Monthly Archives: September 2016

Confronting academic Taylorists.

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Although the corporate media has not covered it, choosing instead to focus on the university’s fund-raising efforts, the academic and professional staff at the University of Auckland held a one hour strike last week to protest the lack of progress on negotiations for a fair living wage for all staff, especially for those at the lower end of the wage scale. Among other union proposals was the payment of a flat $2.500 increase to everyone covered by the collective contract in lieu of a cost of living increment. In conjunction with a rise in the minimum wage for lower-salaried workers, this would have the greatest positive effect on those struggling to keep afloat in the Auckland market.

University management refuses to negotiate until the budget is decided next month or in November. This runs contrary to traditional practice where pay for academic and professional staff is negotiated prior to the budget being fixed. It follows on more than a decade of erosion of collective benefits for university personnel and the slow but seemingly inexorable weakening of the Tertiary Education Union (TEU) as a bargaining agent at the University of Auckland.

The one hour lunchtime strike was well attended, although not massive in size. Shortly after 12:45 the director of Human Resources, a despicable cur if there ever was one, sent out a group email to TEU members advising them that their pay would be docked for the one hour they were on strike. He went on to request confirmation from the recipient that s/he was indeed on strike so that their pay could be deducted.

There followed a blizzard of emails in response. I am on the TEU mailing list so I got to read them all. Other than one person, all were critical of the university’s approach to employment relations. What stood out were the dozens of stories about countless overtime hours worked with no pay (the academic standard contract is for 37.5 hours per week), the abysmal lack of morale and trust in management amongst staff, and the psychological, emotional and physical toll the stress of working at the UA was taking on its staff. The stories were sad and many gut-wrenching.

These stories came from professors, lecturers, IT specialists, counsellors, librarians, tutors, administrative support staff–you name it, they had something to say. Some people asked how the deduction would work since they were not on an hourly wage. Others pointed out that they were on  leave but would gladly see their pay deducted in solidarity with those who attended the strike.  Many pointed out that they were at their offices during lunch hour working out of loyalty to students and colleagues but would gladly have their pay docked in solidarity with the strikers. Some suggested that the deducted pay should go to charity, at least until it was pointed out to them that the university is a registered  charity and the “donations” could well go into the VC’s pocket or as bonuses to his management team members (the VC is the highest paid public servant in NZ and the senior management team all make in excess of NZ$150K/year).

What became clear from the responses is that behind the facade of the University of Auckland being a “world class” university there is a deeply dishonest and unethical management that is seeking to destroy the TEU Auckland branch and thereby further subjugate its staff to its academic Taylorist precepts. I have written about this before, so no need here to reiterate what it entails. The bottom line is that the University is being hollowed out at its core, in a workplace where academics and academic support staff are reduced to time card punching and asking permission to use the loo while the ranks of middle and upper management bean counters proliferate like rats.

I have been critical of the TEU in the past for valuing wage increases over workplace control (including in the classroom, where there is increasing interference by middle level managers with no teaching experience). I always through that it was a bad idea to trade off regular wage increases for workplace control, which extends to promotion and research leave policy. But what is done is done and now the university management is in the final stages of its assault on the union.

The time to make a stand is now. Having read the emailed responses I decided to write a letter of support to the Auckland TEU and its members. This is what I wrote:

“Dear All,

As a former TEU member and academic staff member at the University of Auckland, I want to add my support to your efforts to restore the university to its former position as a fair and equitable workplace. Unfortunately, having dealt with Mr. Phipps as well as other management lackeys at close range, I believe that yours will be an uphill battle. Their objective is to break the union so that with a few exceptions you will eventually be subject to precarious individual, often part time contracts and thereby will be more easily exploited. The trend is already apparent and the situation is worse for junior staff and those not considered to be “stars.” Given the tight academic labour market and the already low union density amongst professional and academic staff (particularly the latter), it will be difficult to individually resist this project if the TEU is further undermined as a collective bargaining agent.

Mr. McCutcheon was a successful union-buster in his life before being appointed VC. Nothing in his tenure at UA suggests that he has moderated his views on the utility of collective agents, and the tone of Mr. Phipps’s suspension notice is a reflection of that. It should not be forgotten that this management team at UA is not known for its honesty or fairness when it comes to employment relations. “Good faith” is not part of their vocabulary. Many of you will know of the efforts by the SMT to offer financial incentives to senior academics to either quit or not join the union. You will have seen the replacement of departing permanent full time staff with part time hires. Given that there are academics who support or go along with the VC’s approach for self-serving reasons, the struggle to return civility and fairness to employment relations at the UA will be a tough one.

I would not be surprised if the many tales of unpaid hours owed to staff outlined in the barrage of email replies to Mr. Phipps’s suspension notice will be seen by the VC and his minions as a sign that their Taylorist approach to academia is working just fine. They need to be disabused of that notion.

