On Dawkins' "New Athens" Proposal - Unclean, Algal-Green, And Anti-Intellectualism

On Friday, word reached us that the world's foremost obstreperous atheist, Richard Dawkins, appears to be advocating we open our borders to the world's "creative intellectuals" in a bid to make New Zealand a 'new Athens' for the 'Trump era'.

This seemed to be a singularly curious proposition to come from Dawkins, for any number of reasons.

Leaving aside the fact that a man who works himself into a fit of apoplexy when asked to surrender his jar of honey at airport security is presumably going to have some degree of difficulty adapting to our rather strict biosecurity regimen ... it also occurs that the rather famed 'anti-intellectual' default tenor of our national character (which acts entwined with 'tall poppy syndrome') may not render us the most welcoming of harbours for a future large-scale influxion of literati immigration.

Further, when it comes to the passion for ecological preservation which Dawkins has apparently identified in our people and our polis from afar as a core reason for suggesting his intellectual fellows move here ... I can only suggest that they'll probably be rather dismally disappointed when they eventually arrive upon our allegedly verdant shores (the shorelines of many of our inland lakes and waterways are, indeed, green - but that's mostly due to the build-up of toxic algae as the result of farm-runoff).

Probably the best example of this antipathy of our political class towards the serious environmental challenges facing our nation remains the conduct of our Prime Minister on BBC's HardTalk five years ago. The contents of this interview have now entered into the realms of local political legend - but in summary, Key was faced with expert evidence which proved how bad the state of our local waterways were under his government (in reaction to the "100% Pure" slogan we were then pushing for tourism branding) and responded by stating that the evidence of scientists was much like the advice of lawyers (or, presumably, atheistic quasi-philosophers): in specia, that if you didn't like what one said, then it was perfectly acceptable to pass the proverbial brown paper envelope of cash at another one and request a different report more to your liking.

Now, I cite this incident not merely because it handly counters the unabashed (albeit favourable) propaganda contained in Dawkins' open letter to the scientific/"creative intellectual" community.

Instead, it's worth bringing up in this context, because it's a fairly DIRECT demonstration that the sort of "post-Truth politics" which Dawkins is railing against and so concerned about in both post-Brexit Britain and Trump-Era America as to be advocating en-masse emigration for the above from theres to here.

Congratulations, New Zealand! We were once more a world pioneer!

So I think we've fairly conclusively established that Dawkins is perhaps being fairly over-optimistic if he thinks that Auckland (or anywhere else in the country, for that matter) will provide especially fertile grounding as his Athens.

And this is presumably BEFORE he finds out how important and integrated various elements of Maori metaphysics which he'd probably dismiss as 'baseless superstition' are in our ways of doing things.

But these were not the first things which sprang to my mind when I initially became aware of his somewhat breathless proposal.

Instead, it was the perhaps rather amusing dissonance between Dawkins' own vituperatively advocated views on religion (particularly in public life), as compared to the role and importance which public religion actually played in historical Athens - to the point, in fact, that they executed a number of prominent intellectuals (including a rather famous chap you may have heard of known as Socrates) for the crime of asebeia - impiety.

And, following on from that (albeit further back in time by a few years), the way in which in the final years of the 5th century BC, Athens found itself bedevilled by a remarkable problem of intellectual types arguably attempting to subvert its democracy, traditions and governance-structures in favour of dictatorship and deplorable suzerainty.

Now, this might not sound immediately familiar. But consider this - here in New Zealand ... we've been down that road before. From the early years of the 1970s through apparently to the present day, economists - trenchant, neoliberal economists - operating in Treasury and elsewhere further afield have attempted to do pretty much exactly what I've outlined above to our once prosperous and positive society.

They wrought a damage to our economy which University of Auckland economist Tim Hazledine asserted could only be accurately measured in terms of the agglomerated effects of a number of Canterbury Earthquakes. And we still haven't recovered from them yet.

This might seem something of a tangent - but it's probably worth noting that there's a fairly direct tie back to "Athens" in what I'm speaking about. It is, after all, much the state of economic ruination which the present, modern city of Athens has languished in for almost a decade now as the directly attributable result of flawed, failing, flailing arch-neoliberal economic policies of austerity imposed by the European iterations of our own dear economists right here in Treasury; and those who've previously staffed the ranks of the ACT, National and Labour Parties.

In other words, while we are yet to produce something as bloody and tumultuous as the Reign of the Thirty Tyrants (you may remember Critias - one of their number - as the interlocutor in several of Plato's dialogues, including one in which he is eponymous) ... the fact remains that we have much reason to be skeptical of folk of the brain who believe they 'know best' and who may wish to undermine or cast out our egalitarian traditions and fetter our democracy - you know, more than they've already attempted to do for much of the previous forty years.

