When Auntie Helen tweets, Labour jumps
In Wellington’s Bolton Street Cemetery stands a striking monument by the grave of former Labour leader Harry Holland. It portrays the socialist firebrand as a classical sculpted nude, attended by cherubs and holding a flowing robe beside his bare buttocks.
It’s an extreme illustration of how the Left mythologises its former leaders, far more than centre-Right conservatives, who might be expected to privilege the past.
And it gives a clue as to why the intervention of fifth Labour Government supremos Helen Clark and Michael Cullen spelled the swift end to a proposed restructure of RNZ Concert, the state-funded classical music broadcast, this week.
It is hard to overstate the influence Clark has. The Labour Government’s core leadership, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Finance Minister Grant Robertson and leader of the House Chris Hipkins are all former Clark staffers in her ninth-floor Beehive office.
Clark tweeted she was ‘‘concerned to see the marginalisation’’ of RNZ Concert, after RNZ proposed that it would be moved off its AM frequency and shed staff. She mentioned Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi, but addressed her tweet to her former deputy chief of staff Robertson, who responded very quickly: ‘‘We will Helen.’’
In what millennials would call a ‘‘speak to the manager’’ voice, Anne Collins, of Napier, wrote on Facebook: ‘‘My husband, Michael Cullen, has already contacted Jacinda and Grant Robertson to express his outrage at the cultural vandalism. This is one fight against the barbarians at the gates which must be won.’’
It is not as if Clark ever bowed out of public life. Last year, with AUT University, she established an eponymous think-tank, the Helen Clark Foundation, to contribute to policy debate.
Yet this provides a useful control study for comparing the passion with which Clark entered the fray on RNZ Concert, as opposed to housing – a genuine issue of social crisis, on which her foundation issued a policy document this week.
The document is tepid, and largely avoids questions of how to increase the supply of new homes, long identified as the chief culprit in the housing crisis.
Interestingly Clark, as Opposition leader, notoriously led the charge against the building of a boarding house near her Mt Eden home. She said at the time in her neighbourhood, ‘‘there is very considerable pride taken by homeowners in their properties’’ and ‘‘they have no desire to see their neighbourhood downgraded by the unwelcome and unwarranted intrusion of . . . needy, transient tenants.’’
Instead the document bearing Clark’s name proposes a watered down capital gains tax, along the lines of the one ruled out by Ardern last year. Clark was publicly silent in that debate.
In comparison to this half-hearted participation in the housing debate, Clark came out all guns blazing on RNZ Concert.
Economist Thomas Piketty last year attempted to show the transition of Left wing parties in Western democracies towards representing the interests of educated elites.
This in itself was a good news story of sorts: it showed the victory in the early and mid 20th century of social democratic policies and the welfare state in lifting traditional working class families into higher education and incomes. However, Piketty argues, this new ‘‘Brahmin Left’’ still sees itself as marginalised by the wealthy Right, and continues to battle over scarce political resources and power, but with a focus on creating highly paid government jobs and funding for the cultural institutions its members enjoy, rather than on material concerns like pay and housing that motivated earlier Leftists.
This approach may be outdated now. Material concerns are very much back on the agenda. Left politics in New Zealand is driven increasingly by activists and union organising on the ground, such as the victory against zero-hours contracts.
While Clark fulminates about classical music, the government’s promised Fair Pay Agreements languish. Climate change presents the greatest material challenge in centuries. While political leaders worry about ‘‘unwanted and unwarranted’’ new neighbours in housing developments, home ownership and homelessness continue to increase.
Clark – the most formidable and ruthless politician of her generation, a world class intellect and strategist – shows her priorities in where she chooses to spend her personal political capital to mobilise the public.
And it could be that reverence for Clark and her instincts in office, presiding with careful managerialism over golden years of pre Global Financial Crisis growth, holds the current Labour government back.
In a zinger that already sounds dated, the ascendant John Key described Clark and Cullen’s administration as ‘‘a Walkman government in an iPod world.’’ As Ardern and Robertson consider the influence of their former employers and political forebears, they may think Key was being too kind: the ghosts of the fifth Labour government are still firmly tuned in to the wireless.
In comparison to this half-hearted participation in the housing debate, Clark came out all guns blazing on RNZ Concert.