Vox Populi

John Campbell's Lament

At the end of 2023 well-known TV interviewer and reporter John Campbell wrote a lengthy piece which appeared on the One News website. It has attracted a fair amount of comment from a number of shades of the political spectrum. Rather than make a generalised comment on the piece I feel that it deserves more detailed attention. Mr Campbell’s article follows and I have interspersed it with my comments which are in italics. I have decided to use this approach so that I retain the context of Mr Campbell’s remarks and ensure that I am not misquoting him. I should emphasise that my responses to what he says are, like his piece, my opinion.

John Campbell – Are We on the Cusp of Something New or Something Old

OPINION: Revolutionary laws repealed, language initiatives reversed, authorities disestablished, even the climate crisis denied. As 2023 wraps, writes John Campbell, is the coalition government leading Aotearoa forward – or backward?

Who are we?

And where are we heading?

It occurred to me, as I started this “2023 in review” over and over again, trying to tidy into words a long and unruly year that began with Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister, saw the job passed, like a relay baton, into the hands of Chris Hipkins, then onto Christopher Luxon, who was propelled over the finish line by two men who appear to stand for less than they stand against, that I have no idea what the answers to those questions are.

Of course, five million people won’t ever see themselves in the same way.

But this isn’t about multitudes, the rich and complex tapestry of diversity, or pluralism, it’s about division.

Christopher Luxon promised us he would “deliver for all New Zealanders”. But as one year ends and another begins, “all” doesn’t feel like quite the right word.

We feel at risk of becoming less than we aspire to be. Of succumbing to what Barack Obama called the politics of “fear and resentment and retrenchment”.

Where are we heading?

And who will we be when we get there?

One has to ask whether or not Mr Luxon, Mr Seymour and Mr Peters are responsible for the division that Mr Campbell laments and which he attributes to them. That said I concede that for most of his political life Mr Peters has thrived on division. His language and approach are divisive, highlighting and condemning those things that he finds unpalatable but at the same time gives a voice to the thoughts of those who either lack the ability to articulate them as eloquently as Mr Peters or, on the other hand, dare not speak their minds.

Mr. Seymour, on the other hand, may be deemed divisive because the ideas that he advances are not those of the progressive mainstream that Mr Campbell clearly favours. But what is important about such ideas is that in a free and open democracy they have a place and should become part of the national debate. And because there is a debate and that debate is necessary for the crystallisation both of ideas and policy, it should not, in and of itself, be considered divisive – unless, of course, one would rather not have the debate at all.

As for Mr Luxon he, like Mr Seymour, expresses a point of view. He has a tendency, at least at this stage of his development, to be rather formulaic and repetitive in his articulation of his message, but once again his message is but one of many and because, like Mr Seymour, his message does not conform with the progressive ideology does not mean that it is ipso facto divisive. Mr Luxon is entitled to put his message out there. If the message is approved by the community he has a mandate to proceed to implement it.

Sadly divisiveness is a part of today’s reality. Authoritarian politicians of the Left and Right both engage in it. Perhaps if Mr Campbell seeks a starting point for the current divisiveness in society he need go no further than the comments that then Prime Minister Ardern made about the reality of discrimination arising from decisions that citizens made about whether or not they would have the Covid-19 vaccine. The cavalier dismissiveness of Ms Ardern was concerning to those of use who abhor discrimination and infuriating to those who were to suffer it. But perhaps that is a bit too distant for Mr Campbell’s historical lens to focus.

All language is learned

I do understand that nobody likes a Grinch.

Some of you will be reading this on holiday.

Many of us, not all because the world needs the fuel of our labour, will have stopped, or slowed. Those lovely, famous lines from The End of the Golden Weather, when dad has finished for Christmas, and he “comes home early, springing without the weight of the year. A fortnight to go before he shoulders the next load of days”.

Yes.

Part of the weightlessness of these days is that politics, too, stops. Parliament does not sit. Our Prime Minister vanishes (briefly) into his or her personal life. Some of us don’t even talk about politics, for fear of disturbing the peace.

But the peace has been disturbed.

If you haven’t noticed that it may be because the kind of resentment populism ACT and New Zealand First are increasingly experimenting with isn’t happening at your expense.

Let me explain.