It's probably important to note at this juncture that I'm not inimically or even incidentally opposed to attempting to increase our nation's intellectual capital 'the quick way' via allowing in folk of demonstrable intelligence and critical capacity. All in all, it would be pretty hard to disagree that this seems, on the face of it at least, to be a pretty decent idea.

But Dawkins' slightly wide-eyed plan betrays a number of key (and untenable) assumptions about who and what we are, here in New Zealand.

In much of the coverage I've seen of what he's advocating here, these don't appear to have been brought to the fore.

There are, of course, also intellectual contrafibularities with his decidedly mixed metaphor about "Athens" in light of his own, vocally expressed beliefs; but, as ever, concerns about where we're going as a nation (and, for that matter, as an ecology - whether verdant- or knowledge-) must come first.

Still, it would be rather grand if we could actually live up to some of the plaudits which Dawkins has put forward in our name.

Best get thinking about how to do that, then.

Maybe some of those "creative intellectual" types might be able to help...

President Trump - Rebirths & Reflections

So it finally happened. American Democracy, dependent upon your relative vantage point and biases, either 'jumped the shark', or reached its apotheosis. Possibly both at once.

By an incredible margin - whether the incredibly Yuuuge 276-215 in the Electoral College, or the incredibly tight mere million votes between the two candidates - Trump has now become the implicit leader of the 'Free World'.

Some might view this as a fairly calamitous if not outright catastrophic outcome - certainly, the impending migration flows of would-be Democrats leaving their homeland in earnest have already been sufficient to crash Canada's immigration department website.

But for those of us a little farther removed (say, on the other side of the world's largest ocean) from the chaos ... a different perspective is starting to become clear.

Hillary Clinton was the Washington Consensus personified, reified and embodied.

Whether on trade policy or NeoCon foreign policy bayonet-stances, she represented exactly what America has been doing, broadly speaking, for the last thirty years.

Trump, presuming he sticks to what he campaigned on (always a fraught risk with politician-types (which Trump apparently now is) - particularly if they're successful), ran on an outright and umbrage-laden repudiation of all of the above.

For those of us who've spent their entire political lives since attaining 'political consciousness' during the fervent opposition to the American-led War in Iraq, and who've more recently devoted much time and effort to attempting to block the #TPPA, you may perhaps forgive us for letting out a small sigh of relief at Trump's victory.

We now may be living in a world - a WORLD, mind you ... not a singular country, no matter how important - wherein these progressive causes: opposing militant American hegemony and the expansion of dastardly neoliberal economics which it often accompanies ... are now hopefully much easier to advance.

This is no small accomplishment. And yet, amidst all the bemoaning about how America allegedly "couldn't bring itself to elect a female president" (as Newshub's Samantha Hayes claimed as part of last night's coverage), it's something which many coming from the nominally progressive wing of politics have curiously overlooked.

I get that there will be many folks still left in America - where, according to some, the lunatic has taken over the asylum (although recall the quote about whom to look to in an Age of Madness to show the way, in a manner akin to a blind guide in total blackness) - who are now seriously disquieted about this result. Given the escalating tone of political violence which has taken place in America over the past year, and what a number of Trump's more extreme supporters may now do, I can well understand a goodly number of Americans not feeling safe in their own country.

But I can equally understand folk located elsewhere and in less privileged areas about the globe who're fundamentally relieved at the idea that the Age of American Suzerainty Secured Through Superior Firepower and rampantly oppressive 'trade' negotiations (which often seem to have precious little to do with actual trade, and far more to do with a cession of sovereignty from their economic targets) now appears to be coming - or sputtering - to an end.

Still, we are now very much in a Political Aeon of Uncertainty.

The only sure thing from now, going forward - is that we are, indeed, living in Interesting Times.

(Which, I note, is supposedly a Chinese curse :P )

Fear And Loathing Of A Democratic Presidency: Where To For The American Left

[Author's Note: This piece originally appeared as the sixteenth installment of my Sex, Drugs & Electoral Rolls column for Craccum Magazine, in early August. However, events unfolding later this week - and their potential ramifications - have once more pushed this topic to the forefront of my mind. Also, I noted with some interest and amusement that noted postmodern 'superstar' political philosopher Slavoj Zizek appeared to reason himself to pretty much the same conclusion last week in his 'endorsement' of Trump. I've therefore chosen to republish my column here for a broader audience.]

At the time of writing, we've just had a week of absolute and utter chaos at each and both of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Predictably, this has lead to the usual profusion of armchair pundits and paid political "experts" pontificating en-masse as to what's about to happen - and, perhaps more importantly, what should happen next in the long run. Obviously, Trump's sensational and salacious dangling of the threat of an onslaught of Russian hackers in the general direction of Hillary Clinton makes for stimulating reading - but this is a sideshow, and we all know it. 

