Top 10 “NZ Politics Daily” stories today
Below are some of the more interesting and insightful New Zealand politics items from the weekend and this morning.
1) The Māori hui at Turangawaewae on Saturday is being seen as a huge success, with even National’s Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka attending and declaring it a “Great day”. Of course, the day included plenty of denunciations of the Government’s “white supremacy”. But in the best review of the day, Newsroom’s Aaron Smale draws attention to a fair amount of self-critique occurring at the Marae – see: Māori rise up while Government looks to rewrite history
Smale reports that Māori King Tūheitia bravely talked about Māoridom’s “dirty washing” – the fact that iwi have been largely co-opted into top-down and corporate ways of operating, and therefore become part of the status quo. Smale reports that Tūheitia “observed that it had been nearly 30 years since Tainui had settled its Treaty claim with the Crown, the first iwi to do so. But he lamented that the structure that had served that purpose was still in place and had changed little in that time.” Tūheitia said: “I’ve been trying to change our structure and bring more rangatahi through. But we’ve got more suits in there than in Wellington”.
The implication is the iwi have become just another business and bureaucratic structure, and the lives of their members aren’t being sufficiently improved by this. Smale appears to agree: “Is it time to rethink the corporate structure that the Crown insisted on when it deigned to recognise the mandate of an ‘iwi’ structure?” Hence, many on the political left, including amongst Māori activists, refer to iwi leaders as being part of the “Brown Table” akin to the old Business Roundtable.
2) The most poetic and thoughtful report on the hui has been written by 1News’ National Correspondent John Campbell, who surveys attendees, and finds it’s all about the “vibrations” – see: I saw peace, joy and 10,000 people uniting to say ‘no’
Looking at the turnout on the day, Campbell reports: “Some politicians may tell you that 10,000 people is not very many. I would say otherwise. In 30 years of covering politics, I have never attended a New Zealand party-political rally that attracted anywhere near that many. Or even half that number.”
As well as reporting on the day at Ngāruawāhia, Campbell also continues his critique of the new Government as being one of populist resentment. He quotes Act leader David Seymour, saying the Treaty “divides rather than unites people, as most treaties are supposed to do.” Campbell replies by asking “Is David Seymour responding to division, or causing it?”
3) Finance Minister Nicola Willis is sending letters to government agencies, asking them to make budget cuts of 6.5%. While previously the belt-tightening was meant only for 21 central government departments, she has now extended it to Parliament and agencies such as the office of the Clerk of the House. Today, Newsroom’s Marc Daalder reports that the Clerk of the House, David Wilson, has said that they have had to start cutting their expenses, such as “refreshments for MPs in select committee” – see: ‘Constitutionally concerning’: Govt accused of ‘defunding’ Parliament
Wilson argues that cuts to his office and Parliament are constitutionally wrong, and he has backing from Labour’s Duncan Webb and Victoria University of Wellington’s law lecturer Dean Knight. Wilson will therefore appeal for an exemption from the budget-cutting exercise.
4) Wellington’s water leak crisis is becoming a central government issue, with the Minister of Local Government starting to ask questions, but not get many answers. In particular, he asked the local councils to supply information, but the Wellington City Council failed to do so, with Mayor Tory Whanau explaining that there was a misunderstanding which meant they didn’t deliver. Now the heat is going on the local council for failures to invest in infrastructure or fund the necessary fixing of leaks. Economist Brad Olssen is reported today as saying: “That’s got to be the worst dereliction of duty for civic governors that we’ve had in a long time. You’re telling people to get ready for a natural disaster that comes around every 12 months because you haven’t invested the right money in the right places” – see Dileepa Fonseka’s Will Wellington be cancelled? (paywalled)
Rather than just deal with the leaks, some politicians are now wanting to use the crisis to get central government to mandate compulsory water meters and charges for households throughout the country.
5) Former Green MP Ghahraman Golriz is being used as a case study for those advocating for political and legal reforms to protect female politicians from “gender-based violence”. University of Canterbury law lecturer Cassandra Mudgway has written about how “New Zealand’s current legal framework is not well equipped to respond to the kind of online violence experienced by women MPs like Ghahraman” – see: Golriz Ghahraman’s exit from politics shows the toll of online bullying on female MPs
Mudgway argues that “More than ever, words have the power to break people and democracies”, and so the state and politicians should have greater ability to police and suppress the more extreme things being said online.
6) Ghahraman receives some heavy-weight support from former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett, who also used to receive nasty comments from the public. She opened up about this yesterday, saying, “My mental resilience is and was strong, but I am one of those MPs who, for a few months, had to get one of my staff to go through my social media and emails because the abuse was so relentless and personal. To stay able to function I had to not see it or read it… Some of you will say we deserve it. Some of you will find this all amusing. I find it disgusting and it is part of the reason I left Parliament” – see: Golriz Ghahraman’s explanation - ‘I believe her’ (paywalled)
Bennett elaborates: “I went through times in Parliament when I felt really low and unable to cope. I don’t know if it was mental illness but with the help of a weekend off and time with friends and family, I would be able to get up and go again. Parliament is not conducive to asking for help. You can’t really share your troubles with anyone, the place just isn’t structured that way. There are too many people inside and out of it who just want to knock you down.”
