Plainly, age had not mellowed the ability of Winston Peters to take offence on grounds not visible to ordinary mortals. Yesterday, Peters felt so miffed by an imaginary slight that he delivered a public dressing down to Reserve Bank governor Anna Breman.
Breman’s alleged sin? Along with many other leading central bank governors around the world, she had signed a joint letter (a) in support of the principle that central banking should be free from political interference and (b) in solidarity with the beleaguered US Federal Reserve governor Jerome Powell. Here’s what the offending letter had said :
We stand in full solidarity with the Federal Reserve System and its Chair Jerome H. Powell. The independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability in the interest of the citizens that we serve. It is therefore critical to preserve that independence, with full respect for the rule of law and democratic accountability. Chair Powell has served with integrity, focused on his mandate and an unwavering commitment to the public interest. To us, he is a respected colleague who is held in the highest regard by all who have worked with him.
Powell has been targeted with what are (literally) trumped-up criminal charges. Powell has earned US President Donald Trump’s displeasure by running monetary policy in line with his job description. However, Trump has long wanted Powell to juice the US economy in ways meant to benefit the Republicans in this year’s midterm elections.
Here’s the gist of what Peters said yesterday:
“We remind the Governor to stay in her New Zealand lane and stick to domestic monetary policy. That would have been the advice of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade if the Governor had sought its advice, which it did not.”
Really? Evidently, Peters is happy to politically interfere with how Breman does her job. To be clear: it is her job to defend the principle that central bankers should be left to do their work free from political interference. Bremam does not need to ask Peters for permission to protect that principle when it comes under attack, here or abroad. The political independence of the US Federal Reserve is crucial to the well-being of the global economic system. A conspicuous failure to defend it would inevitably erode the principle of central bank independence here at home.
Moreover, on principle, Breman should not be forced to seek Peters’ permission before she speaks in solidarity with her overseas colleagues in defence of the freedoms essential for them all to do to their jobs. This would be an absurd intrusion on her own independence. When the world’s central bankers hold their annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming later this year, does this mean the RBNZ governor will now have to read from a script that’s been vetted by Peters?
Peters should be asking himself this: why were the signatories in other, more mature democracies able to sign that letter freely, without being chastised by politicians for doing so? Take a look at the list of people who signed it:
Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank on behalf of the ECB Governing Council
Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England
Erik Thedéen, Governor of Sveriges Riksbank
Christian Kettel Thomsen, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Danmarks Nationalbank
Martin Schlegel, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank
Ida Wolden Bache, Governor of Norges Bank
Michele Bullock, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia
Tiff Macklem, Governor of the Bank of Canada
Chang Yong Rhee, Governor of the Bank of Korea
Gabriel Galípolo, Governor of the Banco Central do Brasil
Lesetja Kganyago, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank
François Villeroy de Galhau, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements
Pablo Hernández de Cos, General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements
Why is it only New Zealand that has chosen to chastise its central bank governor for taking this stand? Why is New Zealand the only country to so openly cringe at the thought of Trump’s displeasure? According to Peters, MFAT would have told Bremam to keep her mouth shut. So much for New Zealand protecting the international norms and conventions around central bank independence.
Like so many other international norms, MFAT – under this Foreign Minister at least – is being guided by the over-riding “principle” of not doing anything that might conceivably offend the Emperor of Washington. Get in straight, Anna Bremam. You’re new here, and maybe you don’t know the ropes. The prevailing rule here is that no New Zealand politician, and no appointed official may say or do anything that might conceivably incur the displeasure of the current ruler of the United States. That also means: we will not defend any international law or convention that Donald Trump has chosen to break.
If, say, the US launches repeated attacks on merchant shipping in international waters that murder over 115 civilians, or if it kidnaps the leader of a UN member nation and steals that country’s natural resources in clear violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter…then hey, MFAT can be relied on to keep New Zealand’s mouth shut about all that as well. Thus, Winston Peters doth make cowards of us all.
Addled in Adelaide
The collapse of the Adelaide Writers Festival is the latest example of the hash that Australia is making of striking a balance between free speech and deterring antisemitism. The cancellation of the speaking invitation extended to Palestinian-Australian writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah may have been the immediate reason why so many other invited writers – including Jacinda Ardern – withdrew in protest. Yet that was only the outcome, not the cause. The issue had been festering for months.
As diligent reporting by the Crikey website has made clear , Abdel-Fattah’s inclusion on the festival programme was being challenged long before the Bondi massacre, and well before any Jewish community organisations chimed in to object to her presence. Adelaide could hardly claim it didn’t see the risk it would be running if it tried to censor its invited speakers.
