at slow growth rate despite energy, skill, competence, adaptability and drive of New Zealand people who deserve better leadership.
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