The REAL issue of serious importance for us to be debating is the future nature of the Democratic Party, and left-wing politics in general in the U.S. of A, for both the rest of this electoral cycle - and for the foreseeable future.

Hunter S. Thompson, in the book I spent a goodly portion of my early twenties straight-out living, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, penned a beautiful paean to the lost promise of the counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s. It's often called "the Wave Speech", and I thoroughly encourage you to look it up. In it, he eulogizes the way that a tumultuous series of crises and catastrophes conspired to bring about the end of that particular political dream (and in other of his writings, points a particular finger at another controversial Democratic National Convention - in this case, the 1968 one held in Chicago).

"We had all the momentum, we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

Sound familiar? For Bernie supporters, it certainly should.

For many of us here in 2016, that elegiac high-water mark is probably Senator Sanders himself nominating Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Candidacy in this year's Presidential election. Certainly, it will be some point scattered around the Democratic Convention itself, if not that precise moment.

Up until then - up until that Convention - it had somehow still seemed possible that Sanders might still, inconceivably either take the Nomination himself ... or nevertheless force the inevitable Clintonite juggernaut to accept such humbling, crippling concessions that the post-Bern beast which thusly arose might bear nothing but a passingly vague resemblance to the pro-TPPA ultra-Hawk candidate that had terrorized our television screens for much of the preceding electoral cycle.

But it wasn't to be.

Whether by the combined might of DNC corruption to 'tip the scales' against Sanders when it came to the delegate-count; the sheer overwhelmingly confounding institutionalized paranoia about what a Trump presidency might bring; or simply, as some have darkly joked, the semi-literal threats of what Clinton et. co might have done to Sanders if he'd held out ... the old man finally decided in the interests of party unity for a party he'd only just joined to sit this one out and apparently adopt a sinecure position as Clinton's cheerleader-in-chief.

And while this was arguably a minor tragedy in and of itself - especially in an emotive sense - I guess a moment like this might still require some sort of justification in order to substantiate the "high-water mark" labeling.

So it's this. The #FeelTheBern campaign represented something fairly unique in the annals of recent Western politics (particularly in the Anglosphere). A genuine attempt to not just put strongly and ardently anti-Neoliberal politics at the direct heart of a modern electoral contest ... but also to engage in what you might term an 'Institutional Revolution', and take back a party of the nominal 'center-left' (which nevertheless, as they are wont to do, frequently seems to behave more as a creature of the 'center-right'). Call it creating a 'safe space for Socialism'.

Whatever. The point is, it didn't work. And for any number of reasons - mostly because the institution true-lefties and young people were seeking to take over ... turned out to be about as hostile to this sort of outside interventionism as one of the Middle Eastern countries so thoughtlessly 'democratized' under Mrs. Clinton's watch as Secretary of State.

This doesn't necessarily mean that such an effort might not work out in the future - but for the moment, just like the Egyptian Deep State rolling Mohamed Morsi in favour of yet another in a long line of more American-amenable dictators, the Powers That Be within the DNC have conspired to head off Hope & Change in favour of going back to the status-quo ante-bellum. A good example of this is the selection of ardently pro-Wall St and TPPA, Tim Kaine as Hillary's VP pick. "Where's your 'Revolution' now?!", indeed.

All of this leads up to some fairly uncomfortable choices for Democrats-left-of-center and more proper Social Democrats going forward.

It would be a bitter pill, indeed, to vote for Hillary Clinton come November. But, so the argument goes, there is no choice. (And I'm sure we all remember that "T.I.N.A." - There Is No Alternative - is a favoured Neoliberal rallying-call to get the skeptical to accept the unpalatable everywhere from Thatcher's England to Douglas's Aotearoa) Trump is apparently too terrifying to risk doing anything other than granting total, blind and unqualified loyalty to Clinton at the ballot. Weathering the four or eight years worth of bad Presidency which Clinton may bring is thought to be far superior an option to taking a gamble on what a Trump-era might entail. "And don't you DARE vote for Jill Stein!"

But here's a thought, and a probably highly controversial opinion.

What if Trump winning made it more likely rather than less for leftists to get organized, field candidates, and win seats in the American political system. What if the stultifying and suffocating influence of the Clinton-machine Democrats had exactly the opposite effect (certainly seems to be working like that already). What if, in short, it was actually desirable from a long-term left-wing perspective that Clinton lost in November?

There's already some precedent for this internationally. Here in New Zealand, for instance, one reason why the true-left wing resistance was so slow and inefficient at organizing and mobilizing against Rogernomics was precisely because it was the nominally left-of-center party carrying out the reforms and the dastardly right-wing economic agenda. Just like Clinton. It took the evils of Ruthanasia carried out under National for parties like The Alliance and New Zealand First to properly coagulate and start winning serious electoral victories.

