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'STOP MUCKING ABOUT. ONLY POWER MATTERS"

Business commentator Bernard Hickey has  called for a  new political party or parties to replace the present old establishment parties.  He says they aren’t delivering for ordinary people. 

IT WASN'T SO LONG ago that Bernard Hickey, business commentator and Managing Editor of Newsroom, was something of a neoliberal acolyte. But in  a 2010 column for the NZ Herald he renounced the faith and admitted he had been wrong. He wrote:

'I feel like a priest who has been wrestling with his belief in god and has now decided god does not exist. It's time for me to recant and to say what I've been thinking for months: the economic god of completely free markets and capital flows is not worth believing in anymore and we must look for other things to believe in and do.'

It was a sweeping repudiation of all Hickey had believed and, to his credit, he unflinchingly conceded that the neoliberal emperor was wearing no clothes.

While Hickey didn't jump on board the socialist train, he did become for an advocate policies that cut right across the neoliberal agenda such as greater regulation of the banking and finance sector and more controls on overseas capital. Hickey embraced, I think, neo-Keynesianism and I don't imagine it earned him any brownie points with the Political establishment and its allies in the media.

Eight years later Bernard Hickey has written another equally startling article. This time he has launched a comprehensive and informed attack on the shambolic state of the housing market. In an article, titled 'Dear Young Renters : You Are Sooo Toast' Hickey writes;

"You may be hearing a lot of talk lately about capital gains taxes and a surge of new housing supply and a transformation in the economy. You may even actually think things are about to improve and that a first home is a realistic prospect, or that an affordable rental is just around the corner.

You may be about to be fooled into thinking your elders have your best interests at heart and are going to change things to make housing affordable. You may actually think New Zealand is about to do the right thing, rather than the selfish thing.

Sorry to say this, but you're dead wrong. You're about to be done over all over again, and you probably don't suspect a thing."

The entire article is worthy of consideration but what makes this article especially noteworthy is that Hickey recognises that we are in a midst of a political crisis, a crisis of a political system that isn't responding to the needs of ordinary people. This is a quite a stunning revelation from someone who is more closely connected to mainstream politics than most of us.

Hickey specifically says that none - that's none - of the present parliamentary parties have any realistic solution to the housing crisis. Of Labour and the Green's he writes: "Labour and the Greens signed up to the fiscal responsibility targets that prioritise debt reduction and low interest rates for home owners over extra housing supply."

While a Labour or Green supporter might try  to fudge it and argue that the government needs 'more time' or resort to 'lesser evilism' (Labour is preferable to National, blah, blah, blah..) Hickey effectively disowns all of the political parties presently sitting in Parliament and suggests that continuing to put faith in them can only lead to defeat and madness:

"Stop mucking around. Only power matters . There is only one way for renters to change things in a sustainable way. They have to take the levers of power in the same way their parents and grandparents did during the 1980s. They have to vote in their own parties and policies in council elections and through general elections."

Compared to the hopeless and embarrassing defences of the present coalition government by its supporters, Hickey sounds almost radical - and perhaps, in New Zealand's stultifying conservative political environment, he is. He certainly makes Labour and Green supporters look not like progressive agents of real change, but reactionary defenders of the status quo. 

in 2010, responding to Hickey's repudiation of neoliberalism, Sue Bradford wrote that "for those of us who have spent our lives trying to say 'there is an alternative' I think we share a collective sense of 'welcome to the real world Bernard, and let's have the debate you're looking for."

Let's hope that Hickey's call for new political parties is fully embraced in debate at least. I'm not entirely hopeful though  that much of  what constitutes the New Zealand 'progressive' left will be so accommodating, given its continued disastrous support for Labour and the Green's.

As evidence of someone who will not even contemplate such a debate, we have to look no further than  Labour supporter, Martyn Bradbury of The Daily Blog. He quotes from Hickey's article but conveniently omits to mention that Hickey is campaigning for a new political party, or parties, to supplant the present sad lot. This is not only intellectual dishonesty but political cowardice.




This post first appeared on AGAINST THE CURRENT, please read the originial post: here

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'STOP MUCKING ABOUT. ONLY POWER MATTERS"

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