In almost sixty years the discourse of New Zealand politics has not changed.This was bought to my attention tonight when I went down to the Film Archive to watch a collection of clips from New Zealand’s political history called Spin.
The film started in 1911 with a silent reel of Mr. D. Mclaren standing on his soap box in Wellington, talking to a crowd who seemed to be more interested in the presence of the film camera than the talk of the politician.
But the part that really got me was the footage of the 1949 election advertisements of the Labour and National parties. Labour was campaigning for a continuation of the stable government they had provided since 1935. Meanwhile National was pushing for change, and the freedom, and playing on peoples fears of Socialism. Sound familiar anyone?
“A Tribute to Fourteen Years of Labour Government” was an interesting piece of propaganda. It highlighted the major achievements of the First Labour Government, guaranteed prices for farmers, workers rights, industrial growth, the need for better health care and housing. It played up the fact that we were a primary produce country and that we were building up our secondary industries to buffer us against a time where we would be isolated from the rest of the world because of conflict.
The National advertisement was done in the form of an old farmer lecturing his son (and a token Maori friend) about the dangers of being a socialist, Labour supporter. The clip called “You Must Decide” equated the socialist policies to communism and therefore they must be limiting the freedom of individuals. My favourite part was the awesome special effects using cardboard cut outs to symbolise the plethora of layers of bureaucracy that a Labour win in 1949 would ensue.
They talked about the price of butter (1949s equivalent to 2008s cheese), nationalisation of the Airways (2008s equivalent of the railways), massive inflation due to government control of the Reserve Bank and the barriers to trade (2008s tax cuts).
The general feeling behind the collection – for me at least – was that New Zealand has not come far in the last 100 years. The same arguments are happening, and instead of Savage, Fraser and Holyoake we have watered down versions in Clark and Key. Grinding the same (pick) axes that their predecessors were grinding.
On one hand I was confused. Sixty years later we’re still arguing about the same things, we’re still using the same tactics and we’re still going nowhere. Oh what a perplexing place New Zealand is. But there there were the famous moments: Michael Joseph Savage addressing the country, Peter Fraser returning from the United Nations conference in San Francisco, Muldoon’s interview with Simon Walker about Russian submarines, Bob Jones being cocky about his chances of the New Zealand Party getting into parliament in the ’84 election.
So where too from here? If in sixty years time from now I sit back and watch these clips, and the clips from the intervening years, will I see any difference in the way which politics is carried out? I hope so. But part of me knows that unless we reform the nature of the beast and unless we start holding our politicans accountable for their bad behaviour and their ruthless tactics, all we will ever see are brief glimpses of politics the way it should be.