I’m in the Wairarapa. I’ve come down here to see my Mum. We’ve had fish and chips in the garden at the Lake Ferry pub (my favourite place in the world to eat f and c, with its view across Cook Strait to the Kaikōura Ranges, and the coastal road that winds east, through Ngawi to Cape Palliser, where the Pacific doesn’t only feel like an ocean, but the beginning of infinity). And I travelled here on roads now under the control of the New Zealand Transport Agency because the government thought it was a priority to relegate the name Waka Kotahi.

Why?

Christopher Luxon says he was told by people on the campaign trail that they didn’t know the difference between Waka Kotahi, Te Pūkenga and Te Whatu Ora.

But all language is learned.

How did those people know what a cat was, or the moon, or mum, or any of those first, special words we learn as infants and toddlers? Because a grown-up cared enough to tell them.

We routinely use language that assumes understanding. MBIE, the OCR, EBITDA. How many of the people who accosted Christopher Luxon about Waka Kotahi understand, exactly, what Treasury does? Or the difference between the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General?

But power speaks the language it chooses. And we nod.

The politics of resentment, this rising meanness, affirms one language and regards another as a kind of threat. And in doing so, it casts shadows not light.

Look at the coalition agreement National signed with New Zealand First. In it, National agreed to “ensure all public service departments have their primary name in English, except for those specifically related to Māori.”

Why?

And how is that echoed in other coalition priorities?

And what do those choices tell us about the meaning of Christopher Luxon’s “all”.

Mr Campbell is correct in some respects that language is learned but his comments about language lack nuance and fail to recognise the purpose of language. I speak as a lawyer, and that background insists that language must be clear and unequivocal. Millions have been spent litigating documents or statements that have been unclear and ambiguous. Mr Campbell as a journalist must understand this.

But what he overlooks is an element of nuance and that is the purpose of language. Language does not operate in a vacuum. It is there to communicate and to do so in a clear and unequivocal way. Now it maybe comfortable to have branding and signs expressed in a language that is understood by a minority of members of society, but that is of little assistance when a citizen is looking for the offices or service centre of a Government Department whose function is to serve the citizen. The branding and naming of that Department should be clear and the fact of the matter is that branding using Waka Kotahi not only does not translate into Land Transport New Zealand but is meaningless to a person who is not versed in the Maori language. And so it is with many Government Departments.

Mr Campbell suggests that citizens should educate themselves in the Maori names of Government Departments so that they may be able to identify them. But this introduces an element of compulsion into the equation that seems to be a characteristic of the virtue-signalling Left.

All that is proposed is to reverse the use of the language. The English brand name comes first, enhancing communication of the message for the majority of the population, and the Maori label comes second. That does not mean that Maori is relegated to a second-class position. It recognises the reality of language as a means of communication and understanding.

This has nothing to do with the politics of resentment as Mr Campbell suggests. Rather it has everything to do with clear and unequivocal communication – something with which Mr Campbell is (or should be) intimately familiar.

The biggest cheer

Winston Peters, of course, would say I was being “woke”.

He said it in Parliament, on December 12th, when he was Acting Prime Minister, and answering questions from the co-leaders of Te Pāti Māori.

He said it when he was soft-launching New Zealand First’s campaign, back in March.

“The biggest cheer”, Glenn McConnell wrote, “followed his criticism of “Air New Zealand’s waka in the sky”, the name ‘Te Whatu Ora’ and the Waka Kotahi/NZTA brand. ‘We will change all of the woke virtue signalling names of every government department back to English,’ he declared.”

Except, it’s not woke, is it? It’s a unique and precious language, grown here, spoken only here. It’s completely and utterly ours. I remember, in season two of Origins, when Scotty Morrison went to the Marquesas, and found words that echoed over centuries and 5500 kilometres of Pacific Ocean, and which told the story of how a new people and a new language came to be.

Mr Campbell is perfectly correct. Mr Peters has a tendency to use derisive language and “woke”, which is another word for “aware”, is being used as a pejorative term.

That said if one were to examine what lies behind what is derided as “woke” one is inevitably drawn to the Left side of the spectrum with all its manifestations of control, centralisation, collectivism and a positive sense that the Left knows what is right for everyone regardless of individuality or indeed individual choice and will ensure that everyone will conform. It goes by another name- social cohesion.

