28 January 2016

There used to be a State opening of Parliament every year, complete with a Speech from the Throne setting out the government’s agenda. That was followed by a full Address-in-Reply Debate, where most MPs spoke, on what was said or not said, as the case may be.

Nowadays, we have an annual Prime Minister’s Statement. Even that has changed over the years. Today, the actual Statement is merely tabled; the Parliamentary debate is quite truncated and highly politicised. Rather than being a formal presentation and consideration of the government’s agenda for the year ahead, it has descended to the depths of being no more than the opening round of the year’s political boxing match.

It is preceded – in the best of the emerging traditions of what passes to be sporting competition today – with the preliminary skirmishes. This farce is euphemistically and overly grandiosely referred as the state of the nation addresses. With rare exceptions (the Auckland rail funding announcement and the Greens’ election policy costing ideas, for example) these speeches are increasingly like the strutting bellowing of boxers at the weigh-in, or a pre-Big Bash team rant. Because of the ritual chest-thumping and knuckle dragging behaviour they display, they actually add nothing to political debate.  Sadly, for many New Zealanders they are no more than the signal that the holidays are over, the politicians are back, so it is time to switch off and carry on with their own lives for the year ahead.

There is a place for passion, outrage and anger in politics. It should be rare and dignified, and never feigned, befitting a major issue of the day. Unfortunately, the competition for attention and the presence of some addled egos means that virtually every issue is now treated that way. All that means is that a moderately interested (at best) public sees this cant for what it is, and becomes more cynical and turned-off from what it perceives to be these contrived, insincere performances.

All around the world today people bemoan the lack of interest or engagement in the political process. Some are even suggesting direct action is likely to be more effective political involvement than following democracy. The challenge for all of is to develop new and better forms of public engagement than are currently the case. Politics as usual, in this country and elsewhere, will no longer work.

History’s great leaders have been those who have transcended the superficiality of their times to connect directly with people about the enduring issues that matter – personal and family security, access to opportunity, the protection  of their rights and dignity, and the chance to live a good life.

That remains the challenge today. Everything else is extraneous. While it is naïve to think there can ever be full trust in the political process (it is after all a robust contest of ideas and values, where some win and others lose) there needs to be greater alignment of the public’s aspirations and the politicians’ focus. After all, the ultimate handbrake on reckless politicians and government is an educated and informed public holding them to account. As more formal political processes reduce, the handbrake is similarly loosened. To overcome this, and thereby restore a modicum of trust, the reinvigoration of education about citizenship (or what used to be called civics) would be a welcome step towards a more civilised, substantive and responsible form of political engagement than the loud, populist, shouting sports channel approach we have currently. 

  

 

  

 

 

 

 

21 January 2016

Welcome to 2016! May the year ahead fulfil your dreams and aspirations.

2016 has begun with New Zealand continuing to tiptoe – always seemingly reluctantly and certainly gingerly – around the issues of its identity and future.

The upcoming vote on the flag is the obvious current example. Changing our national ensign to represent something more in tune with contemporary New Zealand should have been a no-brainer, but, if the opinion polls are correct, such a result seems unlikely at this stage. Then we will be stuck with the current drab flag for another century or so, and the government will probably conclude that the lack of enthusiasm for even this modest change shows no public appetite for wider constitutional change, so that will also fall off the agenda, and we will remain in our national rut.

While the flag is but a symbol, the debate about its future is important. It should be an opportunity to engage all New Zealanders in discussing our values as a nation. In particular, it is important for young New Zealanders, many of whom will be too young to vote in the referendum, but will have to live with its outcome far longer than those of us who will be voting and making the decision. What do they think? What are our obligations to them when we vote? Surely the vote on the flag should be more than just the selfish expression of those who are older?

Of course, the ultimate objective of any constitutional reform project has to be the establishment of an independent New Zealand republic within the Commonwealth. In the meantime, there are other steps we ought to be considering as well. Changing the flag is but the first of these.

Amongst the others is the oath of allegiance. This has caused controversy in recent years because the current oath makes no reference to the Treaty of Waitangi. But it also continues to require allegiance to the Queen, which becomes more and more absurd as each year goes by. Surely a more logical solution would be to amend the oath to one of loyalty to the people and laws of New Zealand?

At the same time, we could look to replacing other antiquated British symbols with a few more relevant to contemporary New Zealand. For example, the Queen’s Birthday observance could be abolished in favour of a Matariki Day holiday, to serve as a possible National Day as well. The offensive Guy Fawkes Day could be replaced by Parihaka Day to honour the tradition of passive resistance New Zealanders have shown in many different settings over the years.

