NZ GETS A YOUNG LEADER - WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE OLDIES

Power to the pensioners

The rapid rise and youth of New Zealand’s new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, 37, has drawn international attention.  Less noticed has been the role of older Kiwis in the election.  

The people of Aotearoa (the Maori name for the South Pacific nation) voted on 23 September but didn’t discover who’d rule till mid October when coalition negotiations were sealed and portfolios allocated.

National, which had been in power for nine years won 56 seats, Labour and the Greens a combined 54, leaving NZ First with nine seats to determine who’d run the nation for the next three years.  It chose to side with center-left Labour.

Although dubbed by opponents as a ’coalition of losers’ the visceral hate which infects Australian and US politics is largely absent in NZ.

NZ First leader Winston Peters said Ardern had ‘exhibited extraordinary talent’ while campaigning and that voters wanted a human face to moderate capitalism. Peters, 72, has been a politician longer than Ardern, a parliamentarian for nine years,  has been alive.

Although compared with young leaders like Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, 45, and French President Emmanuel Macron, 40, Ardern doesn’t fit the standards.  She lives with her boyfriend and quit her church when it rejected marriage equality.  She’s childless and the third woman to be PM in NZ.  

In the new Parliament 36 per cent are women.  Although Caucasians dominate, 30 per cent of are Maori and Pacific Islanders, and six per cent Asian.

Peters understands the importance of age in  politics.  Described by The Guardian as ‘cantankerous’ but by locals as ‘wily’, the former lawyer of Maori descent is the new Deputy PM and Foreign Minister.  

He’s already known in Embassies around the world from his time as FM between 2005 and 2008. He said he’d be seeking more understanding of the Asia-Pacific region.

Australia and NZ give citizens cradle-to-grave welfare, including taxpayer-funded schooling, hospital care, unemployment benefits (the ‘dole’), and pensions.  But the schemes are run differently.

Australia’s pensions are means tested so those with private incomes miss out.  In NZ paupers and millionaires all qualify at 65; Peters gets the pension on top of his annual parliamentary salary of almost NZD 200,000 (Rp 1.9 billion / USD 140,000).

Economists say this road ends at a fiscal cliff. When state pensions started in the 1900s governments planned brief payouts knowing the grim reaper would soon relieve them of the burden. Now life expectancy has risen from the mid 60s to the early 80s. Analysts say pensions are draining the national budget at the expense of infrastructure, education and health care.

Australia has partly plugged the leak by lifting the entrance age to 67 by 2023, adding compulsory superannuation paid by employers, and tightening eligibility rules. European nations, including Britain, have made similar moves.  Though not NZ.

Former National PM John Key famously promised to quit if anyone fiddled with pension eligibility, puzzling many: How could a country of just 4.7 million (smaller than Metro Surabaya) afford such a drain on its finances?  

The answer is politics of pensioner power.  

A retired Kiwi couple currently gets NZD 576 (Rp 5.5 million / USD 405) each a fortnight after tax - 65 per cent of the net average wage. Around 16 per cent of the nation’s revenue goes on pensions, and the figure ratchets up every year.

Although the two countries are often lumped together the former British colonies have separate political systems.  

Australian States and Territories send a fixed number of Senators to Canberra.  All are elected by the people.  NZ has no upper house.  Since 1996 it has had the Mixed-Member Proportional representation voting system, also used in Germany for the Bundestag election last month, and a few other states.

Kiwis get two votes, one for their local electorate candidate, and the other for a party, so can split their choice. One more crucial difference: Voting in Australia is compulsory, in NZ it’s voluntary.  

In Australia voting no-shows are around six per cent. In the NZ election more than 20 per cent didn’t exercise their democratic right.  The stay-aways tend to be youngsters more concerned with their pay tomorrow not half a century ahead.

Those diligent about their civic duty are retirees; this substantial cohort rejects any party threatening their rights.

Peters used this year’s campaign soothing seniors who see the dapper dresser as their champion against indifferent bureaucrats; last decade he forced a reluctant government to allow free off-peak public transport to pensioners through a ‘Supergold’ card.  A wee matter, as Kiwis say, but positively impacting their lives.

Also appealing to the aged were NZ First’s tough policies on law and order and what it calls ‘common sense and straight talk’. The party is usually labeled ‘nationalist’ and ‘populist’.  It wants immigration slashed to 10,000 a year from the current 70,000.

In the past Peters has spoken about the ‘Asian invasion’, resonating with those - mainly the aged - fearing their traditional lifestyles are under threat.  For ‘Asians’ read Chinese – now the third largest ethnic group behind Europeans and Maori.

Now the ever-adroit Peters says he’s not anti-Asian but wants new arrivals ‘to meet critical skills gaps’.  He knows the Chinese are also conservative and determined voters.  He even claimed during the campaign that he had Chinese ancestry citing research that Maori are descended from Taiwanese aborigines.

Victoria University of Wellington molecular bio scientist Dr Geoff Chambers reportedly commented that this seemed to be a rare instances where ‘politics informed science’.  

In public affairs there are few certainties but here’s one: NZ pensioners have political muscle.

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First published in Strategic Review 27 October 2017.  See:
http://sr-indonesia.com/web-exclusives/view/pensioner-power

KIWIS NOW HAVE CHOICE

Change ahead for Godzone?                                                       

A new dawn for Wellington?

