A leading pollster suggested earlier this week that the National Party may be best placed to win this year's election if it just stays quiet and lets the government wear all the criticism for the inevitable rising unemployment, business failures and massive personal dislocation brought on by the Covid-19 outbreak and its aftermath. Whether that musing is any way true or even likely of course remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the National Party seems to have taken the advice to heart and gone to sleep early, just in case.

In part, this is because the government’s initial way of responding to the Covid-19 outbreak was to effectively shut the National Party out of any role whatsoever. When the Leader of the Opposition reacted to this in Parliament – in the days when we still had a functioning Parliament – his response was widely criticised as churlish and striking completely the wrong tone. He clearly took the criticisms to heart, quickly ordering his MPs and candidates to suspend all overt political activity for the duration of the crisis. At the same time, he accepted a government offer to chair a special select committee reviewing the Covid-19 response. He has done so extremely well and showed cross-party co-operation in a time of national need at its best.

But, arguably, he has been too successful, seeming at times to be a stauncher defender of the government’s approach than the government itself. Witness the way he led the government to a stronger line on imposing border controls, for example. However, the weekly committee meetings, asking questions to which there are seldom crisp and clear answers, and never any decisions made, are beginning to look just a little too cosy. It all begins to beg the question of whether he has been politically snookered by the government – cleverly backed into a corner of support from which he cannot readily escape, while allowing it to get on with its job, without too much critical scrutiny.

With Parliament in indefinite abeyance there is little scope for it to currently be any other way. Parliament is the Opposition’s primary forum for holding the government to account and making its alternative case to the public. Given both the current situation, and the massive challenges that lie ahead as we move out of Alert Level 4 and beyond, let alone the huge period of economic and social reconstruction ahead of us, the early resumption of Parliament is hardly in the government’s interests. Even though there are many questions to be answered and numerous uncertainties to be understood, then resolved, the early return of parliament does not even appear to be on the government’s horizon at all. After all, why give the Opposition an open forum for criticism when the country faces such dire times?

Previously, whenever there has been a national crisis – invariably of a much lesser significance and threat than the Covid-19 crisis – the Opposition of the day, National or Labour, has always been quick to call for the immediate recall of Parliament to discuss the situation and, if need be, the official actions being taken in response. There have also been times when the government of the day has felt it necessary to have Parliament endorse its response to adverse circumstances that have arisen. For example, Parliament was recalled specifically to debate New Zealand’s response to the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, and has previously set aside time to debate what needed to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes, and last year’s Christchurch mosque killings. There has always been the view that Parliament as the House of Representatives needs to be brought into the response to such issues.

Covid-19 is by and far away the biggest of all these crises. It is therefore puzzling, disturbing, and plain out of step with our long tradition, that apart from the initial debate in early February when the breadth of what was happening was not then fully appreciated here or around the world, the government has not seen fit to recall Parliament – albeit by videoconference – both to formally update it on its response, and seek its support for the steps being taken. Even more surprising and certainly more disturbing has been that the Opposition does not seem to have considered this a priority either. Yet the day to day lives of New Zealanders, in their homes, neighbourhoods, workplaces and schools are being impacted upon to a greater extent than even in wartime, when Parliament was in frequent session.

However, the crossroads are looming for the National Party. Assuming the election proceeds on 19 September, as seems reasonable given the Prime Minister’s recent assurances, National’s continuing to play the loyal back-up to the government will hand the coalition a huge advantage. Where is the case for change, if both sides of politics seem to agree on the current direction being taken?

Yet by September, life will not have returned to normal, however that is to be defined from now on. Indeed, it will be anything but. Thousands of businesses will have closed; tens of thousands of jobs will have been lost or put on the shelf; household debt will have soared. While New Zealanders’ resilience will be enabling them to get by, long term confidence in theirs and their children’s futures will have taken a severe hammering, and many future dreams and aspirations will have been permanently shattered. People may well be looking for a viable alternative to support, to restore hope. For that reason alone, if not the grander one of upholding democratic principles, National needs to be starting to distance itself, slowly but surely, from the government and its response. It needs to be showing itself as the party of the future, leaving Labour as the party of the crisis. But it needs the forum of Parliament to be seen to be doing that, which is why the government will not acquiesce.

