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April/May 1999
Flat Tax (29 May) letter published in the NZ Listener, 19 June
Authoritarian versus Alternative Thinking in Godzone (16 May)
Labour's (and National's) Pitch (16 May)
MMP is not about Tactical Voting (15 May)
MMP has created Constituency MPs (11 May)
Another Referendum on the Electoral System? (11 April)
Montenegro and West Papua (3 April)
Depoliticising Protection Orders (2 April)
(29 May)
Denis Welch's Listener editorial (June 5) states that both the $110 broadcasting fee and goods and services tax (GST) are "flat taxes". In fact, the broadcasting fee is not a flat tax, as the term 'flat tax' is conventionally understood. It is a regressive tax, meaning that it represents a higher percentage of the incomes of low income earners than of high income recipients. It is a 'flat amount tax', rather than a 'flat tax'.
GST, as a value-added tax, is technically a flat tax, meaning a 'flat-rate tax' or a 'proportional tax'. Rich people pay more GST than do poor people. As a proportional tax, GST does not "impact more harshly on the poor than on the rich".
Some people argue that GST is, in practice, a regressive tax and not a flat tax. This is because low-income recipients are supposed to spend a higher proportion of their incomes on consumption. In practice that may not be so. Low income persons spend much of their income on rent, second-hand goods, and debt repayment; ie on items that do not directly incur GST.
In Act heaven, our existing progressive income tax system would be replaced by flat taxes (mainly GST) and by regressive 'flat amount' user charges. Rodney Hide would be the Sheriff of Nottingham.
The fairest tax system is one that levies proportional (ie 'flat rate') taxes, and confers 'flat amount' social dividends (ie tax credits) on all New Zealand taxpayers and caregivers. Under such a system, instead of cutting taxes as a reward for economic growth, a just government would increase social dividends.
PS: This item was published as a letter in The Listener, 19 June 1999. One error (an additional misplaced use of the word "proportional") and an ambiguity (relating to an unnecessary use of the word "domestic") have been deleted from the text as published in the Listener.
Authoritarian versus Alternative Thinking in Godzone
* (16 May)response by Jenny Rankine (26 May) and rejoinder
Three articles in the last few days, all written by journalists with impeccable credentials as social liberals, have expressed strong misgivings over the "victory" of Liam Williams-Holloway's parents. The court orders that gave the state custody over Liam, and forced Liam to pursue a course of chemotherapy, were rescinded just over a week ago. The Williams-Holloways, in hiding, were giving their son an alternative form of treatment at a Rotorua clinic.
Each writer - Bruce Ansley (Listener, May 22), Steven Price (Herald, May 14), Brian Rudman (Herald, May 11) - writes in a way that presupposes that 'mainstream doctors know best'. They present the issue as one of how best to get parents to comply with what they regard as an undisputed public good; in this case, chemotherapy as a "cure" for cancer.
Bruce Ansley formulates the problem this way: "Do parents have the right to risk their child's life, even with the best of intentions?" He goes on to sarcastically compare the Williams-Holloway case with a case in which an Auckland couple favoured "divine intervention.
I worry when social liberals feel so discomforted with the mere possibility that the established 'scientific' remedy for a problem must be always superior to an alternative solution, and that an innovative alternative solution must be 'unscientific'. (Is it not social liberals who are so opposed to scientific genetic modification of foods?)
I find the premises that underpin much liberal writing in New Zealand to be at least as authoritarian as the premises that underpin conservative writing. What comforts me is that so many New Zealanders reject such premises, and distrust truths that require heavy handed behaviour from the state to uphold them. There is a sharp division in New Zealand society between populism and authoritarianism, and the authoritarian views are by no means confined to the right of the political spectrum.
It was because of left wing authoritarianism that Rogernomics (the extreme economic liberalisation of the late 1980s) was allowed to flourish. Authoritarians may grumble about the status quo, but they get really agitated when alternative solutions are presented by populists (and, in anti-intellectual New Zealand, any alternative solution is populist by definition).
Is it just that Ansley, Price and Rudman are men? No, I don't think so. A female journalist of equally (socially) liberal credentials - Kate Belgrave ("Ignorance bliss until it kills nation's kids", Herald, May 11) - wrote a similar diatribe against those who question the benefits of the prescribed infant immunisation programme.
Subsequently, a letter by Jennifer Cumming ("Vaccination Doubts") was published in the Herald (14 May), pointing out the significantly increased risk of autism arising from, in particular, the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccination.
