|
Recently, I was asked to repost my description of the infiltration of the NZ Labour Party by crypto-rightists and the effects this had on New Zealand politics. At the time I was rather busy, and it is an involved subject so I deferred doing so, until now.
I was once again asked to repost this today, and in light of the continued interest, and the fact that some new interesting twists have eventuated over the last few days, I have decided to comply.
This is a long story, and I hope you will bear with me, because it is also rather complicated. However I am sure that some people will find it very interesting none-the-less.
Setting the Scene:
Firstly a "prequel" to my original story, which I left out for reasons of space, but that I now feel needs to be explained in order to make this all a little easier to understand.
During the 70's and early 80's, New Zealand politics was dominated by the National Party (AKA Tories - the right wing party), under a rather strong willed Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. During this period, New Zealand had essentially been given over to the World Bank and IMF. National called this policy "Think Big" but in reality it was designed to create a debt burden for New Zealand.
What basically happened is that the IMF instructed Muldoon to start massive infrastructure projects (a dam and a synthetic petroleum plant being the major projects) for which the IMF/World Bank would loan NZ billions of dollars. The stated intention was to increase the wealth of all New Zealanders, but the reality was that these projects failed, leaving New Zealand heavily in debt.
This became an opening for the Labour Party and along with its stated anti-nuclear policy almost assured victory for the Labour party in 84. However, the globalists as we now call them weren't stupid and planned for this.
The Takeover:
In 1984, Labour won a landmark election victory which was described as the "Left Turn". Labour quickly passed its landmark anti-nuclear laws, banning all nuclear weapons and facilities from New Zealand territory. This of course meant that US ships could no longer enter NZ waters because of US policy to neither confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons on its ships, and because some of them were nuclear powered.
It seemed that a great victory for the left had been won, but behind the scenes some dirty dealings were going on.
Two Labour Ministers took a central role in the events that followed, Roger Douglas, and Richard Prebble, but there were others who supported them within the party, some I believe knowing their true intentions, and others as "patsy's".
Roger Douglas was made Minister Of Finance, which in New Zealand is a rather powerful position, and is semi-independent of the PM. Basically the Minister of Finance controls the purse strings and thus dictates policy to a certain degree.
Richard Prebble had a very extensive portfolio, among which were The Minister for State Owned Enterprises and Associate Minister of Finance.
Between these two men, a major shake up of New Zealand Government was to occur, a policy that came to be dubbed "Rogernomics". This policy was based on what we all now call "free markets" and "free trade". They privatised anything and everything they could get away with, electricity, telephones, railways, Post Bank and Rural Bank (two government owned banks), forestry, and the list goes on.
They also began a series of labour deregulation policies that eventually saw fruition (under National, but more on that later) with the "Employment Contracts Act" in which unions were basically destroyed, and resulting in marked reductions in wages and conditions, means of redress.
Another of their policies, and MILES ahead of everyone else was the "free market". All import tariffs were quashed, and anything even remotely protectionist was done away with, as were tens of thousands of jobs when local companies folded under pressure from cheap imports.
All of this we were told was the only way to recover from the Muldoon years. We were told if we just tightened our belts a little eventually we would all be better off, after all, no pain - no gain.
The reality is, however that this was just the second phase of the World Bank/IMF plan for New Zealand. The National debt was barely dented as industries that were intentionally mismanaged were flogged off to corporate interests for far less than they were worth.
For example, Telecom was sold to Bell South (I believe, my memory is hazy here) for around a billion NZ dollars (approx. 450 million US at the time). That seems like a lot, until you know that within three years, Telecom had pulled in over a billion dollars in profit, and now regularly makes 700 million in pure profit EVERY YEAR.
So not only did we get less than we had invested in Telecom, but we lost this HUGE source of potential income for the government.
So now you can see where we were - take every right wing corporate wet dream, and that is what these two men put in place.
Round Two:
In 1987, Labour was re-elected, but NOT because these policies were popular, in fact far from it. All through this process National had been cheering these policies and claiming that they hadn't gone far enough. The people of NZ knew that to elect National would not change these policies for the better, in fact they would be far worse. On top of that, Labour was popular for some of its other policies, primarily the anti-nuke stance, and because many on the left were willing to give Labour the benefit of the doubt.
Like the US now, NZ politics was dominated by these two parties, and no other party had even the slightest chance of winning seats in Parliament. So the voters were stuck - Labour was perceived as bad, but National was far worse.
Shortly after the election, the Prime Minister, David Lange, (the man most responsible for the anti-nuke policy) realised that Douglas and Prebble were out of control, and began trying to stop this process. A protracted fight began within the Cabinet which eventually resulted in Lange firing Prebble and Douglas resigning.
However, the crypto-rightists had an ace up their sleeve, and had managed to convince enough of the Labour Party caucus to win a vote for Douglas to be reinstated in the Cabinet. Lange, however, refused to return him to his former position, instead making him Minister of police, but Lange himself had been so weakened by his fight against Douglas that he resigned as PM a month later.
Then began a major fight within Labour, and we had two PM's come and go in the next year. First was Geoffrey Palmer, who was Lange's Deputy PM and continued to fight the rightists, but was eventually overthrown by Mike Moore, who in recent years became the President of the WTO. Basically the electorate was pissed. Labour had sold them out and was now, seemingly, every bit as right wing as National. Many Labour politicians left the party, and began campaigning as the "true Labour", and were denigrated by the crypto-rightists much as Nader is denigrated by moderate Dems.
So in 1990, and with no viable alternative, National was elected as the new Government. The people (in general of course) now hoped that things would either stay the same, or roll back to the way they were before "Rogernomics", but the truth of this scheme was about to be made clear: "Rogernomics" was back, but this time National took the lead.
This incensed the people of New Zealand to such a degree that a major campaign got underway, a true grassroots campaign against the objections of both of the major parties, to change the form of New Zealand's Government. Signatures were gathered demanding a referendum, in fact I believe in the end around one quarter of New Zealand's population signed this petition, which is rather astounding when you consider that there was no help at all from the major parties or corporations.
But National and Labour colluded to try and put off this move hoping it would blow over, so they agreed that at the next election (nearly two years away) a referendum would be held to decide whether reform would occur. This guaranteed that the current system would be kept for at least 5 years, plenty of time to finish what Douglas had started. And finish it they did.
To rub salt into the wound, the newly privatised Telecom spent over a million dollars on advertising fighting against the referendum. The corporation that benefited the most from the status quo was not adverse to investing a little money to keep things flowing smoothly.
To cut a long story short, the referendum succeeded, and our electoral system was changed to Mixed Member Proportional. This system makes it far easier for small parties to gain seats in Parliament, and thus to have a say in how the country is run. Previously, it was not uncommon to have a Government formed by a party that got as little as 35% of the total vote. Now, minor parties that get more than 5% percent of the total vote, but do not actually win an electorate seat, are still assigned seats based on their proportion of the vote. This means that the significant proportion of voters whose vote didn't actually count now actually have a say.
So now we get to the proof of my claim that these two men were "crypto-rightists". After MMP was installed, these men started a new party called the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT), which is actually a misnomer because they are basically the corporate party. In reality it should be the Association of Corporations and Tax-dodgers.
This party is the most right-wing party in NZ, and Douglas became its leader. A few years later Douglas retired from politics (well in terms of political parties that is) and Prebble took over. Prebble is still the Leader of ACT today, while Douglas has gone on to run several corporations and to be an adviser to the World Bank! Yep, the source of Rogernomics hired Douglas to teach them how he had managed to do what was seemingly impossible.
Now if any of the above sounds familiar (UK DUers take note) you know where this is coming from. It is NOT an idea cooked up in your party's back rooms, it is in fact World Bank/IMF standard practice now thanks to Douglas. The World Bank/IMF created the policy, but Douglas showed them how to actually pull it off.
Epilogue:
Now some of you may be thinking, but where is the proof that these people were actually crypto-rightists? Well here is a new little twist that is hot off the presses.
National recently changed its Leader. National has been languishing in the 20's in polling, thanks to the newly revived Labour's successes at redressing much of what went on in the 80's and 90's, as well as the success of MMP which has given a true picture of NZ's views for the first time. All together, left and centre-left parties gain over 70 percent of the polls.
This is making the right rather desperate, and so they installed Don Brash - who was Governor of the Reserve Bank (basically our Greenspan) during the Rogernomics years - as Leader. This has resulted in a very strange event. Richard Prebble, Leader of ACT and supposedly a rival for right wing votes, recently sent out a newsletter to ACT members in which he asked a question: Should ACT be disbanded now that National is on the right track?
In other words he is basically throwing out the idea of a merger with National. Of course when confronted about this he basically said, well its a valid question and its up to ACT members to decide, and that he has no opinion either way.
Oh how the worm has turned! Twenty years ago Prebble was a senior member of the Labour Party about to create a tidal wave of right wing changes in NZ. Just over a decade later he was a founder of a new right wing party, and now less than a decade after than he is now questioning whether they should merge with the right wing National Party!
UK DUers are sure to recognise a lot of this, and in my opinion what is happening under Blair is almost a carbon copy of what happened here. US DUers may also recognise a lot of this, and I also think this process is happening in the US. In fact, I believe it started under Clinton.
Of course, it is different to a degree, and the results are a likely to be different mainly because the US is a rather right wing place, and thus what caused outrage here may be far less concerning to most American leftists, but, I believe, Nader (and now Dean) is a symptom of the exact same kind of backlash that happened here, the people are sick of having to vote for either far right or centre right politicians.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
