Posts by Isaac Freeman
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to BenWilson,
I wouldn’t be surprised if National, who do have some canny strategic advisers, don’t opt to build up a party to the right of them
It does seem like it would be in National's interests to focus on economic liberals, and promote another party for the social conservatives. Under different leadership, they might have had New Zealand First in this position. United would have been there, but they never staked out a clear position and got lost trying to be a Centre party instead of something distinct.
Although it hasn't made it into Parliament yet, the new Conservative Party looks like a pretty strong contender. I'm sure National is very keen to have them around.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Russell Brown,
I think the Greens had to broaden their appeal – how many times did Norman say “smart green prosperity”? – and it worked for them. But claiming nothing has ever changed in the party’s orientation is delusional.
I think you're talking at cross-purposes. Would it be fair to say that the Green Party's brand has shifted dramatically, but their policies haven't?
Sue Bradford and Nandor Tanczos loomed large in the public perception of the Greens. Although it wasn't fair to two very capable and successful MPs, they came across as much more scary and radical than they actually were. I don't think many Greens have ever seen reform of laws concerning marijuana law or ending a specific legal defence for child abuse as fundamental planks in the party's philosophy, but they drowned out other subjects. Which is not the media's fault: if you're talking to a Rastafarian MP, why wouldn't you ask about marijuana? And while I respect Sue Bradford's accomplishments, she stumbled badly when she allowed the Section 51 debate to be so far derailed that you had to say "so-called anti-smacking law" before anyone knew what you were talking about.
I'd propose that the Green Party's public image today is much closer to how Greens have always seen themselves.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I stick to my view that the next left-wing government in NZ will be Green led with Labour as a support partner.
Quite a lot would have to change for that to happen. Apart from the obvious change in voting patterns, you'd also need a massive culture change within Labour. Perhaps if the Labour Party split in two, and a very different organisation somehow gained custody of the name.
Alternatively, there's a historical precedent for a smaller party taking the top job
as a condition of coalition with a larger party, and going on to control the whole government for some time. However, as a party that tends to think in the longer term, I suspect the Greens would notice that things ultimately didn't work out very well for Hitler.Flirting with Godwin aside, I'd have thought that any hypothetical Green-led government would be more likely to involve some grouping of new parties than Labour. But it's quite a hypothetical.
Even if not, with 10%+ of the house, any Labour government will either have to accept the Greens (and quite likely Mana) as a partner or be in opposition for ever.
I doubt Mana are in it for the long haul. Unless I'm missing something (which is certainly possible) their position seems to be that they're a better Labour than Labour and a better Māori Party than the Māori Party. Either of those parties could pull the rug out from under Mana with minor changes to policy and presentation.
To last, Mana needs either a distinct political position like the Greens, or to supplant the Māori Party. They didn't achieve the latter in 2011, and presumably it'll be ahrder in 2014.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Speaking of which, how did the ’Zine Fest go on Saturday?
Small but perfectly formed. The venue wasn't ideal, particularly on account of not being very well lit, but that's life in Christchurch. There was the sort of crowd you'd expect: a mix of poets, activists and musos. People didn't have a lot of cash, but with what they had they bought zines, even from squares like me.
There was an interesting panel discussion about zines as political journalism, by writers who'd recently been in Palestine and Kurdistan.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to ,
It isn’t unorthodox to say that those products are often manufactured in factories.
Food, drinking water and oxygen? I... erm... would grant that it is perhaps a drearily conventional position, but unless I'm very much mistaken the consensus position does seem to be that a significant role in their provision is played by a biosphere.
And that the ”natural environment” is often hostile toward them.
I can only assume here that we're operating out of very different definitions for one or more of the words in this conversation.
Erm... possibly by "unorthodox" you mean something like "comprehensible"? Otherwise I think it'd have to be more than one word.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Not being a neolib or anything, but I don’t believe it’s in the gift of government to build “a national brand”.
When you get down to it, building a brand is nothing more than communicating clearly what you're about. The only reason it gets waffly is that lots of people either don't know what they're about, and try to build a brand anyway.
What they should be doing is ensuring we have a decent environment because its a Good Thing, and ensuring that we have a sustainable economy because it’s a Good Thing *and* it will enable us to survive the onset of resource exhaustion and climate change.
Perfectly good brand in there.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But it is a risk that more clearly defining the principles alienates some at the same time as it makes it easier for others to choose Labour (“that’s the party that represents me”).
I think it depends how deep you go. People within the party, especially if it's been in government for a while, will tend to focus on policies. That's valuable, but the general public won't get as far as looking at your policies if they don't know what your fundamental values are.
Basically, I am advocating that parties should be able to explain themselves to a three-year-old.
We believe there should be a capital gains tax.
Why? Because taxing some kinds of investments more than others isn't a good idea.
Why? Because a diverse economy is more stable than a narrow one.
Why? Because different people have different skills, and we're better off when everyone contributes.
Why? Because we can do more when we work together than we can separately.
Why? Because we're all in it together.When you can show how your policies are motivated by values everyone shares, then you really have something. You have a better chance of reaching people who haven't voted for you before, because they're more likely to share your values than agree with you on every point of policy.
