Is Don Brash from the radical right?
Well, Barry Gustafson - a political historian from Auckland University who’s an expert in the National Party and wrote the authoritative biography of Robert Muldoon - certainly thinks so. Speaking on bFM this morning (hattip, Russel Brown), he said:
The National Party has always been a combination of pragmatists, conservatives and radicals, and largely dominated by the pragmatic/conservative strand: the Holyoakes and the Muldoons and the Bolgers. But, from time to time, the more free-market, ideologically driven radical right manages to seize control: the Ruth Richardsons and now the Don Brashs. They put forward a somewhat more radical/change agenda than National is usually comfortable with.
The conservative wing of the National Party doesn’t believe in perfection, doesn’t believe in utopia. It doesn’t believe in forcing through change that destabilises society and causes division and dissent. And one of things we saw in this election was a sharpening of the partisanship, a sharpening of the divisions, between town and country, between centre-left and centre-right, between those who are moral liberals and those who are moral conservatives.
Jim Bolger spoke to the New Zealand/Asia Institute’s business breakfast earlier this year and predicted that this would be an election in which Maori-bashing would be a part and he personally deplored it… These people are saying that you cannot actually oversimplify and polarise on the issue of the Treaty and the place of Maori. Perceptions and realities are such that this is a complex issue and it needs to be looked at, and there needs to be an element of understanding and goodwill. It’s not a black and white thing. We have to recognise that the Treaty does have a great symbolic significance for many people in Maoridom, and that has to be addressed…
The right on this occasion is tending to say, well, it’s the economic issue that’s important, and we don’t need to worry about secondary things like ethnicity and culture and history. I think they’re wrong, just as the left used to be wrong in saying that gender and race and ethnicity didn’t matter. So I think the right is wrong when they say these things are irrelevant, that it’s just a question of economic relationship and need…
I certainly think that people like John Key and Bill English and Brownlee and Power and Katherine Rich are much more traditional, pragmatic conservative National Party people than I think Don Brash. I think that Act were right when they said that National had virtually got their ideal leader.
Helen Clark’s allusion to Ruth Richardson and Roger Douglas in her description of Don Brash was not hyperbole. As I’ve said before, as soon as the National Party has a more moderate leader, the liberal-left will breathe a huge sigh of relief.
September 30th, 2005 at 12:22 pm
Oh, right… Around the 10th anniversary of Homosexual Law Reform, I had a couple of very interesting (and unfortunately off the record) conversations with three MPs who told me that they personally supported the Bill but voted against it for “traditional, pragmatic conservative” reasons - i.e. they believed it was too “divisive” and “radical” a response to a “complex issue” that needed careful treatment.
It was a matter of complete and utter indifference to them that the lives of gay men were being destroyed, and would continue to be so if HLR had been defeated.
Sometimes, I have to wonder if “pragmatic” isn’t code for “lacking the courage of anyone’s convictions”. Nor do I know whether anyone would really want to adopt Robert Muldoon as a political role model - just look at the record of his Mini-Me, Winston Raymond Peters.
September 30th, 2005 at 12:31 pm
“As I’ve said before, as soon as the National Party has a more moderate leader, the liberal-left will breathe a huge sigh of relief”
……yes, and then the liberal-left will lose the next election. Look at how close National got with Brash. They would have wiped the floor with a more moderate leader.
September 30th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
you dont know that
September 30th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
“As I’ve said before, as soon as the National Party has a more moderate leader, the liberal-left will breathe a huge sigh of relief�
and no doubt so will most of the centre-right, and conservative/pragmatic right…;-P
September 30th, 2005 at 10:32 pm
They would have wiped the floor with a more moderate leader.
… ah yeah, just like English did in 2002 eh?
Without the radical, loony-right tax-cut bribe, and the radical shift in Maori policy, Helen would have wiped the floor with any Nat leader you care to name.
September 30th, 2005 at 10:57 pm
Like she did this time, Al?