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New Zealand's Fifth Labour Government (1999–2008): A New Partnership with Business and Society?
Peter Skilling*
New Zealand's fifth Labour Government, in power from 1999 to 2008, offers a telling case study of a nominally social democratic party re-defining its relationship with business. On the basis that the government is, to a large extent, a linguistic activity, this article focuses on the Government's political discourse, contrasting it with those of the two previous Labour administrations (1972–75 and 1984–90). Drawing on a critical analysis of the three Governments' programmatic public statements, it describes how the fifth Labour Government addressed and constructed business interests in a new way. From 1999 to 2008, Labour presented economic globalisation as the fundamental challenge facing the country, and urged all New Zealanders to work together. Within a rhetoric of partnership, business was represented as a vital contributor towards a putatively shared national purpose in a way that denied the tensions between labour and capital allowed for under earlier local incarnations of social democracy.
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| This article offers a specific perspective on the theme of this special thematic section, by examining the relationship between New Zealand's recent fifth Labour Government (1999–2008)1 and business in terms of that Government's practice of political language. It examines, in other words, the specific ways in which Labour represented the relationship between business interests, society and the state. This exercise is placed in historical perspective as I compare and contrast the overarching discourse of the Helen Clark-led fifth Labour Government with earlier Labour administrations: the recognisably social democratic third Labour Government (1972–75) and the radically neo-liberalising fourth (1984–90). The legacy of the recently departed Clark government is still a matter for debate, given the lack of historical distance and the tensions within its policy mix. While some have described its record in terms of the re-assertion of social democratic policy settings,2 I argue in this paper that it was also marked by a discursive shift that threatened to undermine traditional social democratic values. The inclusive 'Third Way' flavour of its political discourse constituted what Stuart Hall calls a 'politics without adversaries',3 within which all New Zealanders were called on to pull together and work for a putatively shared national purpose. In this discourse, business was not represented as a set of material interests in need of control and guidance in the name of the greater good. Rather, 'business' was reified and presented as a vital contributor to a meaningfully shared national vision. |
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For the purpose of this article, I understand social democracy as a 'parliamentary and reformist strategy ... designed not to abolish capitalism but to humanise it', primarily through economic regulation and the welfare state.4 Social democracy, then, is founded on 'an historic compromise between forces [capital and labour] that had once seemed irremediably antagonistic'.5 It is based, in other words, on an acknowledgment that the state shares some interests (growth, profitability and stability, for instance) with business. As Adam Przeworski puts it, 'the very capacity of social democracies to regulate the economy depends on the profits of capital'.6 Social democracy's 'historic compromise', however, carries within it the constant tension between the demands of capital accumulation and socio-political legitimation, and its resolution of antagonisms is only ever partial and contested.7 In assessing whether the fifth Labour Government introduced a new partnership with business then, it is necessary to keep in mind that social democracy itself is based on an idea of partnership and often includes active engagement with business. The interest in this article is in how the terms of that partnership were narrated, and in the connections posited between business interests, policy 'problems', political objectives and social antagonisms. |
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A key guiding question for this paper, then, is whether the relationship between the Labour Party and business has changed over time. And this question immediately raises another, methodological, question: how can this sort of change be identified and measured? Drawing on Colin Hay's taxonomy of change,8 this article focuses on discursive and ideational change. This choice is based on the fundamental importance, discussed below, of language and discourse to political processes, and on the increased salience of language in a politics in which states aim to shape the 'culture, discourse and language of the dispersed agents of government rather than directly controlling what they do'.9 More specifically, this article's emphasis is on change in the discursive construction of pressing problems and social antagonisms, and the ways in which business has been situated within these discourses. Within a changing context marked by the increasing cross-border mobility of capital, labour and ideas, political choices have increasingly been presented as urgently necessary responses to immutable challenges. In this context, the fifth Labour Government constructed social divisions around the question of one's ability and willingness to agree on (and contribute to) a shared national response to the challenges of ongoing economic viability in a competitive global economy. |
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Certainly, and obviously, changes in policy settings and institutional structure are important: such changes impact on how resources, rights, recognition, respect and opportunities are distributed within society. It is also important not to minimise the policy and institutional changes associated with the fifth Labour Government. While leaving major pillars of New Zealand's neo-liberal reforms, such as the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the Reserve Bank Act, firmly in place, Clark's Government, inter alia, increased marginal tax rates, income support provisions and the minimum wage, made some modifications to employment relations law and instituted income-related rents for state housing.10 This article's focus on political language and ideology offers, however, important insights that cannot be gained without such a focus. |
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The utility of discourse analysis is related to its focus on the dialectical relationship between political discourse and the hegemonic 'common sense' of a society. Path dependencies notwithstanding, discrete policy choices can be reversed. But if constructions of policy problems become hegemonic, they can determine the policy responses accepted as reasonable and necessary even when governments change. This dynamic is especially important in New Zealand, given Labour's position in the local political environment. As neo-pluralists have long noted11 (and as Brian Roper has documented in the New Zealand context)12 well-resourced and organised business organisations tend to assume significant influence within democratic systems. Further, within New Zealand politics, there are relatively few other well-organised and well-funded proponents of social democratic values. If Labour presents the current constitution of the global economy as natural and the pursuit of a competitive, flexible economy as non-negotiable, it becomes that much easier for other political actors to take these as articles of faith in no need of defence. |
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While radical in its origins, the New Zealand Labour Party (NZLP) came quickly to a strategy of pursuing working-class interests within a capitalist framework.13 Political party expert Raymond Miller describes Labour as a moderate party of the Left, one that had rejected a radical socialist agenda for a more moderate approach in its quest for electoral appeal.14 Despite this, it has struggled, according to Miller, to shake off the perception that it was opposed to free enterprise and that it perpetuated class divisions that threaten to 'destroy the social fabric of New Zealand'.15 Against this backdrop – and the fact that the previous Labour administration had initiated rapid and far-reaching liberalisation of the economy – this article examines how the most recent Labour Government constructed policy problems and social relations. The following section introduces the theory and method that underpins the article's emphasis on, and analysis of, political language. A subsequent section summarises relevant aspects of the New Zealand social and political context, before a separate section analyses the ways in which the third and fourth Labour Governments represented political problems, social antagonisms and business interests. This provides the necessary context for a more detailed analysis of the political discourse of the fifth Labour Government. This analysis concludes that this most recent Labour administration tended to deny the existence of the antagonisms that had once been posited between business interests and the broader social good. |
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Theory and Method | |
| Norman Fairclough describes a discourse as a particular representation of the political world.16 Rather than simply reflecting a 'social or political "reality"', a discourse, as Frank Fischer explains, 'actually constitutes much of the reality that has to be explained'.17 Discourse, in other words, is an active process that is involved not just in the description but also, more actively, in the production of knowledge on a subject. But knowledge is not produced in limitless or arbitrary ways. The 'discursive constitution of society', as Fischer glosses Fairclough's argument, 'does not stem from a free play of ideas in people's heads' but emerges, rather, 'from practices that are rooted in and oriented to basic social structures and ideological practices'.18 It emerges, more simply, from patterns of power, and the competition between divergent discourses to be accepted as plausible and compelling both reflects and constitutes relations of power within a society. As Fairclough notes, '[o]ne aspect of power is the capacity to impose and maintain a particular structuring of some domain'.19 |
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An analytic emphasis on the practice of political language need not and should not restrict itself exclusively to words. As Frank Fischer argues, a focus on discourse does not commit one to 'naively take the world to move just because of words'.20 Focussing on Labour's discourse, then, does not imply that Labour was the unconstrained author of that discourse. It was strongly influenced by existing social common sense and by the interests and narratives of local and global actors. The approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as explicated by Norman Fairclough offers a useful way of exploring the relationship between discursive practices and broader economic and ideological forces.21 CDA requires the analyst not just to describe the relevant texts but to explain how those texts were influenced by (and sought to influence) their socio-economic context. |
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This historical analysis is based on the three Governments' programmatic public statements – the Speeches from the Throne that mark the beginning of each parliament, the annual Prime Minister's Statements, as well as key statements of economic policy intent. Limiting the selected texts in this way does carry an in-built bias towards those texts likely to feature appeals to shared interests and a mythical national 'we'. Different emphases can be found, for instance, in speeches to party conferences or to overseas audiences. Focussing on the selected texts carries the benefit, however, of seeing more clearly how Labour constructed problems and divisions within narratives addressed to the widest possible national audience. It focuses our attention on how divisions were constructed within an apparently inclusive discourse.22 As Fairclough argues, every political vision is also a political division – a way of dividing the world into categories of the visionary's formulation23 and there is considerable normative interest in identifying who is included, and who excluded, within a political discourse. The analysis of these texts is guided by a set of key questions: how are policy problems and solutions represented, how are social divisions represented, and how is business positioned within these representations? More specifically, the analysis presented below is structured around Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's conceptualisation of the central concept of antagonism,24 and Deborah Stone's notion of 'causal stories'.25 |
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Laclau and Mouffe assert that antagonism is a necessary element of any meaningful politics, arguing that 'without conflict and division, a pluralist democratic politics would be impossible'.26 They argue, however, that neo-liberal ideology has become so hegemonic since the 1980s that 'an increasing number of social democratic parties have been discarding their left identity' and that, in the process, the 'idea of social antagonisms has disappeared'.27 The implication of such a Third Way approach, they write, is that 'politics is no longer structured around social division, and that political problems have become merely technical'.28 This article demonstrates how, in line with Laclau and Mouffe's broad argument, the discursive practice of the fifth Labour Governments was marked by a denial of antagonisms. To put it another way, New Zealand was constructed as a united team of action in which individuals and groups both can and should work together in a united response to the technical problem of economic viability: 'Improving our competitiveness internationally', the Government stated in 2002, 'will often require co-operative approaches at home'.29 |
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Deborah Stone's notion of 'causal stories' is based on the observation that 'political actors use narrative story lines and symbolic devices' to influence popular perceptions of social situations, while 'making it seem as though they are simply describing facts'.30 Stone asserts that such stories perform a range of political functions. They can, she argues, 'either challenge or protect an existing social order ... legitimate and empower particular actors as 'fixers' of the problem ... [and] create new political alliances among people who are shown to stand in the same victim relationship to the causal agent'.31 In these terms, the basic trajectory over the three Labour administrations can be summarised as follows. Under the recognisably social democratic pattern of the third Labour Government, the blame for various social ills was assigned to actors or situations that could be regulated by an active and redemptive state, thus creating allegiances, often based along class lines. Under the fourth Labour Government, problems were located in the activities of vested interests and in the activities of a stifling bureaucratic state. By 1999, inexorable (but anonymous) global forces were nominated as the sources of contemporary challenges. Under this understanding, the existing constitution of the global economy was implicitly protected in that it was presented as natural or at least as beyond contestation. As a result, discursive attempts were made to construct New Zealand society as a meaningfully united entity responding to shared, exogenous challenges. |
