Political self-interest and an appeal to baser instincts

By JON JOHANNSON*

The promise of any election campaign lies in the heightened political awareness of the public during the four long weeks when the mandate to govern is once more up for grabs.

This feature provides an optimal opportunity for our country's leaders to debate important challenges facing the country. It provides a forum for enlightened appeals to the better angels of our nature, and also a chance for leaders to educate the citizenry about their future choices.

This high road, however, competes uncomfortably (or not at all) with political strategy and tactics, appeals to our baser instincts, and the overwhelming self-interest (or survival) of our political parties.

As this campaign splutters to its unedifying conclusion, with Bill English's last-grasp talk of a four-party grand coalition - an idea that surely more resembles Medusa's hair than anything majestic - it is timely to review the quality of discourse we have heard from our collective political leadership.

One question is what crucially important issues facing New Zealand have not been traversed?

The first concerns New Zealand's place in the world, because the trigger for this early election could arguably be traced back to the aftermath of September 11. The terrorist attack on mainland America represented arguably the most serious ripple in history since the Cuban missile crisis.

The seriousness of the Twin Towers collapse can be analysed by considering a new reality - that policy-makers the world over now face a qualitatively different set of challenges than before.

Domestically, the Alliance meltdown over the Government's response to the war against terror was the straw that finally broke its already crumbling facade of unity. The Prime Minister's subsequent early election call, and her attributing it to the farcical posturing that had descended over Jim Anderton's integrity (or lack thereof), represented merely the final acknowledgment of a new and unalterable state of affairs.

Yet the effects of September 11, which have now seen the United States reverse its standoff with Indonesia because of its fear of our neighbour's potential as a breeding ground for terrorist cells, draws attention to the fundamentally changed nature of our strategic environment in an increasingly polarised world.

Foreign and defence policy will never appear on polls that probe issue saliency for voters. Nevertheless, they represent crucial policy areas for New Zealanders to debate because they go to the core of our self-identity in relation to our immediate and wider global relationships.

A second and even more perplexing omission from campaign discourse has been in the area of national superannuation policy.

Since Sir Robert Muldoon politicised superannuation policy in 1975, creating his own personal electoral realignment in the process, successive governments have struggled mightily to prepare future generations for the fiscal demands of the coming demographic bulge.

What Labour has proposed, National has instinctively opposed; Labour's super fund will, therefore, in all likelihood become a future National government's slush fund.

The dance thus continues, and we seem no closer to achieving a sensible, bipartisan agreement on superannuation.

It remains one of the country's most intractable policy dilemmas, one that demands multi-party agreement to allow subsequent governments (and citizens) more certainty in planning their priorities. And one in which leadership would bring all future voters more reward than all the wasted verbiage on Paintergate, Corngate and the overly significant (and cursed) worm.

This has not been a campaign distinguished by the quality of its discourse, of reasoned debate, or of anything approaching cultural leadership. Political leadership has been submerged by tactics (and desperation). We have seen or heard little of the vision thing.

Given the shallow contours of the campaign discourse, it has not been surprising that there has been such volatility among voters as they tour the minor parties, often stopping only briefly before moving on to the next best hope.

One can cautiously predict, however, that some measure of support will have returned to the two main parties during these past few days. The noise and emotion of the campaign will slowly dissipate and see some voters' minds return to their original voting predispositions.

This trend should particularly favour the Labour Party, whose campaign has been defensive and, on occasions, simply too negative and intemperate. For other voters, a sense of sympathy for the plight of the National Party will probably see some normally National-leaning voters return to the fold.

New Zealanders have always had a basic sense of fairness, and this feature, along with the striking imbalance that exists between the respective public standings of Labour and National, might be all that stands between National and a truly humiliating result.

* Jon Johannson lectures in political leadership and American politics at Victoria University.

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