david shearer – Stephanie Rodgers

3 January 201822 December 2017

2017 rewind: The political prospects for 2017: living our values

Well, isn’t that convenient: the tenth-most-read post on Boots Theory in 2017, and thus the first to be posted in this 2017 rewind series, is from the beginning of the year – looking at the year then-ahead.

These are speech notes from a Wellington Fabians panel I was on with Morgan Godfery and Mike Munro. Our topic: the political prospects for 2017.

Originally published 28 January 2017

The political prospects at the start of 2017 are looking pretty bleak. The polls aren’t great. The right is in ascendancy around the world. I don’t even want to know what new fascist executive order Donald Trump has signed in the time it took me to walk here this evening.

The challenge for the left is pretty massive. With crises at every side – climate change, housing, inequality – it’s not enough for us to just get over the line. We need profound progressive change. A fundamental shift in the consciousness of our society.

It can be done. The trick is not to take the wrong lessons from Trump.

We’ve heard it again and again since November. “The white working class feel ignored. That’s why Trump won. That’s why Brexit passed.” In New Zealand, we talk about Waitakere Man, a narrow-minded stereotype from a less-sophisticated Outrageous Fortune. We’re not talking enough about his issues. We’re not paying enough attention to his needs.

And subtly or more usually unsubtly, we hear, “Women? Shush. Brown people? Shush. Queer people? Shush. Your issues are distractions. No one wants to hear about it. Wait until we’re in power.” Feminism lost Hillary the US election, or maybe it was Barack Obama saying a few mild-mannered things about police violence. Here in New Zealand, senior Labour advisors publicly bagged Louisa Wall’s marriage equality bill as a distraction from issues that matter.

It’s like we’ve forgotten a basic fact of leftwing politics. It’s built on solidarity.

That’s the fundamental divide between left and right. We believe in community and cooperation. They believe in self-interest. We’re about the collective. They’re about the individual. We know that the important question is not “how does this benefit me personally?” It’s “how does this benefit us all.” Standing together, not because we’re all the same and we’re all after the same thing, but because we have the same enemy: capitalism, which takes many forms: patriarchy, white supremacy, social conservatism.

The Standing Rock occupation against an oil pipeline in North Dakota does not impact me directly. It’s not my water that could be polluted or my ancestral lands being torn up. But I know the struggle at Standing Rock is aligned to my struggle – against corporate power, against environmental destruction, against dispossessing and exploiting indigenous people and their land. It isn’t about my benefit. It’s about my values.

I don’t want to assume everyone here has sat through at least one Labour Party conference or candidate selection, but I know you’ve heard the line: “My values are Labour’s values. And Labour’s values are New Zealand’s values.”

We understand the importance of values. But we’ve forgotten that they’re not theory. They’re practice. We need to live them.

When we live our values, nothing’s a distraction. Every issue is an issue that matters.

Take healthcare. We Kiwis take such pride in our public health system. We look at the absolute disaster of American healthcare and feel very smug.

Labour’s policy platform says this about health: “a nation where all New Zealanders, regardless of income or social circumstances, are able to live longer and healthier lives because they have the knowledge to make informed health decisions and the support of a strong and adequately funded public-health system.”

That’s a damn strong set of values.

But let’s take three issues which put that principle on shaky ground. (This may be where I lose some of you.)

Abortion. Abortion is still a crime in New Zealand. It’s difficult to access, especially if you aren’t bureaucracy-savvy or don’t live in a major centre. A pregnant person on the West Coast will have to travel to Christchurch, at least twice, to a clinic which is only open a few days each week, in order to terminate a pregnancy. They’ll need to take time off work or find last-minute childcare and god forbid they’re in a vulnerable situation where they have to keep it all a secret. We’re talking about a safe medical procedure, a basic question of personal agency, a life-changing situation which is not adequately supported by our health system.

Assisted dying. Also a crime. We deny people of sound mind the ability to make their own decisions about the end of their own life, no matter how much pain they’re in or how much time they have. We don’t let them treat their pain with cannabis, either.

And trans health care. Trans people face horrific difficulties getting the health care they need, and that’s putting aside the horrific levels of harassment, discrimination and violence they experience. The waiting list for trans feminine surgery, or male to female surgery, has 71 people on it. Doesn’t sound too bad – except that at current rates, someone going on the waiting list now will be there for fifty years.