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New Zealand from 1972–2008: Context | |
| The history of New Zealand's political economy over the time period in question can be narrated as the story of different attempts to manage the country's geo-economic vulnerabilities in an increasingly global world. Indeed, the Clark Government offered a history of recent New Zealand governance in which the two preceding Labour Governments were seen as emblematic of failed responses to that challenge. Earlier political responses were disparagingly referred to as the 'head in the sand' and the 'open up and hope' approach.32 Most commentators concur that these post-war strategies of state intervention (until 1984) and economic liberalisation (1984–96) were marked by an enthusiasm and rigour that set New Zealand apart as an exemplar of both.33 Neither approach, the fifth Labour Government argued, had delivered the results New Zealand needed.34 This history was inescapably 'presentist', insofar as it was structured so as to make sense of the current situation and to justify present choices. In line with this, the Clark Government offered a new response to the ongoing 'crisis' of global economic competitiveness; one that would avoid the mistakes of earlier approaches. This government-led and co-ordinated approach (often described as 'smart engagement')35 was presented as the only plausible response to the pressing challenges facing the country. |
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Given an increasing acceptance of a world in which capital, jobs, ideas and 'talented' people were both mobile and (implicitly) self-interested,36 New Zealand under the three Labour Governments considered here can be understood as moving toward what Phil Cerny calls the 'competition state'.37 Cerny characterises such a state in terms of a global convergence around forms and strategies deemed efficient by global financial markets. This trajectory moves politics away from a social democratic-style consensus on the 'general maximisation of welfare within a nation (full employment, redistributive transfer payments and social service provision)' and towards a focus on 'the promotion of enterprise, innovation and profitability in both private and public sectors'.38 The convergence thesis implicit in Cerny's argument situates New Zealand's neoliberal reforms in a broader, global context, although it is worth reiterating that reform in New Zealand occurred extremely quickly and rigorously. These changes were driven by objective forces (technological change, for instance) but also by the activities of specific interest groups. Jack Vowles and Juliet Roper recount how state interventionism in the 1970s 'began to draw together a hitherto divided business sector'39 and, although differences remained between business groups, Brian Roper has recorded the role that business advocacy played in the neo-liberal reforms from 1984.40 |
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The movement towards the model of the competition state leads, Cerny argues, to a crisis of political legitimation stemming from the erosion of the state's redistributive function,41 but also from an erosion of a sense of social solidarity as the state becomes a 'pragmatic association for common ends'.42 As we shall see, the discourse of the fifth Labour Government engaged with both of these aspects, as it stressed the twin themes of necessity and of a meaningfully-shared set of national values and objectives. Its strategy of smart engagement included engagement with the global economy: Labour's key statement of its economic agenda, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, announced a return to selecting and supporting sectors of the economy seen as offering global competitive advantage, and the intention to work with the private sector to develop a consistent and attractive 'brand image of New Zealand'.43 It also included engagement with elements of New Zealand society, including significant contact with business leaders. Wary of accusations that business groups had wielded an undue and unadvertised influence on the fourth Labour Government, the Clark administration's collaboration was more transparent. Growing an Innovative New Zealand explicitly acknowledged the input of, '[b]usiness-Government forums ... business leaders and private sector consultants' in its recommendations;44 there was a substantial private sector presence at the Knowledge Wave conferences of 2001 and 2003, and significant collaboration on overseas trade delegations. |
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New Zealand is an exemplary site to examine these practices, as the country faces the world from a unique historical, cultural and geo-economic position. The late date of settlement in New Zealand,45 coupled with its physical location and it economic structure has meant that the country has always had a close eye on the demands of global markets, investors and migrants. It is uniquely small and remote among developed countries, lending some intuitive plausibility to political claims46 that a co-ordinated and urgent response is required. And the New Zealand state has historically played a dominant role in what Bruce Jesson calls the country's 'hollow society'.47 While the ability of the New Zealand state to affect extreme and rapid change has been constrained somewhat since 1996 by a proportional representation electoral environment, the combination of these geo-economic, cultural and political factors offers rich discursive resources to those who would work towards the construction of a pure competition state. The following sections set out an overview of the discourse of the three administrations, focussing on their respective representations of key political issues and of the relationship between government, business and labour. |
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The Discourses of the Third and Fourth Labour Governments | |
| The third Labour Government, as the last Labour administration to assume (and seek to manage) the fundamental tension between the interests of business and labour, provides an appropriate starting point for this exercise. While accepting the necessary and beneficial effects of business activity and economic growth, this administration asserted that the state had a role to play in controlling business activities in the name of the greater social good. It accepted, for instance, a role in balancing the benefits of economic growth with environmental concerns, in 'the encouragement of desirable growth industries' and in ensuring that this growth was 'better spread throughout New Zealand'.48 Norman Kirk, Prime Minister until August 1974, hinted at the antagonism he saw between the interests of business and society when he described his as 'a Government with a strong social conscience' and not, pointedly, as 'a Government of speculators and moneygrubbers'.49 Kirk further aligned himself with workers against business, bemoaning the existence of uninteresting and monotonously repetitive tasks, urging that 'more account must be taken of human considerations in industrial relations' and, most radically, stating an intention to investigate 'profit sharing and the development of productive bargaining'.50 |
