No questions, only orders and flight
Only flight
Song by Roger Waters.
Toeing the line is quite important in politics, not questioning too much.
There might be an occasional opportunity for an MP to cast a vote according to their conscience, on a social issue, but by and large a caucus is expected to move as a pack.
You can’t just have your people wandering off and taking a different position when you’re telling the public something. What’s more, with MMP, people are voting for the party not the views of an individual. You need team players, people who will not only listen to a captain’s call, but get in behind it.
Because if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes - well you could go solo, or join another group, but really - maybe you just forgot the songs?
Please ensure your mouth is beverage free before reading the next bit, lest it become so involuntarily.
National and Act are better at toeing the line than Labour and the Greens. Sorry, they just are - at least in public. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors?
The right might happily stab each other in the back, in front of the cameras, but a policy disagreement, a stand on principle, questioning the direction? Hardly ever happens. They are loyal to a fault.
Meanwhile over at the “loopy lefties” she’s all on for young and old. Everyones got an opinion and some of them won’t shut up about theirs - even when they really should.
It doesn’t even need to be a major conflict. Even respectful disagreement can be a bad look. That last bit’s probably an unpopular view with those who believe respect is sacred - and there will be consequences and condemnation if it is not volunteered. If you can fathom that logic.
Let’s take, for example, Labour’s position at the last election on a Wealth Tax.
Ignore all the arguments for or against, I’m simply talking about unity here. It was common knowledge last October that Chippy did not support a Wealth Tax, but senior deputies like Grant Robertson and David Parker wanted one.
While it’d be nice to think we could be adults and accept that different folks have different views, the reality is that in terms of appealing to wavering voters if your front bench isn’t in alignment, on something that fundamental, it’s a hard ask.
What if Chippy gets replaced the day after the election? You’d have a small group of people making up the direction of the country - independently from what voters thought they were getting.
Kind of like… well, you get where I’m going I’m sure. Time for some examples.
Let’s look at a couple of people who are choosing to operate as if at a silent disco, rather than as a member of the orchestra. The former might be fun, but you might not get many votes if your caucus looks like this:
Much as I love them this does make me think of the Greens. Speaking of…
With friends like these - part 1
Darleen Tana, apparently sick and tired of being so popular has decided to do a Gaurav Sharma and hang around for the sole purpose of being a right pain in the ass to their former party.
I’m kidding of course, I imagine this is also about money and that Darleen would far prefer to keep receiving their salary, than not.
Tana released a letter confirming her decision saying, “It is at the very least contestable that cessation in membership is in and of itself sufficient to meet the requirement as the distorting condition. The fact that the Green Party needs to invoke the legislation to remove me from Parliament shows that this is a moot point.” If you can work out what on earth all that means then you’re doing better than me.
Chris Hipkins offered his views, which I agree with. “Darleen Tana should resign from Parliament, she's resigned from the Green Party, the honourable thing to do is to resign from Parliament as well, she's now distorting the proportionality of Parliament, this is not what New Zealanders voted for at the last election.
Ultimately, New Zealanders voted for the Green Party to have a certain number of MPs in the Parliament, they no longer do because one of their MPs has resigned from the party. That's now distorting the election result and she should resign.”
Tana finished her letter noting the amount of money the Greens will lose out on as a result of the defection: $564,187.
Despite the deluded claims that remaining is the price of democracy Tana appears motivated by self interest with little to no regard for voters, their former party, or our democratic process.
I’ve written before about why Darleen should go, I hope the Greens can expedite her removal as soon as possible, at whatever cost, to remove a toxic presence that can only be motivated by revenge or greed. It’s not hard to see why the Greens determined that there was an absence of shared values.
With friends like these - part 2
Meanwhile over on the Labour benches Greg O’Connor has been demonstrating behaviour that suggests he too might like to become an independent.
To some degree O’Connor already is, having stood as an electorate-only candidate, with no safety net from a list position, in both of the last two elections.
Perhaps as a result he feels no great loyalty to the party? Maybe he thinks his best chance of re-election next time is to position himself towards the centre? Whatever it is it seems like disloyalty, at a time when the left are pushing back against increased sanctions, to repeatedly appear in the media saying some of them are not a bad idea.
Life as opposition leader must be hard enough without having to deal with this…
O’Connor said twice in the last week that he thinks sanctioning young jobseekers is warranted. On the Working Group he said, “Particularly for young ones, I’ll put my neck out, I think they’re actually not necessarily a bad thing, particularly maybe for those under 21.”
Then a couple of days later he went from that left wing audience right to the belly of the beast and doubled down on ZB. “When it comes to sanctions, I’ll tell you what, especially for the younger ones, particularly the under 20, teenagers hitting the workforce, I think those sanctions straight out of school, I think sanctions in that area are a good idea.”
