My column on political discourse in the Dominion Post
2011-01-31 00:00:00.0
AUTHOR: Peter Dunne
Recently, the Dominion Post published an opinion piece I wrote on the political discourse, in both the U.S. and New Zealand. Whilst we were inundated with commentary and opinion on the Arizona shootings from an American perspective, there seemed to be a lack of comment from a New Zealand perspective. I weighed in with the following piece:
I am sure we have all been appalled by the recent sad events in the United States in the killing of six people and the attempted assassination of US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by a deranged gunman.
Setting aside the inevitable partisan Democrat-Republican opportunism afterwards, part of that fall-out has been an intense and vitriolic debate about the intense and vitriolic debate that is American politics today.
Important questions have been raised about the often toxic exchanges full of gun-laden imagery which have come to characterise American politics. Pundits are asking if at the very least, such aggressive posturing has created an environment in which it was actually inevitable that some sad individual would go on a rampage.
The debate will continue for some time. The name of Sarah Palin will continue to be at the centre of it. The rest of the world – including New Zealand – will continue to stand agog at this peculiarly American blood-sport and their bizarre attachment to the constitutionally protected ‘right’ of every Tom, Cheney or Harry to bear arms.
It is a debate that should be had. Cross-hair targets on maps, calls to “reload, not retreat”, and talk of “Second Amendment solutions” have no place in a decent political environment, and if nothing else comes from the current firestorm, then let us hope that some self-censorship begins to apply across the US political spectrum.
It would be easy to look from afar at all of this and feel that it has no real relevance to us in New Zealand
It would also be wrong.
In fact, coming as it does during the summer break, it is probably a good opportunity to look at how we “do” politics in this country.
While we do not have the bare-chested populist bravado of a Vladimir Putin (although Speaker Lockwood Smith in his Speedos surely runs him close), the unpredictable war-mongering psychosis of a Kim Jong Il, or the dubious and dangerous ‘Mama Grizzly’ magnetism of a Palin, we have no shortage of dissembling, half-truths, distortions and fear-mongering.
We are in the midst of just such a campaign today with the opponents of the Marine and Coastal Area Bill, or an issue that in the public parlance is still the re-heated foreshore and seabed debate.
As a thinking New Zealander, let alone as a Parliamentarian, I get angry at the – not to put too fine a point on it – deliberate fear-inducing tripe that those campaigning against this bill put forward.
Their attempts to convince non-Maori New Zealanders that they will lose entitlement and access to our beaches is a cynical, low-level campaign that involves all four of the political low-life’s handbook – dissembling, half-truths, distortions and fear-mongering.
It is not the first such campaign we have seen, and unfortunately it is unlikely to be the last.
It needs to be said, too, that past Winston Peters campaigns around immigration – particularly some of the viler and more damaging verbal volleys against Asians and Asian New Zealanders – were a particular low point in New Zealand politics.
Ugly does not just have to mean guns.
Politicking for personal political advantage at huge cost to a nation’s social fabric is particularly repulsive, and needs to be challenged at every point.
The smacking debate of a few years ago was also not one of our finer political hours.
And before anyone takes umbrage, I deliver that broadside firmly at both sides of that particular debate.
One side painting the other as family-wrecking liberals, and the other deliberately and dishonestly inter-changing the terms ‘smacking’ and ‘beating’ as if they were one and the same thing.
Sloganeering and over-shouting those with a different view was the name of the game. It killed any real discussion that could have involved informed opinion-making and helping New Zealand mature as a nation.
In the end, it, only served to entrench existing positions on all sides.
And that was no accident; that is exactly what the protagonists intended. They were prepared to get their desired outcome any way they could – and brow-beating, bullying and discrediting opponents were seen as legitimate tactics.
The result in all three of these instances has been more heat than light on the issues concerned, and a New Zealand significantly less informed, enlightened and mature than it could be.
If good legislation ever comes out of such debates, it is purely by chance.
When we look back at the smacking debate, who would call it a quality moment in New Zealand’s political life? How were the public served and informed?
How did Winston Peters gives us a more integrated, bolder New Zealand, when preying on elements among us of a quivering, fearful New Zealand?
And when the ink dries on the Marine and Coastal Bill and we are all enjoying New Zealand beaches again next summer, will we have been enriched by intelligent, thoughtful political debate along the way? Will we be a more united people?
While some will argue that it is all fair game in a robust political system, a more holistic view will count the price that we pay for it.
Ultimately such ugliness might afford the protagonists short term victories, but it leads to one thing – a cynical electorate that becomes increasingly disengaged from the political process.
We will all be the losers if that occurs.
As per usual, it generated a lot of positive interest. People often made the comment that NZ analysis of the Arizona shooting was conspicuous by its absence for a week or so.
What do you think? I am interested to hear your views on the political discourse in New Zealand......