8) If Ghahraman was so stressed during her time in Parliament, perhaps it was due to the difficulties of being in the Green Party caucus, without adequate support. This is a challenge put to the Greens by former MP Deborah Coddington: “the Party has form on mishandling personal crises. When former Green MP Holly Walker published her memoir, The Whole Intimate Mess, she revealed she suffered severe post-natal depression after her first baby was born when she was in Parliament, under leaders Russel Norman and Metiria Turei. Despite Walker’s face being badly bruised from her own self-abuse, her colleagues did nothing substantial to get help or support her. Ironically when she quit, one of her replacements was Ghahraman” – see: How language distorts the truth (paywalled)
9) Today in the Listener, Duncan Garner, also has questions for Ghahraman’s party about her descent into a mental health crisis: “I’m also curious to know what the Green Party knew about. Did they do enough? Did they do nothing? Was she honest with them? Honesty might be the issue here, perhaps” – see: Own Golriz – why I’m struggling to understand this (paywalled)
Garner points out that the stress Ghahraman received couldn’t have simply been from her list MP role: “MPs shoulder a heavy workload, but Ghahraman isn’t a minister and is not in a government negotiating with Winston Peters on a regular basis. She’s a List MP in opposition, with plenty of administration support around her in Wellington and Auckland. While she has a number of portfolio areas, she is not an electorate MP, with local demands and constituents, nor does she chair a select committee. Her diary is organised by staff members. Her travel is organised and paid for by Parliamentary Services. She has offices and staff in two cities and all transport in between work and home and wherever is paid for by you and me. MPs aren’t limited to four weeks annual leave like the rest of us, their leave rules are unwritten and at the behest of the party and the party whip who runs the house and has a big say in which MP must be where and when.”
9) Writing in the Post, Adam Dudding has put together a list of parliamentarians who have ended their political careers in scandal. He goes right back to earlier days of Parliament, for “the tale of MP William Larnach, a colourful and wealthy businessman (he built Dunedin’s Larnach Castle) who died by suicide in October 1898 literally inside the Parliament Buildings, soon after losing his fortune in a bank collapse” – see: A brief history of Aotearoa’s political scandals (paywalled)
Dudding argues that scandals have been increasing in recent years. And here’s his list of more recent ones: “National lost Aaron Gilmore in 2013 for being a total jerk at a restaurant then being slow to fess up; then Mike Sabin in 2015 following news that police were investigating an assault complaint; then Todd Barclay in 2017 for making secret audio recordings of staff members. In 2017 Greens co-leader Metiria Turei was hoist by her own long-fused petard when she revealed, in a campaign speech no less, that she’d committed benefit fraud in the 1990s, sparking a chain of events that led her to the door. The following year, National minister Jami-Less Ross had a dramatic public breakdown after a complex cocktail of sexual harassment allegations and political power struggles. In the past three and a bit years alone we’ve had National’s Andrew Falloon leaving after accusations he was a sex-text pest; National’s Hamish Walker leaving because he’d leaked confidential Covid-19 patient information to the press; Labour’s Gaurav Sharma ejected from his party after it didn’t agree with his claims that he’d been bullied; and Labour’s high-flying Minister of Justice Kiri Allan crashing to earth after a rolling mental health crisis that culminated in her arrest for careless driving.”
10) In a brave and controversial analysis column, Andrea Vance, dissents from the growing consensus that Ghahraman is the victim in her downfall scandal. In her must-read column, Vance says: “MPs opening up about their experiences with mental health used to be courageous and noble… Now, it’s just a cheap excuse for those with a casual attitude to rules that most people abide by. It undermines genuine victims: those who will go through distress at some time in their life and are met with a less forgiving reaction and an unresponsive mental health system” – see: The age of entitlement (paywalled)
Vance suggests it’s hypocritical for politicians like Ghahraman that have been in government for the last six years and have presided over the public mental health crisis and done very little to change it: “my sympathy would be heightened if there were more meaningful progress in tackling the mental health crisis that currently, and genuinely, affects a horrifying number of people. We’ve been talking about these societal problems for close to a decade now, and despite lip service and promises, access to services has worsened, not improved. The mental health professionals offered to, and consulted by, MPs in distress is not so readily available to the rest of us, particularly the young.”
“Victimhood chic” is now on display from politicians that get caught out in disgrace, Vance argues: “The victim is the hero of our entitled age. This performative victimhood has also seeped into our politics, accompanying any political failure, rule-breaking or wrong doing… mental health is the PR management tool of choice for a politician in a sticky situation. Sharing demons is now the quickest way out of any political crisis: abandoning responsibility for poor behaviour and delegating accountability.”
This is a big issue for democracy, Vance points out. Throughout the world, “trust in politicians is at an all-time low, partly because law-makers have been flagrantly breaking those laws.” And yet the increasing number of politicians in New Zealand who have been accused of criminal behaviour just resort to explanations of personal crises to get themselves out of the heat. Vance has had enough: “The personal crisis confessionals that accompany mea culpas or resignations have no value when they are issued as a political shield, and as a way to keep scrutiny at bay or shut down debate about the behaviour in question. My heart would be softer towards these politicians, if these were conversations we were having outside of a scandal.”
Dr Bryce Edwards
Political Analyst in Residence, Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington
NZ Politics Daily - 22 January 2024
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