The call to move out of Alert Level 4 next week is perhaps a start, but without Parliament sitting the country is being kept in the dark about what that means. Presumably National has clear intentions about how the threads of normal life should be picked up once again. The country needs to be hearing these alongside the government’s plans, so that it can assess the relative merits of both. For its part, the direction being proposed by National should appear positive, consistent, and clear. In that regard, making the case for the early resumption of a working Parliament to hold the government to proper account once more should be a no-brainer card for National to play well before the scheduled election

However, could it be that National was undoubtedly so badly scarred by the adverse public reaction to its leader’s early February comments that is has been spooked into a mode of quiescent support ever since, trying desperately to appear constructive while not rocking the boat too much. If so, medium term, this is not likely to be a winning strategy – unless, of course, National, ever mindful of being careful about what it wishes for, has concluded that in its own long term interests, the next election is now one it should not be trying too hard to win.

   

As the government starts to work on how it can move the country on at some point from its current Alert Level-4 status, the other political parties will be starting to think about how they can re-enter the fray and normal political debate can resume. After all, and not surprisingly, the focus of recent weeks has been almost exclusively on the Prime Minister and the senior team around her, with other political parties, with the occasional exception of the National Party, getting barely a look-in. Yet an election – still scheduled for September – is looming, so all of them will be trying to work out the best time to resume the usual political contest.

An inevitable consequence of the lockdown has been that almost every politician outside the top circle has been rendered largely irrelevant for the time being. National has been able to reclaim some relevance through its Leader’s positive chairing of the Epidemic Response Select Committee, but it is still very much on the government’s terms. He has properly judged that this is not yet the time for a resumption of full-on political engagement, so has focused instead on areas where the government’s lockdown approach looks particularly vulnerable – like for instance the apparently slack approach to protecting the border. At some point, though, he is going to have to the make the call to go further and resume the normal Opposition function if his party is going to appear as anything more than a pale imitation of the government at election time, whenever that might be.

But National’s challenges here are small compared to those facing the other parties – New Zealand First and the Greens in particular. The way the government has approached the pandemic crisis has effectively side-lined them and left them largely irrelevant. Not only have their particular issues been pushed off the agenda, but also, and more importantly, the government has so far demonstrated, albeit perhaps inadvertently, that it does not need their inputs to manage effectively. This was painfully and absurdly demonstrated by the New Zealand First Minister of Defence’s revelation that he has set up a virtual command post at his home, that no-one seems either to have noticed or taken any account of, leaving him to sit in splendid isolation. The Greens just seem to have disappeared altogether.

Before the Covid-19 crisis emerged both these parties were beginning to define themselves more separately from the Labour-led government they are part of to sharpen their brand definition and secure the support of their particular niches in the lead-up to the election. According to the last polls before the lockdown, neither could have been absolutely confident of their current electoral prospects. New Zealand First was consistently polling below the threshold for re-election and the Greens were hovering at or just above the threshold.

Historically, New Zealand First has always done better at election time than preceding polls suggest, although until now always from the position of being outside the government at election time, and the Greens, also from outside government, a little worse. For both, therefore, the election lead-up has normally been critical to their eventual prospects, especially both will have suffered some of the inevitable taint of having been part of the government since 2017. Yet this year circumstances seem likely to deprive them of their usual election year opportunity. But there is nothing they can do or could have done to prevent that, nor would the public have appreciated any overt politicking at this time by either of them to try to re-establish their position.

To make matters worse for both, there is the potential that the Labour Party, through its handling to date of the crisis could be a major beneficiary in terms of public support. While there are still many hurdles for it to cross and much opportunity for missteps that could cost public support, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that if New Zealand by election time is looking to have come through Covid-19 reasonably well, Labour could reap a significant electoral dividend. However, that would most likely come from currently soft New Zealand First and Green support. Every poll since the last election has shown National’s support to have remained pretty solid, so the likelihood of a significant crossover vote to Labour even in these circumstances is small.

