The Pavlova Omnibus

Quotation of statistics (weighted averages, base date 1949 for Labour, 1957 for National) to prove that immigration to Australia, cost of living, debt and infant mortality all at record levels.

Warning of deterioration of environment and growing threat of pollution with invocation of need for drastic action.

Prophecy of economic difficulties to come and troubled future if present unimaginative policies, tired leadership not changed.

Indication of way in which family allowances, G.M.S., sickness benefit and social security have all fallen behind cost of living, without commitment to definite sums for increase.

Peroration expressing confidence in native abilities of New Zealand people, listing benefits accruing from new welfare and economic policies and indicating painless solution to all problems under new leadership.

The whole science of statistics in New Zealand is, of course, devoted to comparing 1946-49 with 1950-57 and contrasting 1957-60 with 1961-72.

When political change occurs as in 1972, these sets of notes can be simply swapped round.

It is necessary to keep the note of envy out of your voice when accusing opponents of fooling the people. Audiences over whose head the tide of figures normally flows without disturbing sleep might get restless if you compare output over two months of the new government with twenty years of the old. After a change, the Opposition must claim credit for all good as a continuation of trends set previously while blaming everything else on perverse politics. The Government can do the opposite. Each side can settle into its new routine.

You can now tell Government from Opposition. Next distinguish between Labour and National and you can follow our endless permutations, for Labour in opposition is as different from Labour in power as National is from Labour. Go to the party conferences. At National’s, women wear hats, earnest young men glasses, and older delegates have weatherbeaten faces and thornproof suits. The platform used to be draped with the Union Jack, the better to disguise the party’s vigorous pursuit of the American alliance. Conversation between delegates will avoid politics and concentrate on stomach troubles, heart complaints and other ailments until you’re not sure whether it’s a party conference or an organ recital. At the Labour conference there will be a smattering of beards and long hair, a friendly chaos will prevail, and a succession of young men will make challenging speeches on the need to win young voters, then disappear for ever having failed to secure immediate election to the National Executive since the qualifying age is sixty-five.

At branch level Nationalists are supposed to meet once a year. They rarely get together more often. Labour’s are supposed to meet once a month. They manage once a year. Nationalists get a speaker on flower arrangement to discuss the Cabinet reshuffle. With Labour, the euchre report is more obsessive. Despite such powerful counter-attractions to television, both sides find it difficult to get a quorum. Those prepared to put up with the boredom in the hope of becoming High Commissioner to Australia are few.

Woe betide anyone who manages to overcome the insuperable difficulty of actually finding a party branch (for they are usually better concealed than communist cells). I remember my first Labour Party branch meeting in Dunedin and the extravagant welcome I got as the symptom of a revival of youthful interest, being the only person present under sixty. Two old ladies specially collected from Parkside Home to make a quorum regularly interjected, ‘I’m seventy-nine you know’ into our discussions—their sole contribution. My rise was rapid. At the first meeting I was elected delegate to the Labour Representation Committee. At the second, branch chairman. At the third, the young Mitchell was nominated to the City Council ticket. At the fourth, I was asked to go forward as the branch’s nominee for the safe Labour seat in which we were the only form of Labour life still extant. At this point I left for England, not considering myself ready to take over the party leadership by attending a fifth meeting.

The same differences and similarities continue right up the party ladder. National, respected by many, and particularly themselves, as the party of efficiency, runs smoothly because it employs professionals to do the donkey work so the members can be free to prepare the supper. Labour shambles along by imposing an interminable burden of raffle selling which transforms members into walking Amplex advertisements, avoided by all but the unsuspecting. Paperwork, also cuts down the time available for the really important discussions on how hard things were in the depression and how easy life is for young people. This latter conviction is shared by National Party branches, particularly in the country where branches are Federated Farmers meetings in another guise.

Macdonald’s Law, named after a famous bowls player who succeeded for three decades in disguising the fact that the Labour Party National Executive had ceased to meet in 1940, states that politics is diluted in proportion to membership. The more members a party has, the more time is consumed on organisational matters, reports, remits and amendments. Thus the larger party is the happier. It is consumed with constant and completely apolitical activity, rather like the sorcerer’s apprentice. This leaves the candidates and M.Ps free to get on with taking political decisions behind closed doors. As the law predicts, political activity is lowest in the National Party with over 200,000 members, higher in the Labour Party with 10,000, higher still in Social Credit.

A variation on Macdonald’s Law is Wilson’s Law of Political Altitude. Politics are diluted by altitude. Labour and National branches will both animatedly discuss the need to restore hanging, corporal punishment and firm discipline. Both will feel the welfare state encourages scroungers. Higher up the organisational ladder there is little time for such informed discussion. Organisational imperatives force politics out. Thus the Labour Party’s New Zealand executive has no higher political thought than what time the tea and biscuits will be served. Similarly, when asked in an interview why he had struggled to the top of the party pyramid, one Dominion president of the National Party replied, ‘Because it is there’.

