Treasurer Bill Birch on MMP (29 December)
Why do "Europeans" have White Skin? (29 December)
Impeachment Games and War Games (20 December)
The Libertarian View of Children (20 December)
On the Purpose and Autonomy of MPs (19 December)
Worrying concerns about Labour's fiscal policy stance (10 December)
Replacing List MPs (8 December)
Gareth Morgan on the Virtues of Political Paralysis (8 December)
(29 December)
In the NZ Herald today (29/12/1998), and notwithstanding the misleadingly negative headline "How MMP has slowed down the ship of state", Treasurer Bill Birch was surprisingly sanguine about the virtues of the MMP (mixed member proportional) electoral system. In the past he has been known as an opponent of proportional representation, and early in the year even blamed the frustrations of working in an MMP environment as being one reason why he plans to retire in 1999.
His article is neither pro-MMP nor anti-MMP. Rather it's an honest assessment of the differences as a senior Minister in working in the two environments: FPP (the former British system "first past the post") and MMP.
Here I quote what I see as the key bits of Birch's article.
"Under MMP, Parliament is a much more varied animal. ... Now action depends on whether the Government is able to convince other MPs of the merits of its policies in advance, so that it has support in Parliament. ... As Treasurer I meet the independent MPs regularly.... These meetings give me, and other ministers, the opportunity to explain the Government's proposals to these MPs and also allow the other MPs and parties to make suggestions for change to legislation and proposals for whole new initiatives the Government could undertake. The process previously only relied on the cabinet and Government caucus.... Obviously , there are potential headlines in every set of negotiations. It makes it far more difficult for the Government to determine the nature and timing of important announcements, although the release of the last Budget Policy Statement and economic forecasts shows it can work very smoothly.
"The net result of MMP is twofold. First, policy takes a great deal longer to turn into legislation. The process of more extensive consultation means that the ship of state turns more slowly than in the past - which can be a problem if an iceberg is ahead. On the other hand MMP has meant that there is more extensive input into the policymaking process. This can mean more innovative solutions to problems. [emphasis added] What is not so widely appreciated is that the extra challenge of MMP will be one which all future Governments [I think he really means 'Parliaments'] will face. It is a lot easier to simply oppose change than to seek progress."
Mr Birch has come to understand the constructive discipline of MMP, and the dreary negativism of the old "impose and oppose" style of politics.
NB: The "ship of state" is a mercantilist metaphor, associated with Adam Smith's compatriot and philosophical rival James Steuart. (Steuart published his Principles of Political Śconomy in 1767.) The "invisible hand" is Smith's counter metaphor. Just about all right wing government in New Zealand and elsewhere is based on a perception of the world that is much closer to that of Steuart than that of Smith. It is natural for governments to see themselves as important.
It is of course not true that a minority government is unable to take rapid executive action in the case of a genuine national emergency ("iceberg"). And a less blinkered government than the FPP governments of Lange/Douglas/Prebble (1984-89) and Bolger/Richardson (1990-93) is more likely to see an iceberg than is a government under ideological full steam. (Yes I have recently watched the television mini-series, The Titanic.)
One thing that is really great about MMP is that it prevents rapid turns of the ship of state when there is no iceberg ahead. Most of the time, there is no iceberg. Most of the time, panic is not the best option. (Indeed, panic may not be the best option even if an iceberg appears on one's bow. The Titanic would have survived a head-on collision with an iceberg.)
PS: Birch's words hardly fit in with the views expressed by some journalists - including the Herald's John Armstrong - that National will impose a referendum on the electoral system at the 1999 election, as a kind of smarty-pants move to get rid of MMP. My reading is that National will fight hard to retain MMP and keep the pace of constitutional change slow, as it should be.
Why do "Europeans" have White Skin?
(29 December)I saw an item on the news today (NZTV1). Middle class Indian women are demanding cosmetics that have the effect of making their complexions more pale, and Indian men prefer pale-skinned women.
The following is my theory. It starts with the question: "Why did we wear clothes?".
The obvious answer to the latter question - that we first wore clothes for warmth - is probably wrong. Some peoples in cold climates - eg the Aborigines from Tasmania and the Fuegans from Tierra del Fuego - wore the least clothes. And they had dark skin. Furthermore we know that some abused children - eg a girl who was kept naked in a cupboard in California for many years - apparently have no sensitivity to cold.
Humans originated in southern and eastern Africa, so it is safe to assume that the first humans were black. There is no known biological advantage in not having black skin. Hence I believe that the answer lies in the realms of sociology.
