TRUTH AND ETHICS = ? 
Living through this Christmas and New Year period has seemed a little like that pause before taking a bungee jump, or hurtling down the ski slope. Poised for a great and slightly ghastly adventure….Maybe more like that recurrent moment in the Peanuts cartoons (this line of thought is starting to date me…..) when Charlie Brown pauses before running up to kick the ball, which is being steadied by Lucy. Every time before she has grabbed the ball away just as he is about to kick it. Like night follows day that ball will be taken away every time, even though he (and the reader) hopes against hope each time that it won’t.
Why might 2008 be so unnerving? Because truth has won the last few elections and yet is now under more pressure than ever. Pressure from political parties which avoid taking policy positions. Pressure from newspapers which abandon all pretence of telling it like it is and instead conduct overt and crude campaigns on highly party political matters. Pressure from wide-eyed National MPs who received much local campaign support in 2005 from the Exclusive Brethren and seem to have forgotten it so quickly, at the same time forgetting the appalling record of the National Government in the 1990s. Pressure from eye-to-the-main-chance mayors who use every opportunity to lay into the Labour Government, even when logic is utterly absent from their intellectual armoury. Even pressure from voluntary organisation lobbies which, in their eagerness to criticise the Labour Government’s failings, forget to put the problem in the context of what has improved in the past 8 years. Of course, such pressure is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy; it is the scale and lack of balance which is remarkable this time.
I have faith, because ethics has been restored to politics in the past few years, and the combination of truth and ethics is pretty powerful. The ethic of a political party being elected to government and then doing what it said it would do. The ethic of a clear and consistent discipline regieme for Ministers who transgress. The ethic of letting cross-party Select Committees do real work on laws and issues. The ethic of a minority government honouring and respecting its coalition and partner political parties, putting the stability of government to the fore. The ethic of engaging with the voluntary sector, engaging with ethnic minority groups, engaging with local government, churches and other organised interests. Literally, none of this happened under National before 1999, and it has all been a hallmark of Labour in power.
In the debate over the Electoral Finance Bill, now law, all this comes together. That law exists because for too long New Zealand has had a Wild West form of control over electoral fundraising and spending. Of course, until the media started paying attention to that in 2007, National tended to agree. The vast loopholes have now been at least adequately covered, and we will see through 2008 how the law works in practice. The attack on it has latterly centred on freedom of speech. An odd angle of attack in my view. We have long accepted that a third party which advocates for or against a specific political party is engaging in the political process and that at campaign time the absence of rules on that could mean that votes are being brought. All the new law does is to ensure the rules reflect the principle. Remember that it all came about because of the long-secret association between National and the Exclusive Brethren in 2005, a relationship which went way beyond what was morally or electorally reasonable. Thank goodness that truth wins, and that the law is upholding an ethical approach. Maybe out of all that will come a political 2008 to uplift all on the progressive side of politics?
Tim Barnett
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