I don't begrudge people who've made their own personal judgement-call that Trump's over-the-top and abhorrent rhetoric means that he's a bete-noir who absolutely must be beaten at many costs (although I DO most strongly sneer at those who seek to pretend that Hillary is an actually-objectively straight-up Good Option on her own terms and merits).

But if Americans (in whole or most likely in part) were serious about challenging the prevailing conditions of neoliberalism and globalism which have so perniciously ensnared their country - and thus the world at large - for so long, then perhaps a different conversation is needed.

Instead of ringing in the Apocalypse with manic doomsaying about the Republican option ... or celebrating a decidedly false-Messiah (for the purposes of this metaphalagy, perhaps a proper functional Anti-Christ) in the form of the current Democratic nominee ... how about thinking of and discussing the serious business of building up a genuine left-wing alternative option and what might be required for this in the immediate years to come.

That's how we get The Wave to roll back. In, this time.

Ensuring, in other words, that the tide doesn't stay out forever - and that the much-mythologized wave of history one day does in fact roll in up the beach again.

Love Him Or Hate Him - Morgan's Not Like Other Wealthy Men Bursting Into Politics

Every so often, somebody or something comes along which puts a bit of their weight upon our psephological scales, and subtly (or, in this case, probably not-so-subtly) shifts our entire political conversation and course along with it.

Often, when we seek to analyse these figures and these moments, our eyes are first drawn to the boisterous braggarts who want to play political maestro - and hold the fate of governments if not the nation right there in the palm of their hand on election-night by dint of their inexhaustible wallets.

Now, given Friday's announcement one might be forgiven for thinking that the above is how I'd characterize errant economist Gareth Morgan. It's certainly a self-appointed thorn-crown which would seem fittingly adorned for two of the most obvious points of comparison to the author of The Opportunities Party - namely, Colin Craig and Kim DotCom. Or, as they're now known, NZ's most famous defamation litigant and extradition-case, respectively.

But Morgan's different. And in at least two key ways.

If we look at his actual record of political engagement here in New Zealand over the years, it's quite clear that this is someone who's poured in an almost superhuman level of effort to publicizing issues that he cares about ... and, y'know, trying to create change ... for quite an extended period of time without ever once seeking to win public office. His debut on the ballot at the next year's Election, then, contrasts most markedly with Craig staging a fairly well planned two-year 'arc of ascent' from referendum-rally-march-organizer to Mayoral candidate to party leader; or DotCom deciding almost on the spur of the moment to attempt to wreak electoral vengeance upon the backs of the government he first donated to and then was spurned by in his hour of need.

It's probably important at this juncture to note that I haven't always agreed with Morgan. But whichever way you slice it, it's difficult to argue against the notion that this is somebody who has put sustained effort into our politics of a manner and character that is probably unequaled among the ranks of those who aren't doing so with the pursuit of public office in mind.

The results and the reception have occasionally been mixed: while his advocacy for a Universal Basic Income probably had more tangible impact, earlier, than Labour's now-lukewarm picking up of the idea earlier this year ... his de-caturization proposal, on the other hand, appeared to be opposed by an order of magnitude more people than supported it. But either way, there is no denying that we all sat up and took notice - and that for a few weeks in each occasion he's swooped in, we've all found ourselves collectively talking about whatever it is he wants us to ponder.

In other words, politically speaking, Morgan's no 'flash in the pan'. Entering electoral politics directly might be comprehensively new territory for him, but he's been around for awhile and has something of a demonstrable record in this area. I therefore think I believe him when he states that the setting up of TOP has been something of a move of frustration with the continual 'roadblock' of establishment politics from his perspective.

But while there is a perhaps surprisingly strong track-record for wealthy Opinionista-fronted parties in our politics (consider Colin Craig's Conservatives almost grazing the 5% threshold with 3.98% in 2014 - or, further back, Bob Jones' New Zealand Party winning a substantial 12.2% of the vote in 1984) and even better prospects for them if we look offshore (never mind Donald Trump ... does Clive Palmer ring a bell? He should - his eponymous Palmer United Party won three Senate seats plus a Federal Parliament one in the year after its formation in 2013 over in Australia) ... this doesn't necessarily militate either in favour or against Morgan's future political prospects.

Instead, what WILL determine whether The Opportunities Party are in a position to seriously influence our Nation's politics by this time next year, will be the set of steps which Morgan takes as he continues to build his party and campaign machine.

Morgan's main weakness is not in the traditional areas associated with those dipping their toes into the waters of electoral politics for the first time. He's got a demonstrably viable head for policy (and policy detail), as well as a well-established media profile arguably larger than that of some Cabinet Ministers. I also presume that, as the direct result of his previous projects with The Morgan Foundation and its associated outreach attempts, that he has both a pre-existing (professional) staff and some currency out there in the community when it comes to networks he can activate.