My guess is that clothing was first adopted to protect humans from the sun, not the cold. Hence it seems likely that both the widespread adoption of clothing, the evolution of pale skin, and the evolution of human modesty, all evolved in Arabia or North Africa.
It is likely that the most affluent of the early Arab populations were better able to afford to be permanently clothed, and to be completely clothed. It is then likely that wealthy Arabs whose skin was marginally less black were not disadvantaged by their lower tolerance to the sun, because they were clothed. The result would have been that pale skin was seen as a sign of affluence. In a socially stratified society, the higher up the social scale, the more pale one's skin would be. This certainly is true of India today, and is true of mixed blood hispanic societies in Latin America and the Philippines.
It would follow that white skin would eventually be selectively favoured everywhere, on account of its association with wealth and class, but more so in Europe where the sun was less harmful to partially uncovered white skin than it was in the Middle East. Ultimately, it led to the view - held well beyond Europe - that the most beautiful people had white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes.
It also seems likely that the sensitivity to cold evolved - especially in Europe - because people in Europe wore clothes almost all of the time. The process will have been self-reinforcing, leading to the evolution of very pale skins in North-West Europe, quite different from the Mediterranean complexion.
People such as Inuit and Laps, who remained hunter/gatherers, did not develop the conditions for social stratification. Hence they did not develop a selective preference for white skin. So, while more sensitised to cold than the Tasmanians and Fuegans, they remained darker in complexion than those who lived in Germany and Britain.
Today, the preference in much of Asia and the Americas for white skin probably results in part from the colour of the skin of ethnic Europeans who just happen to have been economically dominant for several centuries. In India, however, the caste system is probably much more important than intermarriage with Europeans in perpetuating the unfortunate idea that white is best.
In New Zealand and Australia, more exposed than most to the thinning of the world's ozone layer, there can be no doubt that naturally dark skin is an advantage. Unlike the people of the Middle East, we don't like to be fully covered all the time. Also white skin is associated "Down Under" with "Mother England". Differentiation from England has been a part of the growing sense of nationhood in this part of the world.
Maybe western attitudes to modesty, the lack of any modern association between body coverage and wealth, a sociological advantage in favour of tanned skin (arising in England as a means of proving that one can afford to take a holiday abroad, and arising in New Zealand after World War 2 as a means of minimising the physical differences between the tanned men who served abroad [in North Africa and in Melanesia] and those who stayed in New Zealand), and the ozone thinning have set off a process in which human skin colour evolves back to its original black.
Such a process may take a long time though, especially while Indians - nearly 25% of the earth's population - continue to prefer partners with pale skin. But then, reproduction rates in the last century or so have often been higher among people of lower socio-economic status; for example the people of North-East Brazil who, in adulthood, migrate in large numbers to Sao Paulo. Thus, we can expect Brazilians to evolve darker skins, on average, despite a preference for spouses with pale skin.
It is almost certainly true that socio-economic factors have played an important role in the biological revolution of homo sapiens, and will continue to do so.
Impeachment Games and War Games
(20 December)Yesterday, American President Bill Clinton (a Democrat) was "impeached" by the US House of Representatives (the Congress). To survive as President he must now face a trial by the Senate. In the meantime, the bombing of Iraq is to be suspended, with the onset of Ramadan.
Both events are farcical. One brings the US constitution into disrepute, whereas the other exposes both the weaknesses of the United Nations and the short-sightedness of United States foreign policy.
The impeachment is the peculiarly partisan act of a parliament that was voted out in November. The new Congress, which will formally take over in the New Year, contains fewer Republicans and more Democrats. Normally there is a swing against the party of the president in mid-term elections. But, in a clear vote of support for the president, and against the Republicans who are more interested in power and personality than in principles, this time the swing was an endorsement of the president.
In an earlier commentary, I noted that having political power dispersed rather than concentrated in the hands of a single party was the essence of democracy and good government. I cited the United States as a country in which power has traditionally been more dispersed than in New Zealand. And I noted that Americans do not see their governance and economic prospects as being mortally compromised by "policy paralysis". I am however worried that the significantly increased partisanship in American politics is a bad portent for the democratic world.
