Author: Anita

A Wellington feminist wondering how to make politics something real people can do.
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Catching the train to work

Yesterday I caught the train to work; I live in Wellington, I’m working in Palmerston North a couple of days a week.

On the trip I had breakfast, did an hour’s work, read and wrote some email, wrote a post, and did some good stretches. It cost less than the petrol would have done, it got me to PN in a comparable time, and in heaps of time for my first meeting.

That service exists solely because of public intervention, it runs on publicly owned rolling stock on publicly owned track.

As I whizzed through the countryside in the sunshine I wondered two things

  1. Why were there so many cars on the road? So many cars with only a single person in them. Why weren’t they on my train (or the one in the other direction), or the bus, or even car pooling?
  2. Why does it take government intervention to create a way for me, a private sector worker, to commute to my private sector job in a cost-effective environmentally friendly way?
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Symbolic action – blood on the Rabin memorial

There’s been quite a lot of talk in recent days over Father Gerard Burn’s protest action of smearing his own blood and red paint on the memorial to Yitzhak Rabin. I have very mixed feelings, but I will stand up for Father Burns.

On the one hand, a statement that Rabin’s legacy has been tainted by the blood of innocents seems so very true, and would not be a criticism or attack on the Rabin himself. One can imagine Rabin’s shade weeping at the actions of the last few weeks.

On the other, it is hard to not hear the echo of at least some criticism of Rabin; perhaps for not going far enough, perhaps for the fish hooks in the Oslo accords, perhaps a stronger criticism. Whether that echo was intentional or not, it is there and Burn must have known it would be heard.

I wasn’t there, if I had been I would not have smeared the paint or cut my finger to join his action. But I would have stood there in support of Father Burn’s decision to take that symbolic action. It’s a line call for me, but a couple of things tip the balance: his use of his own blood fits a particular form of faith based protest; the act was not constructed as a ritual desecration; it is not Rabin’s grave; the act was for peace, it was not filled or framed with hate or anger. Perhaps as someone with a Peace Church heritage I give particular latitude to actions for peace that come out of faith and personal sacrifice… perhaps.

Like so many things about the Israel-Palestine situation this is a hard hard decision, but that makes it so much more important for us to stand up for what we believe.

Finally, can I recommend you go read Poneke’s contribution to the debate – he doesn’t agree with me, but as usual his arguments and well thought through and he stands up for what he believes.

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Representing Pacific communities

I recently read an article by Anae Arthur Anae, National’s first Pacific Island MP. While it was written about 8 years ago, many of his points strike a chord when thinking about political representation of ethnic communities now.

  • He talks about his surprise, as National’s candidate for Auckland Central in 1993, that Pacific people in the seat voted along class and historic lines, rather than for a Pacific Island candidate.
  • As a list MP from 1996-1999 he struggled with the challenges of representing the PI community – geographically spread the length of the county, linguistically and culturally diverse.
  • His attempts to build cross-party forums with other PI MPs
  • The challenge to get Pacific issues understood and prioritised within a party focussed on the “economic situation”
  • The PI communities’ disappointment when National dropped him from 19 to 25 of the list “to make sure that the new intake was representative”

Anae tried to represent every Pacific Islander, whether they voted National or not, whether they were Samoan or not, even if they only thing they shared with him was Pacific heritage. At the same time he represented every National voter, everyone who shared his moral views, not to mention everyone in his neighbourhood.

We ask so much of our MPs, we ask them to represent every single one of us, to empathise with us, to understand us, to know where we come from, to be like us. Continue reading “Representing Pacific communities”

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Rights vs traditional values

Over at Still Truckin’, Ari’s posted about the effect of the same-sex marriage debate in the United States. While I’m not totally in agreement that a scaring the conservatives is a huge success (it’s not that hard for a start :) it has illuminated a huge divide within the United States, and perhaps within our own community.

Some of the academic analysis has looked at the tension between the “rights” frame and the “traditional values” frame which occurs in the debate. On the one hand we have GLBT communities arguing for equal rights, on the other some conservative Christian communities trying to protect the traditional values of their faith and the wider society. In much of the world the “rights” frame reigns supreme, but in the US they seem to have found the tipping point, and the rights arguments that win elsewhere fail in the face of moral and social conservatism and the defence of the family.

In New Zealand we see the same divide: Civil Unions, Prostitution Law Reform (rights of the sex workers to safety vs traditional values of sex-within-marriage), section 59 (rights of the child vs traditional values of child rearing and families). With section 59 are we coming toward the tipping point; where the traditional values of some will outweigh the arguments for the rights of children?

And if we are shifting the balance in those newer rights spaces, will we see it shift in existing issues?

In particular National’s plans for education raise that flag for me – increasing funding for independent schools but capping spending? It sounds like it’ll decrease equity of access to quality education for all students (so a step backwards for children’s rights) to afford an increase in funding for schools specialising in traditional morals teaching.

So, will we follow the US and let a conservative groups arguing for traditional values start to eat away the rights gains? Or will we stay true to NZ’s progressive history of advancing our citizen’s rights?

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Making it beautiful (and usable)

There’ve been a couple of suggestions about how to fiddle the layout to make this blog easier to comment on and/or more beautiful.

Suggestions are very very welcome, so please stick them in the comments here and we’ll see what we can do.

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What could NZ do in response to Israel’s actions against Gaza?

If the NZ government wanted to do something about Israel’s actions what could we, a tin pot little country on the other side of the world, do?

It’s hard to know what we could do, it’s easy to understand why the government’s response is vague wafflings (although a statement that we think its wrong wouldn’t go amiss), and I’ve struggled to come up with any options, but here are my thoughts

  1. A public statement that Israel’s action is disproportionate, unacceptable and should stop. That seems like the easy one, but I’m sure someone with a foreign affairs background might explain it’s not without cost.
  2. We could go to the UNHCR and offer to take Palestinian refugees in addition to our existing quota. It’s not a public high profile measure, but it would make a real difference to some real lives. 
  3. Working for a UN statement. We might never get one, but it would keep up the international pressure
  4. A travel ban on government and military officials and families? I was scraping the barrel to come up with this one, it seems like something we could actually do and, again, it’s a sign to the international community.

Anything else?

What we can do as individuals is slightly easier; as usual Indymedia is providing a space for people to advertise events. There’s a protest in Wellington today, and one in Auckland on Saturday.

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There’s nothing new to see here

In early December two new National MPs were welcomed as heralds of the new multi-ethnic National Party. The maiden speeches of Sam Lotu-Iiga and Melissa Lee were the perfect showcases of a new look party: ethnic heritage, community languages, younger faces, respect for the tangata whenua. Yet despite the effort National has put into the semblence, today’s party is no more more inclusive than it was under Brash or English, it’s just a little less out-dated in its conservatism.

Lotu-Iiga, with his Auckland Grammar schooling, his Cambridge MBA and his career in Finance and Law is not typical of New Zealand Samoans. Lee’s career as a TV journalist is far from the experience of most Asian immigrants. They are as unrepresentative of their communities as Key is of state house kids.

Don’t misunderstand me, this is no criticism of either of them – they’re clearly bright intelligent successful people who may well be outstanding additions to Parliament. But signs of National becoming a diverse party of social inclusion they are not. National has not started representing mainstream New Zealand – with our working class jobs, our trades qualifications, our disabilities, our rented cold damp homes and our struggle to access health services and education.

All that has happened is that National – traditionally the party of the wealthy, of business connections, of the 5% – has finally realised that, despite the policies of the right, a handful of Pacific and Asian immigrants have clawed their way into that privileged few.