Mr Campbell is correct in some respects about the Maori language. But it is not unique. It is a derivative of Polynesian languages that are spoken throughout the Pacific. Many of the words in Maori are echoed as far away as Hawaii with slight variations. Mr Campbell acknowledges the variations when he refers to the words that Mr Morrison heard when he visited the Marquesas. Perhaps Mr. Campbell became caught up in his own rhetoric and failed to see the contradiction in the one paragraph.

But let’s chuck that out and cheer. “The biggest cheer”. (Is that who we are now?)

Perhaps the biggest cheer that concerns Mr Campbell is that a large number of people support Mr Peters’ position. Now it may be that Mr Campbell sees that position as addleheaded and he is perfectly entitled to hold and express that view. But his language would seem to suggest that he would deny to others the right to hold to a particular position and to express it.

Let’s trade that in because a few of us couldn’t recognise Māori names, or because our heads and hearts are too closed for the poetry of ‘waka rererangi’. (We prefer ‘aeroplane’. Coined, on the other side of the world in the late nineteenth century, and derived from French, Greek and Latin. That’s ours.)

I wrote about this after the coalition agreements were signed. The surprising amount of space given to things that felt reductive. The priorities that seemed small, regressive, and unhopeful. The strange, circling sense of a new colonialism.

I kept returning to the word “mean”.

Which is odd because our new Prime Minister keeps telling us he’s “ambitious for New Zealand.”

“Hugely ambitious.”

Mr Campbell is not the first person to deride ambition. Brutus, according to Marc Antony according to Shakespeare, said that Caesar was ambitious. Nothing wrong with ambition. In fact New Zealand could do with a bit more of it, especially personal and individual ambition rather than leaving everything up to a collectivist Government.

Christopher Luxon says that kind of thing so often it’s feels like CEO ardour, remembered, repeated. But it’s not always persuasive. Particularly when he’s being harried into the shadows by his coalition partners. Sometimes, it feels like the volume you deploy at a shareholders’ meeting after a slightly disappointing result. Or the way a small boy, walking home after dark, talks to himself in a deep, loud voice about having a black belt in kung fu.

Take a look at the PM’s media release announcing the coalition government’s 100-day plan.

It lists, in fourteen bullet points (Nicole McKee insisted on those), “hugely ambitious… actions”. But ten of the fourteen, TEN OF THE FOURTEEN, contain the words, repeal, ban, remove, stop or disestablish.

All matters which were the subject of the political campaigns of the coalition partners, all of which were scrutinised by the electorate. There are no surprises there. It seems Mr Campbell’s complaint is the fact that “negative language” is employed whereas in fact what is proposed is the disestablishment of many proposals that were enacted by the former Government and which have not found favour with the electorate. It is difficult to discern whether Mr Campbell is mourning the loss of those programmes or merely taking a linguistic point in his analysis that the new Government’s ambition is largely negative.

The world was watching

Maybe I’m being obtuse, but if anyone could point me to any actual “ambition” in, for example, “Repealing amendments to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990 and regulations”, or “Introducing legislation to disestablish the Māori Health Authority”, that would be super useful. I’m here for ambition. It reminds me of when I was an astronaut.

And guess who those actions appear disproportionately likely to impact.

Māori.

“New Zealand smoking ban: Māori mourn loss of hard-won smoking reform”, the BBC headlined their story. “When New Zealand's new government announced it was scrapping the country's world-leading tobacco laws, it came as a particularly hard blow to Māori people.”

Look at what the BBC describes us as walking away from.

“The proposed policies – especially denicotisation and the so-called Smokefree generation – have never been implemented anywhere.”

Um, that sounds… what’s the word for it… ambitious.

And here’s why the world was watching us, “public health researchers considered New Zealand – a high-income country of just over five million people – an ideal setting to try and achieve tobacco ‘endgame’.”

At this point, the BBC exhales.

“But New Zealanders in October voted in a change of government. The conservative coalition then said it intended to repeal the health laws to fund tax cuts – a policy blindside given the leading National party never once mentioned the Smokefree laws during campaigning. The new government also plans to dismantle the Māori Health Authority.”

“Also”. What a discretely pointed use of that word.

Once again Mr Campbell’s point seems to be a linguistic one. I hold no brief for tobacco companies and it is clear that tobacco causes problems. But it is not tobacco that is the problem. It is the people who choose – and I emphasise the word “choose” - to use it.

