These are the reckons you produce when you don’t actually know what you’re on about. These are reckons that get embarrassed by the most basic research. These, of course, are reckons most loudly voiced by idiot racists and arrogant populists.
Either the new government are proudly sharing these genuine reckons because they are that stupid; or they are cynically sharing their pretend reckons because they are eager for the support of bigoted fools. (There is no shortage of reckon-happy voices in the media who will be happy to protect this government from the consequences of its failures.)
Either way, they must think it doesn’t matter whether or not they are wrong, and who will be hurt as a result. They don’t care about families doing it tough, or people on a benefit, or anyone hurt by youth offending, or meeting climate change targets, or reducing smoking in communities, or the nature of democratic participation, or the importance of the Treaty at the heart of this nation.
This is easily the most embarrassing and pathetic and inadequate and unserious government this country has endured in my lifetime. Probably for generations before that as well.
(Asterisks included above for the sake of content filters on work computers. Is that still a thing? It used to be a thing.)
The sun is out, the buds are on the trees, and every main road is suddenly lined with signs showing unfamiliar faces saying VOTE FOR ME! You know what that means: it’s local election time!
Soon an envelope will arrive and you will put it on the stack of things you will definitely get to, and then SMASH CUT to like two months later and you find the envelope again and you never even opened it, and you have a little chuckle at yourself because, hey! It’s only local government, right?
Well I have something to say: NOT THIS YEAR, BUDDY-O! Heck no! This year you’re gonna open that envelope and vote! Because this year your local government elections are the front line of a crucial fight!
Your local elections vote has never had as much riding on it!
You will of course have noticed that things have gone a bit… weird in the last few years. Like, David Bowie died in January 2016 and it all kind of went wrong from there? Of course things were quietly going wrong a long time before that, but in 2016 the wrongness got hold of a vuvuzela and now it’s Blaring Loud Wrongness, Keeping You Up At Night.
And all that wrongness is going to smash right into your local government. Unless you stop it.
Here are two urgent, crucial problems that show why voting matters extra bigly this time.
Problem 1: The allies of fascism are infiltrating government
That description reads like hyperbole, the kind of overheated claims you’d find in the weird corners of Indymedia in 2001. It is honestly a bit hard to accept that this is where we are now.
But we are. If you haven’t already, take the time to review the Stuff Circuit investigation by Paula Penfold & colleagues, Fire and Fury: Disinformation in New Zealand. The hourlong documentary is an intense and sobering watch.
Image from Fire & Fury (Stuff)
A very active set of agitators are busy every day spreading disinformation, fomenting hatred, putting violence on the table. They are chewing on the table legs of our society.
Standing for local election was an idea that circulated widely through these networks, with the explicit aim of making the country ungovernable. As a result, many candidates aligned with conspiratorial views, or worse, have entered local election races. Most of these have kept their affiliations secret.
If elected, they will haul water for this country’s rising ring of fascist agitators. They will disrupt government and provide a platform for fascist recruitment and organising.
We have to vote to keep them out.
(Again, I can hardly believe that I am typing this as a fair description of what is taking place in this country, but that’s where we are. The long 2016 is a deeply weird time to be alive.)
Problem 2: Climate change is local now
Climate change has been a challenge for a long time (I’ve been writing about it on this blog since it was an email newsletter, way back when email newsletters were a thing, oh hey they are a thing again) but we are in a new phase now. Unprecedented weather disasters are finally dragging top-level political actors to the table – heck, even the USA has successfully passed a major climate action bill!
The new urgency is this: dealing with climate change at street level. All those slips around the Hutt and Wellington are a portent of things to come, unexpected trouble all over. We need to build resilience! Our councils need people who are prepared to be prepared.
But that’s just a side issue compared to the real challenge ahead: massive community transformation!
We need to redesign our towns and cities into new forms. For example, we need a completely new approach to transport. Public transport and active transport have to become the easiest and best ways to get around our communities!
Local and regional government will be forced to make some very big calls, soon. (In fact they are already doing this!) Over the next five years, decisions made by your local body will decide the future shape of your community.
These will be some of the most consequential and far-reaching decisions ever made by local government! Your council needs people who are prepared to be brave.
We have to vote for them.
Heck yeah I’m gonna do the thing, except how??
You’re gonna do the thing! You’re going to vote! So… what now?
START ATEAM-UP! You probably have a few trusted friends who live in the same electoral area as you? Ask if they want to team up on figuring out who to vote for. Many hands make light the work, and more fun the work too. Small group action: this is the way.