In mid-August for instance, the Bendigo Writers Festival had damaged itself by trying to impose “a code of conduct” that aimed to restrict the ability of participants to speak critically about Israel’s actions in Gaza. Some 50 writers (including Abdel-Fattah) withdrew in protest.
To her credit, Louise Adler the director of the wider Adelaide Festival ( that oversees the Writers Festival) advised her board in September of the invitation that had been extended to Abdel-Fattah. Shortly afterwards, Tony Berg, a wealthy businessman, philanthropist and governor of the Australian Israel Chamber of Commerce, resigned in protest via an October 22 letter that declared: “I cannot serve on a board which employs a director…who programs writers who have a vendetta against Israel and Zionism.” Berg also claimed that other writers programmed by Adler in earlier festivals were “regarded as antisemitic.”
The newly composed festival board – while nominally supportive of Adler in the meantime, also set up a sub-committee to “guide” Writers Week decisions in the short and long term, and to engage with “relevant government agencies” and “external exports.” Reportedly, South Australian premier Peter Malinauskas repeatedly communicated to the board his opposition to the speaking invitation extended to Abdel-Fattah.
On January 8, the board announced its decision to un-invite Abdel-Fattah. As Crikey reported, Bondi became the convenient topical rationale for a decision that had been months in the making. As the board put it: “While we do not suggest in any way that Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah or her writings has any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, but given her past statements we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time, so soon after Bondi.” Those disqualifying “past statements” were left unspecified. Crikey, again:
This reference to Bondi would seem a convenient, even opportunistic justification to “solve” a problem that had been a running sore at the festival since September. Abdel-Fattah called it a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship, and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre.”
Abdel-Fattah’s fuller, eloquent response to the board can be found here. Predictably, the board’s action in un-inviting her was publicly applauded by Malinauskas, who then blamed the subsequent cascade of writer withdrawals and eventual collapse of the writers festival entirely on the board, which had buckled to the political pressure he appears s to have been a key figure in applying.
Louise Adler then resigned as director of the wider Adelaide Arts Festival and on her way out, wrote a ringing defence of free speech in the Guardian that began:
The Adelaide festival board’s decision – despite my strongest opposition – to disinvite the Australian Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide writers’ week weakens freedom of speech and is the harbinger of a less free nation, where lobbying and political pressure determine who gets to speak and who doesn’t.
In the aftermath of the Bondi atrocity, state and federal governments have rushed to mollify the “we told you so” posse. With alarming insouciance protests are being outlawed, free speech is being constrained and politicians are rushing through processes to ban phrases and slogans.
Now religious leaders are to be policed, universities monitored, the public broadcaster scrutinised and the arts starved. Are you or have you ever been a critic of Israel? Joe McCarthy would be cheering on the inheritors of his tactics.
And furthermore, Adler wrote :
The raison d’être of art and literature is to disrupt the status quo: and one doesn’t have to be a student of history to know that art in the service of “social cohesion” is propaganda.
The arts have allegedly become “unsafe” and artists are a danger to the community’s psycho-social well-being. But, let’s be quite clear, the routine invocation of “safety” is code for “I don’t want to hear your opinion”. In this instance, it appears to apply only to a Palestinian invitee. The increasingly extreme and repressive efforts of pro-Israel lobbyists to stifle even the mildest criticism has had a chilling effect on free speech and democratic institutions.
Footnote One: The wider Adelaide Arts Festival is still due to begin in late February. However, its music wing already seems to be going the same way as the writers festival, with withdrawals by artists. The wider Arts Festival – which reportedly pumps over $62 million annually into the South Australian economy – seems bound to suffer collateral damage. As Crikey concluded, all of this avoidable harm has been done because the political system could not tolerate one Palestinian speaker having a public platform.
Footnote Two: Clearly, there are some chilling lessons for New Zealand in Australia’s readiness to equate criticism of the genocide in Gaza with antisemitism. If only we had leaders with the courage to distinguish between (a) criticism of the criminal actions of the Netanyahu government, and (b) racist hostility to the Jewish people per se. Burt we don’t. We have David Seymour and Winston Peters instead.
Wokeness isn’t, and never has been, a serious threat to free speech in this country. Rich, aggrieved white men have always had ready access to the media microphone, and they continue to do so. However, the attempt to blur the meaning of antisemitism to include all criticism of Israel and Zionism does currently pose a serious threat to our freedom of speech.
Paws, for Dancing
Dan Snaith’s Daphni project released two danceable new singles this week. The video for “Goodnight Baby” is visually reminiscent (to me anyway) of the psychedelic, still jaw-dropping “Pink Elephants on Pare” sequence that somehow made its way into the classic Disney movie Dumbo, 85 years ago.
As some people have always said, this column could do with a lot more cat videos. So here’s the other Daphni single of the week: