McCarten on Labour
August 12th, 2012 at 10:43 am by David FarrarMatt McCarten writes in the HoS:
Does it look like Shearer could despatch Key yet? Of course not.
But no single person can win government without a front bench of competent potential cabinet ministers. So here’s the real question: do Labour front benchers look like they are ready to govern? Have they earned the confidence of the public?
Labour’s problem is not its leader, it’s the caucus. The Green Party in Parliament is less than half Labour’s size yet day after day they prove how lacklustre our main opposition party is.
This may partly be because the media don’t scrutinise the Greens so much.
With the exception of Shearer and his deputy Grant Robertson, do we hear anything much from the rest of Labour? What sense do you have of their finance spokesman? It’s David Parker, if you’ve forgotten.
I assumed David Cunliffe would have been a better pick. But Shearer did appoint him to target Key’s right-hand man, Steven Joyce, the Minister of Everything.
Cunliffe must have a secret plan he’s not sharing with us because he hasn’t initiated one attack on Joyce for more than a month. He’s awol.
And what about our other great hope, Shane Jones? Admittedly, he’s sidelined but he still sits on the front bench so he should do something notable. Alas, his website hasn’t been touched since November.
Cunliffe and Jones’ lack of seriousness suggests they should recommit or put up their hands for early retirement.
I think Jones’ time is up. Cunliffe still has a contribution to make, but the ABC faction would like him to retire.
So about the other talent? During Cunliffe’s leadership bid, he tried to persuade me that Nanaia Mahuta was a hidden talent and once in a front-bench leadership role she would be formidable. I was unconvinced. Does anyone outside the Wellington beltway even know she is Labour’s education spokesperson?
You’d think with all the fallout from National Standards and charter schools she’d be a household name. Yet in over a month, according to her own website, she’s put out a total of three press releases.
Even the new blood such as Jacinda Ardern, at No 4, can’t seem to lay a hand on Paula Bennett as she goes about kicking the poor. The most attention Ardern got was when Maggie Barry made a nasty remark over her not having a child.
Labour has always owned health but I bet you couldn’t tell me who its spokesperson is? Health minister Tony Ryall must find it hard to believe he hasn’t had one sleepless night from being marked by Maryan Street. I respect Street but she’s made no impact on him.
One can dispute some of Matt’s individual comments, but hard to dispute that collectively there is a lack of profile and impact from the Labour front bench.
Even putting aside the day-to-day non-performance, think about this. Winning the Maori seats from the Government at the next election is Labour’s key to victory. Yet its Maori Affairs spokesperson, Parekura Horomia, has put out just two press releases in nearly six months. One was condolences to a family and the other acknowledged the Maori New Year. Good grief!
That is one definite case for retirement.
Related posts:
- The Labour reshuffle
- What will Cunliffe do?
- Labour’s front bench
- Labour’s Women’s Vice-President slams Labour front bench
August 12th, 2012 at 10:50 am
Four sentences from the blog author.
About 500 words from a Mainstream Media Marxist propagandist.
This is “blogging”???
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 11:16 am
And has Matt McCarten paid his taxes yet, or is that for other people.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 11:31 am
For all of the angst on McCarten’s part and self-satisified chuckles from National Party supporters, it seems to me that both groups are missing the key point.
Labour is in trouble, and National is doing well, because National has achieved what Holyoake did. They have taken over much of the Labour Party’s policies, and attitudes towards society, and simply sold themselves as better managers of the whole.
What then is Labour left with? To argue for more, bigger and “better” government, with more spending, paid for by more taxes, to “fix” the problems of our society. Yet we already have a massive government presence in our lives. I suppose the state could gobble up another 20% of the economy in the manner of the Nordic nations, but if that were ever going to be possible it would have happened long ago, when people trusted the government to look after them.
So Labour is constrained by the reality of people’s tolerance for more government and the event horizon of social welfare states already running out of other people’s money. There are simply no new Left-wing ideas out there to push, beyond fringe issues like gay marriage. All the competent personnel in the world is not going to change that reality.
Which brings me to the National Party. With no opposition willing to muster the intellectual and political capability to argue for bigger government, National can simply sit on what exists and tweak it. This is “conservative”; it avoids ruffling feathers and alienating voters. It got Holyoake four consecutive terms of office.
Of course it does not actually move us forward as a nation. Having berated our Political Left for lacking the balls and brains to push further into socialism, it would be remiss of me not to point out that our Political Right lack the balls and brains to argue for smaller government.
So here NZ sits, stuck in this middling status quo: hoping against hope that something will turn up, that if we carefully count our pennies and are tight-arsed enough about spending for long enough, that the private economy will continue to creep along and narrow the gap between what we spend and what we can afford. I suppose if one could imagine a scenario where National remain in power for seven or eight consecutive terms, that that would be a pragmatically acceptable scenario. But who can believe such a scenario?