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The third Labour Government's discourse constructed capitalism as a set of material forces needing a degree of control and guidance. The Government was committed to 'modifying the reward structures of capitalism' in order to achieve a fairer distribution of benefits and burdens51 and to the greatest possible levels of employment: 'Provisions for the highest possible level of employment and an acceptable standard of living for all our people continues to be the goal of the Government'.52 The third Labour Government's period in office coincided with 1974, the year most commonly accepted as 'a significant turning point in New Zealand's economic history' after the long post-war boom.53 The growing sense of economic crisis reinforced for Bill Rowling (the Prime Minister succeeding Kirk) the necessity of an active state and his administration remained, according to Jesson, the 'party of the historic compromise'.54 Policies would be designed, Rowling insisted, 'to meet the challenges ahead in an equitable manner'.55 More concretely, he stated that his Government had 'imported Government and private capital to keep our factories running, our farms producing, and our people employed'.56 |
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Rowling's Government was defeated at the 1975 election, after only one term. It was replaced by the National Government of Robert Muldoon that, after some initial steps towards economic deregulation, proved to be even more committed to the idea of the active and redemptive state. While Muldoon's social conservatism and his authoritarian approach to governing could not be described as social democratic, Vowles and Roper describe his maintenance of full employment at the cost of inflation as a 'defensive social democratic strategy'.57 As this interventionism became increasingly unpopular with National's traditional business supporters, those supporters found a receptive ally in Roger Douglas, Labour's shadow finance minister.58 Commentator Colin James notes that prior to the 1984 election Douglas had been working with Treasury and Reserve Bank officials on 'an agenda for deprotection and deregulation of the economy ... [that] was only partly reflected in the party's stated economic policy'; an agenda that represented a radical break with the expectations of the party's core constituency.59 |
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It is common and sensible to view 1984 as a moment of radical discontinuity in New Zealand politics. The policies of the incoming fourth Labour Government, led by Prime Minister David Lange, have been described as a 'great experiment'60 and as a 'policy revolution',61 pursued through what Brian Easton has called a 'blitzkrieg' strategy.62 According to Castles, Gerritsen and Vowles, these policies 'took New Zealand in the space of a few years from being the most regulated to the most deregulated' of the OECD countries.63 The new Government's political language, however, was contradictory and fragmentary. In continuity with Labour tradition, its initial statement of intent included an active approach to directing industrial activity and ensuring access for New Zealand's exports, as well as an explicitly stated commitment to protect the vulnerable in keeping with 'our country's tradition of social justice'.64 But other themes were being introduced. These included an injunction for the labour market to operate more flexibly65 and, significantly, a warning that sectional interests must be set aside in the common pursuit of economic growth and employment opportunities.66 |
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These moments of ambivalence highlight a key issue within discourse analysis. Political language often serves the purpose of normalising and naturalising preferred definitions of key terms and issues. A discourse, if it becomes hegemonic, has the effect of shaping the common sense values, aspirations and expectations of society. But political language can also be a tool of obfuscation when it is used to obscure a deeper agenda. The fragmentary nature of the Government's discourse, then, points to the importance of attending to the relationship between texts and socio-political context. In this case, the residual social democratic flavour of the Lange Government's statements can be understood both as attempts to reassure Labour's core constituency, and as reflecting the commitments of Labour MPs and party members who were either unaware of the full extent of the Rogernomics agenda or, being aware, found themselves powerless to stop it. |
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But if the Government's public pronouncements were contradictory and fragmented, the general policy trajectory was clear enough. An aggressive programme of 'market liberalisation cut away many of the key mechanisms employed to achieve traditional social democratic objectives'.67 And by the beginning of 1986, the Government could announce that it had introduced policies to 'increase the efficiency and flexibility of the economy ... to create a more outward-looking, competitive and resilient economy ... [and] to achieve better use of land, labour and capital'.68 Within this change of emphasis (and the introduction of the new keywords of competition, efficiency and flexibility), the state's relationship to employment assistance was also being shifted from a 'passive reliance on temporary work' to the sort of training that would allow individuals to 'adapt to rapid changes in industrial technology'.69 Andrew Sharp characterises the tenor of thinking in government circles as individualistic and utilitarian. Key debates such as that on voluntary unionism began, Sharp argues, with 'that kind of liberal moral philosophy, the point of which has been to begin with the separate individual and then wrestle with the problem of tying that individual to collectivities'.70 |
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Given Labour's inconsistent articulation of values, it was Treasury who provided the clearest programmatic statement of the Government's agenda, in its 1984 and 1987 Post Election Briefings (Economic Management and Government Management respectively).71 Bruce Jesson has demonstrated how Economic Management was a better predictor of Labour's policy record after 1984 than either the Party's stated policy or Roger Douglas' Economic Policy Package.72 One notable feature of the two Treasury documents is the way in which they co-opted and utilised social democratic language. Government Management, for example, argued that a move towards voluntary contracting and exchange would generate improvements in 'social welfare',73 that 'labour market restrictions' were damaging to 'equity',74 that industry assistance was a form of 'discrimination'75 and that the protection of 'vested interests' and 'weak industries' contributed to unemployment.76 More generally, both texts proposed a future beyond social antagonisms, where the refusal to privilege vested interests would allow each individual to pursue their own interests in a way that would 'contribute to a better standard of living for New Zealanders as a whole'.77 |