This surgery literally saves lives. Those of us who don’t have to live every day in the wrong body might find it hard to comprehend. But it is absolutely basic, necessary medical care, which our health system does not provide.

What do these three issues have in common, besides making me incredibly angry? They’re Kryptonite, as far as our leftwing politicians are concerned. They’re dismissed, regularly, as unimportant distractions. Alienating fringe issues.

We’re talking about healthcare. About the value we place on supporting every New Zealander to get the treatment they need, quickly and effectively. Unless you’re unhappily pregnant. Or terminally ill. Or trans.

When we talk about values, and say we believe in certain things, and then we turn around to people and say “shush! Wait your turn! We don’t want to talk about your health, or your lives, or the support you need, it’s a distraction!” all we do is undermine ourselves. We show that our values aren’t dearly-held and unyielding – they’re flimsy. No one elects flimsy.

Imagine if, when a Labour Party conference passed a remit on reproductive rights, or a private member’s bill on assisted dying was drawn, we didn’t flinch. We didn’t throw basic issues of health access and bodily autonomy under the bus for fear of the polls. If progressive MPs and commentators and campaigners all stood together and said “Yeah. We believe every New Zealander deserves modern, accessible medical treatment, unlike this government which has ripped $1.7 billion out of the health system.”

Health is only one example. Imagine if David Shearer hadn’t flinched, when he was asked about the man ban. If he’d said, “It’s 2013. It’s ridiculous there aren’t more women in Parliament. Labour’s looking at ways to change that. Why not go ask John Key why his Cabinet’s such a sausage fest?” Maybe he’d be Prime Minister now.

This is how we improve the political prospects for the left in 2017: being bold. Standing on our principles. Even if people disagree with you, they respect you when you’re consistent and honest. And when you’re running against double-dipping Bill English and Paula Bennett the bully, that can be enough to swing a vote. How many people have you ever heard say “Look, I don’t agree with Winston, but I always know where he stands?”

We don’t narrow our focus. We reach out and show that all our struggles are the same struggle.

This achieves several things. It means our values of solidarity and universalism and community are demonstrated to an immensely broad group of people. Two, it gives people certainty.

Maybe their bugbear is the opening hours of the dental clinic down the road, but they live in a safe rural Tory seat that doesn’t get a lot of attention and certainly won’t warrant a visit from Andrew or Metiria or James. But when they see us standing up for increased health funding, and comprehensive services for marginal communities, and saying “we’re not turning our backs on this group of people, or that small town, or this particular need” they see what kind of people we are. They see our values in action.

A mass movement is not built by finding the largest homogeneous group we can and appealing solely to them. A mass movement is not built by nominating one group – like white working-class men – as the most important people to reach, and expecting women or Māori or queer activists to fall in line for the good of the cause.

Thousands of veterans turned up at Standing Rock to show solidarity with the water protectors. Muslim organisations have donated tens of thousands of bottles of water to Flint, Michigan. And I’ve got to be the only person in this room who hasn’t seen Pride, right? Don’t boo.

That’s how we change the world. By being ourselves. Being the people who believe in solidarity and standing up for the oppressed, even if they don’t look like us or sound like us or need the same things as us.

If we learn the wrong lesson from Trump’s victory – if we accept that the white working class will only support us if we speak exclusively about them and their issues, we are frankly fucked. We’ve sold out the notion of solidarity, which is the heart of our politics.

In 2017, the challenge for the Left is not to find the magic words which will make a mythical racist white working class vote for us. It’s not to silence women or transgender folk or Indigenous people. It’s to stop buying into this divisive bullshit, and show everyone what our values are, and that a better way of doing things is possible.

That’s what people are desperately after.

The prospects for 2017 aren’t looking good. But it could look better.

28 January 2017

The political prospects for 2017: living our values

This week I spoke on an panel with Morgan Godfery and Mike Munro at the Fabian Society in Wellington on the political prospects for 2017. A podcast of the discussion should be up on the Fabians website shortly. In the meantime, here’s my speech notes – about 90% accurate to what I ended up saying on the night, which is how these things always go.

It can be done. The trick is not to take the wrong lessons from Trump.

It’s like we’ve forgotten a basic fact of leftwing politics. It’s built on solidarity.

We understand the importance of values. But we’ve forgotten that they’re not theory. They’re practice. We need to live them.

When we live our values, nothing’s a distraction. Every issue is an issue that matters.

Take healthcare. We Kiwis take such pride in our public health system. We look at the absolute disaster of American healthcare and feel very smug.

That’s a damn strong set of values.

But let’s take three issues which put that principle on shaky ground. (This may be where I lose some of you.)

We don’t narrow our focus. We reach out and show that all our struggles are the same struggle.

This achieves several things. It means our values of solidarity and universalism and community are demonstrated to an immensely broad group of people. Two, it gives people certainty.

That’s what people are desperately after.

The prospects for 2017 aren’t looking good. But it could look better.

24 July 201624 July 2016

US ship visits are about compliance, not maturity

Via Radio NZ:

On Thursday, United States Vice President Joe Biden confirmed during a meeting with Prime Minister John Key in Auckland that America would send a ship to the New Zealand Navy’s 75th anniversary celebrations.

The US has not sent a naval ship since 1983, as it refuses to say whether its ships are nuclear-armed, as required by New Zealand’s nuclear-free law.

Our law is simple enough. You want to send military vessels into our waters, you tell us whether they’re nuclear-armed. You don’t, you can’t. We’re told officials will “assess” whether this one complies with the law. How? Are they wizards?

I’m not surprised our government is keen to get an American warship here, and act like it’s no big deal. John Key has always been clear that he wants to be Obama’s bestie, that New Zealand is part of “the club” and has to pay its dues and look deferential.

But this is a big deal. So I’m more surprised by David Shearer’s comments:

New Zealand and America could now move beyond that chapter in their relationship, with their heads held high.

It would be easy to work out whether the ship complied with the law, he said.

Apparently David Shearer is also a wizard. But on “moving beyond that chapter”, I have an alternative view.

New Zealand’s rejection of nuclear power, and nuclear ship visits, is one of the proudest points of our history. It’s on the great list of Times We Stood Against The World Because We’re Scrappy Little Fighters Who Do What’s Right along with opposing French nuclear tests in the Pacific, not going into Iraq in 2003, and (although this remains a divisive topic, progressives still take pride in) opposing the Springbok Tour.

The images of mass protests on land and water against US vessels entering our ports are a literally iconic part of our progressive heritage.

I realise that’s uncomfortable for people who have a different stance on our place in the world – that we need to prove we’re mature enough to sit at the grown-up table in our suits and ties, and that our great international achievements should be measured by how many fancy titles our retired politicians can win, rather than how many powerful noses we’ve tweaked.

Or as Kerre McIvor put it:

For the young ones, however, those born around the time the no-nukes legislation was passed, they have far more pressing concerns – like finding a job, paying off a student loan, finding an affordable home. This isn’t their issue. But for those of us who lived through that time, the visit by a US Navy ship is a big deal. And a sign that not only have we grown up. But that the US has too.

I was one year old when our government rejected a visit by the USS Buchanan. Three-and-a-half when the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act came into effect. And I can chew gum and think about our country’s role in international politics at the same time.

This ship visit is a power move. It’s a way for the United States to call dibs on our loyalty, and reinforce to us plebs that they’re our benevolent boss. It’s a way to impose a new narrative on our country’s relationship to the US – a willing member of whatever the next coalition will be.

The world hasn’t fundamentally changed since the 70s and 80s. The USA still wants to spread and secure its influence over as much of the world as possible, to build alliances against its ideological foes. Its allies risk becoming targets.

If the United States has “grown up” in terms of foreign policy, it is only by doing exactly the same thing it’s always done, just with bigger weapons and more massive civilian casualties.

I’d rather stay at the kids’ table.

By great luck, I hadn’t written this up before I went to the world premier (fancy!) of The 5th Eye, a new Kiwi documentary on … well, everything. Echelon, drone strikes, our military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the raid on Kim Dotcom’s house, our nuclear-free policy, the “attack” on the Waihopai spy base in 2008, Edward Snowden, and yes. Ship visits.