More likely a Labour-Green coalition will take power in 2017, pick up the departments, ministries and all the rest of the machinery of state that National has so kindly retained for them and blow into that whatever money can be sucked out of the private sector, with Keynes. But given the very different economic world being presented by almost all our major trading partners – many of whom face exactly the same problems with very dark economic clouds on the horizon – I doubt they’ll be as lucky as Clark and Cullen were in 2000.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 11:37 am
Can I paraphrase Tom?
With no-idea National forming the government, a party that has completely forgotten their founding principles, and does not even have anybody on board who can understand them or articulate them, NZ is fucked.
Am I right, or am I right?
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 11:55 am
Must be Sunday, Redbrokenrecord preaching again.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 11:55 am
tom and red
Quite right.
Epitomised by Bill English,who keeps reminding us that we could become a Greece. He knows we nearly are.He’s like a jockey on a speeding horse. Trying to slow it down but not prepared to stop it.
We’re still charging towards the line but just a little behind the Europeans.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
That’s right Kowtow, and not one politician (or bureaucrat or media commentator) with the guts to speak the truth.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 12:34 pm
kowtow red keep the sycophantic behaviour to reds blog some on here find arse licking distasteful
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
gruff
A legend in his own lunch time.
Like a mad dog howling in the blogosphere.With his climate alarmism and anti christian diatribes.
there’s more than a few kbers who know he not only howls shit but enjoys the taste of it too.
A dog that keeps returning to his own vomit.Dogs lick their own holes don’t they gruff,what’s it like?
Arse licker indeed.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 1:21 pm
Tom Hunter I don’t believe I’ve ever read a better summary of where we are at.
I think Key et al would dearly love to do ‘what needs to be done’ though, but unfortunately that means massive re-adjustment and suffering for too many people because NZ is now poor.
So the NZ public, although still reasonably conservative to a degree won’t exactly vote for Act or any party with those basic principles that most people apply to their own households.
We’ll just continue to vacillate from the centre left to the centre right so as to continue enjoying all those socialist must-haves we have grown up with but can’t afford.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Don’t agree with a lot of what McCarten said.
I think Robertson, Cunliffe, Parker, Ardern et al will make a great front bench.
I would move Nania into Maori Affairs and Chris Hipkins into Education.
Take Street off Health and give it to Robertson.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 1:27 pm
What really stood out for me was when McCarten informed us that Shane Jones hasn’t touched his website since November. Hard to believe. But then,
Which website are we talking about??
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
No one seems much concerned that NZ hasn’t paid its way in the world since 1973! http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/08/guest_post_our_high_exchange_rate.html
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
You’ve been pushing this line of argument for sometime Red, and every time you do I wish I could find an online example of a cartoon by the great Gordon Minhinnick that was published in the lead up to the 1949 election. Having failed the online search I will have to describe it.
Holland is portrayed in two frames. In the first, labeled “1938″, he is thundering away in front of a crowd with his famous line that (and I am paraphrasing here without the cartoon in front of me): I say, on the present basis, that social security is applied lunacy. In the second, labeled “1949″, he is shown in front of a similar crowd of voters, with both hands in a welcoming, open-palm pose, saying: All existing social security benefits will be retained.
Well of course he retained the core of Labour Party policy! He had no choice. It was that or lose yet another election to Labour, as he had in 1946. He kept compulsory unionism as well, against the party platform, and for equally pragmatic reasons.
So it would seem that you actually have more faith in the National party than I do. John Key is acting in good company with the traditional regard toward “National Party Principles”.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 1:47 pm
McCarten is correct as far as he goes: underneath the weakness of Labour’s leader lies the weakness of the Labour team. But underneath that lies the weakness of Labour’s ideas. All they have to offer are reheated leftovers from failed socialist experiments of the past. They have no really new ideas, and more important DO NOT WANT to have new ideas.
tom et al, I appreciate your point of view on National’s cautiousness, but a) the radical action you seek would just bring Labour back to power sooner, and b) you underestimate the diference National is making to the shape of the state and the economy. That difference is somewhat hidden for now because of the weak economic situation which holds down the private sector and upholds state spending. In time however, I think it will add up to a much bigger difference than you expect.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
I don’t disagree entirely but the key is “time”. I think we’re out of it! Even that would not matter if, like the Leftists when in power, National had embedded new, fundamentally different structures into NZ society, structures that could not be unwound by future Labour-Green governments.