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Consistent with this logic, Economic Management refused to see unemployment in terms of structural tensions between capital and labour. Rather, labour market issues were removed from the political realm and placed in the putatively apolitical realm of market forces: 'as in other markets, willing sellers (of labour services) trade with willing buyers within the prescribed rules of the nature of selling'.78 In this light, the contemporary 'unemployment problem' was not the proper subject of state intervention. Rather, it was simply the result of a 'labour market adjusting to underlying changes in demand and supply conditions'.79 The proper role for Government on this view was not active intervention to foster activity and maintain employment, but to set the conditions that would best assist 'the economy's capacity to generate new employment opportunities'.80 In an explicit rejection of the core commitment to full employment that had been weakening since 1975,81 it was now said to be important that 'policies to assist the unemployed do not unduly impede improvements to overall economic performance or labour market flexibility' (my emphasis).82 While Labour's moves towards labour market deregulation were cautious, compared to its innovations in other areas, the Party 'demonstrated a strong willingness to listen to employers rather than its traditional allies in the union movement'.83 Just as importantly, its reforms and its representation of problems created path dependencies for National and all future New Zealand governments.84 |
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Labour lost heavily at the 1990 election, garnering only 35.1 per cent of the total vote.85 The incoming National administration initially extended the fourth Labour Government's programme of economic liberalisation, before beginning, from about 1996, to express concern over the erosion of social cohesion caused by such reforms.86 In opposition, the Labour Party, under the leadership of Helen Clark, had been developing a strategy to improve on its poor historical record of electoral success. Raymond Miller has described Clark as appreciating more than most Labour politicians that the 'party's future [lay] in persuading an increasingly individualistic, economically conservative, and predominantly middle-income electorate that Labour ... is a stable party with a moderate agenda'.87 To this end, the new Government's initial statement of intent after its election victory in 1999 promised 'responsible, pragmatic change in the interests of the many': change for a people 'weary of radical restructuring'.88 |
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The Fifth Labour Government and Business | |
| In describing the context within which it operated, the Clark Government focussed on the challenges and (occasionally) the opportunities of economic globalisation, which was presented as an inexorable external force. Occasionally the Government's tone was celebratory ('a world without borders is made for an economy like New Zealand's');89 occasionally it was fatalistic ('love it or loathe it, globalisation is here to stay and we have to succeed within that framework').90 Either way, economic globalisation was presented as the over-riding reality that dictated the political response: 'there is a race to the future going on and we New Zealanders have to be committed to winning it'.91 The global economy (as it was currently constituted) was thus presented as the immutable fact to which there truly was no alternative. The Government's general discourse of globalisation and the nation held that all New Zealanders must work together towards a meaningfully shared objective: 'Reversing our fortunes as a nation', Clark argued in 2001, 'requires us to develop a shared vision about what could be, and the road map to get us there'.92 |
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Within the frame of Stone's notion of 'causal stories', the Clark Government constructed a specific range of problems (competitiveness, reputation and visibility in a global knowledge economy) as the most relevant socio-political issues. Given this definition of key social challenges, business interests were no longer seen as the relevant causal agent. Indeed, responsibility for the economic challenges associated with globalisation was not attributed to any agent in particular. Key terms such as 'globalisation' and 'capital' were reified through what Norman Fairclough calls a process of nominalisation. As in New Labour's discourse of the global economy in Britain, the fifth Labour Government in New Zealand represented complex processes as 'actions but without any responsible agents'.93 'No matter how much people value the "New Zealand way of life", the Government warned, for example, 'capital and labour are mobile'.94 This nominalisation of capital and labour marginalised consideration of the actors making decisions and presented pressing challenges as immutable facts. This discourse tended to 'protect [the] existing social order'95 and the key question was not how to resist these anonymised forces but how to best adapt to them: 'We have to make globalisation work for us, not sulk and let it work against us'.96 |
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Causal stories also, Stone argues, 'legitimate and empower particular actors as "fixers" of the problem ... [and] create new political alliances among people who are shown to stand in the same victim relationship to the causal agent'.97 In the Clark Government's discourse, it was no longer just the state designated to respond to the problem. The Government's preferred approach of 'smart engagement' was narrated in the language of partnership. Accepting that 'all wisdom on economic policy does not rest with the government'98, the Government argued that 'a new partnership needs to be built with business and local communities'.99 In this way, business was positioned not as the causal agent of problems but as a crucial ally in responding to pressing challenges. In more practical terms, business views and input were actively and openly sought in the development of economic strategy.100 |
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The Clark Government was also distinctive in the way that its political vision situated socio-political divisions and antagonisms. In the discourse of the third Labour Government, it was accepted that the state had a role to play in negotiating and resolving the divergent interests of capital and labour. The purpose of state action was to remedy the negative and unfair effects of economic power imbalances, while modifying the more militant demands of labour. The fourth Labour Government moved towards the denial of antagonisms. It argued that sectoral (or 'vested') interests were inimical to an idealised, shared 'national' interest and that if these 'distorting' antagonisms could be resolved, the remaining competition between rational and self-interested individuals would (as in Adam Smith) work for the greater good of all. On this logic, there was an attack on unions101 (though not, tellingly, a correlative attack on increasingly united and influential business associations)102. The country as a whole was presented here as the victim of vested interests, thus providing a warrant for the state to refuse their claims. |
