Labour and National both avoided the main debates – climate crisis, infrastructure failures, equity issues and geopolitics – in favour of playing back to the people their current fears and insecurities
Opinion: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it, good and hard” – HL Mencken.
I made the points on a number of occasions during the election campaign that (a) the main political parties were really not addressing most of the significant issues facing us and (b) on the day after the election we would not be delivered from evil whatever our prayers had been.
We had an election campaign in which people sensed that everything from the clusters of supporters trying to look like crowds; to the televised “debates” where facile point scoring by participants was reinforced by immediate “won/lost” scores; to “policies” being flung like half-cooked pasta at a kitchen wall hoping one might stick and we would be finished, were fake. The election campaign as reality television: sometimes cringeworthy, often banal, always without substance.
READ MORE:
* Election 2023: Live results
* Te Pāti Māori rolls Labour
* Christopher Luxon promises a new day – well, he’s got 100 of them
I am told that polls and focus groups among those “middle” voters were telling the major parties the same things (funny that). So they were being given it, if not good and hard, then poor and weak. But nevertheless, what they seemed to want.
Still here we are, after our Wannabe election – with what nobody really, really wanted.
I’ll leave it to others to analyse the voting patterns and the make-up of the new Parliament. In my view the important “who gets what” issues are not political roles but rather where the patterns of power and spending will now go. The election reshuffles faces but all of the realities remain to be addressed.
What is our national response to the massive climate crisis? There is very little that one can be confident about in this. The most likely outcome is that we continue to muddle through with the major aspiration being to appear to comply with international obligations (the trade more than the moral ones) and to try to avoid any more change in our economic activity or lifestyle than we are forced into.
How about our numerous infrastructure problems? Without reframing in terms of “green” outcomes and processes we are left with substituting private or local government borrowing to replace central government borrowing. No plans to enhance capability or reprioritise. We will continue to take the “fix the potholes” approach to infrastructure.
Looming over this is the demonstrated limited capability of our government or private sector to actually deliver major projects or change programmes. This is not an area where “less is more” applies despite incoming politicians’ promises. Of course “more is more” is also not true. What is needed is “different” and “better” about which we have heard almost nothing.
On equity issues it is hard to see improvements. As with infrastructure we have an unfortunate quinella. A reluctance to address the main issues of wealth, income and social determinants of wellbeing coupled with limited capability to deliver positive change in the public sector anyway. The main parties squabbled over details on the menu and wine list while the privileged ate the food.
It got almost no attention during the campaign but – “hello!” – there are huge geopolitical concerns around us. Maybe we have a consensus of our view and place in these but if so it is a very quiet and little discussed view. Our vision on such matters has been restricted to trade issues and occasional nods to a Pax Americana that no one else considers credible outside of Washington.
This is what happens when you limit your political process. When both major parties avoid the main debates in favour of playing back to the people their current fears and insecurities and leveraging those to their advantage.
We have seen where the money flowed, its source and destination. This was a result bought quite cheaply – some benefits will flow to the narrow class involved in that. Most people were disillusioned into apathy or co-opted into a vision which is quite capable of conveying to some a temporary “benefit” in tax rates but will also carry the bitter aftertaste of revenge for imagined lapses and perceived wrongdoings of the ousted Government. We will all find that our issues are unchanged.
Those who fear outcomes from the political shift, be they small or large, should waste no time in either despair or recrimination. Nor should those who are uncertain. The only thing that makes sense is to keep working on what we consider important and the solutions we can identify. Rather less of those solutions are in the hands of government than we might often think.
The lesson of the election is not that elites have financial and political power. They do, but that is not new. The real lesson is that community-based organisation and activity is the important thing. Without it a progressive political party will not achieve its goals. If it allows itself to be hollowed out at community level it is vulnerable. We cannot administrate and direct our way to positive social change. Our ability to influence any Government is driven by our ability to define objectives more clearly, involve more people in our activities, and stand up for those objectives and activities.
If we allow others to define what is important for us and we allow them to think we will meekly let them deliver that, then we will not much like the outcome.