But what he needs more than anything right now are i) 'political insiders' who've direct, personal and above all RECENT experience in how 'the game' works in order to direct TOP's immediately ensuing growth; and ii) people able and capable of running political/electoral campaigns and recruiting and directing the manpower to propel same.

I have this vague suspicion that Morgan's Trump comparison was overly revealing of proposed campaign style - and that he might thus attempt to push TOP to 5% largely off the back of his own media presence, without matching this fearsome asset with corresponding spadework on the ground. This will be questionably viable in electoral terms; and will unquestionably make a waste of the formidable force-multiplier he has in his extant politisphere/media persona if there's nothing for it to actually 'multiply' in the first place.

Fortunately, for a man of Morgan's means, the required personnel resources ought not be too hard to come by. There's a not insignificant number of people who worked hard with demonstrable results on 2014 or even 2016 Campaigns who, for whatever reason, are now looking for a new political paymasters. And as we saw from his enlistment for the Morgan Foundation's Treaty Talks project of Hone Harawira's former right hand man Jevan Goulter, Morgan already evidently has at least some connections in these areas which he can draw upon.

Once that is done, he can start upon the serious business of attempting to first demarcate and then carve out a 'core constituency' for his party. A number of proposed areas have been suggested by other commentators, ranging from "somewhere between ACT and the Greens", and "Blue-Greens with a twist" (if we insist upon using other, more established parties as easy yard-sticks for potentially vast and ill-defined segments of the electorate).

In any case, however he chooses to proceed with the above, the course of his party is likely to prove worth watching.

Even if he doesn't succeed in cracking the 5% threshold late next year, there remains every chance that his efforts and his exploits will be strongly positioned to have a pointed influence upon our broader political conversation and thus the other parties.

Auckland Electoral Post-Mortem Part 1: 'Solids' And 'Biddables'

So now that the dust's started to settle and the excitement's mostly over (barring one or two personages who'll be sitting on tenterhooks awaiting the results of special voting), the attention of the Commentariat has sensibly turned to picking over the weekend's local body electoral result.

I say "sensibly", but there's been a marked tendency towards some decidedly 'unsensible' conclusions. This is presumably an artifact of the FPP mindset which still dominates some aspects of electoral coverage. We want clear, defined and decisive 'winners' and 'losers'. It's much more narratively interesting to be able to present a 'left-bloc' crusading to victory over and against one or more right-wing factions.

But - particularly around the Council table - this isn't exactly how things actually work.

There, as with the very earliest days of Parliament at the national level, you're effectively dealing with far more 'independent' creatures than the fairly tightly-whipped confederations of opinion we find in our modern political parties. Each Councilor is an individual - often, functionally and in practice an Independent (whether they ran as one or not) - and subject to a potentially bewildering array of considerations when it comes time for them to decide how they're going to vote on a particular issue.

Some of these are going to be patently obvious. Those wishing to be re-elected and on thin majorities will wish to please certain (perhaps more vocal) portions of their local constituencies. Others might have particular vaunted paths of idealism which they wish to head down, and which will govern their decision-making behavior. Kow-towing to the wishes of wealthy financiers may be a third consideration. And coming distantly fourth when we talk of motivations - but probably somewhere about first or second in actual practice - are the wishes of Council technocrats lurking murkily in the shadows.

But there's one factor of absolutely vital importance which often falls completely through the cracks in public consideration - perhaps because it's so hard to pin down by journalists.

And that, dear friends, is the subtle art of influence-peddling and vote-bidding.

On every Council there emerges one or more figures who 'wield the chains', if you like that link to the collars of a dozen or more of their compatriots. Somebody who's capable of inducing 'by hook or by crook' the people around them to be herded in the right direction for an agenda to take place.

Ideally, this is the Mayor's job - to form a 'working majority' from his or her fellows, and get enough votes lining up the right way to ensure certain flagship items pass so that her or his vision can be immanentized.

More recently, and for a number of reasons, that job seems to have fallen to (now previous, possibly shortly present) Auckland Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse. But as that appears largely to have been the result of Brown's political failings, his replacement with incoming Mayor Phil Goff may result in that responsibility transitioning.

Goff is an indisputably experienced coalition-builder (as anyone inheriting the mantle of Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party must surely be); but let's take a look at what he's working with.

Hitherto, some commentators have attempted to divide up the Auckland Council into 'left' and 'right', with maybe a few 'centrist' folks thrown in for good measure. Or, with deference to the fact that former Rodney Councilor Penny Webster came to the Brown camp from out of deepest, darkest ACT ... Pro-Mayor and Anti-Mayor. Or, when it comes to The Spinoff ... "People We Like", and "Sea-Goblins".

But the truth is actually rather more complex.