Maybe we should learn from the incredible denial in New Zealand of autism as a public health issue. It took a mother who killed her autistic child - Janine Albury-Thomson - to bring the issue of autism to the attention of New Zealanders in 1998. As a result of that case, we found out that autism diagnosis and treatment in New Zealand is at least 20 years behind best international practice.
The New Zealand medical authorities do not always know best. Should parents be allowed to risk their children's' futures by submitting without question, even with the best of intentions, to the extremely conservative will of the New Zealand medical authorities? (Authorities who are terrified of being shown up by immigrant doctors; but that's another story.) Parents should be allowed to make informed choices about the best forms of treatment for their children, and without being subjected to a media that portrays them as, at best, well-meaning simpletons.
* New Zealand / Aotearoa
Labour's (and National's) Pitch
(16 May)Jane Clifton, in her Listener piece on the Labour Party congress (May 22), describes what can only be described as a plan to pitch their appeal to voters just to the right of centre on the political spectrum. For similar reasons, National will be pitching to voters slightly to the left of centre.
The analysis here necessarily makes the assumption that New Zealanders' political views generally fit onto a linear left-right spectrum.
Under the former FPP (first-past-the-post) electoral system, Labour or National needed 40-45% of the vote to win. Hence Labour pitched its election campaign to voters on around the 45th percentile from the left (ie about 5% to the left of centre), and National pitched its campaign at around the 55th percentile from the left (ie about 5% to the right of centre).
Now under MMP, this is reversed. To dominate government, Labour needs to be at least twice as big as its left-wing coalition partner (the Alliance), and to win votes in the centre-right part of the spectrum. For National, the converse is true. Also, Labour must make sure that the Alliance comfortably crosses the 5% threshold. Labour is most comfortable if the Alliance pitches its appeal to about the 15th percentile from the left. Indeed, Labour is more comfortable with an Alliance that does not pitch to the far-left; such a pitch from the Alliance might scare centre-right voters considering voting for Labour.
Where there is no strong centre party (as NZ First was in 1996), under proportional representation the electoral pitch of the dominant centre-left party must fall to the right of the dominant pitch of the main centre-right party. That's not a problem. It simply acknowledges that elections are fought on the margins of each party's natural political territory. And it reflects the reality that, in a real democracy, political power resides at the centre of the political spectrum.
In a true democracy, a 60:40 vote for left or left-leaning parties means there will be a centre-left government. In 1993 (and 1978, 1981), under FPP, such a 60:40 result gave us right-wing governments. Under FPP, the ensuing governments had not gained the electoral consent of the centre. In 1987 and 1990, the winning parties did have the consent of the centre, but, lacking the discipline of coalition government, immediately abused that consent. (In 1984, Labour abused the consent that it never had!)
In 1999, some people will be discomforted by a Labour Party pitching to the right of National. We should get used to it. Each party wants to win votes from the other. Voters who place themselves to the left of centre will be wise to understand the nature of the political marketplace, and to vote Labour rather than being seduced by National's pitch.
Under a mature proportional electoral system, governments will not change because of electoral seduction. The campaign pitches of each major party for the centre will typically cancel each other out. Rather, governments will change when the centre ground itself shifts; when voters in the centre become less (or more) conservative.
MMP is not about Tactical Voting
(15 May)The Listener (May 22) describes the coming MMP election as "a ballot of second guesses". Jane Clifton believes that some National supporters may vote Labour to increase the dominance of Labour in a coming Labour-Alliance coalition government.
While it is true that while there are some circumstances in which tactical voting makes sense, for most voters it makes no sense. By way of contrast, under the old FPP system, just about everyone whose vote had a chance of affecting the makeup of Parliament voted tactically. Supporters of parties other than National and Labour either had to vote for a candidate that had no chance of being elected or to vote for a candidate of a party other than their preferred choice.
As a general rule, people used to vote for the candidate who had the most chance of toppling the candidate of the party they disliked the most; a thoroughly negative process.
Under MMP we don't need to second guess the intentions of other voters. We just vote for the party we favour, and the candidate we favour.
We have no need to worry about the party affiliation of the candidate we vote for (see MMP has created Constituency MPs). MMP is two simultaneous elections, conducted in a way that means that the best tactic is almost always to make simple positive votes for party and candidate.
The problem that appears to turn MMP voting into a tactical exercise in "mixed-message pragmatic rationalisation" is Labour's intransigence about who it will "do deals with". MMP gets people into Parliament and pressures them to overcome problems of personality and petty principle to produce policy that at least half of all MPs can support. Labour is the party most resistant to the pressure of numbers.
Labour would rather be in Opposition than govern with the help of those on its politically incorrect list. Labour rules out forming a coalition with National, Act, NZ First or Mauri Pacific. That is why Labour is not on the Treasury benches today.
