As Robertson exits, Labour’s reset becomes critical
The ceaseless demands of the 24/7 news cycle mean it’s easy to miss the harbinger of a political party’s evolution, whether it rises, suffers a swooping fall, or fails to thrive. Tuesday’s announcement that Grant Robertson was leaving politics and returning, prodigal son-like, to his alma mater, Otago University, as vice-chancellor contained a sense of inevitability about it. Robertson had neatly placed himself next to the political exit door over a year ago with his decision to not step into Jacinda Ardern’s shoes while also walking away from his deputy PM role, and announcing he wouldn’t be standing for Wellington Central.
If Labour has lost with Robertson’s departure, from his ability to wrangle policy to his savvy retail politics, then its leader stands to lose more. It leaves Chris Hipkins without a loyal wingman when questions over his own future haven’t yet reached a crescendo but the drums are beating.
That was best exemplified at Tuesday’s press conference when Hipkins was forced to bat away questions about party dissent, answering questions about his 10-point drop as preferred prime minister in the 1News-Verrian poll, with him protesting too much that “I’ve still got plenty of fight left in me”.
While “party loyalty” is the chorus in every opposition leader’s songbook at some stage, for Hipkins it hasn’t really surfaced yet because when your caucus numbers a paltry 34 there is no-one else with the experience to challenge at this stage of the election cycle.
But all the indications are there that that loyalty will be broken over an issue that Hipkins is inextricably entwined with – a wealth tax.
As prime minister, Hipkins made the captain’s call last April before officially ruling out such a tax out before the campaign, after Robertson and David Parker had worked on the policy for months. Seven months later – after Labour had plummeted from being the first party under MMP to win an outright victory in 2020, to winning just 26.9% in 2023 – Hipkins declared it was back on the agenda. “Everything comes back on the table,” he said. “So, in 2026, our tax policy could look quite different.”
Which tells you everything you need to know about the left of the party quietly rising while Hipkins’ caucus continually pledge fealty. It also tells you that when it comes to Labour’s siren call to tax, despite having it as policy in its 2014 and 2017 campaigns only to scupper the idea when in power, that it has lost its ideological compass and is adrift in the wilderness of what-it-doesn’t-stand-for. All while applying the magical thinking of all opposition parties – that the government of the day will only last for a term before they are ushered back into power.
October’s election result proved Labour has a problem of Democratsized proportions; they’ve become disenfranchised from their base while other left-wing parties enjoy the benefits. Which is how the Greens managed to snaffle the red strongholds of Rongotai and Wellington Central, and Te Pāti Māori grabbed six of the seven Maori seats. That’s what happens when there’s a divide between the professional managerial class running the party and the supposed bluecollar workers they’re meant to represent.
As a paid-up member of that managerial class, having worn the well-trampled path from student politics directly to Parliament, the question must be, is Chris Hipkins the man to represent the workers in an age when AI threatens to disrupt all jobs? Can a leader who scuttled the tax work of his peers in one election hope to stop increasing dissension in the ranks if its polling numbers continue to slide and party irrelevancy beckons?
The answer to that is a categorical, “tell ‘em they’re dreaming”.
First-term Opposition is by its very nature crisis-in-action. You slide from having access to power and information and the comfort of a Crown limo to not having enough staff and being forced to make your own tea. Hipkins has done a good-enough job of righting the ship while trying to not fall into the Opposition trap of just opposing for opposing’s sake.
But the reset he promised at the end of last year – of both himself and his party – has yet to appear. He’s still the same slightly combative Chippy saddled with a party exhibiting the so-called definition of insanity, by continuing to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Which makes Hipkins’ contention that he’ll still be the Labour leader taking the party into the 2026 election a piece of fantastical thinking in a category of its own. Why would his own party, let alone voters, allow a leader who delivered an historic loss in 2023 another election without a reset? Maybe he should talk to Bill English about 2002.
If that reset doesn’t appear – and soon – dissension and tumult await. Robertson’s departure marks an era’s end for Labour. And it leaves Hipkins exposed to the vagaries of opposition politics in a much weaker position.
Janet Wilson is a regular opinion contributor and a freelance journalist who has also worked in communications, including with the National Party in 2020.
Israel is looking for Palestinians to run “humanitarian pockets” in Gaza where Hamas is no longer present, as part of a test run for the territory’s post-war future.
“We’re looking for the right people to step up to the plate. But it is clear that this will take time, as no-one will come forward if they think Hamas will put a bullet in their head,” a senior Israeli official told Reuters.
The “right” people were those not affiliated with Hamas or the recent violence in any way, or anybody on the payroll of the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority, according to Reuters. “Anyone who took part in, or even failed to condemn, October 7 is ruled out,” the official added.
An Israeli TV channel reported that talks were under way with unnamed people in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City.
Local merchants and civil society leaders would distribute humanitarian aid while the Israeli military would provide peripheral security, Channel 12 claimed.
Channel 12 said the plan also included an overhaul of school educational material, which Israel has long claimed incites hatred against Israel and Jews, as part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “deradicalise” Gaza.
Hamas pushed back on the reported plans, telling Reuters that it would be tantamount to Israel resettling Gaza, which it left in 2005.
“We are confident this project is pointless and is a sign of confusion and it will never succeed,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said.
It is the most detailed proposal to emerge so far about how Israel sees Gaza being run once the current fighting is over.
The United States has called for a “revitalised” Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern Gaza after the war.
But Netanyahu has ruled out letting the PA take control of Gaza, insisting that Israel maintain security control over all territory west of the Jordan River.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant presented his plan for Gaza last month, stressing that Israel would not be in control of civil matters, and would not resettle the enclave.
However, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who represent far-right parties in the government, have called on Israel to reoccupy Gaza and encourage the emigration of Palestinians.
– Telegraph Group
As the general paced the briefing room, he displayed a piece of lethal technology and detailed the death and chaos it has caused in Ukraine. Almost 90 Russian soldiers were slain in a single attack in 2022, explained United States Army Major General Curtis Taylor, when Ukrainian forces dropped US-provided rockets on buildings pulsing with electronic signals.
Here in the Mojave Desert, where Taylor oversees simulated war designed to prepare US troops for the real thing, the same behaviour abounded, he warned.
Taylor held up his cellphone. “This device,” he said, “is going to get our soldiers killed.”
The US military is undertaking an expansive revision of its approach to war fighting, having largely abandoned the counterinsurgency playbook that was a hallmark of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to focus instead on preparing for an even larger conflict with more sophisticated adversaries such as Russia or China.
What has transpired in Ukraine, where this week the war enters its third year with hundreds of thousands dead or wounded on both sides, and still no end in sight, has made clear to the Pentagon that battlefield calculations have fundamentally changed in the years since it last deployed forces in large numbers.
Precision weapons, fleets of drones and digital surveillance can reach far beyond the front lines, posing a grave risk to personnel wherever they are.
The war remains an active and bountiful research opportunity for American military planners as they look to the future, officials say. A classified year-long study on the lessons learned from both sides in the bloody campaign will help to inform the next National Defence Strategy, a sweeping document that aligns the Pentagon’s myriad priorities.
The “character of war” was changing, said a senior defence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and the lessons taken from Ukraine stood to be “an enduring resource”.
The Ukraine conflict has challenged core assumptions.
The war had become an attritional slugfest, with each side attempting to wear down the other, a model thought to be anachronistic, said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defence program at the Centre for a New American Security, a think tank.
Ukraine has demonstrated that everything US troops do in the field – from planning missions and patrolling to the technology that enables virtually every military task – needs to be rethought, officials say.
Fort Irwin is home to the National Training Centre (NTC), one of two army ranges in the US where troops refine tactics and prepare for deployments. In years past, the facility replicated what US forces could expect to face in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now trench lines zigzag across positions intended to replicate the battlespace in Ukraine.
Over the winter, the facility was occupied by the 1st Armoured Division. As soldiers fought simulated battles, Taylor explained Ukraine’s transformational imprint on how the US Army thinks and trains for combat.
Vitally, commanders warn over and over that most electronic gear is a potential target. Soldiers are instructed to not use their phones in the training area, and observers, known as OCs, carry handheld detectors trying to sniff out any contraband.
Taylor told the story of an Apache attack helicopter pilot who successfully avoided air defence systems during a simulated attack. Personnel portraying the enemy forces were unable to determine the path the helicopter took, but after examining commercially available cellphone data, they were able to map the journey of a device travelling across the desert at high speed. It revealed where the Apache flew to evade the defences.
The general is adamant about stamping out such behaviours. He likens the threat to that posed by cigarette smoking on the front lines during World War II, when enemy forces looked for bright orange flickers to help identify their targets.
“I think our addiction to cellphones is equally as threatening,” Taylor said. “This is the new cigarette in the foxhole.”
Troops also have to consider the cellphone use occurring around them. Personnel tasked with portraying non-combatants take photos and videos of troop locations and equipment, and upload the imagery to a mock social network called Fakebook. There, it populates in a feed used by service members playing the part of enemy forces, who then use that data to attack.
Radios, drone controllers and vehicles all produce substantial amounts of electromagnetic activity and thermal energy that can be detected.
Threats from above
The Russian and Ukrainian militaries flood the sky with one-way attack drones that are inexpensive and able to skirt detection. Their prolific use has forced American military leaders to consider where there are gaps in their capabilities.
Whereas recent US conflicts featured big, expensive drones employed for missions orchestrated at very senior levels of command, in Ukraine, leaders have put powerful surveillance and attack capabilities in the hands of individual soldiers – a degree of autonomy for small units that the US military is trying to emulate.
The technology’s proliferation has also created a new urgency at the Pentagon to develop and field better counter-drone systems.
The US Army, taking cues from the Ukraine war, has begun experimenting with dropping small munitions from drones, a tactic used by Islamic State that has since become a mainstay in Ukraine. It also has made a decision to do away with two surveillance drone platforms, the Shadow and Raven, describing them as unable to survive in modern conflict.
“We are learning from the battlefield – especially in Ukraine – that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief of Staff General Randy George said.
The Ukrainians had discovered some innovative solutions to detect drones,
General James B Hecker, the chief of US Air Force operations in Europe and Africa, said during a recent symposium.
He told the story of two Ukrainians who collected thousands of smartphones, fitted them with microphones, and connected them to a network capable of detecting the unique buzzing sound of approaching unmanned systems. The information is relayed to air defence soldiers who can take action. The effort was briefed to the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency, and referred to Nato and US commands to potentially duplicate, Hecker said.
Hecker also described recent drone and missile attacks by Houthi militants in Yemen targeting merchant and military ships in the Red Sea. Gesturing to his counterpart responsible for defending against potential threats from China, he said: “What the Houthis did, what Russia is doing, is nothing compared to what we’re going to see in your theatre.”
The pace of change
In the woods at Fort Johnson, a US Army post in western Louisiana, American troops inspired by the lessons of Ukraine have a motto: Dig or die.
Soldiers who rotate through the Joint Readiness Training Centre there are learning to create trenches and dugouts, relics of past conflicts brought back to provide protection from bombs and drones.
Personnel playing the role of opposing forces used AI software and cheap drones to throw their compatriots off balance, then showed them what they uncovered, to help them improve.
Although troops are getting better at physical camouflage, their digital trail is still a vulnerability. One drone used by opposing forces at Fort Johnson was capable of detecting WiFi signals and Bluetooth-enabled devices. In another case, a command post was identified through its network name: “command post.”
While the Ukraine war has pushed battlefield innovation, some observers surmise that the Pentagon will move only so quickly without forces in extremis.
Pettyjohn acknowledged that the US and Ukrainian militaries operated differently, meaning some takeaways from the war with Russia might not be applicable.
But she noted that some American military leaders she had spoken with seemed circumspect that there was much for them to learn. She said they underestimated how the nature of fighting had changed, holding tight to the risky assumption that the US would simply do better in similar circumstances. – Washington Post