The Radio New Zealand website headline seemed a must-read:  Myrtle Rust Found In Waikato.

Yet another overseas tourist lost in a snowstorm?  Anticipate tales of heroic search-and-rescue. Or maybe she’s a notorious bank robber on the run in the North Island region named after the longest river (425 kilometers).

Neither.  Myrtle Rust is a plant disease discovered on two trees now legally cordoned and rapidly felled.  That this yawn was deemed national news reveals much about the small South Pacific nation now considered a safe retreat should nuclear warheads explode in North Korea.

Another factor was dollars.  Apart from tourism NZ leans heavily on agricultural exports. So an alien bug should be feared by all, even one with a benign forename.

Myrtle aside there’s an even bigger event underway and getting international coverage– an election which looks increasingly likely to be lost by the incumbent National Party headed by Bill English, 55, a competent economist but a bland politician.

His Labour Party challenger is Jacinda Ardern, 37, fun, young but untested. Straw-grabbers have compared her to French President Emmanuel Macron, 40, another fresh contender from behind.  

Ardern has been in Parliament for less than a decade and before that in backroom politics – including the UK where she was on the staff of Labour PM Tony Blair.

That a woman might become PM without the sky falling shows the cultural gap with the US. NZ was the first nation to give women the vote in 1893; two decades ago voters put National’s Jenny Shipley into the top job. 

She was succeeded by Labour’s Helen Clark.  She held on for three terms (each of three years) till unseated by banker John Key in 2008.

Clark then joined the United Nations in New York as head of its development program.  Last year she stood unsuccessfully for the secretary general’s job.

Kiwis believe a woman’s place is everywhere so few journalists dare ask gender-based questions. Voters may want to know Ardern’s marriage plans and dress tips; she accepts the reality but prefers policy talk. 

For the record her father Ross is NZ High Commissioner to the Pacific Island of Niue. She lives with her radio presenter boyfriend. No kids.  Though raised a Mormon she’s now an agnostic. In NZ these traits are no handicap, though her opponent is a married Catholic with six children.

Two months ago middle-road National looked certain to win based on its record of economic stability and few major political crises. Yet housing problems caused by rising migration, high prices and few new builds have forced families to rent, not buy, putting pressure on social services. 

There’s been some resentment towards cashed-up arrivals from China (12 per cent) followed by the UK (many said to be Brexit refugees) and Australia at ten per cent each.  The rest are Indians, Pacific Islanders and returning Kiwis according to Statistics NZ.

About 74,000 immigrants a year is an entree in Europe but a main course in a nation with only 4.7 million people - and 30 million sheep.

National’s fortunes collapsed followed Ardern’s sudden leap to Opposition leader last month when her boss, charisma-free Andrew Little, accepted he’d been ineffectual.

Overseas Aotearoa (the Maori name for NZ) is known as a milk-and-honey progressive state. However not all is clean and green. Although crime is falling the jail rate of 212 for every 100,000 citizens puts NZ alongside Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

More than 40 per cent of those behind bars are Maori, yet the original occupiers represent just a seventh of the population; this suggests many ethnic, education and employment issues still resist resolution.

NZ was a global pioneer in welfare for all; hospital care is free, medicines subsidised and pensions not means tested as they are in Australia where wages are higher and taxes lower.

Yet by comparison with its big northern neighbor NZ is doing well; economic growth is three per cent and the budget balanced. The Great South Land is being ravaged by a mining slump, factional fights over global warming, and moral storms about same sex marriage.

 NZ passed that law four years ago.  Visitors expecting Sodom and Gomorrah will be disappointed; last year just 465 local same-sex couples got hitched while almost 20,000 opposite sex pairs followed suit.

The change was easier because NZ is a unicameral state so no upper house to reject laws.  It uses the Mixed-Member Proportional representation voting system.

Electors get two votes, party and candidate. The Electoral Commission says MMP’s ‘defining characteristics are a mix of MPs from single-member electorates and those elected from a party list.’  A party's portion of the 120 seats ‘roughly mirrors its share of the overall nationwide party vote.’ This gives the five minors more clout.  The Greens dominate but this year imploded over welfare policies.

Unlike Australia there’s no compulsory voting.  The Saturday 23 September election is in spring but NZ’s fickle weather could keep voters indoors.

Traditionally the elderly exercise their democratic duty. In the last election 22 per cent of electors couldn’t bother. Labour strategists hope Ardern’s feisty independence and bright countenance will stir youngsters to vote.

The issues have been largely domestic and so far the debates generally civilised. National is free market, but not US extreme. Labour is socialist, but not UK radical.

The country has a small defence force and relies on the ANZUS Treaty with Australia and the US. Having a massive arid continent between Godzone (God’s own country) and the world’s trouble spots helps calm nerves.

NZ has been pushing into Southeast Asia to boost trade and opening new consulates in Indonesia. However NZ harbors a small but vocal group supported by seven Pacific Island states alleging human-rights abuses in West Papua.

Their campaign has been annoying Indonesia.  Should Labour win on 23 September their calls for greater transparency could find a more supportive government.  * Disclosure: The author is a registered NZ elector.

(First published in Strategic Review, 14 September 2017: