Election tactics: some things never change

ON the eve of Women’s Suffrage Day, a Waikato cowcocky was photographed carrying a sign declaring Jacinda Ardern to be ‘‘a pretty communist’’. In terms of reasons for feeling outraged and affronted, Labour supporters were spoiled for choice. Should they be outraged at the overt sexism of the ‘‘pretty’’? Or affronted by the sheer, redbaiting idiocy of the ‘‘communist’’? Then again, a compelling case could be made for being disturbed by the whole extraordinary image. Here, just five days out from a general election, was proof that, in this country, there are still places which remain entirely untouched by the sunlight of the 21st century.

So unenlightened are these ideological troglodytes that they have yet to grasp the fact that the milk from their cows; the liquid that gets processed into powder in Fonterra’s factories; the export product that gets loaded on to ships; is bound for a country ruled entirely and exclusively by members of the Communist Party of China. That’s right! The people who keep our cow cockies in their tractors and utes may not be all that pretty, but they are, most emphatically, communists!

Another fact these strange subterranean folks seem to have forgotten (assuming they ever knew it in the first place) is that the comprehensive freetrade agreement between New Zealand and the People’s Republic of China — the first such document ever signed by the Chinese state and a democratic Western nation — was negotiated by the Labour Government of Helen Clark. That’s right! The world’s largest market for milk powder; the market that kept New Zealand’s dairy industry afloat through the dark days of the global financial crisis; had been opened up for them by a leftwing woman — from Waikato.

Not that the New Zealand Right’s blind hatred of all things Left is anything new. Throughout this country’s history, conservative Kiwis have demonstrated an exaggerated fear — bordering on fullblown paranoia — of ‘‘the wrong sort of people’’ (i.e. those not farmers or businessmen) being able to exercise the slightest measure of control over their lives.

The Right’s fear of being governed by the Left is not born out of strong libertarian principle. It is not as though the very idea of one group of humanbeings exercising control over another is anathema to rightwing politicians and their supporters. After all, the Right is only too happy to use the full panoply of state power against those whose economic and social subordination is deemed essential to securing their own social and economic ascendancy. Indeed, the history of New Zealand is little more than the record of the Right’s neverending struggle to resist and reverse the egalitarian policies and achievements of the Left.

Even when those policies and achievements have been to the obvious benefit of the nation as a whole, the Right has not, for a single moment, relented. On the morning of the 1938 General Election, for example, after three years of extraordinary progress under the First Labour Government, and with the groundbreaking Social Security Act due to come into force on April 1, 1939, this was the editorial warning the capital city’s morning newspaper delivered to its readers: ‘‘Today you will exercise a free vote because you are under this established British form of government. If the socialist government is returned to power, your vote today may be the last free individual vote you will ever be given the opportunity to exercise in New Zealand.’’

Over the top? Not according to a 1938 National Party circular to its parliamentary candidates: ‘‘Oppose! Oppose! Oppose! That is the essential duty of Nationalist speakers. Use every possible play of words, every fact you can advance to show that your opponents are fools, political hypocrites, opportunists, seekers of power, despots, traitors to their own class, to their country, or their Empire.’’

It was curiously reassuring, following the recent National Party claim that there is an

$11.7 billion ‘‘hole’’ in the Jacinda Ardernled Labour Party’s fiscal plan, to discover how little the Right’s strategic approach to fighting general elections has changed.

Be it the democratic nightmares of conservative leaderwriters, or the feverdreams of redbaiting Waikato cowcockies, the rightwing reflex to ‘‘Oppose! Oppose! Oppose!’’ remains as strong as ever.

What is it the French say? Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Chris Trotter is editor of the

New Zealand Political Review.

Here, just five days out from a general election, was proof that, in this country, there are still places which remain entirely untouched by the sunlight of the 21st

century