So when we talk about the "balance of power" and "the tail wagging the dog" and the dictatorship of the "motley" independents and quasi-independents, we are talking about a situation created by Labour's ongoing refusal to even consider participating in a coalition government with National.
Even in 1996, National's first choice of coalition partner was Labour. It was only because Labour rejected that choice that Winston Peters was obliged to assume the mantle of "kingmaker". Labour could have chosen to share power and avoid the protracted negotiations with Winston Peters.
Similarly, in 1998 when the Prime Minister floated the idea of a "grand coalition", Helen Clarke rejected the idea outright. The Leader of the Opposition told Kim Hill (Radio New Zealand) that New Zealanders wanted a clear choice between a capitalist party and a social democratic party.
Helen Clarke has badly misrepresented the New Zealand voter. New Zealanders voted for MMP so that National and Labour would swallow their political pride and learn to cooperate; to share power rather than to rotate power. MMP was at least as much about forcing a change of culture within the major parties as it was about increasing the representation of the minor parties. Helen Clarke has failed to read the mood and adapt to the idea that the best brains of both parties should contribute constructively to government every year, and should get over their mindless adversarial politics. It has only been the National leaders (both Mr Bolger and Mrs Shipley) who have made initiatives to cross the left-right chasm that Ms Clarke claims is our political birthright.
Labour must learn to accept that most people do not believe that Labour has all the answers. New Zealanders want power sharing without petty politics. They want proud politicians with leadership skills, including the skills of putting past antagonisms to rest for the good of good government in the future. They want MMP to work as it should; without any pressure placed on voters to guess exactly how intransigent politicians will go about forming a government.
MMP has created Constituency MPs
(15 May)One of the enduring myths about MMP is that we have created a class of "unelected" "list MPs".
In fact, all Members of Parliament are elected. Some are elected via the electorate vote, some by the party vote, and some by both. The only ones whose right to enter Parliament might be questioned are those who become constituency (ie electorate) MPs without receiving a majority of votes cast and who also fail to get elected through the party vote.
Parliament is a representative forum of people, not parties. Parties are critical to democracy, however, as they bring people not known to the public to the attention of the public. Otherwise, only celebrities would be successful at election time.
In addition, parties give structure to Parliament. Too little party discipline in the day-to-day running of Parliament is as bad for democratic governance as too much party discipline. [PS]
What is really interesting about the "list MP" myth, is that it is diametrically wrong. MMP has created a group of MPs who get into Parliament despite rather than because of the party they support.
Under FPP (first-past-the-post) and SM (supplementary member), the vote for the local MP was in reality a party vote, not a personal vote. Under the old system, all MPs were de facto list MPs. Even in the most marginal of electorates, most voters voted for the party, not the man (or woman).
It is only after the introduction of MMP that we have had the freedom to vote for the person we favour, knowing that a vote for a person we do like who is a candidate for a party that we don't like will not affect the number of MPs elected from our favourite party. Thus, for example, Steve Maharey, Mike Moore, Jim Anderton and Nick Smith are members of a new breed of constituency MPs; MPs who entered Parliament despite their electorate favouring another party.
It would be a great tragedy for New Zealand politics if we abolish the present constituency vote; a vote that (except in the rare situations of overhang, where parties stand to get less than 5% of the vote, or by-elections) has no bearing on the party political makeup of Parliament.
We might also note that, in the Maori constituencies, it is the party vote and not the constituency vote that Labour needs to emphasise. So long as Labour or the Alliance get the party vote of Maori voters, it will not be a tragedy for the political left if Tau Henare is reelected.
PS: It seems to me that opponents of MMP are about equally divided between those who see the power of political parties as the major problem of the electoral system, and those who see "disloyalty" of MPs towards their parties or party leadership as the major problem. If that is so, a referendum with a question like "Do you favour the MMP electoral system?" would be comprehensively defeated. Yet, MMP would remain an ideal, democratically valid, midpoint between these two opposing views; the golden mean.
Another Referendum on the Electoral System?
(11 April)Ruth Laugesen reports in the Sunday Star-Times today ("Voters soften on MMP") that, although support for MMP is strengthening, there remains strong support in National Party circles to make a referendum between MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) and SM (Supplementary Member [non-proportional]) party policy this year.
While it is still far too early for another referendum on the electoral system, National should promise to conform with the precedent that it has already set. That precedent is to have a mid-term indicative referendum with two questions: (i) "Do you support the present MMP electoral system?" (Yes/No), (ii) "Which alternative electoral system do you prefer?" (STV/SM)
If the vote in (i) is "No", then a binding referendum would be held at the next general election: a run-off between the most favoured system in (ii).
