Pseudo-intellectual About Town

Earlier in the year, I was privileged enough to get free advice from one of NZ's most influential lobbyists. Mai Chen gave a lecture on myth busting the dark art of persuasion at Rutherford House. Verily, it was good.

One myth, don't try special pleading with MPs. It doesn't work. If your point is to be effective, it must be for the greater good somehow, not just your own little retainered fiefdom. It's the same principle involved, albeit with the telescope swinging the other way, when the public react to MPs special pleading themselves. Think Roger Douglas, Chris Carter and Bill English on perks. Little wonder if they get a black eye or a bleeding nose when it swings their way and they're not paying attention.

Another point Ms Chen made. If you hold a free lecture like this in Auckland, no-one comes. She said this to around 150 people or more in the Rutherford House theatre. I can fully believe it. It's why I never got around to writing up any Supercity crap. If Aucklanders don't give a shit, why should I? Auckland's more a Portuguese Man O War than a unitary confluence anyway. Good luck to anyone who can steer that squid. I'm busy preparing for Wellington's transition.

If for no other reason than Auckland's Not Interested intransigence (You'll never see a Hellfire Club started in Auckland), any Public Intellectual thinking will come from Wellington (No good social movements come out of Christchurch, although there's a few good people there. Maybe it's the Nor' Wester. Maybe it's the faux-English drag act that the city clings to like a gin bottle. But Christchurch is not a fertile home to big thoughts).

I say this after Pablo at KiwiPolitico's excellent post on NZ social thinkers snowballed Chris Trotter into a muse on truth to power. Bryce Edwards has said his piece too. It's fascinating stuff and obviously touched a nerve. I'm glad to see that the Left still has some spine.

Auckland used to have opium dens, along Nelson St at a guess. K Road used to have character and a hint of danger, before it lost its guts and blanded down to the slightly quirky strip mall it is these days. In fairness, Wellington's Cuba St has seen better days too. There's no Carmen to outrage the twinset and pearls brigade.

And Helen Clark's smokefree laws have banned any chance of dens of iniquity anywhere. No places where heresies can be exchanged, ideas collided (Camus, after all, was and always will be a smoker). Drinking Liberally is an attempt to reboot this vibe, but no speaker has really seized the imagination enough to compel my attendance.

It's a great shame. This place has so much potential. New Zealand has always been a grand experiment. European colonisation began with science. Abel Tasman dismissed the islands, but Cook's science field trip (to study the Transit of Venus among other curiosities) included New Zealand and it was that that started the really long migration. Karl Popper saw fit to visit and study our progress later on. He was the first of many academics to not hang around here for long.

It's not that the country is short on criticism. We're a nation of critics. You're doing that wrong, that's not how you do it, you can't do that. If in doubt, the answer is no. Consequentially we've developed to be icons of iconoclasts, each to their own and bugger the rest.

Whilst Trotter keeps snowballing the rogernomes, the rot set in much much earlier. Rogernomics did not give us Michael Laws or Lindsay Perigo. Anyone remember Norm Jones berating the Homosexual Reform Bill in the 80's, on the steps of parliament waving his stick has all those godless queers? Patricia Bartlett anyone?

We tend to be good at destruction but consider any creation with doubt, fear and trepidation. Say NIMBY. Wealth creation is seen as such a particularly dirty task, we leave it to foreign capital to pay for our housing fixes and petit indulgences. The NZ stockmarket never recovered from the '87 crash. Stocks and shares are a big boys' game anyway, seeing as how all those flashy prospectuses and TV advertising before the finance company collapses shows none of it was worth a set of adman's cufflinks. Fortune favours the insiders.

Rugby is taken more seriously than any other corporate religion, to the extent that Clark's Labour pushed for Rugby World Cup protection racket laws, discussed in the latest issue of Werewolf talking to Time Law Lord Walker. The closest most kiwis get to a passionate debate is watching rugby or netball on the telly.

We're not only critics but we're experts too. Public intellectual discourse is full of it on talkback shows, at DPF's and the Herald's YourViews section of the gutter. Our mainstream media is full of experts, from P experts such as Paul Holmes and Mike Sabin, through to philosopher kings such as Michael Laws, who have a near-divine private pool of wisdom. Certainly a monopoly on soundbites and media-whoring.

I can't remember the last time I saw a proper interview on the MSM box. There is certainly no signs of intelligence left on the free to airs. Paul Holmes displayed no greater example of just how much respect, professionalism and interest in his craft he has, than with his time talking at David Kilcullen on Q&A recently. He managed to mispronounce both his name and the title of his latest book, before reading out a number of non-contiguous questions obviously not written by him.

Russell Brown on Media 7 has been the best and most consistently impressive cross-examiner over at TVNZ ondemand. I might get round to watching Talk Talk too sometime, once I stop buggering my datacap.