President Clinton, a married man, has been discovered to have been having an "inappropriate" sexual liaison with a then unpaid member of the White House staff (Monica Lewinsky). He was caught as a result of the morally unprincipled act of a partisan Republican supporter (Linda Tripp) who befriended and then deceived Lewinsky. Furthermore, he was investigated by a partisan Republican prosecutor (Kenneth Starr) who seems to have enjoyed wallowing in the details of sexual impropriety while being bored with the financial allegations that he was meant to be investigating. In order to avoid the ensuring media circus, the President responded by way of an ambiguous denial; the sort of thing we are all tempted to do when faced with inconvenient distractions in our lives. Ambiguity is not perjury; it's politics, and its what lawyers practice all the time.
If there is political paralysis in New Zealand, then there is political paralysis tenfold in America. Yet the economy doesn't fall over.
The bigger worry is that Clinton may have ordered (with Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister) the bombing of Iraq in the last few days, not necessarily to postpone the impeachment hearing so that it might go before the newly elected Congress, but to simply show the world that he himself and American power are undiminished by the farce on Capitol Hill. The bombing is ostensibly in support of United Nations resolutions, but there has been no equivalent response to, for example, the repeated breech of United Nations resolutions by Israel.
One result is that the Republicans, who generally show no pacifist sensibility whatsoever, have decried the attack on Iraq. They are not the kinds of people who would be expected to be sensitive to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The less commented on flip-side is that some Democrats do have considerable sensitivity to the non-American peoples of the world; they do recognise that the world is not black and white, and populated solely by goodies and baddies. It may just be that some Democratic senators will be persuaded to "cross the floor" and convict Clinton, because of the Iraq bombing, and because of the perceptions that the timing of the Iraq bombing was related to events in Washington and not events in Baghdad. It could be the Democratic left and not the Republican right that seals Clinton's fate.
Whether the President survives or not, there is a much more serious implication of last week's war games. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has called upon his people to fight those who attack their sovereign nation by whatever means they can. Many young Iraqis can hardly remember a time in which the United States was not hostile to them, either by way of direct aggression or economic sanctions. They will not be able to make any sense of these events other than that the United States represents the "infidel"; that the US represents everything that is unjust and unholy.
Because of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq has no military capacity to directly oppose the bombings. So we don't need 20/20 vision to appreciate the increased risk of a new wave of international terrorism next century. Just as the victims of the attack on Iraq have been innocent civilians, so will be most of the victims of the Iraqi "utu" (revenge). It will be no use worrying about Saddam. These young Iraqis will have their own agenda of glory and martyrdom to uphold.
PS When, earlier this year, President Clinton said, in a public statement, that he "had not had sexual relations with that woman" and that "there is no sexual relationship" it seemed obvious to me that he was confessing to a past relationship that fell short of sexual intercourse. If we are to define the term "sexual relations" more broadly than sexual intercourse, then what are the limits to the definition of the term? A peck on the cheek?
It seems to me that there is a more serious problem; that of the inability of the media to understand political statements. Such statements, by any politician, on just about any topic, are expressed in a kind of political code; so are many official reports. Public servants excel at constructing coded language. It's a sort of ambiguity which enables at least two literal interpretations, but which experienced journalists should never be taken in by.
A classic example in New Zealand this year was Prime Minister Jenny Shipley's statement that she was considering an early election. That statement, an obvious warning to her then coalition partner, was taken at face value by our media, and seen as a sign of weakness on her part. It should be obvious to all of us now that she has never had any of intention of herself precipitating an early election. [back]
The Libertarian View of Children
(20 December)In a letter in The Listener (19 December) headed "Libertarian Low", Richard McGrath of Masterton not only seeks to justify Lindsay Perigo's caricature "Harry the Alliance Retard" (which denigrates both the left-of-centre Alliance party as well as the intellectually disabled), but reinforces the view that these peculiar extremists see no social value whatsoever in the reproduction of the human species. In this, the libertarians of the objectivist ring (of which Perigo is a silver member; see his Free Radical entry page) may be like another peculiar extremist group, the voluntary human extinction movement. They are certainly like nobody else.
McGrath says that people "have no right to expect the rest of us to pay for the consequences of their chosen lifestyles - such as bringing children, normal or disabled into the world". He says he is happy to pay taxes, but "only to finance defence, justice and law enforcement as the only legitimate functions of government".
This is a clear expression of the view that libertarians like McGrath would be happy to live in a closed population made up entirely of octogenarians (and older); ie they would not wish to pay anything to avert such a future. In such a society all of the means of life would have to be provided by the labour of people aged over 80. And it means that extreme libertarians have no interest in the continuation of humankind.
