Dialogue: Gallic fervour gets more action than stoic moans

BY TIM BALE*

"Vive la difference!"

Imagine the scenario. Yet another rise in petrol prices provokes a blockade by truckers, workers and owners alike, of oil refineries and depots across the country. Nearly all of the filling stations owned by the country's largest petrol retailer close, with police enforcing rationing at those outlets that remain open. The Government has to step in to ensure that what little petrol is available goes to the emergency services.

Members of those services - notably ambulance drivers - begin to join in the protests that start to involve the agricultural sector, which is hit by the price rises, too. Protests become more violent, with trains cancelled as trackside fires are lit to ensure that alternative ways of getting from A to B don't ease the pressure.

New Zealand? Hardly! Confronted with a similarly steep series of price rises, we simply grumble. We may moan expertly and we may moan endlessly but, with the exception of the handful of us willing to convert to other forms of energy or make greater use of public transport, or even our own legs, moaning is pretty much all we do.

In France, now experiencing the chaos described above, things are rather different. There, moaning has given way to manning the barricades. This despite the fact that, unlike their Kiwi counterparts, a fair few French motorists are able simply to pop over to filling stations in other countries selling cheaper fuel. Stations in Spain, Belgium, Italy and Germany have done a brisk trade this summer.

But the signs are that this escape option is fast closing down as the petrol protests spread to other countries. The idea that France's long tradition of violent yet supposedly popular protest, and the willingness of its Government to cave into it, has great merit. In fact the Government encouraged the truckers by agreeing to a demand for fuel subsidies by fishermen.

But the spread of fuel price protests into countries other than France suggests that our reaction reflects our political culture.

In Belgium the main truckers' union is well on the way to following the French example. In Spain, as in France, there are moves to coordinate the demonstrations and blockades beginning to emerge on the part of truckers, consumer groups and farmers.

Initially, protest focused on petrol retailers as the villains of the piece. But it would now appear that, as in New Zealand, the Government is in the gun as well. And, as in France, the demands of the protesters grow greater by the day.

Some European haulage interests are calling for exemptions from recently introduced hydrocarbon taxes designed to cut fuel consumption in the wake of countries' international commitments to cut emissions - commitments that must surely be driving the Government here to stand firm against calls for it to cut prices by lowering the fuel taxes.

Meanwhile, farmers in some European countries are going even further, demanding that Governments not only combine to put pressure on Opec in the short term, but also act to create a system guaranteeing fuel price stability for the long term. A similar system introduced here would perhaps go down well with New Zealand's farm lobby, which, quite rightly, focuses on the disruptive and detrimental effect of petrol price movements on one of the country's key export sectors.

On the other hand, of course, there is no hope whatsoever of the Government here introducing such a system.

For a start, there seems to be little momentum behind Alliance leader Jim Anderton's plans for price "transparency" - after all we don't want to scare away the transnationals, do we? And any moves to bring in subsidised fuel price stability for agriculture in Europe, rather than being copied, would surely be paraded here as yet another example of the feather-bedding of European farmers that so enrages their Kiwi equivalents.

But could or should enraged Kiwis everywhere take French lessons in public protest? Probably not. Similar protests here would simply be unacceptable to the bulk of a population accustomed to rather more subtle linkages between state and society, and far more sceptical (for good or ill) about the ability or obligation of the Government to solve its problems.

In addition, any Government operating in an economy like New Zealand's (whose exposure borders on the indecent) could ill-afford to court the displeasure such antics, and any appeasement of them, would cause international investors.

More to the point, and contrary to the mythology that can sometimes surround them in France and elsewhere, such aggressive forms of protest nearly always involve the sacrifice of the interests of the silent majority to those of vocal minorities. These minorities are often well-organised groups whose speed in criticising the Government for taxing and spending on, say, welfare, is matched only by their clamour for special treatment whenever they find themselves in trouble.

*Dr Tim Bale is a lecturer in European politics at Victoria University.