IDENTIFY THE ROCKING GOOD CANDIDATES! You can’t downvote the infiltrators, so you have to help the super-sweet candidates to out-compete them! This election guide covering all candidates is essential: plug in your address and it tells you who is standing for what in your area.
TELL YOUR NETWORKS! Personal recommendations are THE most powerful thing in local body elections. People will generally pay attention to what they hear from friends and neighbours, much more than from any other source. So don’t do the hard work of figuring out who to vote for, only to keep it all to yourself! Instead, get the word out!
HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF TELLING YOUR NETWORKS
Karen ‘Kaz’ Yung – photo from the election guide website
Here’s who I am backing in the Hutt City Council elections: Karen Yung, a.k.a. Kaz.
Kaz is standing for council in the city-wide field, not tied to any specific ward. So she’s going to be on the ballot paper for everyone here, all across Hutt City.
I’m going to give her a tick because I am impressed by her commitment to ground-level community engagement, and because I like her focus on addressing the challenges of climate change.
I voted for her last elections too. She almost got into council then and I am confident her reputation has only increased since. I have followed her on Facebook over the last few years, while she has continued to be very active in the community and has served on the Petone Community Board. She’s just a really good candidate and will be an exciting new voice on council.
It’s second vote day for the Marriage Equality Bill, & an old friend of mine has a few thoughts about that. The video Craig and his husband Marcel made, at the bottom of the post, is worth watching and sharing. Tell your elected representatives that love matters!
In the past I could not relate the idea of being gay to pride. I remember seeing gay pride campaigns and not understanding the connection between being gay and pride. I no more felt proud being a Kiwi or Pakeha or gay or having blue eyes for that matter. They are all simply ways of describing the attributes of who I am, they weren’t something I had earned, and therefore there was no way to be proud of them.
Today I have a better sense of what pride means. It’s not pride at what I’ve accomplished. It’s pride that I am entitled to and should be given the same respect as everyone else. It’s as simple as this: everyone is entitled to be respected for who they are and treated the same under the law. Some call it pride. I call it respect and civility.
Discrimination is a form of cancer in society. It causes people to feel disenfranchised and isolated, and reinforces ill-treatment of the target group. In my opinion, this prevents a society from ever reaching its full potential.
I know first hand what it was like to be bullied…relentlessly for being gay, and laws that discriminate against gay people indirectly and implicitly reinforce this behaviour. Young LGBT suicides are an absolute tragedy, as are any youth suicides. A society built on acceptance and respect instead of fear and discrimination nurtures and fosters our youth. We owe it to them. We owe it to ourselves.
We have been together now for 15 years, and I look forward to the day when the most interesting thing about that is not the fact we are a same-sex couple, but how it is that he has put up with me for this long.
I’m looking forward to the next 15 years, but this time being your NZ husband.
P.s. No Winston Peters, human rights are not a question of popular vote. Human rights are a question of entitlement and respect. Same-sex marriage is not impinging on the human rights of any other section of society and your job as an elected representative is to protect human rights, not to deflect attention away from the real point of the discussion: State-endorsed discrimination. Tsk tsk.
However, you know what? Even if it came to a popular vote, I have confidence Kiwis would support it.
Three years ago, I was disillusioned about the low % of votes cast for the Green party, despite what I thought was a perfect set of conditions for them to thrive. “Is 7% as high as it’s ever going to get? Will the Green party always be this small?”
Turns out the people in the comments who said, nope, it can go bigger – they were right. The Green vote is sitting around 11% this time around.
It’s a marvellous result for them, even if it sits in the context of an election result that doesn’t give much to celebrate – very low turnout, a savage defeat for the main opposition Labour party, key losses for the left in almost every close electorate contest, and (most galling) the ridiculous spectacle of consummate politician (and political opportunist) Winston Peters riding in at the last moment and polling nearly 7% in doing so.
It’s a clear success for the new approach taken by the Greens, a careful don’t-scare-the-horses, friendlier-to-business model that has drawn a lot of criticism from their base. Ultimately I’m comfortable with this; given the failure of the big parties to engage with urgent environmental problems, the Greens need to be a party of influence, and if they have to sell some of their soul to get there then that seems like a political calculation they need to make.
A less-scary Green party also opens up space on the left for a true social justice party to come in and be vocal about those causes. The Mana party is the first shot at this, but I’m not yet confident it can hold together under the strain of the big personalities at its core; only winning one seat might be a blessing for the longer game.
Anyway. The country voted John Key back into power, despite polls showing they don’t really like his policies and don’t really know much about the rest of his party. That’s not a great endorsement for the NZ version of democracy, I guess.