For our purposes, we can probably divide the Council across two axes - 'left' and 'right' (relatively speaking), and 'biddable' versus 'solid'. The first duality's self-explanatory; the second refers to how amenable a given Councilor is to wavering in their quasi-ideological convictions in service of the Mayor's presumptive vaguely center-left agenda.

The names comprising the 'Solid Left' ought come as no surprise. Mike Lee & Cathy Casey have histories of service and well-renowned records. Even The Spinoff couldn't argue with the principle and application of the latter. To this number we can add the two 'Putting People First' Councilors from Albany, Wayne Walker & John Watson; and from the Manukau ward, Efeso Collins. I'm also told that Richard Hills, the potential-Councilor (dependent upon pending special votes in North Shore), would be a likely candidate for inclusion in this group - although the risk with younger folk is you never quite know how they're going to go in the absence of a longer record of service to extrapolate from.

The people on the 'Biddable Left', in many ways aren't that different from the constituent members of the 'Solid Left'. And there's much that is positive to say about a number of them and their achievements. They're classed as 'Biddable' due to potential differing priorities which mark them as an arguably softer form of left. They include folk people look up to such as Alf Filipaina and Penny Hulse (who themselves have a strong working relationship); and further along the spectrum towards the center, individuals like Chris Darby and Ross Clow (the latter of which definitely comes from the 'right-wing' of Labour).

Now out on the 'Biddable Right', we have individuals like Bill Cashmore (whom I'm told can occasionally seem somewhat indistinguishable from Ross Clow), Daniel Newman, John Walker, and Christine Fletcher - with potential question-marks over Greg Sayers and Linda Cooper. The reasoning for their 'right-wing' labeling ought to be plainly & readily apparent. The 'biddable' heading comes from the fact that these are often not entirely unreasonable people, who can in fact be swayed towards lending their votes and support to the occasional Good Idea.

Further out again on the 'Solid Right', in approximate order of sanity and obstructionism, we have Denise Krum (possibly the most successful person to come out of United Future in recent years - and being singlehandedly responsible for 100% of Auckland Future's Council-seat gains this year ... albeit only by patching over from her former affiliation of C&R), Sharon Stewart, and Dick Quax. These last two presumably require no introduction - and represent one of the few times that The Spinoff's unique brand of creatively illustrative vitriol-branding is entirely and unambiguously accurate in its assessment.

So if you were to look out across the Council Table from the Mayor's pole position, what you'd see is probably an approximate Ten-Ten split with yourself as the casting vote. Not an entirely bad place to be in. Particularly when we add in the potential buffer of a few 'biddable right' Councilors who can occasionally be induced to support certain measures.

In terms of how the 'left' is doing long-term and overall, it's probably more useful to consider any changes in numbers on the Council in their proper historical context, rather than the 'vacuum' of a single election result.

Specifically, the way that the 2013 reversals for the left in the form of Denise Krum replacing Richard Northey and Linda Cooper replacing Sandra Coney (the first due to a narrow electoral loss, the second due to retirement) have now, themselves, been reversed due to the replacement of George Wood on the North Shore, and the election of Efeso Collins down South.

Although considering the finely tuned matters of numbers and balance, I can't help but wonder what would have eventuated if The Spinoff's call for Bill Ralston to triumph over Mike Lee had actually eventuated.

It occurs that 11-9 in favour of the 'right' is a lot less favourable, even though it's a single vote, as compared to an even 10-10 plus Mayor.

Hopefully that clears things up a little.

[I'd like to acknowledge the political sources I talked to as part of the preparation for this piece]

Battleground Wairarapa: Why Ron Mark Is Poised To Take The Seat Off National

One of the benefits of being a political insider is that people tell you things. Often, things which the original source of the information would probably dearly have liked to keep secret. These little revelations help to make sense of wider and overt trends which many people notice, but which don't necessarily make full sense in the absence of the 'hidden' information which puts them in context.

Part-way through last month, I became aware of a number of interesting things happening down in the Wairarapa electorate. This is a National seat (and these days arguably something of a 'safe' one), but with a local MP widely regarded as an aloof and out-of-touch carpet-bagger who spends most of his time in Wellington. So we'd presumably be unsurprised to see the Nats putting a bit of work in to campaign there next year.

But deploying massed ground forces THIS far out from the Election?

That's a bit of an eyebrow-raiser.

And yet, that's exactly what's happening.

People down there have noted with bemusement and interest that the Young Nats have been out street-campaigning for their local MP for several weeks now. Clearly they're going to keep building up from there for the next year or so.

So this tells us that the Nats are scared.

But of what?

Well, that's where the 'surreptitious information' bit comes in.

National commissioned a phone-poll of about ten thousand houses in the Wairarapa electorate. That's the vast majority of them.

The results were, from their perspective at least, probably not the most encouraging. Somewhere about 73% of voters held an unfavourable opinion of Alastair Scott and were considering not voting for him. That's a pretty strongly negative result.