Furthermore, McGrath and his ilk, have no concern as to whether other people, including children and the disabled, die or live; and have no concern about the quality of the lives of children and the disabled. One of the most important forms of child abuse is neglect. McGrath sanctions neglect while upholding the "important belief held by libertarians that the initiation of force ... is morally unacceptable". It's OK to let a person starve, and it's OK to nuke others if you can claim that they threatened yourself or a third party, but it's not OK to interfere with a person or the property they claim to be theirs.
The simple truth is that libertarians are "free riders". They don't want to pay for many of the public goods that they consume, such as the investment in the generation that they know will support them in old age. Free riding is as much "fraud" as is the overclaiming of social welfare benefits.
Following their logic, libertarians such as McGrath must believe that all prospective parents (indeed all persons considering sexual intercourse), greedy for the consumption benefits of having children and/or of having a heterosexual sexual relationship (contraception is not 100% perfect, although homosexual sex may be regarded as a cost-free [ie child-free] alternative), should fully insure themselves against having disabled children, schizophrenic teenagers etc. (Men would have to pay higher premiums, because in the libertarian utopia, a woman who become pregnant would be able to avoid the cost of her actions by choosing to have an abortion, to give away her child, or to sell her child.)
They would say that couples who cannot privately afford all of the costs of raising children - including full education costs, full health costs, and full insurance against all forms of contingency including all known and unknown forms of child disability - should choose to not have children. That's no less than a recipe for human extinction preceded by a dismal society of desperately poor octogenarians.
Note: In his Craccum column "Of Tactics and Traitors" (28 August) Perigo writes of a "Labour/Alliance Retard coalition". "Harry the Alliance Retard" is apparently a "regular caller" to Perigo's Politically Incorrect Show on Radio Pacific (McGrath "Libertarian welfare", letters NZ Listener 31 October). [back]
On the Purpose and Autonomy of MPs
(19 December)Are our Members of Parliament autonomous representatives of the people, subject only to the judgement of voters at elections (ie not unofficial media polls), and to the law? Or are they delegates for the people of the local constituencies that they represent, meaning that they do no more than passively represent the majority views of their local constituents? Or are they foot soldiers in the service of the leaders of the respective political parties under whose banners they are elected? Under the latter scenario, democratic politics degenerates into a form of political chess, in which the only players are the party leaders.
We are having a political "crisis" in New Zealand because most New Zealanders have never really understood the principles of representative democracy, and secondary school social studies' curriculums don't give nearly enough attention to civics and to history. Media people, talkback participants and letter writers are all indignant because MPs are seen to be too autonomous, but have not been able to think through the consequences of making their representatives subject on a day-to-day basis to the command of others. Many people understood the introduction of MMP (proportional representation) as a means of controlling MPs who might otherwise have committed the sin of thinking for themselves.
The Bishop of Auckland, the Rt. Rev. John Paterson, was quoted by the NZ Herald ("Bishop puts hikoi back on the road", 18 December) as saying: "we contend that these [social] problems are answerable by politicians, because we elected them to make a better society". This view clearly expresses the view that we expect politicians - all politicians - to be thinking problem-solving individuals, and not simply messengers for their constituents or pawns of their parties.
Bishop Paterson takes a "Whiggish" view, in that he sees social progress as the purpose of representative government. There is a slight danger here, in that we can infer from his words that a democratic parliament is a luxury in a society that is content to stay as it is; a society that values stability over change.
I would thus add to the Bishop's view. Our MPs are elected as autonomous representatives to protect what we have (eg assets and institutions) that we value, as well as to promote progressive change. Progress means asset-building, law-making and other changes that improve those institutions that we do value, and that diminish the institutions that we do not value. And it means sustainable economic growth.
While only some MPs can fulfil these protective and progressive roles as a part of "government", all MPs are required to play a constructive role with the same ends in mind. MPs cannot do this job if they are expected to just play "follow the party leader", or to just be messengers on behalf of their constituents. MPs are constitutionally autonomous, and must remain so.
Worrying concerns about Labour's fiscal policy stance
(10 December)On Morning Report this morning (December 10) the Leader of the opposition Labour Party, Helen Clark, said that if we had not had the tax cuts this year and in 1996, then we would have a fiscal surplus today.
This is actually a very worrying statement, because it implies that a Labour led government wants to adopt a more deflationary (ie contractionary) fiscal policy than does the present National minority government. This would suggest that we will have significantly more unemployment under Labour than under National.