Man, I am explainy today. I am aware that I am talking about abstractions, and don't have to walk the talk of running a real political party.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Bart Janssen,
My friends at work have long argued we should just form our own political party and call it “The real Greens” or something similar.
It's been tried at least once.
That is a reflection of our frustration with the difference between the party we have now and the green political movement which almost every one of my colleagues support.
New movements tend to be united fronts populated by enthusiastic people who share common enemies. In the early stages, the enthusiasm is more important than the consistency. As they mature, they either collapse into infighting or they exhaust the available pool of disparate activists and start to present a more coherent position that can attract people who want to do more than just subvert the dominant paradigm.
I voted Green because I feel they're growing up nicely.
In the longer term, I think there are also generational cycles. Green politics has been through a couple in New Zealand, which nicely line up with the institutional Values and Green parties.
That perhaps is the path that a Labour party could take.
I'd propose that it happened for Labour in the thirties: by the time of Savage and Fraser, the party had shed a lot of its earlier activism and shifted to a social democratic platform. You could call it "moving to the centre", but I think it's more that people outside the movement finally had a clear idea of what Labour were for rather than just what they were against.
What happens next probably depends on how successful the institution is. If, like Values, you don't gain enough traction, you collapse and reform later into a new institution that can have a fresh go at getting beyond the activist mode. If, like Labour, you do gain power, your struggle is between maintaining your coherence and dealing with the complexities of real governance. Then when you lose power, you either reconnect with your principles or you collapse back into disparate groups of activists.
I think there's a common view that new political movements tend to be ideologically pure, but I suspect that's seldom the case in practice.
But probably not, since it distracts from what is really needed which is a genuinely strong Labour identity that powerfully represents a smaller portion of New Zealand rather than weakly representing a larger portion.
I suspect that if Labour were clearer about its values and platform, it would find itself attracting more people, not fewer. They did a great job of this in the election, but the campaign was short, and in the three years before it was rather unclear what Labour was about.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Bart Janssen,
<q>Greens are about sustainability
Nope they aren’t and never have been.</q>
I was a bit unclear there. I meant that the green political viewpoint, as an abstraction, revolves around the concept of sustainability. I'll certainly grant that the Green Party is a different beast. Likewise, conservative thought is concerned with the stability of society, but that's not always true of the Conservative Party.
The Greens are about a whole bunch of things ranging from loony herbal remedies that must replace an authoritarian health bureaucracy to economic policies like capital gain taxes. It has been and continues to be my problem with The Greens.
You and me both. For my part, I think capital gains taxes are perfectly consistent with the principle of sustainability. Loony herbal remedies, not so much.
There are certainly other formulations of what it means to be "green". I tend to emphasise sustainability as I think it's one of the more coherent ones.
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Hard News: The Next Labour Leader, in reply to Tom Semmens,
I find the idea that somehow the environment is going to become the most important issue confronting voters when they come to voting a complete load of old clarts. More important than jobs? The economy? health? Really?
First, unless you have some highly unorthodox ideas on where food, drinking water and oxygen come from, the environment plainly is more important than jobs, the economy and health. I guess you can achieve some political results by assuming the general public is too thick to understand that, but it doesn't seem like a sensible strategy in the longer term.
Second, I think you may have missed the Green policies on jobs, the economy and health. I believe the Green Party you're thinking of is somewhat different from the one we actually have.
Claire Browning commits some confused thoughts to the internet here on Pundit, and since the comments are largely laudatory I can only assume her words accurately represent a lot of the current Green “philosophy”.
I think you may also be labouring under the misapprehension that Claire Browning was writing a manifesto. It was clearly a piece discussing the culture within the party, not an explanation of its principles.
The Greens have no answers to poverty or unemployment, merely a fantastical appeal for us to all indulge in double think (neither left nor right!
Why are these the only two allowable categories?
The Greens will never be an environment party!)
What's an "environment party"?
and a use of the fig leaf of semantics (“…Social Justice is a conceptual part of Socialism and is but a fraction of the big picture encompassed by Social Responsibility…”)
Re-read the article. The quote was from a single party member who specifically was talking about semantics. People quibble about language because they want to get it right. That doesn't mean they don't have principles.
If Browning is to be taken at her word, then the fundamental thinking underlying the Greens is that incipient environmental crisis is somehow going to unite us all in a (Green party led) global crusade to save the planet.
I have failed to find this view expressed by Browning in the article. Could you enlighten me as to where she says this?
the more likely outcome is for environmental damage to worsen both internal class and external international conflicts over resources. Standing on the beaches imploring the resource hungry and desperate invaders to be reasonable will butter no parsnips with most people, who will see a more immediate logic in voting for the party that plans to tool us up with missiles and machine guns.
I've never met a Green who'd disagree with you there. This is why they tend to put a lot of emphasis on reducing economic and cultural inequality, and also on global co-operation. I think you'll find that there's a bit more to it than "imploring the resource hungry and desperate invaders to be reasonable".