Many of the critics of MMP have said that STV (Single Transferable Vote) is their preferred choice of electoral system. STV came out a clear second after MMP in 1992, with double the support of SM. At the time the 1992 referendum was planned, the National Party wanted SM to be the main alternative to FPP and MMP. STV was a late addition on account of, they said, "public pressure" to include it. Cynics at the time suggested that the inclusion of STV was an attempt to split the vote for MMP, hoping that SM would come through the middle.
Whatever the reason for adding STV to the 1992 ballot, the official reason for doing so should be held to in any future referendum. Clearly it would be an illegitimate and politically expedient exercise to offer SM to the people without also offering the much more popular (in 1992) STV. Indeed, STV must be on any future ballot paper if the exercise is not to be seen as completely self-serving for National.
PS: Mrs Shipley's subsequent announcement to campaign for something like a repeat of the 1992-1993 referendum exercise (for 2000 and 2001) as part of her party's 1999 election manifesto at least reflects a respect for the process that was followed then.
However, she has created a degree of political instability that was not there before. Just as disquiet about MMP is receding - and a significant number of people in public life who did not vote for MMP in 1993 are now coming out in support of MMP (Jonathan Hunt and Belinda Vernon are just two) - the Prime Minister is pre-empting the already decided review process.
The flurry of fuss that followed Mrs Shipley's announcement largely reflects a misreading of Mrs Shipley's political motives, however. This is an announcement driven by 1998 political polling, and is little more than a ploy to gain National more votes in November. This politicking by National just adds to the perception among some that MMP is (and was always intended to be) just an experiment.
What some may argue is a downside of MMP, is that every party will make at least one promise that it knows it will never have to keep. Such promises are bargaining chips in the process of forming a multi-party government, and should be understood as such. The electoral referendums constitute a promise that National is in no position to keep. The Prime Minister knows that.
In the meantime she keeps us guessing as to her own views on MMP. Ultimately, it will never matter whether she - just one person - prefers proportional representation or triennial dictatorship. I remain inclined to the view that she supports MMP. Furthermore, she may be having a bet both ways. While encouraging people to vote for her because they believe she is anti-MMP, she is also creating a set of conditions that will ultimately harden popular support for our new electoral system.
The old FPP system will be increasingly seen as one that served the self-interest of defeated politicians and Business Roundtable types such as Doug Myers. In defeat (as seems most the most likely outcome for her in November) Mrs Shipley may have helped to build the pro-MMP consensus that I think she wants.
(3 April)
This morning I was watching a BBC programme about ethnic cleansing in Biak, West Papua (Indonesian New Guinea) only to have it interrupted by another staid press conference on Kosovo.
We ("the west") discovered Kosovo far too late, and are participating in a great human tragedy. In doing so, we are blinding ourselves to tragedies outside of Kosovo. We don't have to look as far as Indonesia for the next crisis. It is about to take place under our noses on the north-western border of Kosovo, in Montenegro.
Montenegro is an "independent" republic within Yugoslavia, whereas Kosovo and Vojvodina (another flashpoint, with its ethnically Hungarian population on Belgrade's doorstep) were autonomous regions of Serbia annexed by Slobodan Milosevic in 1989.
Unlike Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia, Montenegro was too small to withdraw from the Yugoslav federation in 1991. Furthermore, Montenegro represents Yugoslavia's only route to the sea.
At present, Montenegro is taking in ethnic Albania refugees from Kosovo. Montenegro's population is just 700,000; one-third of Kosovo's former population. Its pro-western government is receiving no western support.
What's the betting that Serbia will annex Montenegro within the month, leading to a second cleansing of the Kosovar refugees and to a cleansing of Montenegro's ethnic Albanian population? Loyal army chiefs are already being replaced by Milosevic's men. The destabilisation caused by the refugee crisis in Montenegro will be all the excuse Milosevic will require. The native Montenegrins will become a new second-class ethnic group within Serbia; a group with nowhere else to go.
Will Montenegro prove to be the catalyst that provokes the "civilised" world into thinking seriously about creating an international means of enforcing international law, eg through the creation of "protectorate" states? Kosovo should have become an international protectorate in 1989. And Montenegro should be under international protection today.