All these debates will be opportunities for the young people who are New Zealand’s future to have their say about the type of country they seek. In our role, as custodians of the present for the future, it will be our challenge to give them that opportunity.

A 2016 that embraces these ideas could be an exciting and significant year for New Zealand. But a year that continues to ignore them, will be no more than just one more – like last year and so many more before it. The years of almost, but not quite, and opportunities lost.

      

  

 

 

 

 

10 December 2015

So, according to the Security Intelligence Service, increasing numbers of young New Zealand women are off to Syria to become what have been called “jihadi brides.” Well, actually, there are not that many. Of the thousands of foreign fighters in Syria, and assumed to be fighting for ISIL, it is understood that less than a dozen may be from New Zealand. Unless the so-called “jihadi brides” are marrying non-New Zealanders involved in the campaign, the actual numbers are very small, probably insignificantly so, indeed.

Therefore, why raise this spectre of alarm? One reason might be that, small as it is, the number has grown, and is consequently, in a time of increased international tension, worth noting. Possible, but unlikely. After all, whatever way you look at it, the numbers are still very low. And also, there has been no change in New Zealand’s terrorism alert status in the last year to account for it.

Well, it may be that New Zealand is becoming an active recruiting base for such people. Again, unlikely, and in any case, were it so, drawing attention to it would be the very worst thing to do, as it would only serve to recruit more people to the cause.

So perhaps it was just a throwaway comment, made just in passing. Whatever their many lapses, security agencies are not prone to passing throwaway comments, so that defence can be dismissed.

All of which leaves two possibilities. One is that our risk status has increased and this is a coded way of drawing public attention to it. This too is an unlikely scenario for the simple reason our official risk status has not been upgraded in the last year.

That leads to the inevitable conclusion that the comment was part of a softening-up process for the outcome of the independent review of the security services due in the first quarter of next year. After all, heightening the perception of threat would boost the case for increasing the powers of the security agencies. This is a little too obvious and we should be careful not to become too taken in by it.

But there is another, potentially more subtle aspect to this. The softening-up process may not be directed so much at the general public and the politicians, as it is to the review itself. After all, the review could recommend curbs on the way the security services operate, or even worse from their point of view, some rationalisation and reorganisation. That would be anathema to the shadowy practitioners of the craft, who since virtually forever have operated largely as a law unto themselves. But what if a tighter line was to be drawn between their activities, and those of say the Police under the Terrorism Suppression Act, for example?

Now all this I freely concede is but unsubstantiated speculation on my part, but I suspect issues like this will be focusing the minds of the spooks as they huddle furtively around their summer barbecues. They should also be topics for the rest of us to ponder as well.

On that note, Dunne Speaks takes its leave for the year. Best wishes for a happy and peaceful Christmas and a safe and prosperous 2016.

      

 

 

 

 

 

3 December 2015

The announcement that Japan intends to resume scientific whaling, as it prefers to call blatant slaughter, in the Southern Ocean this season received surprisingly scant attention last week. There were the ritualistic expressions of outrage, the perfunctory Government statement of concern, and the muted calls to dispatch a naval vessel to the region to “sort things out”, but really that was it.

But Japan’s actions deserve a far greater response than that. After all, not only are they thumbing their noses at international opinion, they are also openly defying the rulings of the International Court of Justice. Indeed, this is the contemporary equivalent of France’s arrogant actions from the 1960s onwards of testing nuclear weapons, first in the atmosphere, and then underground at Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific.

And the comparisons do not end there. In both cases, these environmental assaults occurred in our broad neighbourhood, and in both cases, it was not unreasonable to expect New Zealand to take a leading role in opposing them. We did that admirably against French nuclear testing, from the time Norman Kirk sent a New Zealand frigate, complete with a Cabinet Minister on board, to Mururoa in 1973, at the same as he sent his Attorney-General Dr Martyn Finlay to the World Court to argue successfully the legal case against the French. Our staunch approach caused France to first move to underground testing, then inspired the dastardly terrorist attack against the Rainbow Warrior, but finally forced France under Mitterand in 1996 to abandon all testing, albeit 181 tests later. Along the way, hundreds of thousands of typical New Zealanders had been inspired to join the campaign for a nuclear free Pacific, and an end to nuclear testing.

If our outrage about Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean is as serious, we will need to adopt similar tactics to defeat it. The inclement weather of the Southern Ocean makes it impractical and dangerous to encourage protest flotillas into the area, but maritime patrols by either the Navy or the Air Force are surely an option to keep the focus of international attention and scorn on the whalers. Norman Kirk described the frigate HMNZS Otago as it set sail for Mururoa as “a silent witness with the power to bring alive the concerns of the world”. A modern Naval vessel or Air Force Orion shadowing or circling the whaling fleet could provide the same inspiration today.

At the same time, New Zealand should continue its efforts in the International Court of Justice, alongside Australia and other like-minded nations to hold the Japanese to international account.

From the time Peter Fraser signed the United Nations Charter in 1945, New Zealand has been strongly committed to a rules-based international system. We have consistently and properly upheld the primacy of the international institutions we helped create, so utilising those institutions in the fight against whaling is entirely appropriate.

New Zealand and Japan have a good relationship. Through the Trans Pacific Partnership that is about to become a little closer. We should not be afraid to use that relationship, the power of the international community, and our capacity to be a “silent witness” to bring Japan to end the barbarism of whaling in the Southern Ocean.  
   
      

  

 

 

 

 

26 November 2015

Later this week I will join current and former Labour MPs to celebrate the 80^th anniversary of the election of one of New Zealand’s most reforming and innovative governments – the first Labour Government under Michael Joseph Savage. No doubt there will be much reminiscing and catching up with former colleagues, particularly those from the equally reforming and innovative fourth Labour Government in which I was privileged to serve.

Amidst the banter and inevitable backslapping, there will assuredly be reflection on the remarkable Labour Prime Ministers New Zealand has had over the years. Savage, Fraser, Kirk, Lange and more recently Clark come to mind.

For me, the remarkable thing about the Labour Party, which attracted me to join it while still at school, was its ability to continually adapt to the circumstances of the time to promote a new vision for the New Zealand of the future. Savage and Fraser expanded the incipient welfare state Seddon’s Liberals had ushered in during the 1890s to meet the needs of a society recovering from the 1930s Depression. Kirk and subsequently Lange captured the yearning for national identity of the restless baby boom generation and beyond. Lange and Clark oversaw the painful economic adjustment necessary to shift New Zealand from Muldoon’s Gdansk shipyard of the 1980s to the modern dynamic economy of today. Differing circumstances and differing challenges, but the constant was the capacity to develop responses attuned to the time.

Sadly, today’s Labour Party is but a shadow of its bold predecessors. There is no sense of future direction or purpose, and even in its rare positive moments, the Party’s best offerings seem to be a hankering for yesteryear. The boldness in politics is now coming from the National Party – formed primarily to oppose the first Labour government – with no more striking example than its Budget decision this year to lift basic benefit payments, the first such upward adjustment in over 40 years(including the 3^rd to 5^th Labour Governments). Labour, the traditional friend of the beneficiary, was left gasping in its wake.

Labour’s challenge today is to recover its soul and its place. In this post market age, there is a still a role for a radical reforming party of the left, if it is prepared to be bold. There is the opportunity to pull together the threads of the Labour heroes and promote a new commitment based around strengthening New Zealand’s national identity through constitutional and social reform, and encouraging diversity. There is still a place for a progressive party promising a new, more co-operative economic approach in today’s globally digitally and free trade connected world. And there is still a place for a progressive party to promote new, innovative approaches to education and social services.

But rather than grasp these opportunities, Labour has become predeterminedly negative. While it supports a new New Zealand flag, it opposes the current referendum process, essentially because it is a National Prime Minister’s idea. Its approach to economic policy is stalled because it cannot make up its mind on the Trans Pacific Partnership. Its stigmatising of people with Chinese sounding names buying property in Auckland has robbed it of any credibility in the diversity stakes, and its capacity to champion meaningful education reform is zero while it remains the plaything of the PPTA.

Labour’s great leaders of the past all succeeded because in differing ways they snapped themselves out of the prevailing straightjackets of the time to offer something fresh and dynamic.

Among the canapes and the congratulations this week, there ought to be many still in the Labour Party thinking about these points.

If not, there may not be a similar dinner in 20 years time.        

   

  

 

 

 

 

19 November 2015

In the wake of last weekend's horrific terrorist attacks in Paris many are asking fresh questions about what new steps can be taken to curb outrages committed by Daesh extremists and their like. Western intelligence agencies have already warned these types of attacks are likely to become more commonplace, and, as if to reinforce their relevance, have judiciously revealed details of similar projected incidents that have been thwarted already. Countries like France and Russia have stepped up their bombings of suspected sites in Syria and Iraq. And, generally, people in Europe particularly, and elsewhere besides are that much more on edge than a week ago.

