In Canada, “Foreign” is not a word in frequent circulation. There’s something definitely pejorative about it, something suspicious. In a country that is self-consciously multicultural, it carries significances of intolerance and prejudice.

In New Zealand, you hear “foreign” all the time. And I am convinced that underneath, and linked to its meaning of “not New Zealand” are other, intended and unintended meanings: bad, not-us, them…something to be feared. But there are things which are not from here and which are not foreign, and therefore good.

Anything British, for example.

So why would Borders stop selling The Guardian? My guess is that there is another definition of the bad in this country.

Anything that doesn’t sell enough.

Auckland: Return of the Repressed

2003-11-23T12:57:00.000+13:00

I have been working in another virtual space recently, setting up a site for my partner and I to show our friends back home what our life is like in New Zealand.

There's nothing like trying to find good pictures for a site like that to make you start to wonder about the place you live. And about Auckland, in particular.

Most people in New Zealand already know that Auckland is one of the most awful cities in the western world. It's not news. Occasionally, some international group insists on ranking Auckland as one of the top cities in the world, but you have to wonder if these people have ever actually been here.

Why is it so bad? Simply put, Auckland is not a city. It's a giant small town surrounded by suburbs. Beyond the confines of Queen Street, Auckland presents itself as an unending sprawl of villas and "haute" cafes. As Matiu Carr, from Auckland University's School of Architecture, Property and Planning has said of the villa:

A villa in my opinion expresses an attitude on the relationship of the occupants to nature...a villa...I believe attempts to exercise control
on the landscape [and] nature...

The modern suburban villa nostalgically points back to the Roman dwelling, an architectural form only possible in a slave-owning and strongly patriarchal society, where the family unit contained in such a dwelling was typically a large, extended family. Contemporary villas specifically exclude (because of their size) the possibility of an extended family. They also represent the domination of feminine ( see Beatriz Colomina: Privacy And Publicity, Modern Architecture as Mass Media) space by patriarchal power; thus the nostalgic reference to Roman times.

If anything, Auckland is anti-urban. It lacks difference, cosmopolitanism and diversity. Much of it has to do with the reasons why New Zealand was colonised in the first place.

James Belich, an historian of New Zealand, points to the fact that much of the impetus to emigrate to New Zealand was fueled by a middle-class horror at the rise of urbanism in England. Although the 19th century saw the rise of different class precincts (the first suburbs as well as worker's neighborhoods) it simply wan't good enough for many. Arcadian New Zealand offered people the chance to live in a specifically non-urban, monoclass environment.

Meanwhile, Jock Phillips, in his book A Man's Country: A History of the Pakeha Male points to a revulsion with what was precieved as the effeminate nature of urban experience. This essentially homophobic and misogynistic horror with the city is a significant feature of New Zealand cultural life. He quotes emigration activist Charles Hursthouse:

rather than grow up [in England] wanderer of the earth with no better chance than that of finding myself some day behind the counter with a bonnet on, measuring tape and bobbin to morning misses, or becoming the snubbed clerk with the pale wife and the seedy children, nailed to the dingy desk for life for 60 [pounds] a year, I would turn and breast the current; pull off my coat, take six months at some manly handicraft, and then, spite the dark warnings of Aunt Tabitha, spite the twaddle of my male friends in petticoats, I would secure cheap passage to Australia or New Zealand and...achieve a good deliverance from that grinding , social serfdom, those effeminate chains, my born and certain lot in England.

In this respect, it's no wonder that the closest that Auckland comes to urban experience is K road. K road is the one part of this city that has diversity. And it's also the one part of Auckland that harbours the feminine within the masculine: drag queens, gay culture and prostitutes. Call it the return of the repressed.

Totalitarian Politics

2003-08-30T00:25:00.000+12:00

Welcome!

And first things first.

Recently I got into a bit of an exchange with some lefty folks online about the U.N. bombing. Lots of 'em thought it was just fine.

I didn't. I still don't.

The idea seemed to be that the U.N. had been complicit in U.S. imperialism, and as result, even the people doing humanitarian work became legitimate targets.

I called that an example of totalitarian thinking; of course, someone disagreed and demanded that I consult a dictionary before writing. Like that ever stopped anybody.

But seriously. Listen to the logic. Because the U.N. is not perfect, it then becomes a legitimate target for death. It's an old, old way of thinking about politics:

"Fellow partisans," he said - and Peter percieved two flames, like horns, suddenly fly out from his forehead - "I went to the desert, as you know, to meet God. I was hungry, thirsty, broiling hot. I sat up on a rock and called God to appear.

Wave after wave of devils pounded over me, broke, frothed, and then turned around and flowed back. First were the devils of the body, then the devils of the mind and lastly the all powerful devils of the heart.

But I held God before me as a shield of bronze, and the sand around me filled with fragments of claws and teeth and horns. And then I heard a great voice above me: 'Rise, take the axe brought to you by [John the Baptist], strike!"

"Will no one be saved?" Peter cried. But Jesus did not hear.

"All at once my arm grew heavy as if someone had wedged an axe in my grasp. I started to get up, but as I did so I heard the voice once more: 'Son of the Carpenter, a new flood is lashing out, not of water this time, but of fire. Build a new ark, select the saintly, and place them inside!'

"The selection has begun, friends."

N. Kazanzatkis The Last Temptation