Montenegro and Kosovo will be too late to benefit from international protectorate status. My guess is that Milosevic will resettle the Krajina Serbs (refugees from Croatia) in Kosovo, and also encourage Macedonian Serbs (and Serbs from parts of Bosnia not adjacent to Serbia) to settle in Kosovo. I think that the Serbian nationalists will achieve their goals, and that the NATO actions will have facilitated rather than hindered this process. Most of the Kosovar refugees in Macedonia will end up in the west, with some coming to New Zealand. The Kosovars in Montenegro will probably look to multiethnic and protected Bosnia for a standard of living more like that to which they have been accustomed. The west will be obliged to provide massive aid to Albania. Albania and Macedonia will become NATO members, to be fast-tracked to European Union status (along with Croatia and Slovenia).
The situation in the former Yugoslavia is now in what strategists call an "endgame". We had better turn more of our attention to Indonesia now, and not in five years time when it will be too late. West Papua is already looking like a state in need of protectorate status. But nobody is looking.
PS. There is an important analogy between the role of protection in the breakup of countries and protection in the breakup of marriages and families. States/provinces/communities should be able to claim and get protection from the international community without having to go through a quasi-legal process full of political undertones. Acts of violence committed on behalf of either the state from whom protection was sought or the state that requested protection would require an immediate international response and be prosecuted through international human rights law.
Depoliticising Protection Orders
(2 April)On the television news last night, there was an item about the second anniversary of the current domestic protection orders. The report did not even discuss the effectiveness of the provision of protection. Instead it presented women who took out protection orders as victims and the men - often fathers - who those orders were taken out against as perpetrators of violence. The success of the domestic protection law was presented as being the degree in which these (unconvicted) men had dealt with their alleged offending. There was no discussion of the politics of domestic protection, and how fathers and children can become the victims of such politics.
While non-custodial fathers are becoming an easy scapegoat for right-wing politicians seeking to blame social welfare largesse for the economic problems of New Zealand, the unwillingness to address the politics of family law that is at the heart of the problem of fatherless families remains as a constant.
Our present system of managing protection orders for domestic violence is based on the sociobiological premise - debunked recently by Barbara Ehrenreich and others - that women are by nature non-violent and that men are aggressive. While protection - of children and adults - is a very important matter, there is too much scope for protection orders to be misused, as leverage re matters of custody and access. In short, protection orders are used as an intrinsic part of the politics of marital breakdown.
At present, the granting of even an interim protection order creates the impression of fault - that the breakdown is a simple matter of a perpetrator at fault and an innocent victim. Such a simplistic approach to the resolution of marital disharmony creates additional tensions that make it very hard for a couple to resolve their situation in an optimal way. Children in particular are victims of the politicisation and the over-simplified black-white approach to the issues behind their parents' distress.
For reasons of cultural (rather than biological) conditioning, men tend to be much less reluctant to seek protection orders from their former partners, and courts are less likely to grant protection orders to men.
There is a simple solution that does not downplay the problem of domestic violence. Protection orders could be immediately granted whenever someone applies for one; in effect, you would be able to buy a protection order from the police for a service fee. Such orders must be mutual, in that the respondent of the order is equally protected through criminal law from violence by the applicant.
As feminist writers like Barbara Ehrenreich have shown, women have as much capacity to behave badly as men do. This is particularly true when non-physical forms of violence are considered. While Ehrenreich agrees that men are physically stronger than women, she notes that the average strength gap is narrowing.
Such protection orders would be issued on a basis that presumes no fault. They should be about the future protection of the applicant, the respondent, and any affected children or other persons. Such orders would not be contestable, and would not be admissible as evidence of past violence. As such they should not even reference the past and would not contain any statement of allegations.
Protection orders should be strictly a means of preventing domestic violence; not a means of accounting for past violence. Past violence should be dealt with in the criminal court system, not in the family court where protection orders are used as evidence of violence in order to influence the resolution of matters that are appropriate to the family court. (Of course criminal convictions for violence are of interest to the family court.)
The more usual situation in families under stress is one of escalating mutual violence where neither partner is innocent, and where passions are aroused for a variety of reasons which tend to lead to uncontrolled behaviour. Indeed, it's difficult to see how any human being could behave in a cold restrained way throughout the breakup of their marriage. Family violence can be symptomatic of very difficult passion-arousing situations. Anyone caught up in violent situations may behave in ways that do not represent their true character.
It is not in the long-run interest of children to lose contact with parents because of blackmail situations (where a custodial parent sets self-justifying conditions of access to the other parent on the basis of a past protection order) or precipitate family court judgements that have been made under the influence of the political skills of either party or lawyer.
If we are concerned about the problem of fatherless families, we need to depoliticise the family court system. Depoliticising protection orders would be a good way to start.
PS. There are some important analogies between domestic protection and international protection - see "Montenegro and West Papua". In particular, the depoliticisation of the protection process is critical in both the "macro" and "micro" spheres.
© 1999 Keith Rankin