Author: Anita

A Wellington feminist wondering how to make politics something real people can do.
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What do they mean by private healthcare provision?

In a number of threads people have brought up the idea that our existing publicly provided health system is fundamentally flawed and should be replaced by a privately provided healthcare system. Every time I read that argument I want to make a single (bold face) point:

The vast majority of our healthcare is provided by private providers.

The vast majority.

Take me for example, I see my GP (private provider), I have blood tests (private provider), scans (usually a private provider), take medication (private provider) and see a number of specialists (my main one is public but occasionally other public or private specialists). All except the specialists are private providers at least partly funded by the government.  One specialist is a public provider entirely publicly funded.

The only surgery I ever had was in a private hospital fully funded by the government.

So why, if the current health system is so broken, does anyone think that private provision is the answer?

I can see three possible reasons National and Act are arguing for “private health provision”:

  1. Transfer the last of the public money to the private sector to create private sector profits for shareholders.
  2. They don’t mean “private provision” they mean “private funding”, they actually want to cut the government spend and rely on individuals funding their own healthcare. Advantageous for the wealthy (who already have health insurance and would benefit from the tax cuts), disastrous for the poor who can’t afford private cover or care and don’t get tax cuts from the Nats.
  3. Ideological blindness.

Two are awfully cynical and the other requires a level of stupidity I don’t believe they have, any other offers?

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“The community”: a contrast between Māori and Pakeha elites

Since last year’s election there has been a lot of talk about the tenability of the relationship between the Māori Party and National.

On the one hand National’s hard right policies will hurt many Māori voters; how much damage can the Māori Party let their electorate sustain from their parliamentary partners? What concessions can the MP gain that will outweigh the effects of National’s privatisation and their transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest?

On the other hand the Māori Party is dominated by, to quote John Tamihere, the “relatively wealthy, educated elite” just as the National Party is the party of the Pakeha wealthy educated elite. Like peas in a pod, perhaps these two parties of the elites are made for each other. Interesting analysis on this possibility is available all over the media (e.g. The Herald) and blogs (e.g. Against the current). The analysis, good though it is, has tended to overlook the fact that while the Māori and Pakeha elites have many things in common, their cultural differences are significant too.

One of the areas often discussed as common ground between the parties is provision of social services: both want to transfer service provision (and the funding for it) from the state to “the community”. It looks like an agreement, but what do they mean by “the community”?

National’s view of community social service provision is to pay a small number of large corporates or NGOs to provide bulk social services, just like the big companies they’ve worked for in the private sector. The Māori Party, quite differently, imagine many small iwi, runanga and hapu based providers, with perhaps some provision by Urban Māori Authorities. To the Māori Party the key to community provision is local targeted care by traditional Māori structures.

This cultural gulf recurs throughout the apparent policy agreements between National and the Māori Party. Another example, National wants to privatise health care provision by offering it to large privately owned hospital providers like those Michael Woodhouse lobbied for in his years in the NZ Private Surgical Hospitals Association and the NZ Private Hospitals Association. The Māori Party wants to strengthen and develop the many Hauora built by iwi and hapu throughout the country, just like the one Hone Harawira helped set up in the Far North.

That may be the final ideological divide: the difference between a “community” consisting of corporates and their shareholders, and a “community” of iwi and hapu.

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The politics of state funding to private schools

In the United States for a long time the Christian Right and the Economic Right existed in parallel trajectories. They campaigned for different things, they didn’t co-ordinate, and they didn’t overlap in membership. Then they started flirting, they each recognised the political power the other had. The issue that brought them together was public funding to religious schools; it was something they both wanted. For one it was direct funding, for the other it was tax payer subsidisation of the education of the rich. The Republicans, keen to draw in the conservative Christians hugely increased the state funding of private (religious) schools

In Australia as John Howard built his brand off his Methodist values, rolled back liberal measures and developed and used the conservative Christians, his government hugely increased the state funding of private (religious) schools.

In New Zealand, as the Brash and then Key led National Party fought against a liberal incumbent and developed its relationship with the conservative Christians both leaders promised church groups that they would increase funding to religious schools. Now they have been elected and are promising to nearly double the funding to private (religious) schools.

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Section 59: How did the politics get so murky?

By early 2005 section 59’s days were clearly numbered. The campaign to remove it had been going over 25 years, the big family service provision organisations were backing the campaign, as were the big churches, MPs from both National and NZ First had put forward measures to repeal or limit, the government had been running a publicity campaign against physical discipline for a number of years with the intention of repeal once more change in behaviour had occurred, and the judiciary had been gradually limiting the scope of the existing section. 

The final vote to replace section 59 was won 113 votes to eight. A simple clean story on paper.

The reality was very different, sometime after the 9th of June 2005 the political wheels fell off; section 59 was replaced, but the cost was huge. 

I could (and will :) write a lot about the social forces, but today this is about the political forces. How and why did the politics become so ugly? I have a handful of theories, I’m sure there are other possibilities:

  1. It was a Green bill – that made it easier to paint as extremist. 
  2. Labour dithered – which made it appear that this was an area of potential weakness
  3. National  has been building links to conservative Christian churches – for example Brash spoke to a large conservative congregation (with no media present) in July 2005 about “values” and “morals” and pledged National would fight the bill.
  4. The “Nanny State” meme – it was an incredibly well developed attack theme against the Labour led government, and had been successful against similar governments overseas, and this issue fit perfectly.
  5. Cynicism – I already noted that a National MP had tried to limit s59 (Bob Simcock way back in 2001) and National voted unanimously for the bill’s third reading. But it proved such a good stick to beat Labour with, perhaps for a while their principles were traded against a chance at the cabinet benches. 
  6. Poor communications strategies by both the Greens and Labour – something went badly wrong here, there was no comms, then too much inconsistency, and little co-ordination between the Greens and Labour. [Thanks Danyl for reminding me, I’ve updated this now :]
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Representational democracy is fundamentally flawed

Representational democracy in New Zealand necessarily fails entirely to live up to its name. With a hundred and twenty people representing four million or so, this should be obvious. It is a system that forces each voter to make a choice using only at most a few of their views. Which party, or which individual, represents the person who wants to ban genetically modified organisms and privatise the health system? 

Even if the party you vote for is elected, they will hold different views from you and they will vote in ways you would not wish them to. In short they are not representing you.

This not only makes the choice a futile one, but also impoverishes any sort of debate or conversation, because the debates are led by politicians who work within blocks, and are covered by a media which is unable to tease out the individual issues.

This futility, and the requirement to give your vote to a package of policies, means we end up giving far too much power to politicians, and keeping far too little for ourselves. Indeed giving this power to politicians is a mistake. We give people whose motivation is largely to gain power the ability to say they are representing us although they have no desire to listen to our individual opinions, and there is no framework to force them to. Three yearly elections do not allow us to hold politicians to account on individual issues, or even individual actions. 

The problem is not the frequency of our elections or the parties we are able to vote for, it is that the system itself does not allow for all of an individuals views to be represented. Every single one of us is effectively silenced on the majority of our views, and forced to listen politicians claiming to speak on our behalf.

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Is the Christian Right a necessary sea anchor?

In the early 1970s a group named the Family Rights Association wrote

All families are suffering at present, infidelity and divorce are very common. Marriages are breaking down at a record rate. When love dies hatred emerges and the children are exposed to suffering and neglect. Parents often see their children’s lives being ruined by drugs, alcoholism and promiscuity, swept along by an overwhelming flood of pornography and evil. Pressure groups claim that marriage is outmoded. De facto relationships are accepted by society and are treated generously by the Government. Normal sexuality is almost submerged by demands for recognition of homosexuality and other perversions. Illegitimacy and venereal disease have reached epidemic proportions. Social anarchy threatens.

Much of that could have been written by Family First in 2009, or many other groups in the intervening 35 years.

Despite this constant thread of social conservatism and fearful reaction to social change, NZ has made enormous socially progressive change since the early 1970s. We have criminalised rape within marriage, decriminalised anal sex, provided access to abortion, passed the Human Rights Act, allowed no fault divorce, decriminalised prostitution, provided sex education in schools, enabled legal recognition of same-sex relationships, banned corporal punishment in schools, and passed domestic violence protection laws (to name just a few).

Perhaps the role of the Christian Right is a necessary one; it does not prevent change but it slows it and makes sure there’s enough discussion that the more conservative members of our society don’t get left behind and alienated from a society that moves too quickly and doesn’t take the time to persuade them and bring them along.

While I campaign for more liberal and progressive progress, I’m not sure I would be willing to pay the price of a divided antagonistic society. Perhaps I should thank the Christian Right for slowing us down enough that we can move together as a community.