There have been warnings that cyber attacks may replace physical attacks, with dramatic potential consequences for things like air traffic control or the international financial system. Given increasing global inter connectivity this is potentially the greatest threat of all. Moreover, it comes at a time when governments are becoming more committed to the delivery of services on line to their citizens, and in their dealings with each other. Ironically, rather than closer global co-operation being a way of enhancing common security, it may actually become a threat to it.

It is against this background that the D5 Summit is taking place this week in Tallin, Estonia. The D5 (comprising Britain, New Zealand, Estonia, Korea and Israel - the five leading countries in terms of online government services) was formed last year to promote digital government and greater co-operation between governments in providing services digitally. For the Estonians, probably the most advanced government in this space, it was a no-brainer: when the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990s Estonia was left with virtually no physical infrastructure, and so a move to digital was a logical step. Now, virtually every government service there, including voting in elections, can be accessed through one's mobile phone. The drivers for digitisation were different in both Korea and Israel where national security has been the obvious focus. In the case of Britain and New Zealand,  delivering public services more conveniently and at a time of people's choosing has been the dominant influence. The D5's focus is not on global security, but on the delivery of joined-up government services services on line.

In short, the D5 looks to the positive use of cyberspace to facilitate governments' interactions with their own citizens, and with other governments. (The recent agreement that Australia's Justice Minister and I announced about sharing cyber data to prevent identity theft is a good example of the type of inter-governmental co-operation we envisage.)

Inevitably, the recent outrages and their consequences will intensify the pressure for greater intelligence sharing, and potentially more surveillance of citizens as the price to pay to preserve public order. (Wryly, the business maxim that doing more of the same just produces more of the same old results seems never to apply when it comes to intelligence agencies and the exercise of what they quaintly refer to as their craft, but be that as it
may.) While that may be an understandable, if not condonable short-term reaction, it cannot be allowed to prevail. (Churchill's wartime warning about "perverted science" leading to a "new dark age" is worth recalling here.) The D5's challenge is to ensure that its positive vision for cyber connection and co-operation is not subsumed by the short-term exigencies we currently face, and that the idea of more on-line government remains something to be relished, not feared.

12 November 2015

Somewhere along the way this week the plot got well and truly lost. Uproar in Parliament, walk-outs, protests and people shouting at and over each other may be all good theatre, a modern form of gladiators in the arena if you like, but after it is over, the fact remains, nothing has changed as a result.

Moreover, the issue itself seems to have become secondary to the noise it has generated. And the issue here is simple: Australia is treating people in its detention camps – in the main New Zealanders awaiting deportation – in a way that is appalling, no matter which way you look at it. Yes, there are definitely very evil people amongst them who have committed unspeakable crimes, with whom we would not usually wish to associate, but they still have the same basic human rights as the rest of us. The argument should be focussing on how these rights are being upheld in the detention camps. On the strong face of it, the detainees are now worse off than when they were in prison, even though they have presumably paid for their crimes in Australia. This cannot be just.

And that is the real issue here. Are these detainees being justly treated, and if not, what can we in New Zealand reasonably do about it? There has always been a more frontier approach to justice in Australia, as the treatment of their indigenous people has shown, and the current treatment of boat refugees continues to show. I suspect most New Zealanders are far from comfortable with the notion of holding such people captive on offshore islands, and would not let a New Zealand government even consider doing so.

That different approach is where our focus needs to be. The modern concentration camp approach Australia has taken is simply wrong. It was wrong when the British tried it in Northern Ireland in the 1970s; it is wrong in Guantanomo Bay, or in Israel today. Australia is no different. The right to due process and fair and open trials is inalienable. So New Zealand needs to be asserting basic human rights and freedoms, not stooping to the name-calling and abuse that has passed for debate over the last week.

Australia is a sovereign state. We cannot automatically require it to change its laws, just because they affront us. The Prime Minister is right on that score. But we can, and should, be speaking out as loudly and frequently as we can against abhorrent practices, especially given the mantle of family the Australians like to drape upon us. After all, most families are blunt with each other and speak out about what they do not like. We should be as well.

The political civil war of the last week has done nothing at all for any of the detainees on Christmas Island. Rather than turning their guns on each other to pointless effect, the Government and the Opposition need to be turning on the real villains of the piece – Ministers like Peter Dutton and others in the Australian Government who continue to promote and support such savage and inhumane policies.