The late, great Terry Pratchett had a number of choice things to say about conspiracy theories. One of the best was a slightly-skeptical sounding extended paragraph of prose which basically boils down to asking the key question: if governments are generally questionably competent pretty much everywhere else ... then how do they manage to keep the really big stuff - like the existence of aliens - such a successfully guarded secret.
This is a fairly legitimate question, and one which we can equally apply to just about all areas of public life when some great, vast and leviathanic Conspiratorial Agenda (tm) is implied to both exist and be running a fairly large swathe of our political affairs.
In the New Zealand Experience, at least - and particularly as applies the quagmitic morass of Local Body Politics - there are often two answers.
First is, that when it comes to keeping grand and sweeping secrets ... "They" don't. Most of the Cthulhean hidden agendas and clandestine initiatives of our recent past have, eventually and one way or another, come out. We know, for instance, that Roger Douglas conspired with business elites to crash the value of the New Zealand Dollar in order to make his hard-right economic reforms all but inevitable. We're well aware that the Government uses an ineluctable combination of the state's intelligence services and pliant, pliable media sources to attempt to embarrass or otherwise discredit political opponents. Shadowy American media executives met up with our Prime Minister to demand wholesale changes to our labour laws. One of the nation's best-read political bloggers was caught out red-handed working with members of a failed Mayoralty campaign to attempt to force the occupant of the largest executive office in the country without its own army to prematurely resign. The Office of the Prime Minister refuses to supply compelling information to prove (or otherwise) that John Key isn't a shape-shifting reptilian overlord.
I could go on at some length, but you get the idea.
The general response and reaction to any of the above (except that last one) of semi-sullen or actively-aggressive indifference from the body politik brings us on to the second way by which these sorts of overwhelming conspiracies are kept in the main 'submerged' from view within the public consciousness.
This means that when information which reveals what's *actually* going on in our country seemingly inevitably comes to light ... the impact of such disclosures is so sufficiently diffused that it hardly seems to make any serious sort of difference.
Consider: did the Fourth Labour Government find itself rolled in 1987 for daring to implement a secret and scurrilous economic agenda for the previous three years? How about voters failing to punish National in 1993 for harboring a clandestine cabal responsible for Ruthanasia in direct violation of their electoral promises in 1990. In both cases, nothing happened. If there was a perceived gun held to the head of the governments of the day ... when the polling-trigger was pulled, all that happened was a small flag emerged bearing the legend "Bang!".
A similar thing's happened with each conspiracy that the present party of Nats has been caught out in. Dirty Politics, trading laws for flashy foreign elites, and conspiring to bring down what had otherwise been a reasonably popular Mayor ... in all of these instances, the only people harmed were the intended targets - not the blue-hued perpetrators.
But at least in local body politics, something may finally be changing.
Consider the instructive example of Auckland Future. I'll cover the highly entertaining fortunes of this National-aligned local body ticket in a future feature piece, but the basic run-down is that a rebranding exercise for the Nat-ACT satellite group "Citizens and Ratepayers" (or, as it's now known, the slightly more cuddly-sounding "Communities & Residents") turned into a somewhat frenetic splinter-group effort as the result of competing-faction powerstruggles inside its parent National Party.
The net effect of this has been arguable utter electoral chaos on the (center-)right here in Auckland going into the 2017 Local Body Elections. First you had the complete lack of co-ordination which saw both National-aligned tickets seeking to stand competing candidates in the same tight battleground electorates. Then Auckland Future got a bit careless/sloppy and announced it was standing C&R stalwart Christine Fletcher as one of its own candidates. Needless to say, this came as questionable and unwelcome news to Fletcher, who moved to clarify her longstanding C&R allegiance. It is presumably the mark of a highly questionable campaign ticket when 'victory' apparently consists of contesting candidates rather than constituencies.
Matters continued to complicate as The Hunt was announced for a right-wing Mayoral candidate to take on the formerly Labour-aligned Phil Goff. Mark Thomas, an ill-starred National candidate in the 1996 General Election immediately put his hand up. He got no support from his erstwhile comrades, and appears to be running a principled, highly competent independent bid for Mayor. John Palino, the National-backed candidate from 2013 is also attempting a comeback, as a sort of Ghost of Meddling Past. Victoria Crone, meanwhile, a businesswoman with an evident dearth of political experience, found herself in confederation with National Party power-broker Michelle Boag (herself one of the plenipotentiate driving forces behind Auckland Future ... and, in an earlier life, John Key) to try and take the mantle of "official" Right Wing candidate.
What this effectively created was arguably even worse for the Right than the three-headed counter-race it initially appeared. Crone appeared to have a bit of a political tantrum at anyone else daring to contest her anointed territory, and started threatening to refuse to turn up to debates which also gave Thomas a panel speaking slot. In other words, the Right Wing was beginning to actively pour far more energy into savaging its own ideological cohorts than it was into seriously contesting likely electoral juggernaut Phil Goff's comparatively straight line to the Mayoral Chains.
The Shadowy Tendrils of National, in other words, are all tangled up - rather than fixed about our collective throats.
This worrying (or, dependent upon your perspective, highly enjoyable and entertaining) trend has continued with the finalization of nominations. Now, not only are Auckland Future candidates going head to head with C&R candidates in a number of wards ... but thanks to an arguably imbecilic Auckland Future errant local board contender filling out the wrong nomination form, Auckland Future is now running against ITSELF for a single Council position in the Maungakiekie-Tamaki ward. Ex-United Future, then-National-C&R, now-National-Auckland-Future candidate Denise Krum narrowly took the seat with a tight margin of 900 in 2013. With this seat now a three way contest - and two of those contending for it from Krum's own ticket - it would seem fair and safe to say that the Natellites' already-precarious position in local body politics may very well become almost entirely untenable.
This is a pleasing irony, given Auckland Future was set up in the first place for the explicit purpose of aiding and availing National in taking back the control of Auckland's local democracy which it haltingly lost after instituting the changed apparatus of the SuperCity (which, itself, was created and empowered for much the same reason in 2010).
All of this together leads me to a potentially uncomfortable realization. We can't rely upon the righteous wrath of voters to recoil in anger against an exposed conspiratorial agenda at the polls. This has not historically worked. Instead, the best antidote to conspiracy - the thing which appears to keep the clandestine, smoke-filled back-rooms of this country in at least somewhat of a check - is, perhaps surprisingly, other clandestine operations stepping on each other's toes. Indeed, one could argue that this is exactly how electoral party politics appears to work to begin with.
I've previously heard it said that much of what happens in New Zealand Politics (or, for that matter, politics the world over) is fairly invariably the direct and calculated result of clandestine conspiracy. Perhaps this is accurate. Maybe voters and general phenomenal chaos also get a say.
Either way, the definitive thing about houses of cards and tiddlywink towers of Babel is that fairly inevitably, when they reach a certain height and complexity, they implode.
That appears to be what we're starting to witness as applies the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy To Take Back Auckland.
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