And this is where it becomes clear what is going on. If we strip away the emotive arguments about those who are going to suffer, what the Government did in imposing it smokefree proposals was to dictate to the people what they could and could not do. Now Governments do that. Almost every law that is enacted involves a restraint on individual liberty. But in this case the Government was depriving the people of a choice – it was making the choice for them and enforcing it by law.

It may seem to be a little too libertarian for Mr Campbell but people should be able to make choices about how they live their lives rather than have them the subject of a diktat from Wellington. But in some respects, these are times in which we live. The Ardern\Hipkins Government and its associated bureaucrats developed an appetite for excessive control as a result of Covid and let’s face it – that sort of power is not relinquished lightly.

What is surprising is that there are some in the community who do not see it that way and actually favour State involvement in many aspects of the personal life of all citizens and their choices. The only problem is that they want everyone to live in such a totalitarian society where citizens are deprived of their individual autonomy by a collectivist State.

The same new government is “also” relegating te reo Māori.

I wonder if Mr Campbell means “relegate” in this sense. As I understand it the Maori language is not being cast into the shadows. It is not being banned. It will still be alive and well and spoken by those who want to speak it. It is, as it should be, a matter of choice. What is being done, as I have earlier suggested, is that meaning will be made clear which, after all, is the function of language.

The same new government “also” ignored a Cabinet Paper, leaked to Newshub and then the New Zealand Herald, that said repealing Fair Pay Agreements would “disproportionately impact women, Māori and Pasifika and young people”.

And on it goes.

Also plus also plus also.

What on earth does Mr Campbell mean by this sentence?

The impact keeps falling on the same people. And it’s not us “all”.

Then there was Chippy

Twelve months ago, Jacinda Ardern was still Prime Minister. Then, on January 19th, she announced she was showing herself the door.

Slam.

I spoke to her, at length, in April.

By that time, of course, Chris Hipkins was Prime Minister.

Chippy. The nickname, the dirty dog sunglasses, sausage rolls, a home in Upper Hutt, the childhood photos. It all so perfectly evoked a nostalgic sense of brand Labour, or bland Labour, that it was as if an ad agency had dreamt him up.

The only thing missing, and I’m grateful to Christopher Luxon for the word, was “ambition”.

Chris Hipkins was up against Covid exhaustion, general exhaustion, the weather, a cost of living crisis, a sense, later articulated by the Auditor General, that large sums of money had been spent without adequate architecture, rigour, oversight and reward (“At several points, officials advised Ministers of risks to value for money… Ministers did not have enough information to be sure that decisions supported value for money”), the high wattage rhetorical energy of Christopher Luxon with his aspiration for us “all”, and the identity populism of ACT and New Zealand First.

So, Chippy needed to persuade us that he represented something more than just life after Jacinda Ardern. That he stood for something meaningful. But his caution felt like dilution. Or an absence. (Ghost Chips.) Who were the Labour Party in 2023? I’ve no idea. And if you’re a Labour supporter and your answer is “not National”, it wasn’t enough.

Labour won 50 percent of the vote in 2020, and 27 percent in 2023.

Yes, there were factors beyond their control. Huge factors. But governments can’t recuse themselves from governing. And leaders have to lead – more so when times are tough.

What Mr Campbell fails to recognise is that the Government did attempt to “lead” if by “lead” he means take the citizenry in a direction in which they did not wish to go. It should be remembered that by articulating those elements of the Labour Government policy that were to be dismantled, the citizenry spoke – perhaps not with a united voice, voting for one party, but well aware of what the outcome would be. Even Mr Peters had made it clear that a vote for NZ First would not be a vote for Labour.

Where is Labour now?

Speaking to Audrey Young in The Herald, Chris Hipkins considered Labour’s crashing loss of support and concluded: “The general vibe of the campaign was that people were looking for a change and it wasn’t necessarily a policy-driven vibe. It’s just how people were feeling.”

Labour’s vote almost halved in three years and their leader is talking about “vibe”.

“People don’t vote on a left-right continuum. They vote on the vibe of the campaign”, Chris Hipkins declared.

I’m not suggesting a hair shirt – Labour should be taking stock not doing penance. But some acknowledgement that they arrived at an election campaign without an actual campaign, might be useful.

If you’re having a sausage sizzle and you don’t have any sausages, that’s not a vibe issue. It’s that the central ingredient isn’t there.

Audrey Young asked Chris Hipkins what sort of Leader of the Opposition he wants to be. He talked about “highlighting how we would do things differently, and charting a different course”, which echoes David Lange’s belief that if you want to be elected you have to look like a government in waiting.

But then Chris Hipkins said, “you won’t see much of that in the first few months, because we need to take stock and we need to the opportunity to reflect and refresh.”

Good God. The first few months? (Is Labour on sabbatical?) By that stage the Government will be insisting that everyone called Wiremu change their name to William.

Yes, now is the time for Labour to scrutinise the real ambitions of the new government. But more than that, now is the time to remind us that what we aspire to doesn’t exclude people, or diminish them, or single them out for populist blame attributions. Now is the time, surely, for Labour to remind us of the meaning of “all”.

Clearly Mr Campbell in suggesting that Labour can remind us of the meaning of “all” forgets that the Ardern/Hipkins Government was the most divisive Government in my memory. Mantras like “they are us” and appeals to “kindness” disguised the reality of the hidden agenda of Labour.

Ardern’s departure gave Hipkins the opportunity to engage in a reset which, to his credit, he did. But it was too little too late. He had the albatross of He Puapua and Ardern’s discriminatory policies around his neck. And that bird was never going to fly.

Goodbye Freddy?

Ambition. The word the new Prime Minister uses, like a mantra.

We saw it, or its absence, on December 12th, when Shane Jones spoke in the House about “the hysteria surrounding climate change”.

“Hysteria.” Shanes Jones really said that.

Look, New Zealand First would do almost anything for a vote now. They’re as principled as a cigarette. But when Shane Jones stood there and thundered, “one of the great lies about climate change is that, yes, apparently, it's a crisis”, it felt (how do I put this fairly and reasonably?) pathetic.

It’s worth watching him say it. What’s most striking is how proud he appears as he decrees himself boss. It’s like he’s auditioning for the role of Jack in a Parliamentary production of Lord of the Flies. “I am the Minister of Resources”, he says. The “I” echoing. “I look forward to leading the debate, changing the law, enabling gas and oil exploration… to take place, yet again, in New Zealand.”

Sometimes things just damn themselves. Shane Jones uttered those words in the same week that COP28 reached an agreement that “signals the ‘beginning of the end’ of the fossil fuel era”.

And here’s where the coalition government looks like disparate parts. Because Climate Change Minister, Simon Watts, was actually at Cop28.

This is a “turning point”, he said, from Dubai. "That sets us a precedent for us to go forward now".

Then Simon Watts said something that sounded not only ambitious but decent.

"We've taken that obligation of representing and advocating on behalf of the Pacific very strongly.”

“The real focus now is on implementation... we're deadly serious about it."

That was on December 14, two days after Shanes Jones had said: “We are not going to meet the 2030 dreamy, fairy-tale, aspirational figures that we'll be freeing ourselves of fossil fuels as a source of generating energy.”

Shane Jones and Simon Watts have ministerial portfolios in the same government. And they said those things in the same week. And you can be forgiven for wondering whose words best embody the government’s position? And whether anyone in this coalition has a clue what they actually stand for on climate change? Or whether Shanes Jones is the government’s true voice? And Simon Watts is saying what the government doesn’t mean?

This, of course, is the same Shane Jones who (with Winston Peters) presided over the Provincial Growth Fund.

Let’s look back at what they stood for then.

“There is no doubt climate change poses a real danger to our regions”, said Winston Peters in August 2020, as he announced an investment “totalling more than $100 million… to protect against and mitigate the effects of climate change”.

And who was the climate warrior standing alongside him? You guessed it! Old mate! “This funding is on top of the $107.2 million we have already announced for six other regions in the past four weeks,” said a man called Shane Jones.

A particular favourite of mine is the announcement from April 2018 that the “Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) will invest $150,000 to investigate establishing Taranaki as an internationally recognised leader in clean energy technology”, because, wait for it, “‘change is coming and we need to start getting ready for it.’ Shane Jones said.”

And then, on December 12th 2023, the same Shane Jones pumped himself up like a condom full of gasoline, and decreed: “if there is a mineral, if there is a mining opportunity, and it’s impeded by a blind frog, goodbye Freddy”.

“Goodbye Freddy.” Is the guy who said that eight?

Get used to it. We’re entering an age of unenlightenment. As we will see, a feature of populist politics is attributing blame to things that don’t deserve it. Even Freddy.

Mr Campbell’s loathing for New Zealand First is betrayed by his use of emotive language and bizarre similes which does his argument little good.  Indeed in that regard he emulates the person he criticises. Now I hold no brief for Mr Shane Jones. I find him a confusing speaker. He lards his argument with mixed metaphors and obtuse quotations presumably to demonstrate his education (which as I recall took place at Harvard – a place which at the moment is having some difficulty). Mr Jones can be pompous and patronising. His “Goodbye Freddy” comment is obtuse in the extreme, although I assume it has some relationship to a common name that is used for a frog.

But Mr Jones, despite all the blather, may be on to something when it comes to climate change. One has to be carful when entering the lists of this argument. Certainly human activity has accelerated the process of climate change, but climate change has been a part of existence on this planet since there was a climate. And planetary change is a massive process which is so enormous that nothing we can do can change it nor arrest it. Climate change is inevitable. Nothing we can do will stop it. Nothing we can do will return the climate to some earlier “Golden Climate Age” if indeed there ever were such a thing.

The focus of governments on Climate Change provides yet another opportunity for those Governments  to impose even more controls on the lives of citizens and what they can and cannot do.

What really needs to be recognised is that there needs to be adaptation to changes in climate and although that will involve State interference it will not be as significant as it could be. All we can hope is that Mr Jones dials back the rhetoric and attempts to find some much needed common sense – oh and yes – drop the pomposity. It doesn’t fit well with the professed “man of the people” image.

Populism – the runaway train

None of this is new. But it alters how politics is done. It sharpens the edges of its impact. And it suggests that when Christopher Luxon says “all”, he’s operating from a position of blinkered privilege, or he’s looking the other way.

Almost everywhere we look now, populist politicians are retailing demagoguery and building rhetorical walls as fast as they can spit them out. Why? Because a divided population creates constituencies in the shadows.

American political sociologist Larry Diamond has so many strings to his bow I don’t really know where to start with him.

He holds (at least) two senior fellowships at Stanford University. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. At Stanford, “he is professor by courtesy of political science and sociology”, and his “research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy.”

In 2017, he delivered a speech entitled, “When Does Populism Become a Threat to Democracy?”

In it, he argues, “all forms of populism – even “good” (progressive, democratically inspired) ones – harbour an intrinsic tendency to become a runaway train.”

Larry Diamond describes factors that increase populism’s risk to democracy. Two of them are populism’s propensity to be anti-pluralist (“populism becomes a danger to democracy when it rejects democratic pluralism”) and illiberal (“populism becomes a danger to democracy when it seeks to restrict the rights of political, racial, ethnic and other minorities”.)

Let’s go back to the coalition agreement National signed with New Zealand First:

- Legislate to make English an official language of New Zealand.

- Ensure all public service departments have their primary name in English, except for those specifically related to Māori.

- Require the public service departments and Crown Entities to communicate primarily in English – except those entities specifically related to Māori.

- Conduct a comprehensive review of all legislation (except when it is related to, or substantive to, existing full and final Treaty settlements) that includes “The Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi”

- Abolish the Māori Health Authority

- Confirm that the Coalition Government does not recognise the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as having any binding legal effect on New Zealand.

National signed that agreement. Whatever that is, it’s not ambitious. Whoever that’s repeatedly and explicitly signalling out, it’s not us “all”.

What next?

The problem with division is that it divides. Them and us leaves them and us. And then Larry Diamond’s “runaway train” starts moving.

Katherine Cramer is a is a professor in the political science department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

She became fascinated by political polarisation in the US state of Wisconsin, and by the growing support (in a state that had been reliably, but not vehemently, Democrat voting) for Scott Walker, a Republican governor with, what the London School of Economics called “populistic tendencies”.

Katherine Cramer’s book is called The Politics of Resentment.

In it, she considers how populism works by blaming certain groups for things that aren’t their fault: “people do not focus their blame on elite decision makers as they try to comprehend an economic recession”, for example. “Instead, they give their attention to fellow residents who they think are eating their share of the pie. These interpretations are encouraged, perhaps fomented, by political leaders who exploit these divisions for political gain.”

In New Zealand, that might, for example, be Māori.

Let’s look at National’s coalition agreement with ACT:

- Introduce a Treaty Principles Bill based on existing ACT policy and support it to a Select Committee as soon as practicable.

- Disestablish the Māori Health Authority

- Remove co-governance from the delivery of public services.

- Ensure government contracts are awarded based on value, without racial discrimination.

- Issue a Cabinet Office circular to all central government organisations that it is the Government’s expectation that public services should be prioritised on the basis of need, not race

- Examine the Māori and Pacific Admission Scheme (MAPAS) and Otago equivalent to determine if they are delivering desired outcomes.

What that implies, surely, is that a group of people with a seven years shorter life-expectancy, with disproportionately poorer outcomes in almost every measure, who lost land and language and sovereignty, who signed a Treaty that was repeatedly and egregiously breached, are getting something the rest of “us” are not.

It’s perverse. It’s not true. And, as the LSE defines it, it’s populism. (“Populism is a style of politics that manipulates and exacerbates identity cleavages for political gain.”)

And National signed up for that. In 2023.

I wonder if Mr Campbell is confusing populism with polarisation. Certainly polarisation is the hallmark of Mr Peters’ style. But to categorise as he does the list of issues as “populist” allows the word to supplant that of “popular” and if the changes proposed are popular they don’t necessarily have to be populist – at least by the definition preferred by Campbell from the LSE.

Clearly, once again Mr Campbell is having difficulty with the fact that these changes were signalled during the election, have been endorsed by the electorate who have given a mandate to the Coalition Government. And what is more the Coalition has been transparent in what it proposes to do. The policies have been made clear. And they were popular rather than populist. Populism may have been present in the expression of the ideas, but the ideas themselves were popular. And when we look at the origin of the word popular it comes from the Latin “populus’ or people. Popular means prevalent among then people or general public. Mr Campbell demonises popularity of an idea by casting it as populist. He is entitled to do that but such laziness of language cannot go unremarked.

Hope is a maiden speech

Christopher Luxon only became an MP in 2020. At the end of 2023 he became Prime Minister.

It is a remarkable trajectory. A story of ambition realised.

He is similarly “ambitious” for us. At least, that’s what he keeps saying, so very often he sounds like he’s calling race seven at Trentham and every horse has been named after an energy drink. “Ambition.” “Turbo-charge”. “Accelerate”. “Action”. “Action mode”. “Delivery.” He’s said them all since becoming Prime Minister, but what do they mean?

Does anyone, anywhere, really believe the government scrapping our “world-leading tobacco laws” was ambitious?

They’re funding tax cuts.

“We had an opportunity to lead the world”, said Associate Professor Andrew MacCormick, the NZ National Committee Chair of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

That was ambitious.

Does anyone, anywhere, believe ACT’s obsession with the Treaty is ambitious?

Or New Zealand First’s obsession with English – and their extraordinary attempt to cast the most spoken language on the planet as some kind of victim?

Or Shanes Jones, and his advocacy for precisely the oil exploration the world is now finally turning against?

I’d completely despair. But on December 12th, the same day Shane Jones sounded his miserable surrender, Tim Costley and Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke gave their maiden speeches.

They’re lovely things, maiden speeches. Parliament’s equivalent of spring.

Each new MP sows their garden. This is where I’m from. This is why I’m here. This is what I hope to grow.

I sat at my desk and watched National’s new Ōtaki MP, Tim Costley, tell us who he is.

He spoke really well.

He used te reo Māori with genuine skill and feeling. (I phoned him to ask how fluently he spoke it, and he said he was still learning. Then he used a lovely line – “If you want to get closer to someone, you take a step towards them.”)

Yes.

Tim Costley isn’t abandoning the core aspirations that made him want to stand for National. He is clearly conservative. And he aspires to what he regards as meaningful in the framework available to a new, National backbencher.

But he made his politics sound decent. And he had a sense of “all”.

There were moments when he was overwhelmed, by the occasion, by memories of people lost, by a celebration of his mum, by love, and, in each of these moments, he reminded us that our politicians are as human as we are.

What matters, now, is the space we give to other humans.

These are angry, divided, tribal days. And populism will heighten that. Sharpen it. Exploit it for political gain.

Unless someone, a leader, for example, says “no”.

Later that day came Te Pāti Māori's new Member for Hauraki-Waikato Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke. Twenty-one years old, Aotearoa’s youngest MP since 1853, and she filled Te Whare Paremata (Parliament) with what Moana Jackson might have called the light of her ancestors.

It was extraordinary to watch her. Her eloquence, her strength and power. Her mana.

If we are ambitious, then isn’t it for young people like her? You don’t even have to agree with her (the nature of politics is that many people won’t), but surely, surely, a country that celebrates Māori youth when it runs with an oval ball, can see how brilliant and vital she is. She’s bi-lingual, confident, has a sense of self that shines like a star, and understands our history because she comes from deep within it.

And if we drive Māori back into the shadows, if we relegate the Māori language, if we attempt to further diminish a Treaty that we have spent almost two centuries violating, if we accept inequity and regard attempts to address it as provocative rather than just, then what choice will Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke have, but to rise up against all of that?

And then some of us who ought to know better will dismiss her, as “shrill” and “angry”. And the populist politics that drives us to exactly those kinds of divisions will have won.

What a terrible victory that would be.

Who are we?

In his own maiden speech, only three years ago, Christopher Luxon said something worth holding to: “It's my absolute belief that New Zealand can do better, and when it does, New Zealanders will do better, too.”

Lead us there, Prime Minister.

All of us.

Mr Campbell closes on a note of hope, citing maiden speeches from two new Members,  although one would think from everything he has said in his opinion piece there is little enough of that. It is clear that he loathes the “populism” that has accompanied the New Zealand First position and he is entitled to that point of view and as importantly he is entitled to express it and express it from whatever platform is willing to host it.

In this regard there has been some criticism of the fact that Mr Campell’s opinion piece appeared on the TV One website. The view is that a taxpayer funded broadcaster should not be permitting nor condoning the publication of such a piece. Such an attitude is concerning. There is no suggestion that TV One endorses Mr Campbell’s view point. The article is clearly labelled “Opinion”. It contains elements of controversy. It contains matters upon which Mr Campbell feels strongly. It is not really a well written exposition and as he so often does with his broadcasts, Mr Campbell allows his emotions to take over and wears his heart on his sleeve. The musings, the faux bonhomie, the booming self-assuredness of the rightness of his cause which we so often see on our screens leaps out of the print.

But putting Mr Campbell’s stylistic and presentational problems to one side the important thing is that he has said what he wants to say and that should not and must not be denied him. I would rather Mr Campbell’s ideas are in the public arena where they can be scrutinized, examined and critiqued rather than have them lurking unexpressed in an authoritarian and censorious society.

But in the final analysis, Mr Campbell’s critique, although pointed towards Mr Peters, Mr Luxon, Mr Seymour and Mr Jones, is really a Cri du Coeur against what he sees is the stupidity of the electorate in giving a mandate to the Coalition. What he and many of his Left wing companions cannot understand is why, when obviously such an enlightened but flawed Government was heading so clearly in the correct progressive and collective direction, there should be an electorate sea change. Mr Campbell’s lament is for – as the title to John Mortimer’s book states lamenting the fact that the reforms of the Atlee Labour Government were rolled back by Mrs Thatcher –  Paradise Postponed.

But the essence of democracy is that every three years the power shifts from the Legislature, the Beehive and the Bureaucracy back to the people. For a brief, shining moment, the people have a say. The people become sovereign. Thomas Jefferson’s ideal. It is one of the few times that the people get to exercise their sovereign power. One person, one vote (MMP permitting). Majority rule with minority rights. Te Pati Maori, Willie Jackson and others may express concerns about democracy and its processes, suggesting perhaps an alternative form of sovereignty carrying with it echoes of pseudolaw. The irony is that they have been and continue to be the beneficiaries of the democratic system and processes which they deride and which they would replace. But those processes have grown and have been processes for which much blood has been spilt over the centuries. Not to be discarded lightly – no, not at all.

And it is this power shift that has presented Mr Campbell and the critics of the Left what they see as an unpalatable outcome. They have not gone so far as Mr Trump to suggest that the election was stolen but it is clear that they have forgotten or conveniently overlooked a fundamental premise that underpins the democratic process – the sovereign power of the people – Vox populi, vox dei – the Voice of the People (is) the Voice of God.