Meanwhile, Ron Mark's been steadily gaining ground all the while through solid hard graft and stellar constituency engagement. The meetings NZF have been holding in the Wairarapa electorate regularly pack out halls with hundreds. When I did a bit of doorknocking for Ron earlier this year, we found a fairly overwhelmingly positive response from people there for him.

To be fair, the 2014 voting breakdown does leave some ground for Ron to make up. 7593 votes, in fact.

But bear in mind that in 2014 Ron's campaign was run 'seat-of-the-pants' style - announcing a few weeks before polling day, and contesting the race with a small (but highly proficient) campaign team.

2017 looks set to be thoroughly different, as not only does Ron now have the advantages of incumbency (after a sort, being the local List MP of note; as well as a nationally regarded leading Opposition MP), but his war-chest and crew of rampantly enthusiastic volunteers continues to swell.

Labour may also be looking for a new candidate to contest the next Election - but even if they stick with Kieran McAnulty, they face an uphill struggle to reverse the three consecutive electoral cycles' worth of declining candidate vote which they've tended to have in that seat.

And besides, in a rural seat one simply has to ask the obvious question: which Opposition party is more likely to be able to win and capture the hearts and minds of defecting soft-National voters. A declining, fading former party of government which appears set to be eventually relegated to 'minor party' status ... or the vigorously rising crew who've launched an effective (and evidently well-regarded) Crusade for Regional New Zealand.

So all things considered, National is definitely right to be scared. They face the unenviable situation of already having lost a single 'safe' seat to the NZF onslaught - and, perhaps more remarkably, being potentially set to lose another one.

Either way, New Zealand First is in a demonstrably strong position - and I, for one, can't wait to see the mounting cavalcade of consternating terror from National towards us over the next twelve months.

Why National Is Really Looking To Sanctify Illegal Imprisonment And Deny Compensation

One of the fundamental instincts of the political conservative is to Punish. To 'Protect'. To levy the superior powers of the state as a mechanism with which to push 'down and out' against perceived 'undesirables' who may be living in our society's midst.

In ages past, the demographic targets for this form of umbrage have been many and multifarious. These days, it's no longer polite nor acceptable to go after some of them (although beneficiaries and the working poor appear to remain popular objects of scorn in some circles).

But one of the groups which apparently remains absolutely A-OK for right-wing opinion leaders to come down on like a tonne of bricks in pursuit of positive returns at the polls ... is criminals.

I guess it's not hard to see why. Criminals - and those convicted of crimes serious enough to warrant a term of imprisonment in particular - are generally regarded as harming others. As having forfeited some measure of their intrinsic human worth and dignity by transgressing upon the civic norms to which each and all of the rest of us nominally subscribe. They are, quite literally in the popular imagination, the angry threatening figure out there in the dark of the night. The drunk whose aggressive attentions we flailingly attempt to recoil from when we see them coming towards us. An inexorable drain upon the public purse through both the willful damage they cause, and the expensive efforts which We, The People must undertake in order to find, apprehend, vigorously prosecute and punish them.

At least, in the frenetic Conservative's irritation-fuelled imagination. In real life, some criminals are exactly as monstrous as that outlined above ... and others, well, aren't. Cannabis-smokers and small-time drug-dealers are probably a pretty good example of these only semi-reprehensible reprobates. Their behavior isn't intrinsically objectionable, and I'm even aware of a recent case in New Zealand law in which a Judge referred to the latter as being a quite literally "victimless crime".

But regardless of how you feel about crime, criminals or politicians ... it is inarguable that there is strong necessity for there to be both strictures and restraints upon the coercive powers of the state. Where there is no legal basis to lock somebody up, they should not be allowed to be locked up. Where the state has considerably erred in its usage of powers to condemn, indemnify and incarcerate, there ought to be tangible action to put things 'back into balance' - often in the form of restitution. And where the state has been caught out red-handed in wrongfully imprisoning somebody or otherwise doing injurious harm to their person or reputation (for such, a term of incarceration almost assuredly is) ... then it really should think VERY long and hard before considering the utter affront to the Rule of Law implicit in casting retroactive legislation to post-facto legalize its previously wrongful conduct.

Given that all of this is the 'right thing to do', it should probably come as absolutely no surprise to just about anyone that Judith Collins - the Corrections Minister who memorably once suggested prison-rape as an active deterrence to future offending - appears to want to do just about all the opposite.

As many are now aware, a recent New Zealand Supreme Court decision has clarified that we've been illegally keeping New Zealanders - potentially somewhere up above five hundred of us - behind bars illegally. The Government, caught somewhat flat-footed by the court's judgement, appears to be moving to block compensation for those wrongfully imprisoned - and, potentially more worryingly, change the law to retroactively keep people in prison.