I’m talking about structures that would enable people to start to become less dependent on the state for all of life’s needs. People empowered not just in terms of what they are legally allowed to do but what they are financially capable of doing. If that means “subsidising” people in buying private education for their kids and private health for themselves, then so be it. I don’t actually like that approach – and certainly it would cause the left to scream to high heaven about the public sector being deprived of funds. But they’re going to scream anyway, and if their complaints are accepted then the status quo (which they love) will never be moved.
I’m actually not one who argues for National to throw all caution to the wind and embark on a “revolutionary” course. I am well aware that would mean. But I don’t accept that such moves are as politically dangerous as is threatened – if National could be smart enough (now I’ve said it). After all, in Kiwisaver we already have an example of how this is happening in the field of retirement, and that was introduced by a Labour government as both an explicit way of getting people to take greater care of themselves and an implicit acknowledgement that people would not be able to rely on the traditional “universal”, tax-funded program of State Superannuation. If that argument can be made to work in the world of pensions, why not in these other areas, where the future demands may be even greater, and the gap between what is needed and what the state can truly provide is even more stark?
But they have not done that. They’ve not even started to make the arguments, let alone put something in place that is solid. Every single thing they have done is reversible, and the only hope I have is that a future Labour-Green government will be constrained by economic circumstances that they will have to continue with the same penny pinching.
But that’s not much of a future.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 2:12 pm
I see DPF considered that mentioning that McCarten had pointed out that no Labour spokesperson has spoken out on the unemployment level rising wasn’t noteworthy, or maybe it’s just being avoided here as well as on the Labour benches.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
I’m a long-time National voter, but I will say this –
Vote:Key and English are GUTLESS pricks.
They could EASILY have axed Bludging for Families in the Budget, but no – even though that is a Labour thing, it is now a “sacred cow” and must not be touched (in their view).
They could have EASILY put a deadline on the DPB – “from date “x”, no more applications will be accepted for the DPB.” Again, they have wimped out.
I’m thinking of voting for the corpse of ACT, because although they’re damned-near dead, at least they have the BALLS to say what needs to be said. It’s unfortunate that New Zealanders simply aren’t bright enough to vote for them.
August 12th, 2012 at 3:28 pm
thor42, they cannot axe WFF until the economy re-enters fairer weather unemployment goes down and wages begin to rise. Unfortunately that may not be for another 2 election cycles. Until then, they need the political stability it provides. It was also a United Future policy and they are part of the coalition. If National-Act could go it alone, then maybe we will see some change.
They should fix it like Labour did with Tax rates in the noughties, and let inflation eat the impact away until it is inconsequential.
Voting for a list of Act principles may seem a good idea, but it needs politicians who live and actively promote, in clear English, those principles and why they are important. We don’t have that. We have John Banks. Rodney Hide should be brought back as leader of Act for 2014, and Stephen Franks as No. 2.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 3:42 pm
Trade off. More right wing party in opposition. Or more centrist party in govt. The problem is the voters, not the govt.
I do have some sympathy for tom’s suggestion to put in place measures that over time make things more sustainable. Kiwi saver and the Reserve Bank Act are great examples. My thoughts would be:
Vote:- school vouchers / some mechanism for school choice. 3 years of that and parents won’t tolerate going back to the old way
- control of local council spending. Max of inflation without special dispensation
- clear political pain in excess spending growth in central govt. The fiscal responsibility act might do that
- locked in gradual creep up in retirement age, starting in ten years
- control over ACC growth – perhaps competition
- control over welfare growth
August 12th, 2012 at 5:58 pm
Because he really troubled Ryall when he last had it didn’t he??
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 7:51 pm
There simply cannot be a complete u-turn in policy, especially when it comes to WFF.
What people do not realise is that WFF removed the obligation of businesses to pay a living wage, on the assumption that the government would top up wages of those who need it the most. The end result is the foundation for a low wage-high tax economy.
In order for businesses to pay higher wages, there must be growth. Now we simply cannot legislate for this, but the changes that can be made must be incremental, and with a minimum of pain, for both the working stiff, and the business that employs that person.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
“I’m talking about structures that would enable people to start to become less dependent on the state for all of life’s needs. ”
Great. Declare war on the rest of modernity while you’re at it.
Vote:August 12th, 2012 at 11:35 pm
The alternative will be that I vote for a Green-Labour government, safe and secure in the knowledge that True Believers like you will continue to engorge the system. Why should righties like me take responsibility for burning down state welfare systems when we can have idiot lefties do it for us.
Go Greece!
Vote:August 13th, 2012 at 8:04 am
tom hunter, you should start blogging.
John Key’s record is awful. And it will be universally acknowledged once the glow wears off. After John Key we will have a nation deeply in debt, the welfare pyramid scheme ready to explode, ChristChurch in shambles, and the traditional Dad/Mum families shunned as an aberration and with the heavy hand of government ready to smack them in case they every decide to discipline their children.
Vote:August 13th, 2012 at 8:35 am
duggledog: I think Key et al would dearly love to do ‘what needs to be done’ though
The true believer. Facts won’t get in the way!
90% of the country voted to abolish the anti-smacking law, and what did John do?
I think John is very comfortable with what he is doing now. There is not a single indication that he does not believe in what he is doing. The National Party has always been the party to claim to be a better Labour than Labour.
The only real reforms we had have come from Labour. But that’s gonna be a long wait given the enormous purge the party still has to go through.
Vote:August 13th, 2012 at 10:23 am
Cunliffe is overseas looking for a job, back in Banking, where he was considered good.
He has realised that he has no future in Labour in New Zealand.
Robertson et al have destroyed anything in that direction.
Cunliffe would not have put up with the crap surrounding Shearer from within the peculiar Parliamentary party and their Union and other cohorts..
Vote:August 13th, 2012 at 12:45 pm
“The alternative will be that I vote for a Green-Labour government, safe and secure in the knowledge that True Believers like you will continue to engorge the system. Why should righties like me take responsibility for burning down state welfare systems when we can have idiot lefties do it for us”
Oh please. You aren’t going to get rid of big government no matter what you do. Even if it goes bankrupt, it will have to be re-instituted, because it is indispensable. In the end, we will have to pay for it by reducing spending on privately provided goods (i.e. increased taxation) or by some sort of debt holiday. Whatever we do to fix the debt problem, big government is never going away.
This is not because big government is some socialist plot (I vote for no left party myself), but because it is the simplest and cheapest proven way to solve many social and economic problems that we have. For example, the government is the key institution for risk pooling in modern societies, because the private sector can’t do it as effectively or at all in many cases. Getting rid of big government is removing most people’s major source of insurance. Good luck with making a society work without that. No developed society ever has.
There’s a difference between realising that we generally have crap government (we do) and thinking that no government would be better (it will not be).
Vote:August 13th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Tom: There’s a difference between realising that we generally have crap government (we do) and thinking that no government would be better (it will not be).
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that big government is working. At the moment. But it has one tiny little problem: one day you’ll run out of other people’s money.
Tom, you believe in a pyramid scheme, and yes, these systems work for a while.
Vote:August 13th, 2012 at 2:04 pm
That’s an entire Serengeti plains-worth of strawman burning away there. The usual, dopey, slippery slope argument of the eternal leftist. You might note from my original point about Kiwisaver, that I am far away from being the libertarian (or objectivist) that you would love to be arguing against.
In other words, I’m using the very fact of what a leftist government did – the creation of a private-sector, private-savings pension scheme based on individuals, added to a tax-funded state pension scheme – as an example of where this country should go with regard to health care, education and other areas. That is a long way from a libertarian vision of society – but also from your dying vision of a cradle-to-the-grave welfare state.
And of course you don’t even realise that the reason we have “crap” government is precisely because it has got too big. Hayek’s 1940′s critique of socialism was focused on the basic idea that a state-managed economy is impossible because the managers can never have enough information to actually manage – but that critique could apply equally well nowadays to the state-controlled “industries” of education and health (and welfare).
In your world, “crap” government can be improved if only the best systems, and the best managers, and ultimately the best politicians are selected for the job – which was the conceit of the Muldoonists back in the 1970′s, and those who supported Jim Anderton. Obviously that belief dies hard, but it is dying.
For all of your soundbite jibe about “modernity” it would appear to be you who is living in the past, not to mention having a highly Marxist view of the scientific inevitability of big government:
That’s the argument that underpinned ACC, and it’s steadily rotted away over the years because it makes no more sense that if one argued that only vast, state-owned farms could insure against famine. We could not possibly rely on a network of thousands or millions of farmers connected with hundreds of agribusinesses. The Great Collective is the only safe way comrade.
I’m surprised you did not rail against “Big Screen” TV’s, but it points to yet another nail in the coffin of your vision – people are increasingly reluctant to sacrifice their personal lives for the greater good, or at least as much sacrifice as you require, which appears to never be enough.
Which leads us finally to the “debt problem” that gets created. That was fixed in any number of Eastern European countries by very much making “big government” go away, not to mention a number of former statist shitholes around the world, and given the relative success they’ve enjoyed since then they’re much more watchful of growing goverment than we are. They’ve seen where it leads. Funnily enough so did we, although, like Hayek, we focused only on the uselessness of the state owning the commanding heights of the economy. Which leads me to the last point:
Heh, heh, heh. Well, that’s the other big secret hiding right under your nose sweetie! When that major source of insurance does fail people – as it’s failing them right across Southern Europe now – you’ll be quite surprised at how quickly people abandon big government, and how reluctant they are to return to it.
Perhaps the key is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Just a thought!
Vote: