Communications Line No. 52 of 13 September 2007

Leaders to Go?

In Australia Prime Minister John Howard is fending off suggestions that he should step aside from the leadership before the next federal election – due by the end of the year. “I am the best man to lead,” and “just one more go and then I’ll step aside,” he says.

Asking about leadership in a political party is a corrosive question, and I wonder if Labour MPs are starting to ask it here. Is the real message from the Moore/Clark contretemps that Helen’s days are numbered? Once leadership is on the agenda of a political party, it is mightily hard for incumbent leaders to be rid of it.

With Labour between 13 to 20 points behind in the polls, with the attacks on Key (so far) falling flat, and with no visible signs (yet) of the big shakeup that might revitalize their fortunes, perhaps the Labour MPs are thinking about whether a change in leadership would help.

Historically, asking questions about the leadership has been a prelude to a change of leaders in political parties. When Bill Rowling was the leader of the Labour Party, he led the party to three successive defeats.

In 1982, the Lange gang mounted a coup and lost only on Bill’s casting vote, but it didn’t matter. Bill was gone in a second and more decisive vote a few months later. Rob Muldoon would (almost certainly) have been deposed in 1980 if the plotters, unhappy with the direction of the party, had had a candidate, but Brian Talboys wouldn’t stand.

In 1989 Lange stood down as leader and Geoffrey Palmer was chosen, but Mike Moore pushed Palmer aside eight weeks before the 1990 election. Enough of the caucus thought it was worth a shot installing Mike as leader. Defeat under Palmer was a stone cold certainty. At least with Moore some thought there was a whisper of a chance.

In 1985 Jim McLay was ditched as leader when National was well behind in the polls and his own rating was lower than the margin of error. His successor, Jim Bolger, got the shove when a majority of caucus thought they had a better chance in the 1999 election with Jenny Shipley as leader than they did with Jim. National lost, but it was the judgment – sound or otherwise - that precipitated the change of leadership. Ditto Don Brash over Bill English after the 2002 defeat. Ditto Key over Brash in 2006.

The job of political leaders is to win elections for their followers. They survive while they succeed and are replaced when they fail.

Questions were asked about Helen Clark’s leadership in the party between 1996 and 1999, but victory in 1999 settled all that – until now.

She previously looked invincible, the all conquering heroine, a consummate political manager, the vanquisher of successive leaders of the National Party. But if the mood in her own party shifts, if the 'we can’t win under Helen' train of thought gains some traction, then she will look like an overcautious, vacillating liability, and a destroyer of her own MPs electoral chances. If, or when, that becomes the mood of her caucus colleagues, she is gone, as it were, by lunchtime.

And the next Mayor is…

In the eleven way race for the Wellington mayoralty, Nick Kelly, who is standing for the communist inspired Workers Party, was the star of the candidates’ forum hosted by the Chamber of Commerce yesterday. (Incumbent Kerry Prendergast shone out too, but that was because she is competent rather than for the entertainment value.)

Workers create all value but get paid only a fraction of that value. Capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction, he said but significantly he didn’t go on to explain that this was because the worker was alienated from the product of his own labour.

I remarked to Kelly afterwards that it was refreshing to hear Ricardo’s labour theory of value being reprised so enthusiastically. Kelly looked completely blank. My bet is that he has not read Ricardo, and didn’t know that was the foundation of Marx’s theory of surplus value, the means by which Marx explained the aggregation of capital in the hands of capitalists and the enslavement of the proletariat until such time as the workers inevitably revolt, overthrow the ruling class and usher in socialism.

However back in the real world it seems that business generally favours the incumbent mayors in Wellington and Hutt City although for rather different reasons.

In an interesting intervention, the Wellington Chamber of Commerce ranked the Wellington mayoral candidates’ responses on business issues and concluded, “the responses of Kerry Prendergast are the most business friendly followed reasonably closely by Ray Ahipene-Mercer, Rob Goulden and John McGrath.

John McGrath owns and runs two restaurants, but his brother Danny (with whom he has fallen out) has pointed out that brother John is no longer involved with the running of four others he claimed the credit for starting.

In Hutt City, first term Mayor David Ogden is proud of his record of keeping rates down, reducing debt and maintaining services. That gets him praise from some parts of the business community, while others see the lack of investment in infrastructure and economic development as short sighted.

The council’s prudence in spending is commendable, Business Hutt Valley Chairman Leo Austin says, “but the council is operating well within its prudential ratios, so there’s room for more controlled and well targeted expenditure.”

