The "populist" cat-call is being used a lot these days. Its often heard in the context of the US President. Now former NZ National Party Minister for Treaty Negotiations Chris Finlayson has written an article in the UK's Guardian newspaper called, "New Zealand’s divisive Treaty Principles Bill has been Defeated - but the Fight against Populism isn’t over". He states ACT is "adopting increasingly populist policies" and "One can only hope [the National Party] starts asserting itself over its populist smaller partners". What Garbage. Shame on Finlayson for wrongly characterizing NZ politics. What's he playing at?
Seems he wants to associate ACT's Leader with being Trump-like, arguing Seymour is playing dirty politics to gain votes, but which could lead to NZ's ruin. The word "populism" conjures up awful images, because the most notorious politician ever branded "populist" was of course Germany's Nazi Party boss during World War 2. What made him populist? The Fuhrer ran a dishonest line that working class Germans bought into - namely that Germany had actually won World War I, but been mortally betrayed by an elite group of disloyal traitors, many of them communists and Jews, who'd engineered a humiliating surrender of the nation for their own benefit.
What does "populism" actually mean? An old Argentinian friend of mine, called Rafael Di Tella, at the IVY league US university Trump wants to defund, has spent years writing on it. We've had many chats about the topic. One of his articles quotes former UK Justice Minister Michael Gove, who said "The people in this country have had enough of experts" when asked to name a single independent economic authority that thought Brexit was a good idea. Di Tella writes, "The precise meaning of populism varies, but standard elements include nationalism, redistributive politics & emotional speeches". Populist leaders often campaign on how a powerful elite group has taken over, running the country for themselves & their mates, selling out the national interest.
What does "populism" actually mean? An old Argentinian friend of mine, called Rafael Di Tella, at the IVY league US university Trump wants to defund, has spent years writing on it. We've had many chats about the topic. One of his articles quotes former UK Justice Minister Michael Gove, who said "The people in this country have had enough of experts" when asked to name a single independent economic authority that thought Brexit was a good idea. Di Tella writes, "The precise meaning of populism varies, but standard elements include nationalism, redistributive politics & emotional speeches". Populist leaders often campaign on how a powerful elite group has taken over, running the country for themselves & their mates, selling out the national interest.
In Europe, it gained traction again since the European Commission, populated by folks who speak many languages & often come from posh backgrounds, long welcomed more internationalism. For them it meant skiing in Italy, swimming on the French Riviera, waltzing in Vienna, tasting gourmet foods and Wimbledon for tennis in London. They welcomed mass immigration, even when illegal. They weren't affected by it.
In Britain, the Commission's arrogance fueled Brexit. Working-class folk, especially in the North, never embraced these wonders of the EU.
Meanwhile, in blue collar Allentown in America, similar feelings of anger against the likes of President Barack Obama, who went to Yale Law School, President Bill Clinton, who went to Yale, Hillary Clinton, who went to Yale, and George W. Bush who went to Yale, rose. That anger, fed by the trillion $ bailout of Wall Street during the Global Financial Crisis, led to Trump's victory.
So should the ACT Party be called "populist"? Does it meet the criteria?
So should the ACT Party be called "populist"? Does it meet the criteria?
I know ACT well, including its founder Sir Roger Douglas, and all its leaders over the years. Folks like Richard Prebble, Don Brash, and Banksy. Without a doubt, ACT has not one shred of "populism" in its DNA. Indeed, its' problem over the years, as Roger will tell you, has been to pursue causes its leaders held deep convictions about, yet which initially proved unpopular at the ballot box.
Even now, Roger is subject to unpleasant (yes "populist") attacks by three former Labour Prime Ministers - Ardern, Clark and Hipkins. They've all tried to promote the untruth that ACT, far from being populist, was itself part of an elite wanting to sell out NZ and have it carved up by overseas investors and rich people. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The entire point of ACT's foundation was to ensure that capture of NZ by a group of disloyal elitists would never happen. That was the basis for the reforms starting in 1984. Farmers, who once did have the inside track in Wellington, had subsidies cut to zero. Import licenses, that had been a license to print money, were rendered worthless by opening up to foreign competition. ACT was formed to stop entrenched interests being created. It was formed to eliminate "privilege". It still stands for that ideal. Seymour's Treaty Principles Bill had nothing to do with populist politics. It was simply a continuation of ACT's founding principle that no person or group in society should receive special privileges.
As for ACT disdaining competent technical experts (lots are talking about tariffs now) which is a key feature of populism, it is the NZ party most respective of experts, by a million miles. Sir Roger and I have even written articles together. Yes, ACT's founder teamed up with an academic. Our articles are about removing privileges that still exist, one of which is enjoyed by children from wealthy families who go to University here without barely paying anything. We show how stopping this tax-payer rort would enable NZ to establish a far higher quality health-care & retirement system for all.
As for ACT disdaining competent technical experts (lots are talking about tariffs now) which is a key feature of populism, it is the NZ party most respective of experts, by a million miles. Sir Roger and I have even written articles together. Yes, ACT's founder teamed up with an academic. Our articles are about removing privileges that still exist, one of which is enjoyed by children from wealthy families who go to University here without barely paying anything. We show how stopping this tax-payer rort would enable NZ to establish a far higher quality health-care & retirement system for all.
ACT Leader Seymour admirably got Dr Parmjeet Palmer back into Parliament after she was shafted by National, a Party frightened of anyone with a degree higher than a BCom. Parmjeet has a PhD in neuro-science. Former ACT President Jamie Whyte is a philosopher with a PhD from Cambridge University. Seymour and his Deputy, Brooke Van Velden, are both highly qualified. They love experts. They're overly nerdy, as politicians go. Seymour's Department of Regulation is about implementing technical, much-admired-by-experts, Cost Benefit Analyses on rules in NZ, not dismissing them out-of-hand like seems to be happening in the US these days. Sources tell me Brooke always sat in the front row of her Auckland University classes.
Do Seymour, Van Velden and ACT's MPs reflect Di Tella's key attributes of populists ("nationalism, redistributive politics and emotional speeches")? Not one of them. They hate redistribution of wealth. As for nationalism, my worry is the likes of Brash are keener on China's interests than NZ's. On emotional speeches, we probably all wish Seymour and Van Velden did at least one. What garbage for National's former Treaty Minister Finlayson to cat-call ACT as being "populist".
Professor Robert MacCulloch holds the Matthew S. Abel Chair of Macroeconomics at Auckland University. He has previously worked at the Reserve Bank, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He runs the blog Down to Earth Kiwi from where this article was sourced.
13 comments:
Chris Finlayson - the smartest man in the room because no-one can stand being anywhere near him.
I once sat at a dinner party to which Finlayson had been invited in an effort to garner support for the group I belonged to. He expressed strong anti-semitic views which I suppose his denomination would also have supported, but I was still shocked and wish to this day I had a record of the conversation. That and his waspish views on all matters political and social make him a dangerous man.
Finlayson proved himself to be a selfish, deceitful person by, first, dishing up fake claims of breaches of the Treaty vy the government and then becoming part of the government under Key who secretly had UNDRIP signed by Sharples. Thwse three should have been sent to a penal colony on White Island. Treacherous persons, one and all.
Finlayson represents Ngai Tahu in their latest High Court claim for South Island water . This claim is indescribable for the arrogance .
What were Finlayson's "antisemitic views" Allen? I don't like Finlayson at all, but the bar for "antisemitic views" is so low I'd be interested to see what you consider fits into that category.
I disagree about Dr Parmar. She may have a doctorate, but she regularly does beat-ups about Auckland Uni - specifically about spaces for Maori and Pacifica students, and more recently about the compulsory first-year course. What is striking about the former beat-up was that in the responses I saw, the people who'd been to uni weren't fussed about the spaces but most others carried on about how terribly apartheid-like they were. She pitches her stuff at The Platform as well, where the commenters easily get riled up about unis being sources of evil indoctrination, without conveying any sense of university knowledge or experience, That is, Parmar may have a PhD, but she quite deliberately embraces a populist rhetoric and audience. I think Seymour is much the same: it's the rhetoric and the audience, not the qualifications or nerdiness.
Garbage has its own voice!
“That man” has been undermining New Zealand since 1991, when he started representing Ngati Tahu in their fraudulent treaty claims, using the “fake versions” of the TOW to extract ongoing settlements for them, which then opened the floodgates for the $billion Iwi rort of all rorts to commence in earnest.
What is “this man” involved in now… why, representing Ngāi Tahu in its freshwater case against the Crown in the High Court in 2025, and advising Te Pāti Māori MPs on their Privileges Committee summons in 2025.
Of course he is.
"The Fuhrer ran a dishonest line that working class Germans bought into - namely that Germany had actually won World War I, but been mortally betrayed by an elite group of disloyal traitors, many of them communists and Jews, who'd engineered a humiliating surrender of the nation for their own benefit."
As a slight aside, how is any of this false? If we are to be thinking adults, we need to think about things critically, particularly events like WW1 & 2 and the nature of the mid-20th century German regime and why it came about.
While Germany may not have "won" WW1 (because they agreed to surrender, even though the allies had never entered Germany, never expecting to be made to accept full responsibility and to be hit with crippling reparations and land confiscations - which only a fool wouldn't have foreseen would sow the seeds for part 2 a few years later), the easily verifiable facts,
Germans were betrayed by their elites who signed up the Treaty of Versailles for the above reasons; many of these people were in fact Jewish (particularly Jewish financiers who benefitted greatly), and the communist movements post 1918 in Europe supported Germanies' kneecapping at Versaille (after all, they wanted to destroy the existing order themselves) were disproportionately Jewish in membership and leadership (for example, Béla Kun in Hungary, Trotsky in Russia, Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, and so on).
Sure, Hitler was a "populist" in that, despite the currently favoured pop-history notion that he somehow tricked the Germans into making him extremely popular, and he was also very popular because he turned Germany around and built it back up in a very short space of time.
Then, as now, it is quite obvious that a "populist" politician is seen as an extreme threat to entrenched interests who have their own agenda quite distinct from the interests of the average person.
Good to see where the Key government stood in regard to race issues.
Hmmm…betrayed by an elite group of disloyal traitors eh? Why does that phrase resonate? And are these ACT pollies the same ones who can’t describe what a woman is? Ah well, I suppose we only get the Govt we deserve. At least, they are probably better than TPM.
Finlayson helped National push through laws which referred to ToW “principles” but deliberately left them undefined.
Then he watched as judges, academics and radicals took miles where inches were at first given.
As an example, first Ngapuhi claimed they never ceded sovereignty. That soon morphed into all Maori never ceded sovereignty.
Now Finlayson is cashing in with taxpayer-funded legal fees, representing iwi and trying to win further toe-holds based on the “principles” he and other National traitors deliberately left undefined and open to interpretation by the likes of him.
We can see what your game is Finlayson, Graham, Key - and now Luxon.
We will remember it, especially in November next year.
Reply to Madame Blavatsky: It was many years ago and the exact comments I cannot recall, but along the lines of the Jews being a pain in the posterior. You can draw your own conclusion if that is anti-semitic, or not. Either way, I am a liberal man, but his comments were enough for me to draw the conclusion I did. Given the nasty piece of work he is I wouldn't give him any leeway, no matter what level of opprobrium he threw at any ethnic group, excluding maoris who seem immune from his criticism.
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