Bruce Bisset: Speechless in no-man's land

Author Eleanor Catton's criticism towards the National Government's benches was a charge around the flanks of the establishment that caught them by surprise, much like a medic suddenly picking up a rifle, writes Bisset. Photo / NZME.

Perhaps it's the Anzac spirit rising as we near the hundredth anniversary of Gallipoli, but there seems to be a bloom of tall poppies getting mown down of late, albeit they're mostly offering themselves up to the guns.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman and Man-Booker prize-winning author Eleanor Catton are notable for the correlation of their beliefs and exchanges on them over the barbed wire of the political fence.

Norman suffers the triple impediments of being in a minority group (red-haired), foreign (Australian), and staunchly socialist in approach.

Despite that, before the last election he flirted with the title of most-trusted politician - an oxymoron perhaps, but a measure of his worth all the same.

Unfortunately a decade in opposition can sour anyone, and when his penchant for being disarmingly frank strayed from carefully controlled politeness to somewhat petulant complaint, the New Zealand public held back from increasing its endorsement of his party's brand.

Voters don't mind belligerent, but they tend to baulk at any hint of it being self-serving - unless you're already one of the power elite.

And Norman's sortie towards the finance portfolio was more than hinting.

In his case, there's a not-quite-so-tall replacement in the trenches in the form of Kevin Hague, who by throwing his smooth dome into the battle is odds-on to become the first openly gay leader of a major party in our history - one step beyond where Labour was prepared to go.

I'll simply note that, like myself, both schooled themselves up politically while dwelling on that hotbed of social agitation: Waiheke Island.

While Norman's demise is the sort of noble self-sacrifice expected from enlisted troops, Catton's broadside at the foe on the Government benches was a charge around the flanks of the establishment that caught them by surprise, much like a medic suddenly picking up a rifle.

That she should dare to use her position as winner of the most illustrious prize in literature to lambast the owning class for their rapaciousness drew gasps from a horde of swinish non-coms affronted lest she upset their climb over back-stabbed comrades towards officer rank, while the officers themselves tried to dismiss it as a skirmish of no consequence.

The viciousness of their response, however, indicates the depth of wounded pride this manoeuvre wrought.

Art, after all, is about pretty baubles to hang in the mess hall or thick bedside tomes one pretends to have read.

Let's not imagine it should have anything to say to the real world's political conflicts.

As absurdist as I trust that sounds, it's a distressingly accurate picture of the gulf in understanding and empathy between the behind-the-lines generals and the cannon fodder they presume to command.

And it reflects badly on the collective community of artists (of all descriptions) too.

For if our cultural heartbeat is quieted by blood money (grants, sinecures and the like) that buys its silence even in the face of atrocity, and if our leaders come to regard a monochrome output of state-sanctioned work as the ultimate in artistic expression, then our creative doers and thinkers have been well and truly humbled.

Sadly, rare exceptions like Catton aside, that seems the case.

And we are infinitely poorer for it.

If the politicians have forgotten they are promoted by the public, and the public has forgotten it should direct them, and neither any more recognises the power of art to transform because the artists no longer speak, then we are irrevocably lost in no-man's land.

There, we're all cut poppies who will bloom no more.

That's the right of it.

*Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.