Dialogue: Along comes Banks to occupy new territory

John Banks won the Auckland City mayoralty because of
widespread disgust at political correctness. The
National Party should take note, writes OWEN McSHANE.

John Banks' mayoral victory in Auckland City took many by surprise. Surely, they thought, he was bound to fail because contemporary politics is about winning the middle ground, and John Banks has never been a man for the middle.

So what was his secret? How did he win the hearts and minds of so many Aucklanders, those same Aucklanders who determine which party governs the nation?

When Bill English was elected to lead the National Party he announced that he was no longer interested in the economic debate of the 1990s. However, the political commentators who circle the Beehive remain firmly econocentric. That's why they misjudged John Banks.

Their conventional wisdom is that the public has tired of right-wing ideology and happily embraces the parties of the left so long as they bring us back to the comfort of the centre. Given that Labour, under the astute leadership of Helen Clark, now occupies that centre, Labour should be on track to being the natural party of government.

Then along comes John.

Mr Banks has never been actively involved in the economic debate. Anyone trying to position him between Ruth Richardson and Jim Anderton must be mystified. He has simply occupied new territory, but this new political terrain occupies the minds of most New Zealanders above and below the Bombay Hills.

People in pubs, around dinner tables, phoning talkback radio, or writing letters to the editor seldom argue about the free market versus state ownership.

These ordinary New Zealanders rage about the invasion of political correctness into their everyday lives.

They are angry because:

* Air Force pilots are replaced by armies of counsellors.

* Schools can offer contraceptives and even abortions to children without their parents' consent.

* A young punk beats up a community policeman during a school visit, and the cop loses his job.

* Council officers tell them what colour to paint their house.

* They want safe streets, not cultural safety.

* They want more pay for nurses, not ACC payouts to criminals.

* They want tough justice from the criminal courts instead of persecution from the family courts.

And John Banks certainly knows that Aucklanders actually enjoy their cars because in their cars they are free - or they would be if the train-lovers would let them build a few more roads.

That's John Banks' lesson for his erstwhile colleagues in the National Party. He has told Bill English how to win those 200,000 votes he needs to occupy the Beehive. The middle ground of political incorrectness is there for the taking - and Bill English has the perfect credentials. As a family man he can talk about family values and the benefits of the two-parent family without resorting to any ideology. He simply has to share his experience.

He has already told us not to change nappies while wearing a tie. He is raising children in an age when government agencies assume that husbands and wives are incompetents at best and abusers at worst. He knows this is nonsense and can say so with confidence.

And that is how Bill English can brand his party as truly different from the coalition of the left, which includes the Greens, who are really watermelons - green on the outside but red on the inside.

It may be that if Bill English looks like capturing this new middle ground of the politically incorrect, Labour will attempt to recapture the same territory.

The parties of the left will find it easier to give up socialism than to abandon their inherent collectivism, which insists that the state knows best and hence is entitled to penetrate every aspect of our lives. If we insist on driving cars rather than taking trains, they will force people into high-density housing and carbon-tax petrol.

On the other hand, deserving minority groups attract their loving care. All the victims of past and present oppression deserve positive discrimination so as to set the world to rights.

It works until even the minorities become tired of being tainted by victimhood and realise that the collectivists' patronising compassion is based on their assumed superiority.

For example, the Ministry for the Environment has just released its action plan for dioxins. There is some excellent science in here and at last we have national standards for emissions to air for waste-to-energy plants.

However, the ministry's foreword opens with the official declaration that: "The mauri, or life force, of the air can be compromised by environmental pollutants."

Really? Why not just say that air quality can be compromised by environmental pollutants and leave it at that. Surely we all know from high school chemistry that there is no life force in the air. The atmosphere supports life because it contains lots of oxygen and few toxic gases or particles. Deplete the oxygen, or overload it with toxins, and it doesn't any more.

The generous, or naive, explanation for this weird claim is that the ministry respects the beliefs of Maori. The counterview is that the ministry believes that Maori are either too stupid or too poorly educated to know anything about oxygen, or any other chemicals, and so resorts to the language of pre-scientific animism.

Some Maori might feel charmed; many more must feel insulted. These are the Maori Bill English should target.

After all, I am sure his highly educated Samoan wife doesn't believe in mauri. Are Samoans smarter than Maori after all?

Of course not. It's just that the collectivist mind believes that everyone outside the Beehive swarm is inferior to those who claim the natural right to rule.

We may have seen the end of the economic debate. Mayor Banks has demonstrated there's a new one in the air.

It looks like being much more fun.

Owen McShane, of Kaiwaka, is a research consultant and public-policy analyst.