Just Left

Planet Key/National ""Facts"" #1

This is one for the books. Media, some fact checking? ANY fact checking? Please?

From the Dominion Post on Friday 14 September, page 2:

PM: economy on track - just ask the Aussies

Prime Minister John Key said his Government was doing enough for the economy despite a recent spate of job losses. "The overall outlook is slightly improving ... My view is we've got absolutely the right plan to lift economic growth."

Mr Key said many Australians were jealous of New Zealand's direction. "I guess that's the fact that they wanted me to go over and be their prime minister. That would be some indication."

Hmm.

Australia --- New Zealand

Unemployment
5.1% --- 6.8%

GDP growth
3.7% --- 1.7%

Net Govt Debt
9.2% --- 25%


I don't think we will be needing to ask for our Prime Minister back any time soon.

The $78 billion

A new study out today (Stuff, Herald), which cost you and I $1,000,000 or so, shows what we already knew: that if everyone on a benefit stayed on it forever, it would cost us all a pile of cash.

The pile would be of a size neither you nor I can understand: $78,000,000,000 or so. It shows those on the DPB or sickness or invalids benefits cost more than those on the dole.

Wow. What a novelty.

Except it isn't a novelty. You can work that out by simply applying a bit of logic. The longer you are on a benefit, and the higher the rate of that benefit, the higher the cost.

Let me put aside for a moment my cynical conviction that the only reason National released this number today was to further try and pick political fights with weak victims. That the reason they would want to do this now is the growing evidence of economic and social failure their policies are generating in this post-GFC world. That Labour's initiative on education has given them unwelcome pause for thought. That picking on the weak is John Key's favourite sport in shoring up a sagging majority.

So put that aside and wonder what such a study could be useful for.

Does Key, does National have an agenda to force the social security system into an insurance model?

We all know how well that's worked with ACC: insane levy hikes, rampant additions to budget surpluses or deficits depending on global stockmarket results, a constant vicious pressure on claimants to get off the scheme, administrative ineptitude as costs are pruned at every turn beyond what competence permits.

Full funding of ACC has been a disaster and it needs to go. It sees every single one of us paying too much for too little.

What on earth would you want to extend the model to social security for?

To give you arguments to pick on the most vulnerable even further?

(After all, the highest cost ones could be victimised/pushed off, in order to ""Save Billions!"".)

To make the system able to be privatised?

(Nobody would buy pay-go social welfare just as they wouldn't buy pay-go ACC, but they would LOVE to get their hands on the billions sitting around in a ""fully funded"" model.)

Given that neither of these arguments will ever fly in New Zealand, it must be something else.

There may be incremental improvements to the system that can learn from this knowledge. If there are, that's to the good. But such incremental improvements would never get the political attention through leaks and trailing that the $78bn number has been connected with.

I'm left with my cynical explanation. It's just another distraction, just another form of abuse of the most vulnerable people in the country.

Just business as usual for the government we suffer under.

Education matters

Pleased with David Shearer's speech on education yesterday, two aspects in particular:

1. Making the link, explicitly, between poverty/inequality/social inclusion and educational success. We have a long tail at heart because the poorest and most vulnerable in NZ are left out.

2. Practical changes that will tackle that problem in the short and long term, and at the same time having a plan to improve school quality that will actually make things better instead of just trying to scare parents.

It's good.

Education is at the heart of a free and equal society. It's an issue the public knows we get. It sums up much of what Labour stands for in an entirely practical way: the chance for everyone to learn and grow.

The depoliticisation of economics

I was having a discussion on Facebook last night, sparked by my previous post, about why it is that there is so much more passion among parts of the left for marriage equality than more bread-and-butter issues such as, say, a living wage (as evidenced by the gallery people-flows last week).

Allow me to suggest a reason why.

Think about civil rights.

For the past thirty years, decisions by our Parliament have been central to expanding the realm of human rights and freedoms. Homosexual law reform, the Human Rights Act, prostitution law reform, Civil Unions and now marriage equality (as a non-exhaustive list) drew direct connections between the political process and real changes in people's lives.

The public discourse on these issues was about the centrality of Parliament and the decisions that politicians would make on these issues. Politics was central. Debates were substantive. Change could result.

So now, think about economic issues.

For the past thirty years, decisions by our Parliament have been marginal to the economic progress of the nation - and deliberately so. Government has withdrawn itself in so many ways from economic life. In pursuit of an ideology now proved false in the only testing ground that counts (the real world), the state got out of the way.

The public ideology of and debates around economic policy have been about the primacy of the market, and subordination of politics. The market, a cold abstraction nobody could see or argue with, would make the calls. It was our job as people to do what its highly paid messengers and managers would say.

Think about that.

Is it any wonder that most people don't think political action can make a difference on so-called "bread and butter" issues - when for so many years they've been told just that?

Is it any wonder that most people think political action can make a difference in civil rights, when they evidence that it can is before their eyes every time such an issue comes up?

This isn't to discount different explanations such as the changing class composition of Labour and left activists more broadly. Just to suggest a different way to think about the problem.

The implications of this are, I think, quite wide-ranging. I personally have never made this connection before. If most people don't think politicians can help when it comes to economic concerns, the political left is in a tricky spot given its entire programme of reform is based on changing the economy.

Perhaps our campaigns need to focus on repoliticising economic questions. Perhaps they already do and I'm just not conscious of it. Perhaps we need more even-handed media institutions that don't privilege the depoliticising agenda of the right when it comes to economic issues.

Food for thought!