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The fifth Labour Government took this denial of social antagonisms further. Its presentation of its political vision as mutually advantageous was, perhaps, even more thoroughgoing as it promised to provide 'security and opportunity for all New Zealanders' and to 'reverse our fortunes as a nation' (my emphases).103 It also argued that its proposed vision was meaningfully shared, as it announced a new 'shared vision about what could be'.104 The challenge of global economic competitiveness was held to require a co-ordinated national-level response within which everyone had a vital contribution to make. New Zealand was constructed as an enterprise association united 'in respect of some identified common purpose, in the pursuit of some acknowledged substantive end, or in the promotion of some specified enduring interest'.105 While the Government's national vision explicitly embraced and valued diversity,106 it can be argued that this embrace did not extend to those forms of diversity unwilling or unable to the putatively shared national vision. The Government held, for instance, that '[d]ivisions within the community, whether perceived or otherwise, must not be allowed to get in the way of the transformation of New Zealand, to a prosperous, confident 21st century nation'.107While this could be taken as signalling an intention to address the social inequalities that stopped some New Zealanders from fully participating in the economy, it can also be read as a refusal to countenance dissenting perspectives on policy problems and solutions. |
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The marginalisation of antagonisms was, of course, not total. Indeed, the fifth Labour Government was reminded very early on about the divergence of interests between business and labour, when business confidence dropped to its lowest level in 12 years following the introduction of policies including the Employment Relations Bill 2000.108 Miller relates, however, how Labour addressed this business campaign through consultation with and placation of its critics. As we have seen, a more pro-active active solicitation of business perspectives became an important part of the development and promotion of the Government's economic agenda. So even as the fifth Labour Government offered some gains for labour, in terms of minimum wage, holidays and industrial relations policies, a rhetorical commitment to win-win solutions led it to solicit business input into policy change and to proceed cautiously with new legislation.109 |
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In language terms, the fifth Labour Government shared British New Labour's focus on rhetorical reconciliation. Its language was marked by 'not only but also' constructions in which terms that might be seen as existing in some kind of tension (economic dynamism and social cohesion, for example) were presented as complementary.110 For the Clark Government, '[e]conomic and social development go hand in hand'.111 It argued for 'a market led approach to economic development' which would 'unleash the productive potential of the private sector not to replace it', but also for a leadership and co-ordination role for government.112 It held also that economic dynamism could be made compatible with environmental and cultural objectives. While it has always been true that social development policies have relied on economic growth, the pursuit of social cohesion might be seen as an uneasy fit with an approach to economic growth that valourised individual responsibility and labour market flexibility. The deeper problems with Labour's 'not only but also' formulations was that they presented the 'terms that are made compatible ... as having equivalent weight'113 in a way that made a critical public debate about the trade-offs involved more difficult. |
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All of this is in keeping with the broad church of Third Way politics, which attacks and deliberately eschews what it calls the 'dogmatism' of both the 'old' Left and the 'new' Right. According to its leading theorist, Anthony Giddens, the Third Way can be thought of as a 'renewal' of social democracy, or as the 'restructuring [of] social democratic doctrines' in response to a changing context marked by globalisation, the knowledge economy and rising individualism.114 Ministers in the Clark Government equivocated on whether they were part of the Third Way or not115, but consistently presented themselves as part of a modernisation or renewal of social democratic practice. Consequently, the Third Way label remains a useful analytical device for shedding light on the novelty of the Government's project in relation to preceding modes of governance in New Zealand. |
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Laclau and Mouffe understand the Third Way as the result of a process in which 'an increasing number of social democratic parties have been discarding their left identity' in the name of modernisation. They argue further that the posited disappearance of antagonisms is the 'basic tenet' of the Third Way.116 The only antagonism allowed within this sort of logic is that between the shared national purpose and those who continue to insist that no such shared purpose is possible; and that the fundamental social divisions, such as that between capital and labour, endure. Or, to put it another way, Third Way discourse may continue to see an antagonism between those who 'agree on our vision and our objectives' and those who remain unable or unwilling to do so. This seemingly open and inclusive politics, in other words, may serve as a way of marginalising social divisions and genuinely divergent perspectives. Labour's promise of 'responsible, pragmatic change in the interests of the many' aligns closely with Laclau and Mouffe's observation that, increasingly, 'we are told that there are no more left-wing or right-wing economic policies, only good and bad ones'.117 |
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Conclusion | |
| According to Eric Shaw,118 a social democratic party ought, minimally, to stand for the 'basic goals of higher growth, full employment and an expanding welfare state' or, as Hay himself puts it119 for dreams of full employment, redistribution, a comprehensive and universal welfare state and corporatism. In the logic of the competition state, however, these goals are positioned as indulgent luxuries. This article has focused on the practise of political language to demonstrate that the recently departed fifth Labour Government in New Zealand moved away from acknowledging the tensions that had informed earlier social democratic approaches and towards an inclusive politics, a politics supposedly without adversaries. Utilising a language of partnership, Labour urged New Zealanders to see themselves as united in the shared pursuit of global economic competitiveness. |
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In the logic of this discourse, the self-identifying social-democratic NZLP sought to establish a 'new partnership with business'.120 The fifth Labour Government represented continuing economic competitiveness in a global environment as the fundamental challenge facing the country. In developing a co-ordinated national response to this challenge, the Government actively and openly solicited business perspectives and expertise and incorporated them into the development of policy. Labour sought to legitimate its deviations from traditional social democratic values through the argument that its policies offered the most 'pragmatic' response to the immutable external forces of economic globalisation. As a result, the Government's discourse constructed business as a vital contributor towards a putatively shared national purpose in a way that denied the tensions between labour and capital allowed for under earlier articulations of social democratic practice in New Zealand. |
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Peter Skilling is a lecturer in the Centre for Business Interdisciplinary Studies at Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. His research interests focus on constructions of national identity and on the links between political discourse, cultural identity and economic outcomes.
<Peter.Skilling@aut.ac.nz>
Endnotes
* I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of two anonymous referees, as well as those of the participants in the Social Democratic Parties and Business symposium at the University of Sydney, September 2009.
1. Technically, there were at least three Governments (or three separate coalition arrangements), corresponding to the three parliamentary terms. For clarity, and because they were all built around the Helen Clark-led Labour Party, I describe them throughout as one Government.
2. Chris Eichbaum, 'The Third Way', in Raymond Miller (ed.), New Zealand Government and Politics (4th edn), Oxford University Press, Auckland, 2006, pp. 55–6.
3. Cited in Anthony Giddens, The Third Way and its Critics, Polity Press, Malden, Mass., 2000, p. 12. See also Chantal Mouffe, 'The radical centre: a politics without adversary', Soundings, vol. 9, 1998, pp. 11–23.
4. Eichbaum, 'The Third Way', p. 48.
5. David Denemark, 'Social democracy and the politics of crisis in New Zealand, Britain and Sweden', in Martin Holland and Jonathon Boston (eds), The Fourth Labour Government: Politics and Policy in New Zealand (2nd edn), Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1990, p. 279.
6. Adam Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985, p. 42.
7. Claus Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State, Hutchinson, London, 1984, pp. 58–60.
8. See Colin Hay, The Political Economy of New Labour: Labouring under False Pretences? Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1999.
9. Norman Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? Routledge, London, 2000, p. 5.
10. See Eichbaum, 'The Third Way', p. 55 for a fuller list.
11. See Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World's Political Economic Systems, Basic Books, New York, 1977.
12. Brian Roper, 'Business political activity in New Zealand from 1990 to 2005', Kotuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, vol. 1, 2006, pp. 161–183
13. Bruce Jesson, Fragments of Labour: the Story behind the Labour Government, Penguin, Auckland, 1989, pp. 14–7; see also Ray Markey, 'An antipodean phenomenon: comparing the Labo(u)r Party in New Zealand and Australia, Labour History, no. 95, November 2008, p. 87
14. Raymond Miller, 'Labour', in Raymond Miller (ed.), New Zealand Government and Politics, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 2001, p. 227.
15. Ibid. pp. 227–8.
16. Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? p. 21.
17. Frank Fischer, Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, pp. vii-viii.
18. Ibid., p. 76.
19. Norman Fairclough, Language and Power, Longman, Harlow, 1989, p.13.
20. Fischer, Reframing Public Policy, p. viii
21. Ibid., pp. 74–6.
22. See Peter Skilling, '"We must agree on our vision": New Zealand Labour's discourse of globalisation and the nation from 1999–2008', Journal of Language and Politics (forthcoming 2011).
23. Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? p. 13; and also Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change, Polity Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1992..
24. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, Verso, London, 2001, pp. xiv-xvii.
25. Deborah Stone, 'Causal stories and the formation of policy agendas', Political Science Quarterly, vol. 104, no. 2, 1989, pp.281–300.
26. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, p. xvii. Fairclough (New Labour, New Language? p. 11) contends that 'struggle amongst groups of people over substantive aspects of social life' is a definitive feature of the practice of politics.
27. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, p. xiv.
28. Ibid., p. xv.
29. Office of the Prime Minister [OPM], Growing an Innovative New Zealand, Government Printer, Wellington, 2002, p. 25.
30. Stone, 'Causal Stories', p. 282.
31. Ibid., p. 295.
32. David Cunliffe, 'From hollowing out to hothousing: promoting ownership, investment and economic growth: Speech to MORGO Conference, 6 August 2004', URL: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/hollowing+out+hothousing+promoting+ownership+investment+and+economic+growth, consulted 8 April 2009.
33. Francis Castles, Rolf Gerritsen and Jack Vowles, 'Introduction', in Francis Castles, Rolf Gerritsen and Jack Vowles (eds), The Great Experiment: Labour Parties and Public Policy Transformation in Australia and New Zealand, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1996, p. 16. See also Colin James, 'The policy revolution 1984–1993', in Raymond Miller (ed.), New Zealand Politics in Transition, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1997, pp. 13–14.
34. OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 19.
35. Cunliffe, 'From hollowing out to hothousing'.
36. OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 12.
37. Phil Cerny, 'Paradoxes of the competition state: the dynamics of political globalization', Government and Opposition, vol. 32, no. 2, 1997, pp. 251–274.
38. Ibid., p. 260.
39. Jack Vowles and Juliet Roper, 'Business and politics during the postwar era', in Chris Rudd and Brian Roper (eds), The Political Economy of New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1997, p. 110.
40. See Roper, 'Business political activity', pp. 167–8 for a summary.
41. Cerny, 'Paradoxes of the competition state', p. 258.
42. Ibid., p. 255.
43. OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, pp. 51, 48; Clark, 'Prime Minister's Statement [2002]'.
44. OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 5.
45. See Miles Fairburn, 'Is there a good case for New Zealand exceptionalism?' in Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney (eds), Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand's Pasts, Otago University Press, Dunedin, pp. 143–168.