The conventional wisdom of economists (repeated a number of times in recent weeks by National Bank chief economist Brendan O'Donovan) is that a neutral medium-long term fiscal policy requires budget surpluses in years of strong economic growth and budget deficits in years of recession. Furthermore, conventional macroeconomics suggests that it is appropriate to run an expansionary fiscal policy (meaning that, if the stance was to be maintained, the years of deficit would outnumber the years of surplus) in order to recover from a prolonged recession.
In 1996, just after the peak of the economic cycle, Labour offered an expansionary fiscal policy. In 1998, in the midst of a potentially intransigent recession, Labour wants to tighten fiscal policy. It makes little sense.
I agree that the tax cuts of 1998 and 1996, in taking the form they did, favour those on higher incomes. But opposing the tax cuts on those grounds is quite different from opposing the tax cuts because they represented a departure from tight fiscal policy.
It is not too late to re-jiggle those tax cuts, to convert them into proper social dividends, and not just the "social dividend of sorts" anticipated in 1995 by Independent editor Warren Berryman (see note 11 of my "A New Fiscal Contract? Constructing a Universal Basic Income and a Social Wage" published in issue 9 - November 1997 - of the Social Policy Journal of New Zealand).
(8 December)
When Independent MP Deborah Morris formally resigns from Parliament later this month (see "A New Style of Government in 1999?"), she will be replaced by a new MP from her former party (NZ First). Thus a government supporting MP will be replaced by a government-opposing MP. (It would be interesting if another one or two ex NZ First MPs - eg Peter McCardle? - resign. Any further replacement MPs might have only one duty - to vote themselves out of a job via a vote of no-confidence.)
I think that the rule should be changed. When people leave their parties mid-term, there are three broadly different scenarios:
So how should replacements be determined?
If we were to come up with a simple set of rules for replacing list MPs who resign or die, I suggest the following:
There is a simpler alternative: list MPs would not be replaced at all. Proportional Representation is not about exact proportions; its about effective representative government. When electorate MPs resign or die, there is a considerable likelihood that the new MP will be of a different party. That may reflect changes in the political climate since the general election, or it may not. (A by-election in my own electorate of Maungakiekie might be something of a lottery, with the winner getting significantly less than 50% of the vote, as in the general election.) We accept a small loss of election day proportionality in that situation. I cannot see why we cannot accept a similar loss when a list MP departs.
Gareth Morgan on the virtues of Political Paralysis
(8 December)Economist and Columnist Gareth Morgan has a greater ability than most to argue for contradictory positions within a short space of time if not simultaneously. On 27 October he argued against a small increase in the graduation of the New Zealand income tax scale, and then a few weeks later extolled the virtue of the considerably more graduated tax scale due to be implemented in Australia in 1999 (see my "Lies, Half-Truths, and Statistics").
On 6 October, Morgan simultaneously argued for getting rid of "middle-class benefits" and more "tax cuts" that happen to be the equivalent of middle-class benefits (see my "Paying Benefits to the Middle Classes").
In his latest effort "Curbing the Cost of Representative Democracy" (publish in today's NZ Herald as "More ways than one to curb political influence"), Morgan argues for "checks and balances" - in effect the "policy paralysis" that he opposed on 29 September - to stop "some well-meaning ignoramus from doing too much damage during five minutes at the wheel of power" (see my "Gareth Morgan (Economist): a Boon to the Left?").
We introduced proportional representation (MMP) to our single chamber parliament in 1996 in order to provide the checks and balances that Morgan explicitly argues for. No longer can people like Sir Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson run rampant through our nation.
Morgan, however, clearly sees MMP as a part of the problem. He has in mind, I believe, people like Tau Henare - or even Winston Peters - as people who should be stemmed. Interestingly, their policy contributions have been restrained though constructive. The rampagers in this Parliament are people like John Luxton and Maurice Williamson. Their wings have been clipped by the checks and balances implicit in representative democracy.
Morgan, however, sees representative democracy as the problem. His solutions are essentially means through which a non-elected elite can suppress popular initiatives. He likes the House of Lords in Great Britain. I suspect he doesn't really like the Australian Senate, which is more representative and less right-wing than the Australian House of Representatives.
Morgan particularly likes the 1989 Reserve Bank Act and the 1994 Fiscal Responsibility Act, because they take power away from elected representatives, and confer more power on Reserve Bank and Treasury technocrats.
In short Gareth Morgan wants more policy paralysis if it arises from technocratic conservatism dampening the impact of leftish governments, but he wants fewer checks and balances of the democratic sort that arise when parliament overrides or slows down a rampaging new right government.
© 1998 Keith Rankin