Central city businesses are willing to pay rates to spend on development in the CBD and on infrastructure projects generally, and many unsuccessfully opposed the recent lowering of a business rating differential. This is in contrast to Wellington City, where the high differential between business and residential rates is a significant issue.

It is unclear whether Mr Ogden’s programme of low rate increases and debt reduction will work to his electoral advantage. Nor is it obvious who would benefit politically from Mr Odgen’s reluctance to spend.

Made in China

I am made in China, but I am good quality, Chinese journalist and mayoral candidate Nick Wang told the mayoral forum. As we have our own discussions over the quality of Chinese goods there is a much more important set of events taking place in the developing nations of Africa. China is now abandoning joint ventures in favour of extracting the raw materials to take back to China for processing.

The New York Times recently reported on a textile mill in Zambia, where “the factory used to roar…spooling out millions of yards of brightly colored African cloth. Today, only the cotton gin still runs, with the company’s Chinese managers buying raw cotton for export to China’s humming textile industry. “We are back where we started,” said Wilfred Collins Wonani, who leads the local Chamber of Commerce. “Sending raw materials out, bringing cheap manufactured goods in. This isn’t progress. It is colonialism.”

“From South Africa’s manganese mines to Niger’s uranium pits, from Sudan’s oil fields to Congo’s cobalt mines, China’s hunger for resources has been a shot in the arm, increasing revenues and helping push some of the world’s poorest countries further up the ladder of development. But China is also exporting huge volumes of finished, manufactured goods — T-shirts, flashlights, radios and socks— to those same countries, hampering Africa’s ability to make its own products and develop healthy, diverse economies.

“Who is winning? The Chinese are, for sure,” said Michael Sata, a Zambian opposition politician “Their interest is exploiting us, just like everyone who came before,” he said. “They have simply come to take the place of the West as the new colonizers of Africa.”

The parlous state of TV

For the first time ever Television New Zealand has lost money. I’d suggest that money isn’t the only thing the state owned broadcaster has lost. The trust of the people it is supposed to serve would be the intangible but real loss that is more important than mere profits.

The mixed model of commercial broadcaster with public obligations met through a charter has failed. Charter programmes are either overtly populist, the sort of things that a commercial broadcaster should accept the risk of doing anyway, or they have been buried at times the niche audiences they were supposed to serve find inconvenient. At least there was the consolation that the company was commercially successful – until now. The last justification for the mixed model has been blown away. It is time to look for something better.

Ian Cross suggests the old snob and slob option – TV One as a public service broadcaster and TV2 as the populist channel. It might work. Bringing back Paul Holmes, inventing more news programmes to be served by fewer journalists and revamping the weather presentation won’t cut it in my view. Rather more fundamental rethinking is required, because at the moment, both the viewers and the taxpayers are getting a bad deal.

A recent survey of New Zealanders’ attitudes purports to show that we like what we are getting from “public broadcasters” – defined in the survey as TVNZ, Radio NZ Maori TV and NiuFM. There is a methodological issue of what the public thought was meant by the term ‘public broadcaster’ which the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and the survey research company acknowledge.

Leaving that aside, the value of the research is questionable because the barriers to agreement are so low. Who would not agree that “public broadcasting contributes to the “overall cultural, democratic and social value of New Zealand”? (89% agree, with 31% strongly agreeing).

Even if you disliked the contribution, you’d still agree that a contribution was made. But the survey does not ask what the public thought of the ‘contribution’ whether they thought it was useful to them as citizens, whether or how it was used by them, how important they thought it was either in its own right, or by comparison with the contributions of other media or information from other sources. In short there was no comparative basis, and no context for understanding how the ‘contribution’ of public broadcasters was used by people in their daily lives.

I’d say that the survey was close to useless as a tool for understanding what public broadcasters do for people in NZ. But on the face of it the survey could be very useful to fling about as ‘evidence’ that we like what we get. And the Minister of Broadcasting Steve Maharey got that ball rolling with his comment in a press statement that this was “a very positive reflection of the Labour – led government’s commitment to public broadcasting.”

For more on the survey see
http://www.johnbishop.co.nz/writer/articles/art310807-1.shtml

In the rain in Noosa

“That’s $28,” the girl in the cinema said as I bought two tickets for the Bourne Ultimatum in the Noosa Cinema complex on Friday 7 September. It was $24 yesterday I said. “Today’s a public holiday” she said. Why does that make a difference? I asked, already well aware of the 15% surcharge I had paid at breakfast. “I don’t know,” she said.

