The National Business Review
June 27 2003
There's no joke in the funny side of government
by James Allan, Associate professor of
law, University of Otago
Laughter
is a great joy in life. Like me, some readers might on occasion look back
wistfully on Bill Clinton's second term as president. To come into the office,
turn on the computer, read the latest joke or story doing the ethereal rounds,
and have a good belly laugh. Fantastic.
In comparison, the Labour-Jim Anderton minority government
doesn't seem funny at all. Where is any sense of humour in Helen Clark or
Margaret Wilson or Phil Goff?
Indeed, one could be forgiven for thinking their government's defining feature
(with a few honourable exceptions) is its puritanical, self-righteous bossiness
and humourlessness. To be any more politically correct they would have to have
a sex- change operation.
But appearances can be deceptive. After a lengthy undercover investigation I
can report that in fact the government has a dazzling sense of humour.
Once you cotton on to the fact the government is continually taking the piss,
you'll quickly see what I mean. It's a riot, really.
Here's a favourite of mine. It's the one where you tell everyone you want a
high- growth economy to take New Zealand back into the top half of the OECD and
then you bring in a slew of new legislative and regulatory requirements on
business - like more maternity leave, more holiday entitlements, more
government ownership of airlines and railways, and new taxes on productive
farmers under the Kyoto Treaty.
Better still, you do this all with a straight face. What a scream!
Then there's the one about how a new supreme court costing tens of millions of
dollars to house and millions more annually to staff is going to save - yes,
save - New Zealanders money compared to the Privy Council, which is free. The irony, the timing, the audacity - brilliant.
How about all the incessant talk of justice and rights in every context you can
imagine while Peter Ellis is left to rot because there's claimed to be no new
evidence? Forget the fact that many people at both ends of the political
spectrum (and I include myself here) think Ellis never did any of the things
for which he had to go to prison. And forget the further reality that with a
standard of proof in criminal trials of "proof beyond reasonable
doubt" even more people think Ellis should never have been convicted. (If
there's not a reasonable doubt about Ellis, there will never be a reasonable
doubt.)
If you had a sense of humour you would realise it's funny to ask for new
evidence that can never be produced when the original evidence on which Ellis
was convicted is so lame and unconvincing.
And it's funny the government could give Ellis a pardon tomorrow - or
alternatively could bring in an overseas judge to review the merits of the
convictions - but prefers to pretend it is somehow powerless in this whole
affair and that pardons are for the governor-general (which is formally true
but substantively false).
Nope, you've simply got to admire the brazen chutzpah of those who can worry
about the rights of (fill in this blank from a list of several thousand
"deserving"' choices) while a man who seems to many to have been
wrongly convicted of child abuse and had to spend years in prison is simply
ignored.
Hey, and what about that timeless old gag about the knowledge economy? Talk
about leaving them rolling in the aisle. This is a classic. On the one hand you
talk up science and the need to produce critical-thinking young minds.
On the other you act and behave as though alternative medicines have some sort
of merit or as though other "worldviews" are as capable of producing
(again, fill in this blank from a list of any essential feature of modern life
including antibiotics, jet aircraft, computers or open-heart surgery) as the
empirical, scientific, yes, western worldview.
Related to that old favourite is the government's move to pretend to measure
outputs in the tertiary sector. They're calling it PBRF - performance-based
research funding. (The irony of the name itself should have you doubled-up.)
Throw in 30 or so millions of dollars to get it off the ground. Add in the
deadweight costs of every academic in
Instead, let the experts just read the self-puffery - which is all they can do
when assessments look likely to be done on the basis of about 10 minutes a
person. (The government must be subscribing to the Seinfeldian
theory that the best way to find a good stockbroker or hairdresser or farmer is
not to assess what each does but rather to assess what each says he or she
does.)
So don't be fooled by first impressions. Of course, the government has a sense
of humour. It must do. Otherwise all the above accounts would be pretty hard to
swallow - which neatly takes us back to Bill Clinton.