Equality matters to us all

Equality is one of the most interesting values and principles of the labour movement, at least in part because we live in the Era of Freedom in so many ways. Individual choices and the right to be left alone are dominant in policy, politics and the media -- though of course not among citizens or in the way people actually live their lives.

I was reminded of the importance of the principle in the somewhat strange debate that sees the occasional Labour person saying that marriage equality isn't an important issue.

Of course it is.

If your social or family circle includes no people from LGBT people (which is unlikely), you are less directly affected. Sure. I get that. But even so, you benefit from a society characterised by a high degree of fairness for everyone. Direct or not, equality in the realm of marraige matters just as it does in the workplace, or anywhere else.

Grant Robertson's weekend post on Red Alert summed up nicely why:

As the excited crowd left the public gallery of Parliament on Wednesday evening, the Speaker had to pause the business of the House. There was a buzz in the air following the vote on Louisa Wall’s marriage equality bill. It was a great night for fairness, equality and courage. The journey New Zealand has been on since the passing of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill in the 80s, through Civil Unions in 00s took another important step in giving all New Zealanders a fair go. We saw some courageous testimonies in the days leading up to the vote and some courageous speeches and voting on the night.

When the crowd had dispersed, and the gallery was deserted, my friend and colleague David Clark got up to introduce his private members bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour in line with Labour’s 2011 manifesto commitment. The crowd should have stayed. He gave a great speech. So did Darien Fenton who followed on from him focusing on the plight of the cleaners in Parliament. Have a look at the speeches, they are thoughtful and heartfelt pleas for a fair wage for all workers. The response from the government speakers was as predictable as it was out of touch.

...

I would have loved the crowd who so enthusiastically supported marriage equality to have stayed and cheered on a fair go for our lowest paid workers. The issues come from the same well-spring. Its all part of the agenda of a fair go for all New Zealanders and a society where we reject exclusion and unfairness and embrace and value the contribution that all Kiwis can make to our society.

Fairness, equality, is deep in the DNA of New Zealanders. We instinctively knowthat a system stacked against the weak and powerless is wrong. That is why our history is littered with progressive reforms based on the principle of equality: votes for women, votes for Maori, human rights law affecting all, anti-racism campaigns, the Halt All Racist Tours movement, striving for ecological justice, the human rights improvements for LGBT New Zealanders, fair workplace laws, egalitarian social security arrangements, a non-discriminatory state pension.... on and on it goes.

The phrase "equality" summons up some of the worst. That's why most of us, most of the time, talk about fairness. Equality isn't about forcing conformity, or lowest common denominatorism, or turning people into stalinist clones.

It's precisely the opposite.

You cannot have a free society which is disfigured by divides between the insiders and the outsiders.

You cannot have democracy when the voices of a few with power drown out those of the many who don't.

You cannot have economic success for all when working men and women are treated as a cost to be minimised.

You cannot honour the Treaty when the trappings of colonialism still lie all around, powerful and alive and well despite the progress of the past forty years.

You cannot have social justice when you treat those on benefits as second class citizens, somehow less than the rest of us.

You cannot have dignity when some are treated as a little less equal than others when it comes to social rights and customs that are at the heart of our society.

Honouring the diverse circumstances we all have is why the Labour movement believes in equality. Fairness is justice and justice & fairness are all about equality: that is the core of social democratic politics and ideology today. Not just to those living but to those who are yet to come (which is why environmental stewardship is becoming more pronounced in social democratic and Labour politics).

So I have a piece of advice to my friends in the Labour movement who try to charactise the Living Wage campaign, or Marriage Equality, as sideshows. (I've heard both, to my surprise.)

They aren't. Relate them back to our core beliefs. If you are in an audience skeptical about one aspect of this journey we are all on, towards fairness & equality, then tell another part of the story.

For those who aren't interested in marriage equality, relate the issue back to core issues of fairness at work.

For those who can't get their heads around why a strong trade union movement and fair industrial laws are good for us all, relate it back to suffrage or marriage equality, or the universal pension.

These things are all related. The more clearly we link them together the more likely it is our message can cut through, and the stronger our movement becomes. The more voters will get the message that equality affects everyone and is worthy of the support of all, regardless of their circumstances.

Let's not play divide and rule. Let's not engage in reverse wedge politics against ourselves.

Instead, let's celebrate the founding and distinctive principle that motivates our movement, and that is more relevant to New Zealand's future prospects than it has been for many years.

Campaign School mulling

I've spent the weekend in Hamilton at the first Young Labour campaign school.

It's been an interesting couple of days for a number of reasons. The turnout was fantastic — around about sixty attendees not counting presenters. There was a good broad range of topics, from elections to issues campaigning and thinking about messaging and communications.

Ten years after the first Summer School, which is a Labour Party event organised by Young Labour, a campaigning focus like this is well timed and much needed. Campaigning is core business for a political party and we don't make enough effort to teach people how to do it.

It is not for me to go into any specific detail about what was covered, but some reflections:

• issues campaigning is getting more important as a way to drive emotional connection between the party and various groups of voters — done well it is a strength.
• knowing the political context as it is, not as you sort of wish or hope it might be, should be obvious but isn't always.
• another reminder about the importance of repetition to get messages through. We are so, so, so bad at this in many ways and it's entirely down to us to get that right. Narrative is similar.

Again and again too, through the weekend, was acknowledgement of the climate change challenge we face. If any part of the Labour Party is going to lead a new approach here, YL is going to be critical to the effort.

Good event, continuing with local govt campaigning next.