Club Politique by Che Tibby

OK, I’m going to whinge about this one because I plainly don’t understand it. Why in the hell do some political factions whine about the need for fiscal independence, then in the same breath gasp at the implementation of social freedoms?

This one has always stuck in my craw.

The thing about freedom, and the love of freedom, is that it seems to be entirely dependent on what the individual thinks is important.

The situation is more often than not this: Person ‘A’ believes in small government. They think that any interference by government is a bad thing, especially if it seems like government is interfering in something they find very important. Like their income for example. Taxation, apparently, is interfering in their ability to spend the money they deserve.

Whether they deserve that money is of course another question. There are plenty of people out there whose very high incomes I find, well, offensive.

So ignoring this, government should be prevented from interfering in our lives by lowering taxation as much as possible and freeing up money for us to spend as we see fit. If we want to help out the poor by giving them money we can, and if we want to use that money to employ people, like cleaners, then we can.

This is overstating the case of course, and I’m probably being a little too obtuse. Having lived poor I know for sure than money does make your life easier.

The question though is how much money do you really need to make your life more free? If you’ve got enough to put food on the table, pay all the bills without stress, put away a suitable amount for a comfortable retirement, and still get away for a holiday at least once a year then what in the hell are you bitching about?

Again, more often that not it’s a particular type of person that sees tax as them being robbed. Take away all the guff about how the money is being spent, for instance on things like cheap health care or decent education, and what you have is people who are basically just stingy.

And I use the word stingy for a very particular reason, because I’ve noticed that these same types of people, though decrying the lack of freedom in regard to the theft of their money by the state, are all too willing to restrict the freedom of other people.

I realise that I’m potentially drawing a long bow on this one, but why is it that people who want the state out of their money are all too willing to have the state restrict the freedoms of people like homosexuals, ethnic and religious minorities?

It’s a weird kind of relativity, and more of a stereotype than a hard fact, but if you’re demanding more freedom in your own life, then you can’t go demanding the restriction of other peoples freedoms without setting yourself up for accusations of hypocrisy.

Sure, there’s the argument that financial and social policy are two entirely separate political spheres, but to me that’s simply being Janus-faced in your opinions.

A better way to put it is that the financial sphere doesn’t impinge on relative morality that the social does. But again, that’s being selective.

Quite frankly, I find conspicuous consumption obscene. Flashy wealth and big money is just gaudy, shallow and at times outright rude. If you only drive an $80,000 car in order to demonstrate your wealth, then I think you are in all likelihood just a wanker, plain and simple.

Thing is, to me consumption is a moral question. It is immoral to waste money on things you don’t need, or food you’ll just throw away, or toys you’ll break for fun.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to argue in favour of radical wealth redistribution. It’s good to have incentives for people to work harder, to try to better themselves, and to try to escape things like welfarism. But how much money do you really need before your spending becomes taking the piss?

Yup, I’d better come clean. The thesis isn’t actually finished and handed in. All the hard yards are done, and I’m kind of kicking back making small structural and wording changes as they are indicated. So, technically it’s finished because all the research is done, gone, over, but unfinished because the supervisors are poring over it looking for inconsistencies.

In other words they’re doing the hard yakka now.

Anyhow, leaving Australia once the final draft had been submitted, and saying goodbye to Melbourne was probably the best move I’ve made in years. The city is great, and I’d love to live there again, but maybe not for a long time.

I’ve lived in a number of cities now, on a couple of continents, and returning to Wellington has been something like an emotional homecoming. Not emotional in the sense of getting at bleary and not wanting to let go, but emotional like it just feels ‘right’.

As each chapter comes back, with amendments and the digital equivalent of big red scrawl, I’m drawn back to that tiny little office space, in a pokey student dive, with a three feet view to a grey paling fence, flowers grasping over the tops once a year or so to brighten up the spring.

These days I’m sitting in front of a picture window, with a view across Te Aro to Mt. Vic, with the hospital at one end of my view, and the hills surrounding the harbour and Hutt Valley at the other. How things change in a year ay?

I get to walk to work, as I did in Melbourne, but here I see places I recognise as something else altogether, and have memories of people I used to walk with who are no longer present. I get to point out places that once housed people I knew and streets I may well have stumbled along in drunken stupors. I get to meet old friends with whom a distance has fallen and remained.

That said, there’s something ‘deeper’ about being here. In Melbourne it was always like I was spread too thin on the ground? Even after six years I knew half the city all too well, had found out all her secrets, had friends I’d known for as many years as all but my closest and oldest mates, and was intimately familiar with her moods, but there was still that intangible feeling like I didn’t really belong.