Now you must differentiate by policies. The Poms disguise basic greed as political philosophy; the Americans hire a public relations firm to paint it as pure altruism. Kiwi politicians are blunter, ever ready to call a spade a prohibited immigrant. ‘Gimmee’ is rarely presented as the advancement of welfare and the socially just society; ‘Lemmee’ only occasionally comes out as the need to stimulate the dynamics of competition. Compared with political debate overseas, both parties restrict themselves to the exchange of instinctive grunts, which is the reason why the ever-tortuous English mistake New Zealand politics for dull.

First then the little clues. Both parties are political archaeologists constantly unearthing the past. Nationalists will talk about any, or all of the following:

1974 and industrial unrest.

1957 and $100 rebates.

1958 and Black Budgets and/or import restrictions, rationing controls, restrictions and shortages.

1943 and burnt ballot papers.

Danger of state ownership of all property.

Reminder that the other side opposed sales of state houses.

Iniquities of land sales control and possibility of restoration.

Threat of nationalisation of all business down to the corner dairy and suspicion that the recent (1932) dropping of the socialisation objective was insincere.

Labour men sling different ritual incantations back:

1972 and industrial unrest.

1967 or 1970 and mini-budgets.

Abolition of subsidies and free school milk with figures on increased incidence of rickets.

1957 and 25% rebates up to a maximum of $150.

1958 when the party attacked capitalisation of family benefit.

1938 when other side opposed social security (‘organised lunacy’).

1932 and responsibility for Depression. (This last is a concession to the slowly dwindling number of Labour men still running against the Coalition Government.)

Political debate like this will make the task of the future historian impossible, like an archaeologist reconstructing a civilisation on a site which has been progressively looted by bands of desperadoes (the politicians) and then picked over by coolies (the party researchers).

Policies spring from the class conflict of have-mores against have-lesses. Labour harps on education, social security, full employment and housing—things relevant to the preoccupations of what the Queen Mother would call ‘the little people’. National talks about farming, exports, and the American alliance, for they worship all things American, particularly dollars. They will claim that taxes have been reduced, in 93 of the 74 years of National government, without explaining why you’re paying more than you were five years ago.

After studying the New Zealand political scene, Chairman Mao evolved his theory of the pedant revolution because of the teachers—primary, secondary and university—who man the Labour desks. The farmers confront them. Yet there are certain conventions of the constitution which insist that even in a National Government the Minister of Education shall be a teacher, if a presentable one is available, to show the portfolio isn’t important. The Minister of Agriculture has to be a farmer to show that it is. The Minister of Finance has to be a man the people love to hate: an aloof, austere figure, waiting like an inverse Micawber for things to turn down. Collective hates can then be concentrated on him, so that the Prime Minister can get on with his real job of being loved. The least successful Finance Minister of modern times, Mr Lake, was so because he was too nice and cheerful and made people feel good and they went out and did dangerous things like spending money. On his death the government considered offering the job to Allen Klein on a commission basis. They eventually compromised on Mr Muldoon (R.21) because of the way his lip curled at the thought of freezes and squeezes. Just in case he should get those delusions of optimism, which have been known to overtake some Finance Ministers at election time, he was carefully watched over by the Monetary and Economic Council, liberally supplied with goats’ entrails to warn of impending disasters. With its help Mr Muldoon made a contribution to finance which can only be compared with that of Attila the Hun to Western civilisation.

Now you understand party differences, don’t get obsessed by them. The fluctuations of the balance of payments and the state of livers at the IMF have more impact on Kiwi lives than the hue of the government. You will be exhorted to cast an ‘informed vote’. Read up on the candidates, their attitudes and backgrounds. Look at the history of the parties and the mail order catalogues they call manifestos. Then weigh up the policy and past performance of each party in the light of prevailing circumstances and the trends of the trade returns. Then boil all this information down into a choice of candidate. It’s impossible. Even a computer couldn’t do it—and it’s not had anything to drink.

You’ve fallen into the trap of taking what New Zealanders say at face value. The exhorters of informed voting don’t actually want you to think and investigate. They are merely anxious that you should vote the same way as they do. So walk into the polling booth and put yourself on automatic pilot. Your background will vote for you and if you try to vote against it you’ll merely end up voting for Social Credit or some other lunatic, or doodling hysterical patterns on the ballot paper while sobbing convulsively.

Having voted, don’t worry if your party doesn’t get in. Governments are very generous, more generous to their opponents than their supporters. This must be so, because when National is in, the farmers grumble continuously; in Labour periods, the Federation of Labour drowns out every other pressure group with its complaints. You see, when Labour is in office it is anxious to prove itself respectable so it does what it thinks National would have done. National wants to be popular so it doesn’t do what it really would like.

