First, some good news. Zohran Mamdani has won the mayoral race in New York and as the prophet Leonard Cohen once said, taking Manhattan is just the start. More than anything, Mamdani is providing leadership to New Yorkers, and especially to his generation. To people who are racially, socially and religiously diverse, Mamdani is also a shining light at a time when ICE and the National Guard are running amok across the nation. (Yet even on the eve of Mamdani’s victory, Democratic Party boss Chuck Schumer was still declining to endorse him!)
Right throughout his year of campaigning, Mamdani has offered a positive alternative to the politics of fear, hatred and division. As a Muslim and as the child of immigrants, he embodies the city’s traditional strength in diversity. By embracing that diversity Mamdani has – inevitably – came under attack from the demagogue in the White House, who will pull all the levers of federal power to try and nullify him.
In short, Mamdani offers hope, and he has the policies to bring that hope closer to reality for the working class citizens of the city. In addition to his progressive policies on free public transport and early childcare, the most substantive change may prove to be his promise to cease treating homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness as policing issues – and treat them instead as community mental health issues. He has pledged to provide the funds and resources that this change will require.
At a time here when we’re kicking people out of emergency housing into the street, and then removing their unsightly presence from the CBD, New Zealand has a lot to learn from Mamdani’s approach. Below, I’ve linked to his 20 minute victory speech. There’s a lot in it that feel relevant.
Like New Yorkers, we face bullying incompetence on the centre right, and a calculating timidity on the centre left that, in the end, has been almost as harmful to our sense of what is politically possible. There is an alternative path. Zohran Mamdani has just shown that a fearless, progressive politics that dares to speak its name out loud and proud, can win elections.
Footnote One: Democrats also won governorships in Virginia and New Jersey by double digit margins, while in a personal victory for Gavin Newsom, California voters heavily endorsed a ballot initiative aimed at countering the Republican efforts to rig the boundaries of congressional seats, and thereby skew the midterm election results next year. That battle is ongoing.
Footnote Two: As for Donald Trump’s own poll ratings, the negative perceptions of him are currently running 13 points ahead of the dwindling number of Americans who approve of the job he’s doing. In the next presidential contest in 2028, much will depend on the candidate selection process, something the Democratic Party is prone to bungle.
Even in 2008, Barack Obama had to wrest the mantle from the party leadership’s choice, Hillary Clinton. Undaunted, the same leadership elite picked her again in 2016, failed to remove Joe Biden early enough, and then chose the widely unloved Kamala Harris. So let’s celebrate Zohran Mamdani’s victory while we can. Here he is, on the night:
Failing upwards
With election year just around the corner, it is only right and proper that the government should be being held to account on what it has failed to deliver. If the Luxon administration’s handling of the economy was a school exam, the principal would be calling in the parents of Nicola Willis, making a case for remedial teaching, and writing “Nicola is not fulfilling her potential” all over her report card.
Meanwhile, unemployment has just hit a nine year high, and young people are bearing the brunt of it, with youth unemployment running at 15%. No wonder those who can afford a plane ticket are leaving in droves to build a better life elsewhere. Even if the long-awaited cuckoo of recovery does finally sing its song next year, the job numbers, as the bank economists so soporifically say, will continue to “lag.” These days, recovery is a luxury import.
Failure flies on two wings
Meanwhile, the wolves of the cost of living crisis are still at the door. The marker dominance of the banking cartel and the supermarket duopoly have been left untouched. Far less attention though, has been given to what has been taken away. Routinely, all three coalition parties rail against Big Government. It is part of their political DNA. In reality however, the centralised power of the corporate state has vastly increased under this government.
Cumulatively, it means that New Zealand is being systematically transformed into a less democratic country. The recent changes to an already lopsided fast track legislative process will significantly undermine the ability of individuals, NGOs, iwi and communities to have any significant input into corporate decisions that affect our neighbourhoods, and the environment we live in.
The details of the fast track changes are available here, courtesy of the Environmental Defence Society. The supposed guardrails are being lowered. There will be further restrictions placed on who the expert panels can invite to comment. The period allowed for objections is being reduced. Rights of appeal are also being reduced. Ministerial power to over-ride objections is being increased. As the EDS says, the government is taking upon itself ( and away from the courts) the power to determine what “ a significant regional or national interest” will mean in practice.
This would influence which projects are referred to panels, and panels’ decisions. “It could transform the test from something capable of being objectively tested in the courts to something that Ministers could determine themselves. For example, it might see large mines sail through the process more easily, despite having very little benefit for the people of New Zealand and carrying significant environmental risks.
“The Bill would also allow the Minister to approve ‘modifications’ to projects after they are referred to a panel. That could encourage applicants to submit smaller, more palatable proposals initially, and then expand them later on, without having to go through the same hurdles as the initial referral process. The Minister would only have to be satisfied that the project ‘still had significant national or regional benefits’.
Moreover :
“The Bill would also allow applicants to complain about the ‘suitability’ of panel members if they feel a member is not impartial. ‘Panel-shopping’ is completely inappropriate. Applicants should have no influence over panel appointments. This could easily be abused to side-line panelists who are perceived as too expert, rigorous or environmentally minded.
All up, there could hardly be a clearer example of the merger of state and corporate power, for the commercial benefit of the few. Via the fast track process, power is being far more centralised, at the direct expense of individual and community rights.
Stealing the vote
Here’s another example. One of the blessings of our voting system has been the fact that anywhere in the country, people have been able to register on election day to vote, cast a special vote and thereby have their democratic voice heard, regardless of how far away on election day they may be from the electorate in which they normally reside.
Friends from the UK have remarked to me about how incredibly efficient, inclusive and democratic we are in this respect, compared to their own benighted system. Not any more, though. National has a bill in the House that will terminate the ability of New Zealanders to enrol and cast their vote on election day, or even to enrol during the week leading up to it. Keep in mind that this is the period when many people finally focus on the election, and on their part in it. For no valid reason, the National Party is planning to disenfranchise tens of thousands of New Zealanders.
According to the Electoral Amendment Bill people will in future, have to be registered 12 days beforehand, and still be residing at that address come election day. By doing so, the Luxon government is seeking to adopt some of the worst, least democratic features of the UK system. In the UK, Tories have tended to be the main beneficiaries of placing obstacles in the path of the public’s ability to register to vote.
Staggering numbers of New Zealanders stand to be affected by this over-reach of state power. During the 12 day period prior to election Day in in 2023, 450,000 people either enrolled to vote and/or changed their residential details. 110,000 people enrolled to vote on election day itself.
As one submitter on the Bill has pointed out, politicians should not get to choose the voters: it’s supposed to be the other way around. The government’s bogus rationale for the change is that it currently takes an extra week to verify and count the special votes. There are two obvious rejoinders to that claim (a) fund the resources to do it quicker and (b) so what? To the voting public, taking an extra week to count the votes is utterly insignificant compared to the unlimited weeks and weeks that the political parties give themselves to hammer out their coalition alliances and agreements.
This is a ram raid on democracy by the centre right, pure and simple – and it is being carried out by the same politicians who profess to be champions of the rights of the individual.
Footnote: In any debate on the expansion of state power, the elephant in the room has been the sustained onslaught on the Treaty of Waitangi – which this government plainly regards as an obstacle, rather than a treasure.
The Luxon administration seems to be totally opposed to the concept of partnership that the Treaty entails. That explains why the power of the Crown to rule unhindered by any obligations to Māori is continuing to expand into all areas of state activity – by deleting references to the Treaty from legislation, by exempting school boards from recognising Treaty obligations, by reducing te reo within classroom texts, by changing the curriculum to minimise teaching about the impact of colonisation, by reducing the ability of Māori to exercise the customary rights they hold as the country’s indigenous people, by scrapping the Māori Health Authority that was our last, best chance of addressing the glaring gaps in Māori health needs and life expectancy etc etc.
Unfortunately, the Treaty’s fundamental vision of a multicultural future for this country (based on a bi-cultural foundation) seems to be anathema to this government and to its core supporters. The corporate state that they serve demands to be enabled to exercise its power, unchallenged.