But here is the problem. Current electoral mathematics mean that the Labour Party needs to have both New Zealand First and the Greens pass the 5% threshold to be confident of remaining in government after the election. Failure of one or both of these parties to cross that threshold will greatly increase the prospects of a National-led government emerging. Polls since the end of last year had already been showing National ahead, and able to form a government with the support of ACT, putting more pressure on New Zealand First and the Greens. A surge in Labour support now at the expense of New Zealand First and the Greens could have the unwelcome effect of seeing both of them out of Parliament altogether and Labour paradoxically out of office.

Before the Covid-19 outbreak Labour was showing small signs of understanding the need to give both New Zealand First and the Greens the space and freedom to differentiate on key policy areas to secure their electoral brands. Hence the Prime Minister’s remarkable tolerance of Shane Jones’ persistent and wilful breaches of the Cabinet Manual’s provisions on Ministerial conduct, and the various concessions to the Greens. However, once Covid-19 burst upon us, the government’s response quickly reverted to the old two-party approach. There was a belated, grudging acceptance of the role of the Opposition in a Parliamentary democracy (albeit one on hold for the duration) through the establishment of the Epidemic Response Select Committee chaired by the Leader of the Opposition, but there has been no obvious attempt to involve the government’s support partners in the process. They, along with many Ministers and all of the government’s backbench MPs, as well as most of the Opposition, have been left to twiddle their thumbs, irrelevant on the side-lines.

The perverse upshot may be that while the Prime Minister and her Labour colleagues win the battle against Covid-19 they could end up losing the war to secure a second term in office.  

A recurring theme in contemporary literature is of the plague that appears suddenly from nowhere and takes hold of the world, destroying or severely damaging life in the process. In 2003 acclaimed author Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake was premised on a super-pharmaceutical cutting loose and causing a global pandemic. The 2011 movie Contagion focused on a global pandemic that jumped from animals to humans and spread around the world. Perhaps most eerily of all though the American science fiction writer Dean Koontz predicted in a 1981 novel the emergence in 2020 of a man-made virus called Wuhan-400 with a 100% kill rate, which had been developed in Wuhan as a biological weapon but got out of control.

Although all these accounts are fictional, and while the tolerance for conspiracy theories should be limited even at the best of times, they do draw attention to situations that could become reality at some point. Yet, despite various occasional national and international warnings from researchers and clinicians, the Covid-19 outbreak has shown overall that the world was in a relatively poor state of preparation for such an occurrence.

This was notwithstanding the fact that in the last decade alone a number of global disease threats had appeared – Ebola, Zika and coronaviral diseases like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, known more commonly as SARS-Cov-1, to name just a few. Add to that, the constant threat of influenza related epidemics, and bioweapons, and the world should have well and truly been prepared for an event like Covid-19.

The New Zealand Influenza Pandemic Plan was published by the Ministry of Health in August 2017. It is a thorough and comprehensive document, but it does not appear that all that much has been happening since then to implement it. As early as late 2017, in the wake of the Ebola crisis health professionals were warning that New Zealand’s preparations for dealing with global disease outbreaks needed to be stepped up, both in terms of clinical and research capacity, and wider community response strategies.

The Pandemic Plan calls for “a nationally consistent monitoring and surveillance system during the period between pandemics” as an “essential component of preparedness.” It urges that “overseas trends must be monitored and analysed and surveillance systems in New Zealand maintained to enable the early detection of a novel influenza virus following announcements by WHO, and these systems must be capable of tracking the progress of a pandemic in New Zealand.”

But it is not clear what notice the government has taken of all the warnings. The difficulties we now hear reported almost daily of tracking Covid-19’s spread around New Zealand, and the initially slow and chaotic response, the shortage of essential items like ventilators, masks and gowns, not to mention the confusion over community testing, all confirm that the Plan has not been given the priority it deserved.

While not much can be done about that now, there are lessons for the future about the need to ensure that neglect never happens again, and that we are better prepared for the next global pandemic, whenever and in what form it may occur.

Because, as we have seen, the response to a major pandemic is a whole of government and not just a Ministry of Health issue, the way we deal with it needs to be similarly broad-based. Although the Plan acknowledges that, the response it suggests is a little narrow. It suggests the Ministry of Health should be the lead agency, but these issues are simply too big to leave to any one agency as the lead as is the case now. There needs to a single standing all of government agency, reporting directly to the Prime Minister on a quarterly basis.