Here though? Here I can cast my minds eye back to days long gone, to a montage of changes and incremental difference falling past me as I push them down into the earth and the past when my feet carry me through rolling and variable time.

There’s something to be said for that impression we each make as we go about our daily lives with the flakes of our memories burying our feet in the places we stand.

Another way to see it is standing in the shallow waves. They pull away the sand around your feet and sink you while some remains to anchor you there, the cold water keeping you keenly aware of the changes taking place.

In Melbourne my feet never really reached the ground. It was always like I walked above it all, a traveller, itinerant, unrooted. I was the water more than the feet, one of the people who washed through the city without really leaving an impression but for the few lives my own reached?

Here though? Here I sit and read chapter after chapter written in that whole other place, and while I see the ideas and who I was forming layers around the person I was becoming, the detritus of the daily life in that world has rotted away leaving little.

And so it is, the wind has swept me up and brought me back to a place where wind belongs, leaving scattered behind me bits and pieces enough to lead me back should I choose to return. And I romanticise the past as the past deserves, and joke about the hardships.

But here I am all the same, happy, content and a little too secure. Surrounded by an old home that’s bigger than just the four walls of this room, one that reaches to the shores where my people came off sailing ships, married local and carved lives out of rugged bushlands.

A place where my feet touch the ashes of lives who have shared mine but have long since passed. A place where I stand, look up, and see tomorrow’s memories falling graciously, gently, toward me, and for which I am happy to wait.

I almost choked on my coffee.

in the mythology of his own nation, Lange continues to be celebrated as a brave visionary, rather than as a poseur and dilettante who misread badly the pulse of history. [emphasis mine]

If you'd like to express to Tony Parkinson what you think of his opinion of David Lange, printed today in Melbourne paper, The Age, you can contact him at

tparkinson@theage.com.au

That email is taken from the public domain by the way, here.

If you aren't familiar with Tony, he's the International Editor of The Age, and a more venal, petty, one-eyed columnist I've never read.

Feel free to tell him how inappropriate his column is, and what you really think of his opinions.

PS. Now I'm a little less shocked, I should ask you, do not to send hate mail to Mr. Parkinson. Otherwise...

PPS. Details on how to send plain old letters to the editor can be found here

If you ever need an example of what a dickhead Howard is, his comments regarding the loss of Lange are recorded by Rob O'Neill over at NZBC. Good one Johnnie, get a little partisan dig in while New Zealand laments the loss of one of its great leaders. Beazley's comments in the same post are more befitting a statesman.

Something my trendy, pinko commie mates in Australia used to rue was the swing towards conservatism they were suspicious was overtaking the country under Howard. There were always things to notice, from the continuous assaults on the impartiality of the ABC (the national broadcaster, which was happy to air obviously left opinions, and would do stuff like present the other side of the story during national debates over Reconciliation or the Iraq War), or the gradual replacement of board members of the National Museum, which was presenting a history of Australia Howard found distasteful.

As I may have whined several times in the past though, you kind of have to expect petty behaviour from conservatives. All too often they are just plain, garden-variety, dicks. And that's probably why I find any suggestion that New Zealand is becoming more conservative problematic. What you're really saying if you agree with that statement is that you think we're all becoming dicks.

Great. A nation of dicks. How's that going to look to the rest of the world? Isn't it just saying, "yeah, welcome to New Zealand! Don't expect to have any fun! Be prepared to be deafened by the sound of four millions tongues 'tut-tutting' if you look at another woman wrong way."

By way of example and as Keith points out, statistically the SST 'survey' into morality in New Zealand is a little sketchy, so I won't cover that ground again. But, I was busy laughing at it over breakfast on Sunday because it's plainly stupid.

What you have there is a survey that says, "conservative voters are likely to vote for conservative parties, while liberal voters aren't". To which my reply was, "What?" So, someone has actually gone and commissioned research into finding out if the conservative parties natural constituency is conservatives?

One word... [insecure] dicks.

How about a survey to see how many religious people believe in the afterlife! Maybe one about how many taxpayers actually like paying tax!

People, a real survey would have tried to find out how many formerly liberal voters have swung conservative in their views and morality. That would be one example of New Zealand becoming a "more moral" society. It seems however that presenting near-fictional statistics is more worthwhile that actually discovering information.

After all, 42% of all PublicAddress readers know that, so I'm preaching to the pulpit really.