But for all this bitching, I think the state of public discourse in NZ has never been better. In spite of the pervasive Nanny Statism, talkback vomit and occasional blog sewer, in spite of the likes of Ian Wishart and Bob McCroskrie being taken seriously, in spite of the lack of public spaces and private places where one can sit in warmth and comfort with consenting puffers and kind strangers. In spite of all this, I have hope.

The stereotypical academics are beginning to circulate outside the ivory towers of circular reasoning through a number of blogs, freeing interested readers and commenters from the constraints of time and space of public gatherings. Conferences and talks which most would have no means or contacts to go to in person are posted up for public consumption online. While the public spaces are tamed and anonymised into nothingness, social networking sites provide a platform for soapboxes of all shapes and sizes. Communication has never been easier.

Don't expect an avalanche of public intellectuals to suddenly burst onto the scene though. NZ is a country of part-time tinkerers and our thinkers are no different. The renaissance is here. We're soaking in it. But don't expect miracles.

The Hongi and the Headbutt

"No. 1 was surly, 2 was mean, 3 was vicious and 4 was brutal - although Mean Machine, as he became to he known, was to prove most dangerous on those rare occasions when his dial setting got stuck on 4½."

Thank you frog for curing my writer's block on how I was going to start this post. Because the last week has shown that Labour has got its dial stuck on 4½ and is caught up in a headbutting frenzy.

Helen Clark's been headbutting John Key in Question Time. Michael Cullen's been using his head to drive in the last spike at KiwiRail. Annette King's been bonking Mack trucks. Phil Goff might find a few heads to smack in the NZDF (that's NZ Defence Force, not Drug Foundation). But Labour is hitting its head against a brick wall. The only damage it is doing is to itself, self-mutilation by scalping.

The masses do not not give a flying truck which PR company political parties use, whether it's Crosby Trextor or Crosby, Stills and Nash. Brian Edwards was on cruise control on this morning's Agenda, easily monopolising the segment and carpet-bombing the panel with praise for Labour. Helen Clark isn't a helpless damsel in this department.

The attacks on the ACC/Merrill Lynch connection was likewise self-defeating. The last National government in the late '90s privatised ACC, albeit too late in the play and with abysmal delivery (Many doctors I spoke with at the time complained about the added paperwork). The Merill Lynch report was only stating the patently obvious.

John Key has gone on record stating that no privatisation will occur in National's first term, and he would be a mug to renege on that promise. It's entirely sensible for National to spend the first term in government opening the books, assessing the damage caused by nine years of ineptitude and cronyism, and applying triage to the SOEs.

For example, it will take years for National to recover all the value wiped from TVNZ by Clark's administration. Bill English made a sound case on Agenda, foreshadowing an adjustment to electricity SOE accounts to enable some reinvestment in future generation capacity, as opposed to Labour's wholesale revenue-stripping to pay for pet projects.

Labour's attack on John Key's commercial history not only backfired, it portrayed Labour in the haughtiest light possible. How dare a politician have a previous life in the private sector. Philosopher Kings (and Queens) can only be ordained in the ivory towers of academia, on the slippery pole of union advocacy, the know-it-all egotism of teaching, the long and faithful service as a public sector wonk. Thank you Labour, for tarring intellectual thought in your quest for eternal governance.

These tactics, which I have seen coming for about a year, risk alienating Labour's voting base to the point where it remains an ineffective opposition for a generation or more. I keep telling Labour strategists whenever I bump into them, but it's just not sinking in.

The only saving grace for Labour at present is Russel Norman's inauspicious beginnings as co-leader for the Greens (As Jane Clifton said in Political Animals this week, nobody loves a goody two shoes). I maintain that Nandor Tanczos should have been made Greens co-leader, which would have seen the Greens come out as a serious contender to Labour at the election. Longer term, you might have seen an amalgamation of Labour and the Greens as an environmental and social democratic coalition. But coulda woulda shoulda, it's not going to be. The Greens will be lucky to get eight percent come polling day. It's all over, Rover.

The Nats, on the other hand, are an intriguing beast. Imagination is on their side. While Labour is going headbutt crazy, the Nats are demonstrating cautious humility. John Key's hongi with Tame Iti is emblematic of an openess to new ideas and inclusive consultation that eludes the Labour party.



National's team are a government in waiting. It is not a stretch to imagine John Key as prime minister and doing a better job of it than Helen Clark. Bill English as finance minister trumping Michael Cullen, Chris Finlayson as Attorney General and Treaty Settlements minister, Tim Groser as trade minister, Jonathan Coleman Associate Minister of Health in charge of drug policy. It is not a stretch to imagine that they will listen to reason, unlike their compromised predecessors.

Although my heart belongs to the Labour party long term, I'm sick to death of fisking Labour. There's no sport in it any more. It's like shooting fat, slow moving fish in a claustrophobic barrel. With an Uzi. If National can fulfil my expectations for a Labour government better than a Labour government can, so be it. Warning to the Nats though, if you're found lacking, you'll get both barrels from me ;-)