That agency needs to have the capacity to review from time to time the overall state of future preparedness, and to be able recommend changes as necessary. It needs to be able to suggest to universities, research institutes and Ministers areas for future desirable research and to recommend appropriate levels of investment to ensure they occur. Also, it needs to be empowered to challenge the operational autonomy of District Health Boards to ensure a consistent range of clinical response is available across the country in such situations. PHARMAC needs to be in this loop as well to ensure funding is available to keep up the appropriate level of medicines and medical devices.

At the civil level, the pandemic co-ordination agency should set the parameters of any Police operations, both at the national and individual levels. For example, it is neither good enough nor acceptable for the Commissioner of Police to be able to say as he did this week, that while detailed operational instructions have been issued to individual Police officers during the current emergency he is not prepared to make those public. The Covid-19 response is not just another (albeit bigger than normal) Police operation so cannot be conducted that way. It involves many more public organisations than just the Police, so in these instances it needs to be clear that its traditional “constabulary independence” from the government has to become both subservient and accountable to the whole of government process.

While the immediate focus is on getting rid of Covid-19 in New Zealand, it would be foolhardy in the extreme to treat this as a once in a lifetime situation.  Rather than filing plans like the New Zealand Influenza Pandemic Plan on a shelf, we need to be ensuring they are constantly updated and kept in a state of readiness so that when next required they can be given effect to at a moment’s notice.   

The enormity of the government's task in defining the scope of the national lockdown has been highlighted by the confusion over what constitute essential services to be permitted to remain open.

After to-ing and fro-ing on whether the likes of The Warehouse could remain open, or liquor stores continue to trade or whether home deliveries of takeaway food would be permissible, the government finally offered some clarification. But anomalies remain, and almost certainly more will come to light over the next few days as the lockdown takes hold. Unless the relevant government officials move quickly to tidy these up, as and when they occur, the whole effort risks falling apart.

That would be an outright disaster. Every one of us, from the Prime Minister downwards has to take every reasonable step we can to eliminate the Covid-19 virus from New Zealand. While we should not be afraid to employ extreme measures during this critical time, we should equally not be afraid to modify them or abandon them completely if it becomes clear that they are not working out as intended. The worst thing we can do in such situations is to try and make running repairs to the regulations as we go along.

While our experience with occurrences of this magnitude is thankfully limited, we do know that mass restrictions, invariably designed hurriedly in response to a crisis, crash not because of their well-meaning intent, but rather the devil in their detail. Too often we make the mistake of assuming simple, broad-brush solutions can be universally and fairly applied, when clearly that is not the case. In the end, they fail not because the policy intent behind them was wrong, but because the anomalies and exceptions overwhelm them. They then become the major focus of public attention at the expense of the problem they were trying to resolve. Invariably, those who have no option but to comply become more and more resentful that “everyone else” seems able to get around the regulations, but not them.

Even under a state of emergency, and the unprecedented peacetime powers that confers, the democratically elected government still has ultimately to rely on the goodwill of the citizenry to make its plans work. That will be forthcoming so long as everyone continues to feel their contribution to the national sacrifice is an even one and that the sanctions being imposed are reasonable. The swift public rejection of The Warehouse’s suggestion that it should remain open as an essential public service was a good example of people sensing that one organisation was trying to push its luck too far. But it is also a salutary reminder to officials about the level of assurance and deftness they will need to show in dealing with the unexpected situations the lockdown is bound to throw up over the next little while. Government in New Zealand, even in these difficult times, remains a partnership between the governors and the governed.

The range of individual situations that will be affected here is massive, and probably not fully appreciated as yet. Struggling families worrying about their accommodation and the whether the breadwinner’s job will remain; people caring for elderly dependent relatives and those with terminal illnesses; the young mum about to give birth, or the family on the point of breaking up – all these are very real situations for many, many New Zealanders today. They are by no means exclusive, there will be many similar examples. The last thing any of these people can be reasonably expected to cope with alongside everything else at the moment is excessively rigorous, inflexible and intolerant administration of the lockdown which tries to fit their particular square peg into the officials’ pre-determined round holes.

