Anne Salmond: Our government policies are also ‘weird’

In the US, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz caused a storm on social media by calling Donald Trump and his Republican supporters “weird”.

After watching Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, in which he quoted the Almighty, Hannibal Lecter and Kim Jong Un and added, “It’s nice to get along with someone who has a lot of nukes,” and was cheered on by adoring Wisconsin delegates with large chunks of Swiss cheese on their heads, you’d have to agree.

In New Zealand, Vernon Small in the After also described our coalition government as “profoundly strange” because many of its policy proposals also defy logic – cutting tobacco tax to reduce the harms of smoking; preaching democracy while pursuing ministerial autocracy; slashing hospital budgets to shorten waiting lists; waging a war on red traffic cones while engaging in climate denial; criticising civil servants, teachers, the health system, the economy – everyone except politicians making Faustian deals in the pursuit of power.

Again, it’s hard to disagree. There’s something very odd about this ‘three-headed taniwha’. I thought so after the last election, when I saw a video of Lord Hannan, a Conservative peer from England and one of the authors of Brexit, addressing members of New Zealand’s new coalition cabinet, and he grinned approvingly as he praised them for their commitment to cutting government spending to below 30 per cent of GDP, compared with 49 per cent in Britain, and the UK’s health system and other public services collapsing.

Hannan called his host Jordan Williams of the Taxpayers’ Union the ‘capo di tutti i capi’ (mafia ‘Godfather’) of the global taxpayers’ movement and gave a lecture on Te Tiriti o Waitangi (which he cannot read), warning coalition ministers of the threats to equality posed by inherited privilege – and this from a Tory Lord! That a new New Zealand government would seek advice on such a subject from such a source seemed bizarre indeed.

Hannan’s performance, peppered with oxymorons, nevertheless foreshadowed much of the coalition politics Vernon Small talks about – preaching equality while radically increasing inequality; cheering democracy while expanding executive power; or the coalition’s use of the Treaty to spark culture wars in New Zealand. British Tories and Treaty twerking as models for good governance in New Zealand? To quote the Tui advert: ‘Yeah right.’

Criticizing “woke” policies combined with a turn toward autocracy is not only strange, it’s dangerous. In the United States, populist appeals to autocracy led to the attack on the Capitol in 2020, and could lead to more violence in 2024. In the United Kingdom, far-right groups are causing riots across the country. Intergroup hostility combined with radical inequality, autocracy, anti-environmental policies, and climate denial is a toxic mix.

Is this what Kiwis voted for at the last election? I doubt it. As Sir John Key tried to warn National at their recent AGM, democracy is not about letting small, right-wing parties – or their think tanks – steer the ship of state. Allowing ACT, with just 8.6% of the vote, to rewrite Te Tiriti according to Lord Hannan’s libertarian prescriptions; or imitate the kind of austerity policies that have brought the British economy to its knees; or, at the behest of the populist NZ First, with just 6% of the vote, declare war on the environment that underpins New Zealand’s economy is not only bizarre, it’s counterproductive.

In the UK, the electorate rejected the Tories at the last election, and in the US, a small, remote island nation clumsily encapsulated by right-wing agendas will be vulnerable and isolated if voters reject Donald Trump in November. Race wars are raising alarm bells, an all-out assault on the environment is destroying our ‘clean green’ reputation for tourists and buyers of our primary products, and climate denial is endangering major markets. Such policies cast a shadow over New Zealand, threatening national prosperity and cohesion.

To see how far the political process is failing us at the moment, compare Parliament with the Olympic squad of New Zealand athletes, both representing this country at home and abroad. On the one hand, skill of the highest order in many areas, modesty and generosity of spirit. On the other, a lack of moderation, incompetence in many portfolios, cynical manipulation of the rules and too many unbridled egos.

As British economist David Susskind notes, a country that wants prosperity “must build new political institutions capable of creating a space in which citizens can more freely discuss difficult choices.”

It is time for New Zealand to join the 21st century. Parliament needs radical reforms to curb executive autocracy, limit the influence of lobbyists and funders, address conflicts of interest and ensure better informed decision-making based on deliberative debate, impartial advice and the weight of evidence. Current processes – including the balance of power under MMP – are no longer fit for purpose.

As in many successful small nation states, complex challenges such as climate change, the Treaty and the taxes needed to deliver quality health, education and other services can be addressed through citizens’ assemblies, marae meetings, mini-publics or other deliberative processes before policy is finalised and promulgated. Perhaps a leadership programme for aspiring parliamentarians to train them in policy analysis, debate and public service, or a youth parliament, could capture some of the Olympic spirit.

Such processes would help to reduce the ‘deeply strange’ policy proposals that cause so much consternation, and provide New Zealand with sharp, informed and insightful governance. Then perhaps young Kiwis would find a future here, and we might once again have a country to be proud of.