Social psychology tells us that the biggest influence on our behaviour is the behaviour of people we know.
Our day-to-day social groups usually share our opinions on political matters, but Facebook (and, to a lesser extent, other social media tools) connects many of us to people beyond this.
So here’s a simple thing you can do before the election: announce on social media how you’re going to vote. Perhaps also say why if you can sum it up in a sentence. No big song and dance required, no need to engage in arguments if people reply. Just speak up.
I miss being able to blog about things in the world. Writing here helps me process and understand things. My comprehension of reality has reduced while I’ve been busy. Anyway, to spare you lengthy tortured posts, here’s some quick thoughts.
Shipwreck: A ship on a reef leaking oil, and the election just changed again. Our PM is under pressure from the media for a change, and he’s not coping. Key has been protected from tough questions his entire premiership for this reason – he can’t handle the pressure while keeping his smiling “nice Mr Keys” persona going. It won’t cause a huge desertion of the National party by voters, but expect Key’s preferred PM #s to drop and the Greens to continue to gather up votes.
OvalBall: I’ve never seen our country like this. The Rugby World Cup really has become a national celebration (even as the promised economic benefits fail to appear, SURPRISE). When we roadtripped up to Hastings and back a few weeks ago, the whole route was lined with festive signs. All Blacks flags in so many windows, flying from so many cars. And so many other flags! And every little town dressing up in global-village finery for the visiting rugby teams. A genuine spirit of love for the game, huge applause for the little-guy teams when they play well. It’s quite a wonderful atmosphere. I’m genuinely delighted. (Of course, if the All Blacks lose to Australia this weekend, there’ll be… well, not riots. But it will be rough. And hard to avoid even if you care not one tiny fig about rugby.)
Occupy: Yes yes, the Occupy Wall St movement has a vast overrepresentation of university-educated hipsters, and elides differences between middle class and working class, and hasn’t articulated unifying principles, and harbours madness on its fringes. It is important to note all of these things. But for heaven’s sake, don’t mistake these concerns for justifications not to celebrate the appearance of a genuine grass-roots societal justice movement that is driving the conversation in the US. (The US being the society whose abject brokenness all other Western societies are striving so hard to match.) There isn’t a completely different movement that does a better job waiting in the wings. This is the shot we get. Wish it well.
Who: loved Matt Smith’s performance this season of Doctor Who, but my enthusiasm for the show as a whole is at a very low ebb. Moffat as showrunner has lost me completely. His big villains are a complete failure of storytelling craft, and the more you try to forgive that, the more holes show up elsewhere. I stand by my earlier call: Torchwood season 4 > Doctor Who season 6.
Those who are at the top of unequal power structures always develop a mythology to rationalise the inequality. Kings were Kings because of Divine Right, etc etc.
In the modern world of business-oriented hypercapitalism, the mythology is that of productivity. You will be rewarded in accordance with your productivity – what you contribute determines your compensation.
This is a mythology. Who determines productivity? By what metric? What opportunities are given to display productivity? What else is going on in an employment relationship besides productive labour?
Alasdair Thompson has been mocked and chastised for saying a small portion of women’s lower pay is because of menstruation-related sick days. The mockery shouldn’t obscure the fact that this has revealed how the mythology is maintained. Women across all employment are paid less; therefore, they must be less productive; therefore, reasons for their lesser productivity must be found.
Thompson should be given the boot, but more urgently, his ideology – shared in toto with our current government – should be exposed to sunlight and revealed as the mirage it is. Because even after everyone agrees that, no, menstruation does not limit productivity – well, the ideology will remain in place. It was never founded on facts, and it will shift to new ground. It isn’t menstruation, then. Well, it must be because women are more emotional and not hard-nosed enough to pursue their economic self-interest. I just invented that now.
Rationalisations are easy. Shifting an ideology is bloody hard. This is an opportunity.
This is a shameful episode in NZ politics. Bad law, and indefensible process. You cannot legislate morality, and you cannot legislate to fix technological failure.
Both major parties voted for this law. Only the Greens opposed (with two independent MPs). Remember that at election time.
Duncan Garner on TV3’s morning news show Firstline just now: “Māori are confused. You’ve got Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples saying this is good legislation… and on the other hand you’ve got the last of the activist Māori saying we don’t want this.” (Starts at 4’41 into the clip, although he says “Māori are confused” at other times as well.)
Y’know, it’s good that Pākehā don’t get confused when John Key and Phil Goff say different things, or the country really would be in a pickle!