Also you must remember the basic characteristic of politicians: they are anxious to be loved. Katzengruber’s Law of Political Psychosis states that the basic drive to enter politics comes from psychological insecurity. This can spring from many causes. Whatever the source of their anxiety, capitalise on it. Nothing frightens them more than the threat of withdrawal of love. Write to them threatening this and you will get long explanations. Write to the papers with the same threat and you’ll get action. This is known as sensitivity to public opinion and it affects every institution of government. A fellow academic was once visiting the Governor of the Reserve Bank. In the centre of the gubernatorial desk, clipped, mounted and underlined, was a letter from that morning’s paper making suggestions on banking policy. It was signed, ‘Mother of Eight’.

Even if you don’t particularly like the government, remember that governments only take decisions in times of economic crisis. They then impose import controls or remove them, impose taxes or slash subsidies, depending on how the mood takes them. These periods of frenzied decisions leave such a backlog of hostility that the government spends the rest of its term anxiously appealing for love. No more decisions are made. Instead the government assumes the role of ringmaster adjudicating between competing pressure groups and trying to hurt their feelings as little as possible.

The pressure group melées are the real substance of Kiwi politics. All the big things are settled—homes, jobs, the Blue Streak. So the real political arguments are now about the little things—for and against compulsory hydatids dosing, whether large-mouthed bass should be introduced into the rivers, how many toheroas can be dug up. Over these the pressure groups struggle.

Like beasts, pressure groups come in many shapes and sizes. Biggest and most fearsome are the throwbacks to prehistoric days, the monsters. The Federation of Labour, the Manufacturers, the Chambers of Commerce, and Federated Farmers (which also runs the agriculture portfolio through a front organisation called the Department of Agriculture). Not quite as big but compensating by making as much noise are bodies like the RSA (motto: ‘Make war not love’) and the National Council of Women (‘Make scones not love’). Some are minute, like the family planning movement (‘Make love not children’) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which favours unilateral abandonment of New Zealand’s massive nuclear stockpile. These are only random examples from the dense growth of pressure groups.

Pressure groups are intended to serve their members and give pleasures to their officers. These officials get a right to endless peregrination which keeps the skies black with pressure group officials ferrying from one conference centre to another. Without pressure group traffic NAC could slim its services down to a De Havilland Moth plying monthly between Auckland and Wellington. Officials also get access to the great, though like ministers, the more they see of public servants the more they grow to talk and think like them.

Pressure groups pursue these goals in various ways. Where necessary they will fight each other, a process which serves no useful purpose but gives a great deal of pleasure. ‘Federation of Labour unsympathetic to the needs of widow and orphan debenture holders’, announces Associated Chambers of Commerce. ‘Wharf workers near breadline,’ wittily replies the Federation. ‘New Zealand Federation of Sex Maniacs demands repeal of porn laws’ may yet become a headline. In the ‘good old days’, which like any other immigrant you will find ended just before you arrived, pressure groups were led by giants who enjoyed nothing so much as wrestling in verbal mud. Sir Hamilton Mitchell, A. P. O’Shea and F. P. Walsh were always good for a quote. Once when I interviewed Walsh he demanded to know whether I was ‘a Roman’ (candle presumably) before the interview began. He then went on to denounce opponents who had risen ‘from bogs to riches’. For some reason this was not in the final broadcast. In any case, though Hamilton Mitchell soldiers on, the giants have really been replaced by the blandness of the professional public relations men.

When not fighting, pressure groups can form coalitions. ‘Our members not getting a fair crack of the whip,’ say NZ Sadists’ Society and NZ Masochists’ Association in a joint demand for increased import quotas for instant whip. Most important of all, pressure groups have to cajole ministers. All have equal rights to earbash members of Cabinet. The Government, for its part, is anxious to co-operate. To go against any pressure group is to court a storm of protest and unpopularity. Ministers have therefore attempted the taming of the shrewd by keeping all the groups happy. Faced with problems, overseas governments take decisions. The New Zealand rulers call a conference of pressure groups:

1941 Stabilisation Conference

1960 Industrial Development Conference

1963 Export Promotion Conference

1964 Agricultural Production Conference

1968 National Development Conference

1984 Conference Promotion Conference.

As this technique is perfected and a higher standard of living provides more cake to share out, one can glimpse the ultimate system of non-government which will be perfected. Already all difficult decisions on road-building and spending have been handed over to the National Roads Board. More and more areas can be handed over in the same fashion. Finally, divested of all its responsibilities, the government can concentrate all its undistracted energies on its main concern and its most difficult job—being loved. The Kiwi art of politics will have reached its ultimate development: politics will have been completely excluded from politics.

*. The situation is typified by one Social Credit candidate who told an eager Press reporter in 1969: ‘As a man who during his life has worked on the railways and as a milk vendor, taxi driver, restaurant and piecart proprietor, he has come into contact with a great many people of all types … his grandfather was on the staff in Parliament Buildings.’ Unfortunately this wealth of experience was put to the service of the wrong party. The candidate was heavily beaten.

SIXTH LETTER

SEX or the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly

MOST COUNTRIES have oppressed minorities. New Zealand has an oppressed near majority, sometimes called The New Zealand Woman, sometimes known by her Christian name, Sheila. She’s constructed locally from internationally approved patterns. Basic design is good and sturdy, though finish is unimaginative and trimmings limited. Controls are in the usual place and she needs little attention or maintenance: mumble at her occasionally, slap her on the back (never the bottom) and you can ignore her for hours. Above all, she’s clean—fanatically so—and you will be, too, if you have anything to do with her. Yet aside from her outstanding contribution to the soap industry, what is her role? America is female dominated; France is male dominated. New Zealand you have to accept as a world divided into ‘his’ and ‘hers’.

The ‘his’ compartment includes all the positions of power and the interesting jobs, all the folk heroes and all the dominant myths: sport, war and virility. Woman’s role is to run the home, raise the children and make the scones. Like Dr Johnson, a Kiwi is ‘better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table than when his wife talks Greek’, though he might tolerate a little flower arranging. Naturally the Outward Bound Trust, considering courses for girls, thought flower arrangement, make-up and nursing more appropriate than the more energetic pursuits for boys. With the comfortable average measurements of 36-28-39, Norma Average is built to be mater not Mata Hari.

Despite her impressive statistics, Women’s Liberationists find the Kiwi woman as underdeveloped as Twiggy. She leaves school almost a year before the male and she’s half as likely to go to university. New Zealanders are low on the world league for the proportion of women working. Only a third go out to work and then usually in lowly paid jobs: a seventh of men workers get under $1,400 compared with two-thirds of women, while the average man gets over $1,000 a year more than the average woman. Female Cabinet Ministers are as rare as the captive kakapo, no woman has ever run a government department, only eleven have ever sat in Parliament, and now only 5 per cent of M.Ps, 7 per cent of those embalmed in Who’s Who and 8 per cent of doctors are believed to be female. The rare woman who gets to the top gets there by transforming herself into a man in skirts, an embattled suffragette, or as a token gesture—most bodies feel it necessary to appoint a woman, an advisory broad, in the same way as a token Maori. Even the leaders of the campaign for female emancipation are men. Like its counterparts elsewhere, the Pohutamanurewa Women’s Liberation Movement (membership three) has a male quorum after 9.30 p.m.—the two women members have to be home early to prepare hubby’s supper and bake cakes.

A situation which horrifies overseas emancipationists hardly interests the New Zealand woman. She’s programmed to want something different. Unimportant, honorific positions from Prime Minister to chairman of U.E.B. can be left to mere males. The female has real power and a more fulfilling role. The male clings to the myths of dogged masculinity as social conformity, and the growth of organisations and bureaucracies steadily emasculate him. The New Zealand woman is still a pioneer, the last to savour the joys of being an independent small businessman. She commands and manages the home unit. She determines the destinies of its denizens, mobilises its resources, manages its labour force of husband and children. Welfare and tax determine the floors and ceilings of the man’s income. Much more important in determining the family’s welfare is the way the woman mobilises the minimum the husband provides. Her housekeeping, budgeting, scrimping and saving and her efforts at the cottage industries of dressmaking and bottling make all the difference to the family’s wellbeing.

The Kiwibird has the job of the small entrepreneur or the pioneer. She also has the characteristics. No wilting violet she, with her capacity for hard work and her dogged toughness. The dull plumage hides a fierce spirit. She knows what she wants—a husband, a lovely home, children, preferably though not necessarily in that order. Woe betide anything or anyone who stands in her way for she’s a fierce and terrifying species. Her looks betray her spirit. Where the Kiwi male has a face younger than his body, her efforts have told to such an extent that her body is younger than her face.

Unfortunately her role doesn’t provide universal satisfaction. Since she marries at 20 and has produced 2.6 children by the time she’s 28, the joys of being a homemaker (notice the distinction from the English ‘housewife’) can pall when the children grow up, if only because it’s useless. Sometimes she takes refuge in neurotic symptoms from backache to the National Council of Women. Or she throws herself into a strident hostility to change because she feels herself let down and without realising why, dimly puts it down to forces beyond her control. More than one in three go back to work around forty as an under-paid labour force, though slightly less exploited than the remainder, who devote themselves to the frenzied organisational work which alone keeps the machinery of welfare and education going. Committees are the opium of the people. The field of endeavour ranges from the Women’s Division to the Mothers’ Union competition for the best pikelet. Rarely does the embattled female fighting the rearguard action of life on one or all of these fronts realise that she is doing all this because the role she is programmed for has let her down.