Just Left

Where does change arise?

Lots of people in political parties - both activists and staff - seem to think political change comes from & is led by government, by the political world.

Aside from my first few years in Labour, I've never really thought that was a deep enough analysis of how change arises or how to drive it. It just is not convincing that a model like this can really secure deep seated change:

Pass a law --> support builds --> behaviour changes --> attitudes change.

That model doesn't explain Labour's passage of civil unions in 2004 (where the drive for change came from a community campaign outside parliament); the failure of Labour's attempt at electoral finance reform (where that model would secure change that endured, which patently didn't happen); or the foreshore & seabed legislation.

I'm a bit of a post modernist in my approach to political theory and I don't really buy any massive coherent theory models in whole.

It seems to me that change arises from the interplay between structural and institutional dimensions, political and wider social culture, and the events of the day/broader global situation.

The broad neo-liberal (with all its flaws, a viable description just now) changes in New Zealand since the 70s have reinforced each other: institutional change responded to an end to patience for government control of economic life, creating institutions and policies based on private markets, limited state, individual responsibility choice and freedom.

Thus user pays education. The shopping malls and consumer boom. The end of strong unions. Punitive criminal justice policy. The demise of public broadcasting. Part payments in health. The list goes on.

These policies then flow to further cultural change.

For a political party, what to do, when that wave is at odds with important parts of your values set and base of principles?

Ride the wave and give up? (New Labour)

Refuse to change and go into irrelevance mode? (Austrian social democracy)

Edge along as best you can, making moves where possible but not challenging the core settlement? (NZ Labour, arguably)

None of those, to me, are very satisfying.

They are all the options you have if you conceive of politics as done to people through policy change in Wellington.

So what do other options look like?

I think they have to start with a real debate about how change happens. I might not be right. There are plenty of reasons to think I might be though.

The party is at the core of a project to drive social and cultural and political change, but only as the coordinating lynchpin of a much wider group of organisations and social forces.

Such a party needs to be open and inclusive; democratic and fun; challenging and stroppy; and aiming at a reach into every single part of New Zealand.

There is no political party like that in New Zealand today.

What do you reckon? Does the idea that change arises outside politics and thus requires much broader political parties to spark it along and ride the wave, make sense to you?

Political theorists, be gentle...

Polling: a path to the light

Nobody likes being down in the polls, and you have to be mad to think that Labour will have an easy ride up to this year's general election.

It's not for me to speculate as to the causes of that deficit and the massive popularity of the National government, but I did want to say I don't think that we're doomed!

We are trying for an historic first: the infliction of a one-term National government, and turning around a big gap in a few months.  If we do it, it will be the political upset of the century. If we don't, it will not be because we haven't tried.  I think we have a chance.

The silliest thing some media figures are saying now is that Labour's economic policy announcement this month hasn't gone well in the polls.

The CGT and the fairer tax system it will form part of have barely begun to sink in with voters yet. And Labour's campaign to explain it and to pose the choice to people between selling out the future and owning it ourselves has also just begun. 

That message is resonating - in the media and among voters.  But by itself it will not be - and should not be - enough to transform our poll rating.

What it has done is transform the conversation, away from the flimflam that has marked recent months and onto hard questions about the future of New Zealand.

Future policy announcements from Labour will build on that framework, and will fill out the promise of a clear choice for voters to make between the status quo and change.

It is as the fuller choice sinks in that voters will take a closer look at us, and I think that'll lead to a shift towards Labour.

I think this is the right political approach for the party.  We have changed our focus from the government of last decade, and are more clearly focused on the things that matter most to voters.  We will be mounting a case that people do have a choice between two very different paths for the country's future.

Now we just have to stick with the plan, avoid any cock-ups, and see what this most interesting World Cup election year has to throw at us. Seventeen weeks to go on Saturday!

Norway

Ever since the news of the mass shootings of Labour Party activists in Norway came out, I've been having flashbacks to a moment in the evening at the IUSY Festival in Hungary in 2009.

I was wandering around the camp trying to find the Kiwis, and walked past a circle of ABF members playing drinking games as most were at that time of the evening. There was flickering light in the camp and it was just a happy, relaxed scene. People sharing an experience of learning and having fun, in a community of others who share their call to fight for a more just world.

The attack on the Summer School out of Oslo brought that memory back with a jolt, because you suddenly realise that it's perfectly possible some of those people are now dead.  And then you have another jolt, because as one of the people who brought the Summer School format to the NZ Labour Party, you can imagine what it would be like if a lone gunman showed up at that sort of event, and then you start wondering what you would do.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that the events of the weekend in Norway have left me profoundly shocked and sad, in a way I don't really know how to write about properly.

Young people doing what we all hope they will - taking an interest in the world, trying to change it for the better - gunned down by someone who was totally out of step with his society and its values, at least so far as we can make out.

The very political nature of the attack and what it seems to have been - a full frontal attack on the Norwegian Labour Party and its vision of an open, democratic and inclusive society - makes it all the more horrific.  There is none of the comfort of derangement or madness as an excuse, and even if that emerges to be part of the mix, the political point will never go away.

So seventy or so people are dead, and all their families are devastated, and their friends and comrades are in shock, and the labour movement of Norway has lost some of its best and brightest, and the very picture of a good society is thinking through how to respond while holding fast to its values.

Last night Norway had a minute's silence.

Today, this morning, on the steps of parliament the Kiwi wing of the movement will mark the attack, somber and in mourning for those lost, and reflecting the global determination of our movement that our response will be to fight all the harder for our values.

That respect and solidarity is the least we can do to honour the lost, to mark our determination to carry on their work: all over the world, to change it -- for the better.

Five quick questions - what are your answers?

What are credible arguments against a capital gains tax?

What would be the biggest economic development policy you would want to see the incoming Labour government adopt, and why?

What is the biggest policy issue you think mainstream parties are ignoring?

Why isn't Steven Joyce finance minister yet?

Why has summer not arrived yet?

Red Alert guest post

Post today is a guest post on Labour's blog, Red Alert:

http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2011/07/18/pulling-the-threads-together/

Have a squizz.

 

Owning our Future #ownourfuture

Yesterday's tax policy release by Labour gives voters a clear choice between asset sales and fairer tax as alternative paths for New Zealand's future.

It also gives voters the chance to choose higher growth and higher incomes, or to choose to continue with the status quo that sees us slowly falling behind.

That's the most important underpinning of our tax policy.  That's what it is for.

We can choose to own our future.

A broad based capital gains tax + a higher top income tax rate for top earners will pay for GST off fresh fruit and veg, no income tax on the first $5k, no need to sell state assets, and prudent investments in the future.

Those are all good things: a step towards fairness, and a long run change to the tax system that will truly tackle the debt problem the National Party has created for the country.

David Parker made it clear yesterday that the economic consequences matter too. By closing the distortionary loophole around capital, there will be less incentive to spray money onto investments that solely make returns through speculation or a general rise in land values.

Instead, there'll be a more level playing field with ordinary productive enterprise investment.

That cannot help but be a good thing: more capital in productive use allows higher productivity, higher incomes, and higher growth.

So we can in a sense have our cake and eat it: a tax system that is fairer, that leads to better economic outcomes for everyone.

Of course, some people will pay more. People on salaries will pay another 6c in the dollar on income over $150,000 - which is about 2% of tax payers. People who currently make a stack of money on capital gains and pay no tax will pay some.  I've got no problem with that at all.

There are also some misconceptions. Historic capital gains won't be taxed - only ones after the valuation day (after the tax is passed).  Family home exempt.  No tax when someone inherits property, unless they choose to sell it.

I've had a few posts about the lies the government has been engaged in recently. I'm sure they will be lying about this policy too, but the lies are so obvious this time (they began with English this morning) that I won't really go into them.