The key to defeating the academic Taylorists is to assiduously defend and increase union membership and to strictly and unwaveringly adhere to any calls for direct action such as labour service withdrawals (be it strikes, slow downs or work-to-rule). The call for a living wage and fair pay for professional (non-academic) staff is a step in the right direction. However, much ground has already been lost in terms of workplace control, academic freedom, promotion and leave, so the time to regain some measure of balance in the employment relationship is rapidly disappearing. The nature and timing of the direct actions to be taken henceforth in defence of the union and its members will be decisive, and must receive unanimous support..

You should not expect favourable media treatment. Today’s editorial in the Herald about the University’s fundraising is indicative of the pro-management bias of the for-profit news outlets. A concerted PR campaign will be required to counter-balance the view, propagated by the SMT, that all is well at the university and that if anything, academics have things easy when compared to other wage earners.The public needs to hear the stories told in your emails to Mr. Phipps.

There comes a time when people can be pushed only so far. Perhaps that time has come for the TEU Auckland branch and its members. Although I no longer belong to the academic community, I understand your struggle and deeply empathise with it. I wish you the best of luck and success in staving off the managerial offensive.

Kia kaha!”

I can only hope that if the union does make a stand, that it not be its final one.

When the PM is away the mice will play: Catch of the Day Edition

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It might be the pain medication talking, as I have spent the last few days off work with tooth “issues” (googling “home dentistry” and popping pain medication like candy), but it seems like our current round of infighting in parliament occurred only because the PM was out of the country.

Like the plot of a bad teenage movie, the parents are going to be out of town and the kids have some high-jinks planned while they are away.

One can imagine John Key giving his parliamentary spawn one of those “looks” that parents give to their kids before he hopped on his plane and jetted out of NZ.

But as the plane departs into the sky one can also imagine the kids slowly turning to each other before breaking into wild grins and running around, like dogs off their leashes, free to get into whatever mischief their little heart’s desire.

Of course parents often leave one child in charge, bearing the responsibility of making sure the house does not burn down, no one kills anyone else and to prevent the squabbling that occurs when enough childlike egos congregate in one place, without any parental oversight, to achieve critical mass which descends into the inevitable ruckus where parents are then forced to wade into.

But, like the plots of the afore mentioned movies, the ability of the one responsible voice to keep calm in a sea of chaos, is but a momentary note before dark clouds gather and the whole tea party goes over the cliff.

So what are we to make of the current flap between Winston Peters, the Maori Party and National; the Kermandec issue and the MPI scandal?

First and foremost it’s very clear that Winston has taken the opportunity to flex his political muscles and remind the government who will be calling the shots in 2017 if National does not make a clean sweep of the polls. It might not have been deliberately timed to coincide with Key being away but it sure looks like it.

And while the government and the Maori Party have good reason to be miffed they have played into Winstons hands by publicly firing back at him. Winston gets to bank some more credibility with the NZ First faithful by sticking it to the Nats and “those bloody Maori” while giving all and sundry a taste of what will happen if Winston is kingmaker in next year.

Meanwhile Bill English, hereby designated as “the responsible one”, rapidly shoved Nick Smith aside as what seemed like a done deal on the Kermadec  Marine Sanctuary turned to custard and Smith proved about as useful as a chocolate fireguard on the negotiating front over fishing rights for Iwi.

Now again it might be the meds twisting my perception but my reading of the Governments logic behind the situation was this: “Maori and the Maori Party wont deal with us on the fishing rights issue and don’t agree with it so we won’t bother consulting them and just keep on trying to run this through”.

If this is the case can someone please explain what exactly were they thinking? Were they just simply unaware of this being a potential minefield of an issue or were they expecting Maori to just simply go along with this and say nothing.

In many ways it was a delicate issue from the get go with definite winners and losers no matter how it was played out and in effect, as others have pointed out, may be foreshore and seabed of this government.

Add to this Andrew Little suddenly deciding to pull Labour support for the sanctuary, and in the process giving Chris Finlayson and backhanded compliment by calling him a talented Treaty Negotiations Minister when queried about what Labour would do if they became government (which translates into “they got themselves into it, they can get themselves out of it”) and you have a right royal muck up with National now caught between its own supporters, the Maori Party and other opposition parties and with no easy solution to fix this.

And if that was not enough we have the MPI scandal just coming to a boil with phrases like “industry capture” being thrown around and NZ First making further political hay by calling for a commission of inquiry as well as other parties swinging the bat at the government piñata.

Based on a leaked report there now seems to be enough ammo to fire off more than a few shots at government, MPI and the fishing industry (including Maori owned fisheries) to make headlines well into 2017 (although I fully expect the government to throw MPI under the bus much like the CERCO prison scandal except that Nathan Guy won’t get corn holed as badly as Sam Lotu Liga was).

None of these issues are directly related but in my medication clouded mind they seem to have some linkage simply because it’s either fishing rights, fishing, Maori or the Treaty as the common thread between them all.

