Gordon Campbell on Alfred Ngaro’s standover tactics
Gordon Campbell on Alfred Ngaro’s standover tactics
First published on WerewolfWhen someone like
Alfred Ngaro is being paid circa $350,000 a year (in
salary and perks) you’d think he wouldn’t have to learn
on the job about the basic moral rules of his role.
Evidently not though, so here goes. Mr Ngaro, the money you
were threatening to withhold from any organisation headed by
Labour candidate Willie Jackson for his daring to criticise
the government on the campaign trail… it isn’t your
money. It doesn’t belong to the National Party, either. It
belongs to taxpayers, who expect it to be distributed to
competent providers of social services in the sector that
Ngaro administers, regardless of their political stripe.
Political obedience to the National Party isn’t
supposed to be the criterion that Ngaro can demand
before dispensing said moneys. But evidently, that’s his default
setting: “We are not happy about people taking
with one hand and throwing with the other,” Ngaro said.
“If you get up on the campaign trail and start bagging us
then all the things you are doing are off the table. They
will not happen.”
There’s a Cabinet manual that
outlaws the sort of Mafioso tactics that Ngaro was
advocating. Subsequently, Ngaro didn’t apologise to the
person he threatened – Jackson – or to the public, whose
money he was threatening to co-opt for political purposes.
Instead, Ngaro has apologized to his consiglieres (eg
Finance Minister Steven Joyce) and to the capo di capo (aka
PM Bill English) of the National Party, for embarrassing da
bosses. Not that Ngaro will be swimming with the fishes
any time soon. Cabinet Ministers (eg Nick Smith now, Hekia
Parata beforehand) are judged to be too big to fail. Once a
Cabinet Minister has become” made” they cannot be taken
out by pressures exerted by outsiders. The family closes
ranks: Senior Cabinet Minister Steven Joyce relates
that Ngaro has since apologised for the comments to Prime
Minister Bill English, deputy prime minister Paula Bennett.
"He knows he overstepped the mark," Joyce said. "He didn't
mean to, he got carried away." To which one can only
say: if this was a minimum wage job (rather than a $350,000
a year Cabinet post) Ngaro would be out on his ear. He would
have failed the 90 day test. Secondly, we know what
“experience” really means. It means learning on the job
that the same goal of ideological compliance can be achieved
by restructuring the delivery process, and cloaking it in
business jargon. For example, Ngaro could learn some quite
useful terms from studying this sort of
exercise. In time, Ngaro will pick up the bureaucratic
language whereby the government’s foot soldiers in the NGO
sector get rewarded, and its problematic critics get weeded
out. Threats then become unnecessary. Trump
Watch The other guy who regards his job as an
opportunity to settle scores with government critics (or
anyone else who pisses him off) is, of course… the current
President of the United States. Last week’s firing of FBI
director James Comey has taken Trump for the first time, into the realm of an impeachable
offence. That’s assuming the Republican Party –
once so willing to pursue impeachment over trivialities like
Whitewater and Benghazi – was willing to treat the current
blatant obstructions of justice (over the Russia links
probe) as a serious matter. It was particularly striking
that the same Attorney General Jeff Sessions who had recused
himself from overseeing the Russia probe was central to
advocating the firing of Comey over Comey’s pursuit of the
Russia probe. So it goes. More White House firings may be
afoot this week. Although, as this article indicates, the
constant threats of firing someone – or everyone - may be
just Trump’s way of letting off steam when he’s not out there whacking golf
balls. With North Korea testing a long range missile
over the weekend– successfully this time – the odds on
Trump also letting off steam by steam by using the US
military to attack someone must also have shortened. Over the weekend, Labour leader Andrew
Little floated the idea of gradually removing – over the
course of five years – the mechanisms that currently gifts
property speculators with a tax write off for any losses
they incur in the course of driving up house prices. Across
the Tasman, Labor is being more old school: they’re
planning a “soak the rich” tax cut by proposing a slight
lift to the top marginal tax rate to 49.5%, despite the
current rate of 49 % already being among the highest in the
OECD. In other words, the Aussie state is formally taking
nearly half the income of those earning over $180,000 a
year, or at 2.2 times the average Aussie wage. The Alfred
Ngaros of Australian commerce are not happy about this. Nor
is former Labor treasurer Paul Keating, in the (paywalled)
Australian Financial Review. Mind you, the conservative
Coalition government of Malcolm Turnbull is continuing to
advocate a steep 47.5% top tax rate. The Coalition also used
last week’s federal Budget to raise the Medicare levy
(which is imposed on all but the lowest paid) from 2 % to
2.5% - which will fully fund Australia’s popular but
expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme, whose
resources will reportedly swell from $3 billion this year,
to $20 billion by 2020. What I’m getting at is that for
the blatant imperfections of the Australian political
system, they seem more willing to confront the longer-term
problems facing the country, and seem prepared to take the
political heat from doing so. By contrast, our two major
parties have all but converged on economic policy, and with
party branding being done via token initiatives.
Dreams In Total Darkness In a week
that has seen the return of everyone from Fleet Foxes to
Miley Cyrus, here’s an appropriate track from the
National… The first single from their new album Sleep
Well, Beast is called “The System Only Dreams In Total
Darkness” and you might be forgiven for thinking that Nick
Cave has stepped into the vocal shoes of Matt Berninger.
Bryan Devendorf’s drumming provides the fragile melody
with the propulsion it needs. And in
case you missed it, here’s the wacky video for the new
Fleet Foxes single “Fools Errand”.
Labour and
Labor