SOMETHING BROKE in the big city suburbs, provincial towns and rural hamlets when Norman Kirk cancelled the 1973 Springbok Tour. Before the announcement, most conservative New Zealanders had regarded groups like HART and CARE as noisy irritants. Good for a headline, or an item at the top of the six o’clock news, but otherwise not to be taken seriously. They’d been buoyed by the outcome of the 1972 US presidential election, where the great silent majority of Americans had decisively rejected the Left’s peace candidate, George McGovern, in favour of President Richard Nixon. After all the turmoil of the previous four years, it was reassuring to know that people like themselves were still the ones in charge not long-haired agitators with walrus moustaches. But then Kirk cancelled the Tour and something broke.
Rob Muldoon heard it break and knew instinctively that if only he could manoeuvre himself into becoming Leader of the Opposition, then New Zealand was his for the taking. Not even Big Norm would be able to stop him not after cancelling the Tour. As things turned out he didn’t even have to try: the big man’s too-big heart made it easy for him.
Three weeks after the Christchurch Mosque Shootings, and in the context of rising speculation about Labour engineering a snap election, it is time to ponder two critical questions.
The first is about the government’s response to the shootings. Praise for Jacinda’s handling of the Christchurch tragedy has echoed across New Zealand and around the world. No mainstream journalist or commentator has dared to suggest that there may be some Kiwis perhaps quite a lot of Kiwis who did not find the
Considerable dismay has been expressed by ‘progressive’ New Zealanders at the angry reaction of military veterans to the Titahi Bay RSA’s plan for a Muslim cleric to conclude the annual Anzac Day ceremony with an Islamic blessing. How much greater would the dismay of those progressives be, were they to discover how far that anger extends beyond the ranks of the veterans.
In the eyes of these progressive New Zealanders, the idea of including the Muslim community in Anzac Day commemorations is entirely appropriate. After all, the people in the Anzacs rifle sights were Muslim Turks; and we killed many more of them than they did of us.
For conservative Kiwis, however, the inclusion of an Islamic blessing in the liturgy of Anzac Day (in many important respects this increasingly secular nation’s sole remaining ‘holy’ day) represents the last straw. Is there nothing now that we can claim as ours, and ours alone, they are demanding to know. Renaming the Crusaders is crazy enough, but messing about with Anzac Day takes crazy to a whole new level!
That, then, is the first question: has the official reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings caused something to break in the political fidelity of those New Zealanders not invited to signal their virtue on Wallace Chapman’s The Panel, or Jessie Mulligan’s The Project?
The second question, of course, is: Can Simon Bridges fix it?
To which the obvious first reply is: Well, he sure as hell isn’t a Rob Muldoon!
And that is National’s problem. To take on the powerful consensus which is rapidly forming around the prime minister’s and her government’s response to the Christchurch tragedy requires a leader in possession of what Liam Neeson’s character in the movie Taken refers to as a very particular set of skills. To date, however, there is scant evidence that Bridges possesses any of them.
No special skill was required to perceive that any attempt to hold the line against gun control would simply have provided the electorate with the unedifying spectacle of National getting kicked around the floor of the House of Representatives. That ground simply had to be surrendered and it was.
Having retreated in good order, Bridges next task is to establish a rock-solid line of defence against any attempt to give effect to the legislative programme being urged upon the prime minister by everyone from the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt, to the Co-leader of the Greens, Marama Davidson, and her party’s Justice spokesperson, Golriz Ghahraman. There is, however, considerable doubt on the right of New Zealand politics that Bridges has what it takes to hold that line.
An effective defence of liberal democratic values requires at least one of two crucial qualities. The first is gravitas. A leader able to project wisdom and serious intent is an invaluable asset to any conservative party. If that same leader is also able to convey a sense of hidden strength menace even then so much the better. Is National’s current leader in possession of either of these qualities? Does Simon Bridges possess gravitas and/or menace? Not really, but then, does anyone in the present National caucus possess them?
A case could be made for Judith Collins being a strong contender in the menace stakes. But gravitas? It’s not a word that generally springs to mind when Collins’ name is mentioned.
Then again, perhaps gravitas is not what the angry and alienated Right are looking for. Perhaps menace alone will be enough. In the months between Muldoon’s successful bid for the National Party leadership and the landslide election of November 1975, the sense among conservative New Zealanders that only Rob had what it took to fix what Kirk and Labour had broken was palpable. That many of those conservative Kiwis had voted Labour in 1972 only made a National victory more certain.
Progressive New Zealand never saw it coming: had no conception that a 23-seat majority could be swept away in the space of a single term. They simply had not registered the sudden and violent sundering of New Zealand society which the Left’s policies had set in motion, nor that this shifting ground was about to leave its progressive political forces dangerously isolated and exposed. Unaware that they had damaged anything, they were oblivious to the urgency of conservative voters desire to see their country repaired.
The 2020 General Election will, similarly, turn on what New Zealanders believe to have been broken on 15 March 2019, and who they most trust to fix it.