All these threads are tied together with brilliant clarity and our governments – several of them – don’t come off particularly well. About the only person who manages to make John Key look good is Jonathan Coleman, whose cringing obsequiousness as our Minister of Defence is just humiliating.

If you have a chance to see The 5th Eye at the NZ International Film Festival this month, go. You certainly won’t think positively about a US warship visiting our harbours after you do.

Now if only we had a major Opposition party willing to stand up and say “there is an alternative”.

Here’s a pair of Kiwi tracks to get you in a good mood for Monday:

24 August 201523 August 2015

In defence of actually standing for something

Rob Salmond has a post up at Public Address, In defence of the centre, to which Mike Smith has written a response at The Standard.

It’s an argument I’m a bit tired of, really, because it feels like NZ Labour has been having this argument since 2008, without actually paying attention to the empirical evidence happening all around us. But hey, let’s get a scary leftwing feminist’s voice in the mix.

To sum up my personal objections to Rob’s own objections to Monbiot (down the rabbithole we go):

First, they don’t consider the alternative. How have centre-left parties gone when they’ve tacked away from the centre? It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it goes badly.

This assumes that in every case Rob cites, “tacking away from the centre” was the decisive factor. That over-simplifies the issues, as the comment thread at PA shows. Leadership, specific policies, economic factors, actual-freaking wars, all play a role in electoral success and failure.

Second, peoples’ votes are more malleable than their values.

The data Rob uses is is based on people self-labelling their position on the left-right spectrum.But being “more left than Labour” and “more right than National” are hardly objective measurements.

The assumption is that the “I’m in between Labour and National” group are making an academic assessment of their place on the political spectrum and the comparative left-wing-ness and right-wing-ness of Labour and National. The conclusion is that there’s some policy-related “ground” in between the two parties which can be “claimed”.

But “in between Labour and National” isn’t a fixed point on a map. “Labour” and “National” aren’t even fixed points on a map.

So if there is a concrete “centre ground”, I don’t think anyone really knows what it looks like. It becomes “not too left” and “not too right” – another set of meaningless labels.

Third, Monbiot conflates policy with competence … Clarity is always a good quality in a politician. But you can have clarity, and be competent, no matter where you stand on the ideological spectrum. “Clear” does not mean “extreme.”

Two objections: “not centrist” =/= “extreme”, and “centrist” usually does mean “not clear.”

First: remember when David Cunliffe appointed Matt McCarten as Chief of Staff? The immediate meme, repeated in way too many headlines, was “Labour veers hard left.” The source of that meme? Cameron bloody Slater. Labelling our opponents as “too extreme” to discredit them is a shabby tactic. Let’s not.

Second: there’s a group of questions which crops up at The Standard every so often, usually right before elections when the base are arguing just how leftwing/centrist/rightwing the present Labour leader is.

Do they support a living wage?
Do they support a 40-hour working week with mandatory overtime rates?
Do they believe benefits should be paid at a liveable level?
Do they support truly free education, including or not-including tertiary education?
Free healthcare?
State housing?

These aren’t “centre-left” ideas. They’re not “extreme” either. UMR’s 2015 Mood of the Nation report notes (p20):

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, the economy and employment have dominated responses to the question on what is the most important issue facing New Zealand today.

In 2014 poverty and inequality issues took over.

This obviously did not stop the re-election of the National-led Government but the agenda is shifting.

Concern about poverty and inequality issues began to rise in 2011 and became the number one issue in January 2014.

All of those traditional Labour principles above are part of the solution to inequality. So why did New Zealanders’ increased concern not translate into a victory in either 2011 or 2014?

Because Labour was, and in some ways remains, trying to pursue “the centre”, defined as “not too scary and leftwing”, at a time when New Zealanders’ concerns are leftwing concerns. Money, inequality, class and work.

It’s difficult to clearly communicate a paradox.

For Goff, for Shearer, and ultimately for Cunliffe, those questions above were unanswerable. You could go through reams of policy and say “these kind of align with those ideas” but that’s not the same thing as standing up and saying:

“No one should have to work more than 40 hours a week to feed their kids. Everyone has the right to the absolute basics – a warm, safe home, a social life, time off with the kids, good food on the table, good shoes on their feet. Going to the doctor when they’re ill and getting a good education at the school down the road.

Many people can’t find work, or enough work to pay the bills. When people can’t find work because the jobs aren’t there, when people cannot work because they’re sick or injured or are raising babies or taking care of their parents or grandparents, we have a duty as a community to support them, not make them go hungry and live in mould-ridden housing as a punishment for their circumstances.”

Instead, we’ve had three electoral cycles of: “Everyone should get a living wage but I won’t actually legislate for it because I support small businesses, but they should definitely try to pay a living wage and I’d pay it to government employees, maybe contractors, depending on the financial circumstances.”

And: “I support people who can’t find work which is all National’s fault but also everyone has a responsibility to find work if they can because bludgers are a blight on our society but we must help the poorest except the ones who can paint roofs because if you can paint a roof you can’t be really sick I reckon.”

My examples may be just as cherry-picked and oversimplified as Rob’s, but this is fundamentally my problem with “centrism” or “centre-left politics” as it has been practised by NZ Labour since 2008: it cannot clearly tell voters what it stands for. Because it doesn’t seem to stand for anything.

It’s been tried. It’s failed. Let’s try something new.

20 January 201519 January 2015

No fix for housing affordability as long as we ignore what’s actually affordable

Housing affordability has been a huge issue in New Zealand for a long time, but some extra fuel has been added to the fire by a recent survey which shows housing in Auckland is less affordable than in New York, Los Angeles, or Tokyo.

The survey ranked 378 cities in nine countries and considered the cities affordable if the median house price was a maximum of three times more than the median annual household income.

Auckland’s median house price is $613,000 – 8.2 times the median income of $75,100.

There are a lot of reasons for housing being unaffordable – property speculators driving the prices to ridiculous levels, a National-led government which would love to see wages drop – and a lot of different solutions, depending on whether you listen to the people who make money flipping property (open up more land to development, relax regulations on the building industry) or the people who care about people (a living wage, more stringent taxation on speculation).

Personally I think anyone who looks at Auckland and goes “you know what this city needs to do? Sprawl more!” needs to be banned from ever commenting on Auckland issues because they clearly don’t live/have never lived there (or at least, not in the sprawl they proclaim to love).

Principally I’m concerned by the relaxed attitude Mayor Len Brown seems to have:

He defines “affordable” as under $500,000, which is still more than six times the median household income, but insists more options are being developed.

“A good number of [new apartments] are high $200,000s to low $400,000 purchase prices, and what we’re seeing with those developments is they are selling out,” says Mr Brown.

“The most recent example I’ve got is that the St James apartment development, which is being built in conjunction with the renovating of the great old St James theatre. That’s only just come on for pre-sale, and it’s already pre-sold by half – and they haven’t even started the project.”

I immediately question whether the kinds of people who can pre-buy apartments which haven’t even started construction are the kind of hardworking/struggling/middle-New-Zealand families who find it impossible to get their first home – if only because banks demand a far higher deposit on apartments. Even if you’re talking only $280k for the place, you may need to find over $80k just to get your foot in the door.

And it brings to mind what I was saying just yesterday about taking numbers out of context: what use is it knowing that unbuilt apartments are selling like hotcakes unless we ask who is buying them? What proportion are first-home-buyers? New Zealand-based investors? Overseas-based investors? Corporate interests?

But the other problem is this: Brown defines “affordable” as “under $500k”. This is a common bit of silliness in the house-price debate, with even Labour under David Shearer declaring that “affordable” covered everything from $300,000 on-average-per-house to $550,000 for a single-family home.

The problem is, the Demographia survey defines “affordable housing” as a median price of no more than three times the median household income. Across New Zealand, for the year ending 30 June 2014, that was $72,394 – giving an “affordable” median price of $217,000. For Auckland, as quoted above, it’s $75,100 – a bit higher, but we’re still talking a median of $225,000.

Building a lot of apartments in the “high 200s to low 400s” might drag the current obscenely-high median lower, but it’s still not getting us anywhere near “affordable”.

There may be many reasons for housing unaffordability, and many possible solutions, but we’re never going to make progress on the issue as long as we can’t even be realistic about what “affordability” is – and acknowledging that it’s far less than those of us lucky enough to already own our homes would assume.