Stuff reported that Chippy would speak to O’Connor about his remarks. The renegade MP then tripled down by confirming to Stuff that he stood by them.
You’ve got to wonder at the motivation for such disloyalty. Was O’Connor fulfilling some need for relevancy, at the expense of his party, in order to further his own career? Or is he trying to undermine the leader for some other reason?
If you think I’m being too harsh on Greg imagine if the situation was on the other side of the house.
If some backbench National MP was doing the media rounds, telling all and sundry that Labour was right and Nicola Willis shouldn’t be borrowing to fund tax cuts. We’d be laughing our heads off and cheering them on. But it wouldn’t happen because, at least for now, Christopher Luxon’s team seems well disciplined.
Not in terms of actually producing results that make the country better, but in toeing the party line. So why is O’Connor acting out this way?
You’d have to think that at 66 and in his third term he’s not likely to hang around too much longer. It’s also difficult to imagine a scenario in which he would be given ministerial responsibility in a future left wing government. So why cause a ruckus?
Given that he’s basically running as a lone wolf he isn’t really damaging his future prospects, but where will Chippy draw the line? How much free rein can he allow a rebel in the ranks?
Let me give you a hypothetical.
When Greg O’Connor was the Police Association president he advocated arming police, even though as he left the role he acknowledged that most police were happy not being armed. So what if rather than backing Louise Upston’s work, as he has been, he starts making pro-gun comments in support of Machine-gun McKee’s policies?
If O’Connor thinks Ms Upston’s approach has some merit he is not reading the room in terms of left wing supporters.
I’m glad O’Connor defeated Nicola Willis in Ōhāriu but given the strength of the left wing vote in that seat, and assuming Chippy can come to some accommodation with the Greens not to split it, the Labour leader might be better off with a different candidate there next time around.
One with more potential to assist in rebuilding the disaster National and it’s cronies will leave behind. Or at the very least someone who knows when it’s time to show a little diplomacy, a bit of loyalty, and toe the line.
Were these particular comments a big deal? You could argue that they’re pretty meaningless, but what they do is add to a picture of disunity on the left and jeopardise the ability of the opposition to present a compelling, unified alternative. Chippy has a bloody hard job to do and I think he deserves better support than this behaviour.
Both O’Connor and Tana should pull their heads in and do the right thing. For O’Connor that means avoiding comments that might help his future prospects as an MP, but are detrimental to his party, and to the left in general.
As for Tana, I’ll save you reading a list of expletives, but for goodness sake can they not finally do the right thing by the Party they chose to represent and, like O’Connor, stop focussing on their own interests?
That is not why people should be in parliament. A fact clear to the leaders of both Labour and the Greens, who I’m sure will put the interests of the people of Aotearoa ahead of those of these individual politicians.
Today’s Johnny’s birthday. Our precious lad turns 20 and we could not be prouder of the man he is. Kind hearted, with a biting wit but not a mean spirit. Following in his old man’s footsteps he’s in his second year at Auckland Uni doing a Science degree and is currently interested in the Antarctic.
A world of opportunities for that young man, but I worry at the planet he is inheriting. Not simply the challenges of scarce resources and climate change but the changing nature of work, the advances that will come in AI, so many things that are not of his making but will shape his life.
Then tomorrow’s my birthday. Had Johnny arrived 15 minutes later we would’ve shared one. So there might not be a newsletter tomorrow, unless something particularly catches my interest.
As a birthday special I’m offering a free 30 day subscription to Nick’s Kōrero. You get access to all my writing, and if you decide not to continue then you don’t pay anything. I’ll stop now before I offer you steak knives.
But wait, there’s more. If you’d like to subscribe, until the end of August you can get 20% off for a year by clicking this button:
The end track today is from one of my favourite albums, Roger Waters - Amused to Death. It’s called Late Home Tonight, Pt 1, I hope you like it. 🙂
Let me just reword slightly your theory that Nats and Act are better at publicly showing loyalty to the party. And say that perhaps the left parties have far more individuals with integrity who will speak out if they disagree. I would absolutely prefer to vote for someone I know has that integrity than any of the forelock tugging nonentities from the right.
Tana was NOT elected by the people as she's still falsly claiming. As a List MP she was selected by the Greens to represent the party. If she is no longer in the Party she is no longer in Parliament, simple as that. (Good morning Choir, please enjoy this short bit of preaching ;-) ). As for Greg O'Connor, if he campaigned on principles up front he was saying to the Electorate "I follow Labour, and my personal views which are these ..." and got elected on those sentiments, then yes there should be some leeway for him to express them now - jsut as long as he's been consistent. However, he's still part of Labour so if this isn't a conscience issue and not a local Electoral promise then time to pull his head in.
p.s. so 2 days of Cake for Nick & whanau!