The various natural disasters we have endured in recent years have shown us two things. First, New Zealanders rally round each other in a crisis, and do what they can to help those who are suffering. But, second, sadly, there have also been occasions where rigid and petty-minded officialdom has got in the way of what the community was trying to achieve.  We cannot allow that to derail what we all have to do as a community to stop the spread of Covid-19.

The immediate reaction to the Prime Minister’s call for us all to live within our “bubble” for at least the next little while will be one of acceptance – we fully understand we must all comply, no matter the depth of the personal disruption, to play our part. Initially, at least, there will be no tolerance shown for those shown to be or seeking to flout the rules or create mischief about them. However, that initial wave of support will start to evaporate steadily if questions of fairness and equity begin to occur and gather pace in the community.

Latest opinion poll tracking shows most New Zealanders now support the government’s actions on Covid-19, although only a minority think they will be successful. So, there is still work to be done to bring everyone completely on-side.

The apparent confusion between the Prime Minister and Police Commissioner over the extent to which you can use your private car is a silly distraction the government just does not need at the moment.  In these troubled times one of our best assurances of prudence and stability must be that the elected civilian government is in control and making the decisions, not the Police or the military.

It would be a massive pity if over-zealous policing, nationally and locally, upset the public’s acceptance of the government’s comprehensive and to date responsible efforts to see New Zealand through this crisis. Right now, a deep breath followed by a solid dose of common sense might well be in order for all those administering the lockdown. Keeping focus clearly on the bigger picture is far, far more important.

“This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

So spoke Franklin Roosevelt when giving his first Inaugural address to the American people in March 1933. He was, of course, speaking about the Great Depression which had wracked his country and the world since the great share market crash of October 1929, but his words are just as apposite today as the world confronts the Covid-19 pandemic.

Governments, businesses, health professionals and citizens everywhere are reeling as each new revelation about Covid-19 occurs, or as the daily explosion in the numbers of cases around the world is announced. While all these agencies are genuinely doing their best to respond appropriately, none of them really knows what the duration of the virus will be, how severe it will get, or what the long-term consequences will be for world economies and social cohesion. Suddenly, those television series popular in the 1970s and 1980s about small groups of survivors from either a nuclear holocaust or a global pandemic trying to re-establish social order and functional communities do not seem that fictional anymore.

This is just the type of environment where the best endeavours of governments and civil authorities can be easily and quickly derailed by rumour, gossip, idle speculation and ignorance that unchecked gives rise to the “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror” that Roosevelt was so keen to quell. While governments can act responsibly to stimulate their economies to keep as many of their citizens as possible employed and businesses afloat, to lay the ground work for recovery, and while they can endeavour to ensure the best possible medical services are available, it is almost impossible for them to manage the spread of public opinion. That is a virus of itself.

Private views about what is happening, formed on whatever basis, pass the same way as the virus from one person to the next, to form a community perspective. Any suggestion that access to medical care is not being offered even-handedly, or that some groups in society are missing out, or that people are not being told the full story can multiply rapidly and become  ultimately unqualified fact in the eyes of at least some sections of the community. At that point, the fear Roosevelt referred to sets in, and breeds envy, hatred and division, which, now unlike then, will be fomented and spread by social media, as we have seen in other areas.

But governments cannot manage all this by themselves. In fact, stentorian government messages on how people should behave are likely to have precisely the opposite effect. Even in a crisis, people do not like being told what to do, but they will respond positively to what they think were all their own ideas, or at least the suggestions of those around them. Peer pressure to conform remains the most powerful incentive of all. Public messaging from governments and health authorities needs therefore to be simple, consistent, positive and repetitive, as not everyone will be hearing them at the same time, or as often.

The messaging also needs to be co-ordinated and evidence based. The news media has a huge role to play, focusing on the information people need to have to be able to go about their daily lives securely and confidently, rather than the latest angle on the ongoing situation. In this environment, the drama of the event must give way to the wellbeing of the citizen, and the protection of public calm.

The Prime Minister struck the right tone when she told Parliament “Be strong, be kind, we will be ok”.  But that message cannot be left as just a one-off, a catchy line at the end of a speech in the House. It has to become almost a new mantra, for the government, business, the health sector and the community as a whole, to be constantly repeated and upheld. That way, assuming the maintenance of consistent and co-ordinated policy responses, we will overcome fear, prejudice and ignorance.

We will “revive and prosper”.

 

The first anniversary this coming weekend of the brutal, tragic Christchurch mosque slayings will be a difficult and bitterly sad occasion for so many people – the families of the victims, obviously, but also the recovery and medical teams involved, the Police and the other community leaders who played their part on that fateful day. For most of us, it is still hard to imagine events like that taking place in New Zealand, even though they were now nearly a year ago.

In the immediate aftermath, the country seemed to come together as one, with the near universal vow that something like that should never be allowed to happen here again. Much was said at the time about how we needed to unite as never before to make that a reality, and there seemed to be a genuine spirit about doing so.

Now, as we mark that first anniversary, it is worth looking at the progress made, and how we as a society may have changed to prevent a repetition of such awful events in the future. Sadly, despite the bold proclamations of the time, the resulting scorecard has been somewhat mixed.

The most dramatic commitment made was to clean up New Zealand’s cumbersome and lax firearms laws, to prevent dangerous weapons falling into the hands of cold-blooded terrorists like the Christchurch attacker ever again. A ban on semi-automatic weapons – the easiest bit of the jigsaw – was quickly achieved, but the rest of the package has struggled somewhat. The weapons buyback scheme appears to have had mixed results – a significant number of weapons have been handed in, but the suspicion remains that a large of numbers of weapons and components are still out there, unaccounted for. The next phase, the firearms register, has gone nowhere. Proposals to establish the register have stalled and are unlikely to be passed through Parliament any time soon, if at all. So, at best, the promised bold firearms policy gets a bare pass mark, and is unlikely to deter a determined terrorist from a similar attack in the future.

Next was the promise of a comprehensive Royal Commission of Inquiry to examine all aspects of the tragedy, including the performance of the security and intelligence services and whether they were paying sufficient attention to the presence and activities of extremist right-wing groups. Because of the perceived urgency, the Royal Commission was told to report back its findings by the end of last year. However, not surprisingly, the enormity of the task has proved impossible to achieve according to the original timeframe and the deadline for its report has now been extended to April 2020. To use NCEA parlance, the Royal Commission gets a “Not Achieved” at this point.

Meantime, disturbing claims have emerged from the Islamic Women’s Council about how various concerns of rising Islamophobia and the risks it posed they had been raising with the State Services Commission and other official agencies have been ignored. This, and the lack of apparent change in the way the intelligence services are now going about their business, raises important questions about official attitudes before and after the attacks. This in turn puts further pressure on the Royal Commission.

Another element that was focused on immediately after the attacks was the role of online communications and websites. While the Christchurch Call has made some progress on the international front in drawing attention to the concern and seeking the engagement of the likes of Google and Facebook to better moderate the content on their platforms, there still remain too many instances where objectionable online material has been able to be streamed in exactly the same way as before. So, while the Christchurch Call probably rates at least a B+ for its intent, the unsatisfactory practical consequences rate at around a D, leaving the overall rating on this score at about C to C+.

On top of this, and despite the pious good intent of the time, it is now clear that not a lot has changed in terms of improving public tolerance and respect for diversity over the last year. This week alone there have been reports of neo-Nazi groups becoming more active, and there was the incident of alleged homophobic conduct by a police officer in the wake of Wellington’s Pride Parade. Last week, there was the Court case involving the person who had made fresh threats against the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch. Over the course of the last year there have been a number of incidents reported across the country of racial slurs being cast, or discrimination made against people on ethnic grounds. And there has even been the case of a senior Cabinet Minister making racist and inflammatory comments on a number of occasions and suffering no sanction for his remarks.

Our society still seems to be as challenged as it ever was in terms of accepting the need for tolerance and diversity, with the brief coming together after Christchurch being clearly no more than a mere blip.
So, it will be another D on that account.

Overall, then as we reflect upon last year’s horrific attacks, the scoresheet is not especially promising, barely a pass mark and probably a fail on the commitments made a year ago. As we recall the events of March 15 2019, we should also realise that collectively we have so far failed the memory of all those who were killed, wounded and otherwise scarred for life. For the second anniversary in 2021 to prove worthy and pay true tribute to them, we all need to improve our response considerably. More action, less pontification would be a good starting point.      

   

There should be little surprise at Shane Jones’ latest racist outburst against Indians living in New Zealand. The typically florid, bombastic, pompous comments were, by his own admission, aimed not at the Indian community, nor the vast majority of the rest of the country, but rather at just the small percentage of it that identifies as supporters of the New Zealand First Party.

After all, they have had a tough time in recent weeks defending the apparently indefensible way their party funds itself, so might welcome the party making the headlines for other reasons. What better way therefore to make the party troops feel positive again than trotting out some good, old core message rhetoric as light relief? No matter the offence the comments understandably and justifiably caused the Indian community, because although they were the group attacked, they were not the group at whom the remarks were aimed. Playing minorities off against the rest of the population in this way is a classic New Zealand First tactic and is the height of electoral cynicism.

But it is also much more than that.  It is a blunt expression of New Zealand First’s beliefs. Moreover, what it really shows is that racially motivated criticisms by New Zealand First MPs are not just some casual occurrence to be brushed aside as “their personal views”. There have been too many instances of this type of behaviour over the years for them to be dismissed credibly as just coincidence.  Rather, they are at the heart of New Zealand First’s monocultural, anti-immigrant message, which the party is unashamed and unabashed in promoting. It is a deliberate pitch to that segment of the population that holds similar views.

One only need recall Winston Peters’ quarter century of attacks on non-white migrants; former deputy leader Peter Brown’s outburst that there were too many Asian immigrants coming to New Zealand; former MP Richard Prosser’s references to people from “wogistan”, Ron Mark telling a Korean born MP to “go home”, or Clayton Mitchell’s anti-Semitic comments in  Parliament. The list goes on and on. Shane Jones is no different – he is just playing the same old tune his party has scratched out for years.

But it is not just the frequent attacks on foreigners and their values that mark New Zealand First out as racist. It has also been the party most consistently opposed to correcting Treaty of Waitangi imbalances, or enabling greater power-sharing with, or public participation by, iwi in the nation’s life. New Zealand First has always opposed moves in this direction as encouraging separatism, an anti-social justice and equality tactic frequently employed by white-supremacy groups elsewhere.

New Zealand First has consistently and deliberately played the race card in New Zealand politics like no other party in the last quarter century. And given its electoral success in that time it has to be conceded, sadly, that the strategy has succeeded. Unfortunately, its overt racism has legitimised the latent prejudices of a small group of New Zealanders who have supported New Zealand First as the public expression of their own private bigotry. And, at three of the eight elections held under MMP, that support has been sufficient to put the party in a key position which it came to government formation.

However, this year, the party is locked in a real battle for political survival. There are steady signs that New Zealanders may be tiring of the New Zealand First presence in Parliament. But, as previous elections have shown, the party often performs best when its back is to the electoral wall. And it does so by playing to its traditional appeals. Therefore, during this year’s election campaign, all ethnic and cultural minorities are likely to be targets of some type or other of New Zealand First’s hostility, if it considers that fomenting such division is in its selfish political interests. After all, it has worked for them in the past, so why would it not do so again? Unfortunately, therefore, any hope that New Zealand First will moderate its racism in the slightest in the lead-up to this year’s election seems likely to be extremely forlorn.

All the while, it is becoming increasingly ironic and incredible that the Labour Party which professes itself to the world as progressive, compassionate and kind should be propped up in office by such a regressive, racist coalition partner. Sadly, while National has already reduced New Zealand First’s relevance for the future by ruling out working with it, Labour is too electorally reliant on New Zealand First’s potential numbers to do likewise. And with the Prime Minister’s do-nothing response to New Zealand First’s racist attacks likely to continue, the country seems set to endure yet more ignorant and intemperate outbursts from Shane Jones and his colleagues over the next few months until the election, when the majority of New Zealanders will have the opportunity to finally put an end to this racism in politics once and for all.