Venting Their Spleen

At the height of the 1993 election campaign, I found myself in a Wellington shopping mall when Mike Moore’s entourage splashed through. Various would-be luminaries were with him: they cheered and clapped loudly as a hysterical Moore preached doom and gloom, vitriol and fury, and rage and ire, in a scene that was until then, as a young right-wing activist, the most negative display of mud-slinging campaigning that I had ever seen.

Moore was a mercurial figure. He had the amusing habit of starting a sentence that seemed to go on for ever, covering all ranges of homilies and subjects, and somehow ending each statement with personal abuse directed at Jim Bolger, Ruth Richardson, and Jenny Shipley. The Labour Party’s 1993 slogan, “Jobs. Health. Growth,” didn’t seem to bear any relation whatsoever to the message that Moore was pushing—that the National Party were a group of very nasty people who were hell-bent on destroying the country. It was not a coherent campaign.

Among Moore’s private coterie were such figures as Clayton “Mini-Me” Cosgrove, and Ron Mark. Also present that day were Paul Swain and the local Labour candidate: they were, in short, a group of diminutive, angry young men who believed that they deserved to be in Government, apparently for no other reason than that they had bigger tempers than anybody else. Policy barely featured.

Instead of heckling Moore, which was my natural inclination, I went to chat to some of Labour’s activists. I made a few smart remarks, and what sticks with me even now was the reaction of the supporters: their hackles up, they sneered and attempted to jostle me. I jostled back. It took a then level-headed Ron Mark to calm his colleagues down; the realisation that a group of Moore’s inner circle starting a rumble with a member of the public in front of the cameras was not the image that Moore wanted to portray.

What also struck me, apart from Labour’s then mob mentality, like some bunch of Mafia thugs demanding an extortionate payment of electoral support, was the lack of social skills in Moore’s team. They had no means of engaging with members of the public: they didn’t like the public. They were hostile and militant. They believed they had a right to govern, for no other reason than that they had an innate belief in their leader. I suspect that this was the reason behind Moore’s extraordinary election-night boast of a “long, cold night” for Jim Bolger; he had surrounded himself with people just like him—angry, vengeful thugs who had told him precisely what he wanted to hear.

Half a generation on, I can now understand the rage from Labour supporters this election.

For the last six years, Labour has danced in the moonlight of economic prosperity. That prosperity has come about through the very major sacrifices that both Labour and National Governments imposed on New Zealand from the mid-80s onwards. Those gains—the longest sustained period of economic growth since the second world war—have delivered an unprecedented winfall to the Government. Those gains have not come about through the fiscal discipline of the last six years by Labour—because the fiscal discipline has been non-existent. Rather, it has come about through the hard-won toil and efforts of New Zealand taxpayers.

The question this election, therefore, is who deserves to reap the benefits? That question—a luxurious position given the hardship and slog of the past twenty years—presents for the first time in several generations, the most stark difference that voters have had in modern history. What voters decide to do on September 17 will dictate the path that New Zealand takes over the next twenty years.

That probably explains why minority parties are taking such a flogging this year. No longer can voters state that there is little difference between National and Labour. The key choices are between the two parties.

Labour’s solution is one that ignores the key thrust of the reforms of the last twenty years. Despite the sea-change of Rogernomics that started getting New Zealanders to realise that they are primarily responsible for their own economic destiny, and that the Government is merely a buffer in times of last resort—Labour wants to turn the clock back. They claim that it is politicians who should decide how individuals behave: dictating to them how their money is spent.

Suddenly, state support for very low-income earners is extended to middle-income New Zealanders. Education expenditure, originally intended to provide people with the minimum tools of basic learning, is extended to provide twilight golf courses. Health expenditure is no longer just directed at hip, cararact, and glue-ear operations, but to cover sex changes as well.

That might be acceptable in an ideal world. Perhaps in the perfect society, a vastly enriched state sector does help the masses.

But the perfect society doesn’t operate in New Zealand. Nor did it operate in the Soviet Union or Albania. It is certainly not operating in North Korea or Cuba now.

What happens, when the state attempts to extend itself beyond providing the bare minimum of services, is that they lose focus on providing those basic services. Trans-gender operations, a fault-free justice system, and the inflated excesses of the wananga may well excite the Socialist ideologues, who see their dream of an “inclusive” society—in which fringe groups are pandered to at every corner—coming to fruition.

In the meantime, by getting distracted by their pet projects, the compulsory education sector is in disarray. Students emerge from schooling with no reality-based assessment mechanism. Tertiary students emerge from dubious institutions with worthless qualifications. Waiting lists for surgery rises. Violent crime increases, simply because New Zealanders no longer see the point in reporting it to an over-stretched Police.

In the meantime, Labour tells voters that because of the massive proliferation in special pet-projects in the social laboratory that New Zealanders didn’t actually vote to live in, there is no money left for tax relief.

That is the vision that Labour has for New Zealand. That National is exposing that agenda, and that Labour is losing the argument for that agenda, explains why, as in 1993, the Labour Party has resorted to the most negative election tactics in a long, long time. Instead of defending the indefensible—their own skewed view of New Zealand, the Way Labour Wants It—their smears on Don Brash and his party continue.

National’s position on New Zealand is equally clear: that the benefits of economic reform deserve to be returned to New Zealanders. That the returns should be returned in a way that continues to promote prosperity and further gains. That the role of Government is to provide basic services, where individuals have the option of purchasing their social luxuries as they see fit, rather than having imposed on them by the socialist agenda. That if you want the luxury of a sex change operation, a bigger house, or a twilight golf course, then you will have the means to pay for it yourself—but only if you earn it.

So over the next two weeks, New Zealanders can expect more spleen-venting from Helen Clark, Trevor Mallard, Steve Maharey, and Pete Hodgson. Their vision of New Zealand is falling apart, as New Zealanders begin to see for themselves just what havoc the socialist experiment will have on New Zealand society.

And expect them to get very nasty and bitter as they gang up on Don Brash and try to punch him out of the political mall. Just as Mike Moore did twelve years ago, they will increasingly lose any coherence they had before. They’ve already lost the argument; their only resort is fear, rage and thuggery.