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Zaoui: the lessons

We’ve had comments around the Zaoui debacle on a couple of threads, so I thought I would try to pull together some things I think the government (public servants and politicians) should have learned from it:

  • “National security interests” must be publicly defined and open to public debate and influence
  • Secret evidence is unacceptable in all but the most unusual situations, when it absolutely must be used genuine checks and balances must be in place
  • Refugees should never be housed in prisons, and should be in secure facilities only in the most unusual situations (and that must be open to judicial review)
  • The immediate families of refugees should be allowed to join them as soon as possible.

What have I missed?

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RfP: Hate speech laws

Recently I’ve read a number of paired essays, one arguing strongly for something and one arguing against it. I really like the form and reckon the arguments are much better than those that have to pretend objectivity. I’m wondering if we can get the same thing going here – two posts on one subject arguing strongly for opposing views.

So, with no more ado, I’m looking for anyone who might be willing to write a brief strongly argued post for or against hate speech laws. It’s a fascinating topic as it involves competing rights, and NZ has (perhaps without thinking too hard about it) legislated against racial hate speech but probably allows hate speech against other groups.

If you’re interested either email us (kiwipolitico@kiwipolitico.com) or post in the comments and we’ll get in touch.

P.S. If you’re keen to do this but run your own blog please get in touch, I’m sure we can figure out cross-posting.

P.P.S. If you don’t run your own blog I can promise you writing a post would be more fun and easier than you think! :)

[Many thanks to Lew and Rich, we have posts for the case for and against hate speech laws]

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Inclusion: The Kevin Bacon Principle

I know someone who knows John Key. I know people (or know people who know people) who know all the party leaders, and who know each cabinet minister, the mayor, senior journos and public servants. Who else matters? Because I probably know someone who knows them too.

If I meet someone influential we’ll do that kiwi thing and figure out the connection, and in 5 mins we’ll know we have friends or family in common.

I know those people because I’m middle class, well educated and have lived in NZ my whole life. I expect most of you can make the same claims, it’s the beauty of being at the heart of a small connected country. 

That connectedness helps me in a variety of tiny ways; I can ring a friend and say “So, who do I need to talk to to get the promised traffic calming measures on my street under way?” if I ever needed something passed through a Minister’s office I’d have coffee with a mate and ask who’d be the best person to get the request to.  When a less connected friend was struggling with immigration rules I hooked him up with a friend who explained how it really works, and permanent residence was back on track.

More importantly it makes me feel connected and part of society, I know that the rules are made by people like me for people like me and I know people who know (and make) the rules. I’m confident that I can make my way through the maze, and that my friends will make sure I do.

New immigrants don’t have that connectedness nor do most beneficiaries. A kid from a working class background starting university doesn’t have the connectedness advantage I did.

The informality and friendliness that we love about New Zealand can also be insular and exclusive. From the inside we’re a classless level friendly society, from the outside we look a like a clique.

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Who took down Winston?

Winston Peters did not fall, he wasn’t even just pushed, he was dragged down by an effective tactical campaign. Some political operative got everything they needed – the evidence, the source, a couple of journos, a couple of commentators and a couple of politicians – and they went for it, and they won. 

It’s tempting to see it as a joint National-Act campaign with a disgruntled ex NZ First staffer feeding them information, but the idea that National and Act managed to work that closely together and completely shared everything seems really far fetched. Also the main source will have needed a single main contact.

So maybe it was a National campaign, carefully orchestrated, inviting Act in when needed. National had the biggest benefit from the end of NZF, so that counts for it. But… National ran a very low risk campaign and this was not a low risk strategy: imagine the fallout if the media had covered the strategy orchestration by the Nats, or if Peters really did have the material on the Nats he’d always claimed.

Ok, possibly an Act campaign which occasionally invited in National? Much more plausible from a risk perspective: Act could’ve withstood this going bad without any real difficulty. But… if you were a disgrunted ex-NZFer, would you go to Act? And how much did Act really get from the death of NZF? And does Act have the internal political infrastructure to pull this off?

Final option, someone on the right but outside both parties – relationships and trust with both parties, but not beholden to either. So no political risk to either party, more plausible deniability for journos (it’s not coming straight from a party operative) and the ability to co-ordinate across and beyond party lines. But… there are only a few right operatives that skillful who aren’t in parties and surely someone’s checked them out.

So, who did it? Who had the skill, ability and connections to take down Winston Peters?