At Noosa Civic, a self contained supermarket complex about 15 minutes drive from Noosa Heads, Mellisa from behind the counter in the Noni B women’s clothes shop tells me that no one lives in the area around the complex. “So you drive here to shop? Yes, it’s great isn’t it? No wonder Howard gets traction for opposing Kyoto. “I don’t mind working today. I get paid double for working today.”

It was a public holiday because it was a show day in Noosa and the surrounding area, much like the typical A&P show in NZ, complete with a rodeo.

Good staff are hard to get, judging by the slow service in most restaurants, and frequent mess ups in the orders. Why a pot of tea and a latté takes 20 minutes and arrives in the form of two long blacks after the eggs benedict have been half eaten isn’t clear. The right drinks came a few minutes later. “I’ll just take those coffees away for you shall I?’ the third waitress to serve us purred.

Eumundi – a small town about thirty minutes from Noosa – put itself on the map by developing regular market days. I return to a shop selling good quality T shirts with interesting messages. Its top seller is still “They lied. Lots of people have died of hard work,” just as it was two years ago, when I was last there. (I refreshed my supply with another popular seller, Meat is Murder, tasty, delicious murder.

Across the road, the chalked sign on the hotel in Eumundi reads: “Customers wanted. No experience necessary. Apply within.”

Back at Noosa Heads, Sails restaurant on the beachfront, a properly run place, has a note on the menu that asks patrons not to let their children run around inside, and to “comfort crying children outside.” It’s that kind of a place.

On the Pacific Blue flight, one buys food and drink on board. Scotch is available only in a can premixed with Coke. It’s that kind of an airline.

Electronic Messages Act

No doubt, like me, you have received a lot of messages lately from banks and other businesses, from clubs and associations and other people and places who sent you information, about the Electronic Messages Act. The messages seem to fall into two categories: those that ask you to confirm your willingness to continue to receive information – a positive opt in; and those that say that as you have been receiving material for some time, you are deemed to have consented, but if not, here’s how to unsubscribe.

Both are legal, but what a difference in approach. The first signifies confidence that you will want to continue to receive the information being sent, the second suggest rather more diffidence about what the sender has to offer.

Some weeks ago I asked those receiving this newsletter to opt in and many did so. A few unsubscribed, and many did nothing at all. So for those who have not replied positively before, here is your opportunity. Just click below and tick the box accordingly. http://johnbishop.co.nz/opt-in.php Thanks.

We ain’t winning say Americans

Six years after the worst terror attacks on U.S. soil, only three in 10 Americans believe the United States and its allies are winning the global war on terror according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll quoted by Levene Breaking News this week. About half of Americans believe neither side is winning the war on terror, while 19 percent said the terrorists have the upper hand.

American car brands in trouble

In July there was a significant first in the American car market. For the first time ever, aggregate sales of the big three American carmakers, Ford, GM and Chrysler, were less than 50% of the car market. GM Sales were down 22% Ford slipped by 19% and Chrysler by 8%. Even Toyota sales fell. But BMW didn’t because, says local brand expert Dave Bassett, it is a “Masstige” brand – prestige at an affordable price. (see www.brandnew.cc)

Food Miles fake

Food miles is a contrivance and poor economics the winner of the NZIER Economic Award – effectively Economist of the Year – Caroline Saunders from Lincoln University says. See http://www.johnbishop.co.nz/writer/articles/art310807.shtml

In the Language Mangler

“In an effort to reach youth and to catalyse thinking by tomorrow’s leaders….” Catalyse? You must be joking? No, it’s in the summary document of the Police Act Review.

Car number plates are fascinating. A marine biologist at GNS Science in Lower Hutt has the plate ROCDOC on his car. The Kelburn vet has as a number plate IPURRR, and I spotted 36PACK on an old but well preserved Packard roadster.

Stop following me

An elementary school has banned the age old kids’ game of tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will. "It causes a lot of conflict on the playground," said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus School in Colorado. Running games are still allowed as long as students don't chase each other, she said.

Levene Breaking News 31 August.

John Bishop is a commentator, professional speaker, communications consultant, writer and trainer who publishes a free electronic newsletter on media, marketing and management matters. This can be found at www.johnbishop.co.nz. Feedback to saymoretojb@yahoo.com

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