46. See OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 15.
47. Bruce Jesson, Only Their Purpose is Mad, Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1999, p. 205.
48. New Zealand Parliamentary Debates [NZPD], vol. 389 [Feb/Mar 1974], Government Printer, Wellington, pp. 5–7.
49. NZPD, vol. 382 [Feb/Mar 1973], p. 117
50. Ibid., p. 8.
51. Castles, Gerritsen and Vowles, 'Introduction', p. 8.
52. NZPD, vol. 396 [Mar/Apr 1975], p. 2
53. Brian Roper, 'New Zealand's postwar economic history', in Rudd and Roper (eds), The Political Economy of New Zealand, p. 3.
54. Jesson, Fragments of Labour, p. 27.
55. NZPD, vol. 396 [Mar/Apr 1975], p. 2
56. Ibid., p. 125–6
57. Vowles and Roper, 'Business and politics', p. 110.
58. Castles, Gerritsen and Vowles, 'Introduction', p. 10.
59. James, 'The policy revolution', pp. 13–14.
60. Castles, Gerritsen and Vowles, The Great Experiment.
61. James, 'The policy revolution'.
62. Brian Easton, The Commercialisation of New Zealand, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1997, pp. 79–81.
63. Castles, Gerritsen and Vowles, 'Introduction', p.16.
64. NZPD, vol. 457 (Aug/Oct 1984), p. 8.
65. Ibid., p. 9.
66. Ibid.
67. Castles, Gerritsen and Vowles, 'Introduction', p.18.
68. NZPD, vol. 469 (Feb/Mar 1986), p. 2.
69. Ibid.
70. Andrew Sharp, Justice and the Maori: The Philosophy and Practice of Maori Claims in New Zealand since the 1970s (2nd edn), Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1997, p. 221.
71. Jesson, Fragments of Labour, pp. 65–70; see also Sharp, Justice and the Maori, p. 216.
72. Jesson, Fragments of Labour, p. 66.
73. New Zealand Treasury, Government Management, Government Printer, Wellington, 1987, p. 15.
74. Ibid., p. 268.
75. Ibid., p. 239.
76. Ibid., p. 6.
77. Ibid., pp. 6, 49.
78. New Zealand Treasury, Economic Management, Government Printer, Wellington, 1984, p. 235.
79. Ibid., p. 235.
80. Ibid., p. 236.
81. Roper, 'New Zealand's postwar economic history', p. 10.
82. Treasury, Economic Management, p. 244.
83. Mark Bray and David Nielson, 'Industrial relations reform and the relative autonomy of the state', in Castles, Gerritsen and Vowles (eds), The Great Experiment, p. 69; see also Shaun Goldfinch, Remaking New Zealand and Australian Economic Policy: Ideas, Institutions and Policy Communities, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2000, p. 77.
84. Castles, Gerritsen and Vowles, 'Introduction', p.17; see also Bray and Neilson, 'Industrial Relations Reform', p. 69.
85. Miller, 'Labour', p. 228.
86. See National Prime Minister (until late 1997) Jim Bolger, A View from the Top: My Seven Years as Prime Minister, Viking, Auckland, 1998, p. 259.
87. Miller, 'Labour', p. 238.
88. Helen Clark, 'Speech from the throne [1999]: 21 December 1999', URL: http://gphansard.knowledge-basket.co.nz.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/han, consulted 15 August 2003.
89. Helen Clark, 'Address to the Knowledge Wave Conference [2003]', URL: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=16079, consulted 18 May 2003.
90. Helen Clark, 'Prime Minister's statement [2001]: 13 February 2001', URL: http://gphansard.knowledge-basket.co.nz.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/han, consulted 15 August 2003'.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid.
93. Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? pp. 23–4.
94. OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 12.
95. Stone, 'Causal stories', p. 295.
96. Helen Clark, 'Closing address to Knowledge Wave Conference [2001]', URL: http://www.knowledgewave.org.nz/conference_2001/documents/talks/Clark,%20H%20-%20Plenary%2011.pdf, consulted 12 February 2006.
97. Stone, 'Causal stories', p. 295.
98. OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 9.
99. Clark, 'Speech from the throne [1999]'.
100. Colin James, 'Innovating with the private sector', New Zealand Herald, 7 February 2002. URL: http://www.colinjames.co.nz/herald/Herald_2002/BizHerald_PMspeech_02Feb07.htm, consulted 5 January 2010, OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 5.
101. Treasury, Economic Management, p. 243.
102. Roper, 'Business political activity', p. 168.
103. Clark, 'Prime Minister's statement [2001]'.
104. Ibid.
105. See Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1975, p. 203; see also Cerny, 'Paradoxes of the competition state', p. 255.
106. OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 6.
107. Clark, 'Prime Minister's statement [2005]'.
108. Miller, 'Labour', p. 238; Roper, 'Business political activity', p. 176.
109. Miller, 'Labour', p. 238.
110. Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? p. 10.
111. OPM, Growing an Innovative New Zealand, p. 28.
112. Ibid., p. 22.
113. Fairclough, New Labour, New Language? p. 11.
114. Anthony Giddens, 'Conclusion', in Giddens, The Third Way and its Critics, p.163.
115. See Clark and Steve Maharey as cited in Kelsey, At the Crossroads, p. 79, but also Maharey, 'The Third Way and how I got on to it', speech, 3 June 2003, URL: http://www.beehive.govt.nz/node/16977, consulted 14 January 2010.
116. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, p. xiv; Mouffe, 'The Radical Centre'.
117. Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, p. xvi.
118. Cited in Hay, Political Economy of New Labour, p. 16
119. Ibid.
120. Clark, 'Speech from the throne [1999]'.
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