In Australia though, the country really does seem to have swung conservative. Not that Australia was ever a bastion of liberal values mind you, but in my humble opinion there does seem to be a faint atmosphere of anal retentiveness overtaking the country. The question we'd want to ask then is does New Zealand really want to follow this same path.

What possible purpose does moral conservatism serve?

The answer you might want to look for there is 'none'.

Moral conservatism is a way of restraining people. It is a dog collar for some people in our society to regulate the behaviour of others, and more often than not to dictate hypocritical viewpoints on what is and is not permissible.

I needn't point out once again the recent case of a moral guardian behaving in ways that complete hedonists I know would never brook. I'd disregard that example if it wasn't tragically more the norm than the exception worldwide.

I've also said before that I think it's a good thing that some people use a set of 2000 year old markers like the Bible to guide their otherwise moral vacuity. If you're unable to work out for yourself what is and isn't acceptable behaviour then haul them cheeks out of bed on Saturday or Sunday, get down to your local god-man, and load up on a little common sense.

Or, if you need to find community in the first instance, then good, join a big, medieval, organised, trance.

But never presume to tell me that I need to become a bigger dick to make New Zealand a better place.

I pay my taxes gladly so that the people at the bottom might have a better chance, the same way someone else's taxes gave me one. I take an interest in political argument so that I can help fight against any lunatics trying to put moral or political straight-jackets on us. And I make little compromises every day because we're all in this together, whether the dicks see that or not.

And if you think that my moral markers are incompatible with your own? Tough, I never said you have to like them.

If you’ve never experienced what it’s like to be different, and not only meaning standing out from the crowd in a good way, then you probably want to tell your mum you’re moving out.

I think it’s the case that a lot of people have experienced difference, but are used to the other people being the ones who are weird. So they’ll go to Thailand for example, and coo about how different the place is, how strange the food is, how it’s dirty, how it’s chaotic.

But the fact is, in Thailand you’re the freak.

Unless you’re Thai.

That said, it’s fascinating that everyone pegs difference to what they see as the norm, and are quick to jump to the conclusion that their way of life is the best, or at least the least strange. And it’s for that reason I think people need to get outside their own comfort zone every now and then, if not only to see what other societies regard as the status quo.

Travel is the obvious panacea to this problem, and one I’m proud to see New Zealanders embrace with a passionate fervour. Again, if you’ve never experienced difference there’s a good chance it’s because you need to get out of the country for bit.

The trick though is not just to go to Bali and sit in a resort with other Kiwis and Aussies, but maybe go to someplace like East Timor, who really need the tourist dollars, and who are completely unused to the kinds of luxury you take for granted. Like regular work.

If you haven’t got the time and inclination to travel though, there’s plenty of diversity within New Zealand for you to get out of your shell. Which is just dandy. Mind you, this assumes that you actually want to know what it’s like to feel different, which many don’t, and more fool them.

I’m insisting on this one for a couple of reasons. First of all, unless you know what it’s like to be the different one, then you’re unlikely to have any sympathy for ‘aliens’ you encounter. And second, it’s just plain good for you to feel out of place every now and then. If anything, it makes it easier to feel closer to ‘your’ people.

There’s the danger of course that experiencing the rest of the world will just reinforce negative stereotypes and opinions about other countries and peoples, but if you use your experiences not to learn, but to back yourself, then, why bother?

Like I say, if you’re willing to step outside your comfort zone, there’s plenty of scope to feel alien right here in New Zealand. Hanging out with farmers always kind of freaks me out for example. Or just pick an Asian restaurant to eat in instead of McDonalds. But, for a more concrete example, read on.

Back in 1998, I started working at Auckland Coop Taxis to keep food on the table while waiting to head to Melbourne, and moved up the ranks from call booker to dispatcher pretty quickly. Not a bad job, although the money was abysmal.

The thing to note about the phone room at Coop is that there ain’t a lot of white folk. Other than the Manager, who was a very full-on queen, and a couple of Pakeha dispatchers, the whole crew was pretty much Māori or Pacific Islander of some description, and almost all women. Being a skinny white boy in that environment wasn’t too difficult, but was enlightening.

Naturally, the work was in shifts. Auckland does not sleep, I can assure you. There are a few classic stories, such as seeing a white person for the first time in days and my reaction. But my favourite is sitting quietly waiting for calls and overhearing a couple of the younger women talking about something on the TV.

The first one goes, “Hey, check him out…”. The second one goes, “Yeah… not too bad, considering”.

I pipe up, “You mean, he’s not too bad, for a white man?”

They turn and look at me and say, “oh… yeah, sorry Che, forgot you were there…”

Which is kind of flattering in a way, I guess.