Instead, back to the main point. The way our tax system is set up costs us dearly in terms of growing and developing our economy.  It also is unfair, with most people paying more tax than they need to to subsidise people getting a free ride.

Labour's tax policy fixes both, and removes the need to sell off the assets that Kiwis have built over generations.

More info at www.ownourfuture.co.nz.

It's worth a look.

The Big Day: Precis

Today Labour begins to roll out the core of its economic strategy for government.

Building on previously announced tax policy (no GST on fruit and veg, a tax-free zone on income), there will be a range of announcements today.

The detail though is not the main thing.

The main thing is that at last, a major political party is going to set out some real, concrete steps that can help New Zealand climb out of the hole it is in.

The simple case is twofold: that we need a fairer tax system, and that a fairer tax system is an integral part of getting NZ back on a path to growth.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. In retrospect, the tax policy announcements coming today might usefully have been done earlier: if it had been obvious in 1999 how distorted investment might end up in the economy, perhaps the Clark administration would have moved in this direction.

But today is different. Today is the start of showing people what the renewed and refreshed Labour agenda is for government.

Another post later on to consider the detail, once it's out.

ACC and the proper boundary of politics

Where is the boundary, and when does politics go too far?

ACC is a crown jewel in New Zealand's welfare state. A low cost, highly efficient social insurance scheme that works brilliantly. Not perfectly, but well.

When National came to government, it set about systematically lying about ACC.

It's bankrupt! they said.

Levies will skyrocket! they said.

It's now apparent how big both those lies were.

ACC has a lot of funds under management. During the global economic crisis's first wave it lost lots - on paper.

Those paper deficits were the tissue covering Nick Smith's lies.

So this year we see a paper surplus, and large levy reductions which is mysteriously conveniently timed for election year.

Scumbag politics in my book.

I think stoking fears you know are false is beyond the pale. (John Key is taking the same approach with those poor Sri Lankan boat people, sadly.)

So where do you draw the line?

Is blatant, cynical, fully-conscious lying OK?

Speaking of daggers...

Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
. . . 
or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

With a hat-tip to David Craig.

A very nice dinner

I was somewhat mystified to get an invitation in my inbox a few weeks ago asking me to Dinner at the Residence of the Ambassador of the United States of America.

A very nice dinner it was too, last night: a crowd of media/blogger types, who for reasons of discretion I shall not name.  The Wellington post apparently has one of the most developed social media operations in the US diplomatic universe, and I'll admit I've been following some of their stuff for a few months now. That may have been the inspiration for the selection of the guests.

I've never really been in that sort of setting.  David Huebner and his partner Duane McWayne were brilliant hosts, and the mix of guests and Embassy staff mixed nicely together.

If you've not been to the residence and you get a chance, you should go: a particular highlight is the art.  The Ambassador explained that each post gets up to 15 art works which the State Department will borrow and bring to the residence, and that for his choices, he put a young Auckland artist together with a young Los Angelo artist, had them over to each other's cities for a fortnight each way, and got them to pick something that worked for the house.

Work it does. The pieces are marvellous, and the residence itself has a nice mix of informal and formal rooms that set the different pieces off.  The two chose seven pieces each, and if memory serves the fifteenth is a specially commissioned piece in the dining room that is really quite stunning.

The conversation was all around the place: the challenge of Kiwis with spicy food, through to U.S. presidential politics, the religiosity of public culture in the States, connections that social media allow, capital gains taxes and more.

It's funny. You can't always raise things you are most interested in in the context of a light social dinner. At some stage I'd be fascinated to hear his thoughts on the relationship between the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement negotations and America's strategic interests in the Western Pacific -- but that didn't quite fit last night!

So a pleasant evening all round, a nice way to begin the week. My thanks to Mr Huebner for the hospitality. You can follow him on Twitter too, at http://twitter.com/DavidHuebner.