What is clear is that John Key will have a mess to clean up when he gets back (if he can).

Plumbing the Depths – Part I: Trading in the rose coloured glasses

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This post came about due to a comment made about my previous post (here) being depressing, which was fair comment given that I had dropped a rather critical rant regarding the state of New Zealand politics as well as the voting public with little context or wider viewpoint.

But what got me thinking was that while my post could be viewed as depressing I, myself, did not view it as such.

Yes it was a rather pessimistic screed (although it’s always cathartic to vent ones frustrations in such a manner) but deeper than that there is a coherent theme and set of ideas behind all the things I post here on KP but thanks to one singular but insightful comment I was forced to consider that I may not have articulated that theme very well and as such what I thought was a coherent and linked set of posts critiquing the denizens of the Beehive and the NZ political landscape in general may have come across as the disparate rambling of some nutter behind a keyboard (or possibly both).

So to address that imbalance in what I post and what I think I am posting I present the following as a means to address that.

And the core ideas or themes behind what I post are relatively simple being that I don’t believe in the Left/Right divide in politics (which is why I have facetiously referred to myself in the past as a “fascist anarchist”) and that human society, and more specifically New Zealand Society is in a transformative phase as the previously standing social and economic structures (US imperialism and neoliberal dominance) are declining under the failure of their elites to govern effectively and as new challenges and challengers arise.

So those are the core ideas but where are they coming from? Have I just plucked these ideas out of thin air and formed some colorful but unsupported opinions as the basis for my rants. The answer is no I have not.

Just as I have previously referenced George Orwell as a strong basis for my political opinions there are other thinkers and writers out there who have helped shape my view of the world and their contribution to my views has been to provide a set of tools for constructing a lens by which I (and others) view the world.

Unfortunately there are too many to all list here but some have been more important than others in giving me the view of NZ politics (and the world) that I have and it’s worth noting them to show that I do not draw my conclusions in isolation or without support.

First up is Arnold Tonybee who through his works like A Study of History* and Mankind and Mother Earth have clearly shown that societies live or die on the ability of their elites to lead their respective societies through the various challenges that they face. The idea being that while elites do get the wealth and privilege they pay it back through the the Noblesse Oblige (the idea that privilege entails responsibility) by leading their societies responsibly and with welfare of the greater whole (even if only articulated through the idea that by not crapping in their own nest they ensure their own survival) as a primary goal.

Following on is John Ralston Saul who through books like Voltaire’s Bastards and the Doubters Companion took a similar idea and not only attacked the failure of the current elites to lead, by cataloging their transformation from genuine rulers into technocratic managers, unable to effect real change in the face of crisis or failure but also who “manage” events in an ineffective fashion due to devotion to one idea or ideal (rationality) at expense of all others.

Saul’s core theme is the rise of the cult of rationality or what he referred to as the “dictatorship of reason” which has seen western politics, culture and thought saddled with a parasitic managerial class (of which our Beloved PM would be part of) in place of genuine leadership and which creates the very crisis’s they are then unable to deal with through slavish devotion to rational process (as enacted through technocratic management practice) as the solution to all problems.

This managerial class is beholden to technocratic practices above all else and represents the triumph of technology and rational dogma over all other forms of thought, leading to various aberrations like Nazism, Neoliberalism and a rabid belief in the invisible hand of the marketplace which denigrate, minimalize and even seek to remove all concept of community, society or balanced thought through promotion of economic and rational dogma.

And if Tonybee looked at the past, Saul looked at the present then its Dimitry Orlov’s book The Five stages of Collapse (link to the original blog post which lead to the book here)** which takes these ideas and translates them into the future.

Orlov’s book is a different take on the failure of our current society from the wide range of often shrill and hectoring books one can read about future doom because instead of simply categorizing all the issues and then trying to tack on at the end some sort of upbeat solution to the mountain of problems listed (what he explicitly refers to as avoiding the “unless we…” or “we must…” turns of phrase) Orlov is simply asking the reader to accept the state of affairs, to take of the rose colored glasses and see the situation for what it is, to accept it.

The other thing about this book which is refreshing is that while he catalogs the various stages of collapse he links them to losses of faith in the following: financial, commercial, political, social and cultural rather than simply (and often inexplicably) piling them up in for display without a genuine exploration of the factors that lead to them or by using the afore mentioned escape clauses at the end of try and add a feel good tone to what is otherwise a rather depressing read (in essence academic level disaster porn having much in common with movies where asteroids strike the earth, plagues threaten or zombies wipe out civilization).

And these are not the only ones that have shaped my views in this area. I also cite the works of Robert Ardrey (specifically The Territorial Imperative); Jared Diamond (his books Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel); Martin Van Crevald (specifically here The Rise and Decline of the State but also his many other books on military theory); John Boyd (for his OODA Loop theory); Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation); Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth); Paul Kennedy (The Rise and fall of the great Powers); Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine); Chalmers Johnson and Johnathan Kwitney (Blowback and Endless Enemies respectively) and Edward Gibbon (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).

What all of these works have in common in this regard are two things: Societies change, decline or fail as a natural order of progression and/or that it’s not just the events themselves which categorized why societies change, decline or fail but also the response (or lack of) of their ruling classes to these always inevitable processes.

And in world of today we face crisis’s of faith in regards to finance, commerce, politics, society and even culture (to continue to riff off Orlovs idea) which can be seen in the continued failure of the marketplace (the housing hernia and million dollar houses in Auckland, the Global Financial Crisis; the rise of angry politics in the form of Donald Trump, Brexit and a merchant banker as PM on New Zealand; child poverty and homelessness in NZ along with issues of immigration and social decline; failed states around the world down to decreasing numbers of people voting; wholesale escape into fantasy through TV, movies and video games; and the seismic shifts taking place in societal views over issues such as sexuality, transhumanism and AI/robotics.

And to add to this is the even greater issue of the environment and our planet which has finally come home to roost in NZ with a vengeance in the form of water issues across our country (be they third world style water quality issues, dairy runoff, “wadeable” rivers or simply selling the stuff to offshore businesses when there is a drought on) and the lethal paradox between the idealized myth of clean green NZ and increasingly unsustainable tourism leaving NZ bulging at the seams and more an ecological Disneyland for vicarious viewing rather than a genuine unique and sustainable ecosystem which can be enjoyed and explored.

And this is the viewpoint I have when I post on KP; but before the reader assumes I am a depressed and melancholic individual let me assure them I am not. Yes, our society is a bad state, yes our politicians are drooling mongoloids driven by greed, yes things are grim but the key point is that our society is ending but the world is not, a new society will come to be.

As many of the authors listed above make clear, societies fail but that does not mean the end of the world or extinction for human kind. Change may be coming and it will probably be harsh but it’s not some dark terminus for everything and everyone.

And this is why I view politics (both in NZ and more generally) as a urine soaked sandbox full of squabbling infants and cat feces BUT where it’s not ok for us to sit passively like a dog on an electric floor and just let them parade about throwing reeking handfuls of sand at each other. These people, our elites, have not only lost their way but sold their souls, they are slaves to dogma and at best they can temporarily conjure the illusion of progress from the stale ashes of past progressions but it’s fleeting and leaves nothing of substance.

John Key and National, Andrew Little and Labour, Winston Peters, The Greens, Act, United Future, Mana, Maori and all the rest (those business people who like to remain in the background but will funnel money and influence to the party of their choice) are our elites and while some individuals among them may genuinely strive for better things they will be overwhelmed in the miasma of corruption and stagnant thinking that have come to characterize parliament and political process. We turn to them, our elites, our leaders, to lead us out of this but instead they lead us deeper in.

But this is only part one of a two part post and in part two I will go into the second key part of Orlov’s (and others) thesis regarding the decline of our society here in Godzone and elsewhere and show that while we will get brunt going through the fire it’s what lies on the other side of the flames that may be worth getting burnt for.

But to do that we first have to stop fooling ourselves with the idea that the world we live in now will always prevail and that those that rule us now will rule in the future. They have had their chance to deal with the issues and they have failed which is what drove me to make my previous post and which now I can see was without context to any who read it and why I have written what I am posting here. I am not going to spoil what’s in part two but I hope it will show that the future for NZ (once we go through the flames) may be anything but depressing.

 

*-I have the abridged copy of this (as who is going to be able to afford all 12 volumes of this work) but despite searching high and low through my book collection I could not find it so had to source my info on it from the internet.

**-While it might be tempting to read just the page and leave it there I highly recommend the book as its not only expands on those points but develops others not touched on there.

Media Link: The French are back, and in a big way.

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I spent some time talking with a Radio New Zealand reporter, who I must say is very well versed in the politics of the region, reflecting on the de facto admission of France into the Pacific Island Forum. Unlike the usual media sound bites, he gave me some room to reflect.

Such a nice crowd.

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Unfortunately I know people, to include some in my own family, who are Trump supporters and who think that Fox News is “fair and balanced.” I also know some people, including one here at KP, who think that voting for Trump is all good because it will break the status quo politics represented by Hillary Clinton.

Many of the people I know that have chosen the Trump/Fox News view of the world bristle at the suggestion that they have issues with race/ethnicity/gender/Islam/sexuality/foreigners/poor people/disabled people/whatever. Some of those who think that voting for Trump is an anarchic stroke of tactical genius appear to ignore the concerns raised by these suggestions or believe them to be untrue. Allow me the right of rejoinder with one link.

It may not be a statistically significant sample of opinion among the Trump/Fox News “nation,” but I believe that this compilation is emblematic of what lies at its core. And if this is the base sentiment behind Trump that is being championed by Fox News, then the situation, if not the very character of his campaign, is indeed a giant basket of deplorable.

Say what you want about Ms. Clinton (and I shall write something about the false narrative about her at some point), she does not attract this type of folk. In fact, she repels them, which is as good enough reason to vote for her as is anything else.

Politics has made monsters of us all!

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Its a rant, no denying it.

I tried, I really tried.

Firstly I ignored all the reports coming out of Dunedin in the wake of Winstonfest 2016 that it will turn into a cat fight between Ron Mark (long serving but foul mouthed NZ First 2IC) and political mercenary Shane Jones over who will succeed Winston when he finally steps down (whenever that actually is) in one of the more interesting cases of “get your hands off my man!) We have seen in a while.

I turned the other cheek to Colin Craig’s sleazy behaviors being exposed in the press. If his chances of being an MP were slim to none before they are effectively nil now as it looks like his fellow party members (Christine; she of the extravagant spending while a civil servant, Rankin) are more than willing to publicly twist the knives in his back; also the man writes love notes with about as much passion and enthusiasm as a politically conservative Christian businessman running for office, oh wait…

But it got harder after John (I for one welcome our new reptilian overlords) Key blamed kiwi workers being lazy and drug addled as the reason for National having the immigration policies it does. Key (no pun intended) point: importing low skill workers under the guise of student and other visas allows employers to drive down wages and places anyone not willing to work for the same pay and conditions in employment limbo*. This is the equivalent to shooting someone in the foot and then complaining that they can’t walk.

By Wednesday it was getting much more difficult to tune out the noise when the government announced that it was spending 24 million dollars on housing in Auckland when the average house price was now “one meellion dollars” (which as many commentators gleefully pointed out) meant that there would be just another 24 houses up for grabs; Winston Peters decided that hypocrisy was the better part of valor (by taking someone’s money and then accusing them of being a front for the National Party); the Auditor General cleared the Niue hotel deal (but did admit that their hands were tied and their range of investigation limited); the Chiefs found themselves unable to say sorry to the one person they really needed to say sorry to (showing how much our sporting culture remains a bastion of macho BS); the blather about Helen Clark at the UN continued despite it being made clear she is not the preferred candidate (get over it, she is not going to be Sec Gen); Andrew Little called for Nick Smith to resign (about as useful as firing the captain of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg) and our beloved PM now saying NZ and OZ are still BFF’s (despite OZ deporting back all those its deems no longer BFF and treating kiwis living there like second class citizens). I had to laugh though when the Stuff article reporting this had to include an explanation of what a BFF was.

But what finally sent me over the top was watching parliament go into melt down over the housing situation with question time being cancelled and the government fumbling the ball as the process was hijacked by the opposition. Of course it’s not one of those overseas style parliamentary melt downs like they have in Taiwan or the Philippines with legislators throwing chairs, starting bonfires in the middle of the chamber or fist fighting in the aisles (although I would have tuned into parliament TV if such things were scheduled) but just some filibustering which will peter out sooner or later.

The reason why this particular event, in a week of hard core political gibberish sent me over the top was that it perfectly encapsulates the reason why we are in the situation in the first place.

The Housing Hernia continues to grow and the chances of all this shouting and filibustering (or for that matter any wet-paper bills) actually producing a solution are zero. We have been there and we have passed the point where this process is manageable by some quick fixes or legislative tweaks and we are now heading into territory marked more by backbiting, squabbling, lots of weasel words and no actual action on the matters at hand.

You would almost think that campaigning for the 2017 election had started but this is really just a small hint of what the 2017 election will be like. If you thought that vapid hot topics and political push button issues were going to have our politicians shouting, parading and grandstanding like no tomorrow now then you ain’t seen nothing yet!

And this is the state we are in today: political ineptitude and inaction; corruption and tabloid sleaze; empty political gestures over any genuine action; political infighting; low quality political journalism as a substitute for discourse (I get the irony of writing that) and issues which need genuine attention not more political verbiage.

The summation of the situation came to me last week, as I and several co-workers were in a taxi crawling out of Auckland’s CBD towards the airport, knowing that we had given ourselves over an hour to get to the airport but still not sure if we would make it, by the taxi driver who summed up Auckland’s transport problems in one succinct sentence.

“Auckland’s roads were built when Auckland had about 800,000 people living in it, today its about 1.4 million people and by 2020 it’s expected to have 2.2 million people but all attempts to fix the roads or improve transportation have been blocked or failed.”

Even if those numbers are out somewhat the metaphor remains painfully correct and applicable to NZ at large.

In areas like immigration, housing, the environment and all the rest we are now in a state where what we had is no longer able to cope with what we have got and the people responsible for sorting these problems out (those we elect to run this country for us) remain either unwilling (in the case of National clearly captured by those who are making coin of our current misfortune) or unable (in the case of Labour being too busy sucking up to potential voters and their mortgages to ever rock the boat) or putting their own personal gain over the general welfare of the country (Winston, Peter Dunne and the rest of the gumboots) to do anything about it.

So with that in mind I am no longer able to refrain from comment (I really wanted to keep on with research on Asia for upcoming posts and not get sidetracked). I assume that this week is a combination of moon, tide, weather, biorhythms, the stock market and all sorts of other factors which have produced the political crapfest this week has been so far, and its only Thursday!

And it’s the tone of events which is the most ugly, like other countries the problems are piling up and those supposed to be in charge are turning out to be incompetent middle managers at best and corrupt clowns at worst (I favor the latter).

All of this points to the 2017 election being a real watershed election as these issues won’t go away between now and then and will surely continue to worsen while the clowns continue to bicker over ticket prices to the circus while the tent burns.

I won’t play the doom scenario card too much but we live in interesting times to say the least and calls for action continue to grow. Our current political model is not working very well but will we get any viable alternatives?

Come campaign time I expect all of these little hot potatoes to remain hot and a lot of promises to be made to fix them to an electorate which will be in an ugly mood and in no mind to hear political and economic catamites parading around shouting dogma as solutions to rising waters. Dirty politics will be front and center and media manipulation will be all over the place.

The outcome? Polarization and a parliament less and less able to address the issues (under a minority Green/Labour government with Winston staying neutral) or worse Winston backing our dear leader Key followed by further economic shenanigans from his minions for another three years (imagine the housing hernia in three years time!) or the unthinkable and a Green/NZ First/Labour hate triangle of rivalries and poison looks until its inevitable implosion.

But we kiwi voters are not blameless in this, we tolerate this state of affairs and we continue to vote for the same ugly faces, their ugly messages and their ugly acts. We are as stained and muddled as those filthy beasts in Parliament. Politics has made monsters of us all!

*- The fact that Barry Soper in the Herald felt that such a position had some merit shows how pernicious such BS attitudes are as well as highlighting how out of touch Soper is to the reality of situation (but then I never really liked his reporting anyway).

Have some impunity with your privilege.

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Extending the theme of short posts about current events, here is this one:

An up and coming sportsman gets name suppression and no jail time for filming a sex act with a women and posting it on the internet. In his sentencing the judge said that naming him and serving jail time would interfere with his athletic career even though the victim suffered significant emotional harm. The athlete/secret taper is ordered to pay a $2000 reparation to the victim–a day after he paid her that sum.

A case of domestic violence against a doctor in Auckland is thrown out of court and he walks free after his father-in-law pays Crown witnesses (the exact reasons are not specified in media reports but one could expect that whatever the reason this is a pretty straight forward example of pervasion of justice given that the couple had reconciled and wanted to “put things behind them”). The police say that they are “aware” of the payments but refuse to say anything else.

The Minister of Health attends a Vegas themed fundraiser for Northcote Primary School in which parents partied with fake cocaine. He says revelations in the media are a “beat up” because the event raised $30,000 for the school. He claims that he did not see the faux coke and did not ingest. Apparently none of the parents involved thought anything was wrong with simulating drug use at a school function, and the Health Minister (of all people!) thinks it is all good because much money was raised. As a friend of mine mentioned, they would have made a lot more money if they had used real coke instead.

All of these episodes were made public in one day. What do they have in common?

Well, they follow a long history of instances in NZ where people of privilege, be it via sports, money, political clout or social connection, engage in and are later absolved of full consequence for behaviour that otherwise would be considered worth severe sanction. I am sure that readers will remember many such instances. What does this say about the supposedly egalitarian and honest nature of Kiwi society?

Or look at it this way: if the clandestine sex taper was mediocre at sports, if the doctor and his wife were recent immigrants, if the Northcote Primary parents were from South Auckland, and if the politician was an opposition backbencher, would the media coverage and outcomes be the same?

Tick, tick, tick…

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http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/83951548/qv-stats-confirm-1m-average-for-auckland-but-growth-may-be-slowing

Sooner or later.

There are a rage of arguments and scenarios for how this will play out but sooner or later.

The problem is that it might not come with any major drop in house prices, as the article notes slowing growth not any stop in growth, if any, but it might come in the form of something else.

I wonder what that will be?

Also to add to the mood is the comment I herd last week that there has never been any significant or known drop in house prices in NZ history. Not confirmed at this time but even just in recent memory I cant see any downwards shift.

Readers are encourages to suggest their own scenarios for how this will go in the comments section.

Constitutional Coups.

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When people think about coups d’etat, they tend to think about armed interruptions of the constitutional order, usually perpetrated by the military against an elected government. Such was the case with the abortive coup staged by elements of the Turkish military against the government of Recep Erdogan last July. Note that I do not say “democratically” elected governments, as usurpations of the constitutional order can also happen in electoral authoritarian regimes such as that of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in 2011 (only to be followed by a “full” coup against the subsequently elected Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi in 2013).

The traditional origins of such forms of regime change, known as golpes de estado in Spanish, do in fact hark back to military interventions against civilian governments, and that remains its most common form. But another form of coup has emerged, minus the bloodshed and state of emergency so often associated with military-led coups (I say military-led because it is very seldom the case that the armed forces act alone when moving against the government of the day). Rather than an interruption and suspension of the institutional process by military means, it is a usurpation from within the institutional order by constitutional means. Rather than bullets fired by soldiers it is ballots cast by politicians that overturn the will of the people prior to scheduled elections. The insurrectionists belong to and work within the political system. This is what is now known as a constitutional coup. In order to understand this new form of “golpismo” we need to consider two background factors.

First, liberal democracy comes in two forms: presidential and parliamentary systems. Although they are a possibility in parliamentary systems (such as having the government dissolved by the Governor General, as occurred in Pakistan in 1953 and Australia in 1975), constitutional coups most often happen in presidential systems. By their very nature parliamentary systems have built-in insurance against constitutional coups because there are established means to remove a government, specifically via votes of no-confidence followed by snap elections. The rules governing both the vote and the election may vary from country to country, and there may be a ruckus surrounding such events, but they are an integral part of parliamentary democracy and, some might argue, a much finer tuned aspect of democratic governance than that allowed by its alternative.

Presidential systems provide no such mechanism for the removal of governments prior to their end of term. By definition, any such move constitutes an institutional crisis as the system is based on a separation of executive power from legislative authority. In parliamentary systems the executive (in the form of cabinet) continues to act as a parliamentary faction, to include ministers discharging responsibilities as members of parliament. In presidential systems that is not the case and executive authority can often be confronted by or exercised against legislative majorities (as is currently the case in the US). No matter what the majority in the legislature may wish, it cannot simply call for a vote of no-confidence in the government of the day. In fact, it has no legal basis to do so.

When the legislative and executive branches in presidential systems are locked in impasses or stalemates over any number of potential issues, the resolution mechanism boils down to supermajorities in the former and veto powers in the latter. Ideally, in bicameral legislatures the resolution sequence is usually this: the president introduces or supports a bill submitted for approval by the legislature. The opposition obtains a supermajority against the bill in the lower house, which is vetoed by the president, which is then upheld or overturned by a supermajority in the upper house. In unicameral legislatures the sequence is either one and done or a second legislative supermajority vote is taken after a veto in order to ratify or overturn the veto. Neither of these resolution paths provide a mechanism for the removal of the executive.

This process is cumbersome but offers the benefit of providing space for compromise between the executive and legislature as a bill winds its way through the ratification process. But what about removal of an elected government before its term is up? That is where the second key backdrop factor comes into play: disloyal opposition.

Long term KP readers will recall my earlier writing on this subject.  But for those who are not, here is a nutshell refresher on what constitutes loyal and disloyal opposition in a democracy (there is no point in using those terms in authoritarian regimes).

Loyal oppositions are those that, having been defeated in elections or confronted by an opposing party in executive office (remember, the problem is unique to presidential systems), abide by the rules of the political game and wait for the next electoral opportunity to gain executive power. During the meantime they work as much as possible to find areas of compromise so that the machinery of governance can continue to serve the public good (or at least be seen as doing so). Even if token, concessions are exchanged so that consensus on issues of policy can be achieved. Only in the most egregious case of executive misconduct, usually involving criminality or gross negligence, does a loyal opposition begin to contemplate the unthinkable, which comes in the form of impeachment (that is, forcing the resignation of the executive under pressure from the legislature backed by the authority of law enforced by state security agents).

Disloyal oppositions are those that refuse to accept the outcome of elections and/or the legitimacy of a particular government and use their political influence and power to bring down that government by any means short of force. This includes being deliberately obstructionist when it comes to passing legislation, flaunting rules governing acceptable political discourse, manipulating or colluding with media to plant false accusations against incumbents, refusing to authorise budgets and confirm executive appointments, and generally acting in every possible way to stymie government policy initiatives, make it impossible for the executive branch to function effectively within the tripartite, separation of powers framework of constitutional government, and to promote discontent with and distrust of the government and its political supporters.

The classic modern instance of a disloyal opposition was the Christian Democratic led opposition to Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular government in Chile from 1970-73. The result of that disloyalty is well known. But not all disloyal opposition need result in full fledged military coups. Instead, they can veer down the path of the constitutional coup. Consider the case of Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998-99. In late 1998 the Republican controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton on two counts of perjury and two counts of obstruction of justice. The charges related to his accounts of the affair he had with White House intern Monica Lewisky, the salacious details of which were vividly spelt out by Independent Counsel Ken Starr (Starr has recently been forced to resign from his position as president and chancellor of Baylor University for his role in covering up sexual assaults on females by football players). Mr. Starr was appointed by the Speaker of the House at the time, Newt Gingrich, he of the three marriages and many affairs (including with subordinates).

In 1999 the Republican controlled Senate held a trial and voted on the charges. Needing a two thirds (67 seat) majority for the impeachment to succeed and with 55 Senators on the Republican side, the impeachment vote failed when 50 voted in favour on the obstruction charge and 45 voted in favour on the perjury charge. Clinton remained in office, albeit significantly hamstrung by his near-miss.

The issue here is that the impeachment was over a private sexual affair, not an act of public malfeasance . It was led by people who themselves had similar skeletons in their closets and who did so in part just to weaken the president even if their efforts to impeach him failed (given media coverage of the story). More specifically, it was not about gross incompetence, criminal behaviour, military mismanagement, or even lying to Congress about any matter of policy. Instead, it was about the president receiving fellatio from and using a cigar as a sex toy on Ms. Lewinsky during trysts in the Oval Office, then trying to cover it up. It is doubtful that the founding fathers, in Article Two (Section Four) of the Constitution, had this in mind when they wrote that impeachment was to be used only in exceptional circumstances involving “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours.”

That is a slippery slope. And nowhere is the bottom of that slope more evident than in the recent impeachment of leftist President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil.

Brazil has history with impeachment. In 1992 then president Fernando Collor de Mello resigned after Congress voted in favour of his impeachment on charges of bribery and misappropriation of funds. Similar charges of “budgetary mismanagement” were brought against Ms. Rousseff in 2016 by a Congress dominated by the center-right PMDB, Brazil’s largest party, which has the most seats in Congress (66) and is the one to which her vice president Michel Temer belongs (the coalitional aspects of Brazilian politics are too complex to get into here but suffice it to say that Rousseff was trying to keep her friends and allies close and her enemies closer. That did not work out as planned). By the time the first reports of fiscal irregularities surfaced in 2015, the PMDB-led majority in Congress had gone full-blown disloyal in a context of economic stagnation and assorted crises (Zika, lack of Olympic preparations) and were itching to find a reason to remove Rousseff (who was not anywhere as popular as her Workers Party predecessor Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva). The investigation into financial wrongdoing gave them their window of opportunity.

The charges against Rousseff stemmed from “Operation Car Wash” (Operacao Lava Jato) into bribery and corruption involving the state oil monopoly Petrobras, assorted construction firms, politicians, bureaucrats and financial entities. Without going into the details, let’s just say three things: First, corruption is a way of life in Brazil, not just an aspect of how the economic and political elite behave (hence the phrase fazer jeito, or ” a way of doing things” on the sly). Of those legislators demanding her impeachment and who voted against her at the Senate trial, over a dozen are being investigated or have been charged with corruption themselves, including now-president Temer. Included among the luminaries who voted to oust her is a former Army officer who was involved in her torture when she was imprisoned by the military dictatorship in the early 1970s, and who said during the proceedings that it would have been best that she were killed while in custody.

Secondly, creative accounting by Brazilian governments is a time-honoured tradition that crosses party lines. Most reputable political and financial analysts agree that not only was Ms. Rousseff not personally involved or benefitted by dodgy Treasury figures, but that in the scheme of things the book fiddling done by her government was not criminal but in fact par for the course in Brazil. Unfortunately for her, Article 85 of the Brazilian constitution and the Fiscal Responsibility Law specifically prohibit mismanagement and disregard for the federal budget. This was the seldom used rope that Congress hung her with.

Thirdly, no impeachment in Brazil can occur without the tacit assent of the armed forces. Of all the sordid aspects of Rousseff’s impeachment, this is the most sobering one. 30 odd years after they returned to the barracks, Brazil’s military still sees forced removal of elected presidents as a viable option–so long as it does not involve them directly.

This is why what happened in Brazil a week or so ago was a constitutional coup. Impeachment is the weapon of choice for the constitutional coup plotters, but their intentions are disloyal and their objectives sinister at heart. Their motivations have nothing to do with honesty and transparency in government or defending democracy. Instead, they are about playing the system for tactically opportunistic partisan gain.

Brazil is not the only Latin American country to have suffered a constitutional coup. In 2012 Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was impeached and removed from office, ostensibly because of his mishandling of a land occupation that ended in violence. He was given two hours to prepare his defense, and was replaced by his Vice President, who sided with the legislative opposition against him. Subsequent publication of US embassy cables by Wikileaks revealed that as early as 2009 opposition leaders had begun to discuss using impeachment as a way of ousting Lugo from office (Lugo was elected in 2008). They eventually succeeded.

There is a problem with this strategy: more than one side can play that game, and learning curves may teach that rather than the exception, the use of impeachment in pursuit of a constitutional coup can become the new norm. That in turn can spur a contagion effect, whereby politicians in other democracies with presidential systems see merit in pursuing similar courses of action. Worse yet, repeated recourse to constitutional coups as partisan weapons can lead to outright military intervention, at which point the return to the traditional form of coup trumps any constitutional niceties.

One should take this into account when pondering the activities of political actors in presidential-system liberal democracies, be they big and small. Because in a world where military-led coups are considered particularly thuggish and therefore distasteful, the constitutional coup is the genteel authoritarian’s game.