This is wrong. This is so obviously wrong that we could dress it up in a rosette and run it as an ACT Party candidate.

But what's behind it? It's exceedingly tempting to just and simply characterize the Nats - and the insouciant Collins in particular - as a nasty pack of work, out to derive some considerable pleasure from ruining and coralling the lives of others. Yet there's almost certainly more going on here.

We've seen this sort of behavior before - frequently enough, in fact, to start drawing out a bit of a pattern.

Remember when David Bain was released? Then, compensation was mooted. A report was ordered into the subject in order to ascertain whether this was appropriate. In the view of the expert member of the Canadian judiciary whom the government had headhunted in order to produce the judgement, it was. While Bain hadn't proven his innocence - he HAD produced sufficient 'reasonable doubt' over his conviction to effectively remove his guilt. The state, therefore, had had no basis for keeping him locked up - and owed him some measure of compensation for putting his life into cryo-sleep in the interim behind bars.

Judith Collins disagreed. And after excoriating the Judge responsible for this fair and accurate determination (allegedly after wasting yet more taxpayers' money to fly him over here from Egypt in order to give him a verbal dressing down personally), a new report was ordered by another luminal figure of the legal fraternity with the specific objective of producing a settlement - and a dollar figure - vastly more amenable to the Crown's (by which I mean the Government's) political interests.

And that's why David Bain is, today, walking home with zero compensation for his time spent behind bars (albeit with several hundred thousand dollars recompense for his legal fees).

A regrettably similar pattern played out with Teina Pora's bid for compensation. In this instance, there was no doubt. Pora had been found innocent, and was entitled to compensation. But there WAS some measure of quibbling to be had as to the precise level of coin which he got. Due to accident or malignancy, the relevant legal provisions did not allow for an incorporation of inflation into the dollar amount Mr Pora was entitled to. He therefore wound up somewhere in the area of $1.5 million dollars short. A not inconsiderable amount of money.

Various politicians, commentators and activisty-types pressed for the Government to use its discretion, and go beyond the strict letter of the law in order to make full restitution to a man who'd been so considerably wronged by the system.

Those pleas fell on deaf ears; and I can't help but find myself wondering whether, if it were a matter for completely open Governmental discretion, whether Pora would have found himself given any compensation whatsoever at all.

All things considered, the Government's attitudes towards both criminals - and, more worryingly, those who were illegally locked up alongside them - appears to be categorically and comprehensively mean-spirited.

This should come as no surprise. In an age wherein National are fairly desperate to direct attention away from their chronic under-funding of the police, and the rising tide of crime which accompanies seriously flawed economic mismanagement ... how better to placate the baying mob of its corner of the electorate, than by being seen to kick downwards against nominal 'criminals'.

There is always a 'fiscal argument' raised in cases such as these against compensation being paid. This is wrong-headed. Justice for the citizen ought trump petty economic considerations where possible - and, in any case, the disincentive for the state of having to pay out when it wrongfully imprisons somebody is a useful tool. Besides, considering this is the same group of politicians who felt quite comfortable wasting twenty six million dollars on a flag-change referendum nobody wanted, it's not like they're exactly concerned with being model bastions of economic frugality elsewhere, anyway.

Thus, I maintain that these economic 'justifications' against compensation are merely a front. The Government is concerned with how it would look to some of its hard-on-law-and-order supporters if it were seen to make rightful restitution to victims of the justice system's ongoing legislative incompetence.

I'm also not entirely sure that the public safety justifications raised by Collins in response to this issue are any more factually viable. Preventative detention is, indeed, a sentence we mete out to some of the worst offenders - serial and compulsive sex offenders and the like. It thus does have some precedent. But that is not what we are talking about here. Instead, Collins appears to be suggesting that locking up offenders - illegally - for longer will lead to a reduction in crime (provided, one supposes, that the crime is not committed behind bars - a possibility she also acknowledges).

It's a pretty worrying stance for a politician to take - justifying illegitimate incarcerations in the nebulous pursuit of public safety. And a more than somewhat questionable one in practice. The longer one spends in prison, the greater the risk of an inmate being scarred and socialized - brutalized - towards an enduring life of crime.

But, of course, National doesn't care about that.

Instead, they're only concerned with the "optics" of the situation - and there, for an uncomfortably large share of their voters, "cheapness" and "meanness" as applies criminal justice policy and the rights of those incarcerated, must apparently win out every time.

It is a scary thing indeed to be rendered subject to the coercive power of the state. It is even scarier to be held so wrongfully. And, on top of this, to see one's rights and restitution treated as political footballs to be kicked out of play rather than meaningful concerns to be properly examined and taken seriously.

So frankly, to put it bluntly, it's absolutely terrifying that National are gearing up to legitimate all of those things through retroactively protecting wrongful imprisonment, and denying those affected compensation.

We deserve better.