Good heavens, Susie. I am astonished that you are disconcerted by the plethora of right-wing thinks tanks in the world. After all, they have only been there, in plain sight and much reported upon, for the better part of half-a-century.
And, is it really all that surprising that right-wing politicians are closely connected with these organisations? When the whole purpose of think tanks is to research and frame responses to the many economic and social phenomena by which political leaders and governments are challenged.
Perhaps you should reserve your concern (and your sarcasm) for the leaders and parties of the Left who, as New Zealanders discovered to their cost, were unequal to virtually all of the challenges they faced - bar the first few months of the Covid Pandemic.
You might also like to ruminate on the lack of transparency that characterised so much of the Labour Government's policy development - most notably on Crown-Maori relations. That is not a charge you can fairly throw at right-wing think tanks - they publish and publicise their favoured solutions.
Conspiracies are hatched and developed in private, Susie, and conspirators of evil intent do not usually issue press releases and make themselves available for interviews. It may be inconvenient for leftists of all hues that the Right possesses the advantage of wealthy backers, but it is neither immoral nor illegal for it to use them.
A left-wing government could, of course, pass legislation making state-funding available to all political parties and their respective research institutions. Oh, but wait-a-minute, isn't that precisely the sort of suggestion that a think tank might flesh-out into implementable policy? What a pity the Left in New Zealand lacks the gumption to form a serviceable one of its own.
It doesn't have to be a large or complicated affair. Virtually all of the thinking that led to the Social Security Act of 1938 took place in the home of Kurow's GP - ably assisted by its Presbyterian minister and the headmaster of the Kurow school. Ah, but that was back in the days when the Left devoted itself to working out what to do - not who to blame.
Chris, I think We should all be concerned with Right wing think tanks like the Atlas Network.
Yes, they may have a slicker and well oiled apparatus with money to burn on producing convincing messages to sway the average workers vote to the right, even more so in this era of social media algorithms. But this is not simply a competition of Right vs Left. It is a battle between Authoritarian rule and democracy.
What Act, Atlas, and these right wing think tanks are seeking is “little or no government interference in the economy”.
Unfortunately many “average voters” cant comprehend the implications of that goal achieved .
Little or no Government means Little or no democracy. Little or no democracy translates into little or no rights, little or no freedom, and a world where economic might is right. Absolute wealth translates into absolute Power.
Good heavens, Mr Trotter. Astonished that you should write this. Just any old bunch of neoliberal think tanks, like any other old bunch with rich donors? Perhaps you have an exploratory journey as yet not taken. Start here and follow a few links: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/06/rishi-sunak-javier-milei-donald-trump-atlas-network. But then this article is written by another of those paranoid lefties, eh.
Btw I can’t think of anything sunny about the NZ Initiative, which, like the Taxpayers Union is an Atlas Network ‘partner’. Jordan Williams of TPU along with David Seymour are proud Atlas Network MBA graduates, but surely they have left all that behind them in their buoyant youth.
Thanks, Chris. Excellent analysis. Mihi Forbes, for one, is convinced that The Voice was voted down in Australia because shadowy cabals like the Atlas Network put money into the No campaign. She claims the same forces are behind Seymour's referendum.
What she fails to mention — including in her doco Trick or Treaty? — is that the Yes campaign was heavily supported and generously funded by Big Oil and Mining (BHP put in $2 million, among other big sector players that contributed), alongside Qantas ($500k free travel for Yes campaigners) and the big Four Banks and Accounting firms that all backed the Yes side.
The official figures of who donated what to both sides of the campaign won't be out until April 1 but it seems unlikely that the No side will have received anything like the funding the Yes campaign received (estimated by some to be $50m at least).
Maybe shadowy groups are indeed funding Seymour — who knows? — but the left really needs better evidence than the claim he worked for think tanks in Canada to make their case.
Don't be ridiculous. Big Oil and Mining is behind Atlas. One doesn't exclude the other. Atlas is not some monolithic scary entity - it's simply a network of like minded interests connected by ethos, and big money.
In the USA, they are called Heritage Foundation and have written the manual for what happens if/when Trump wins. In the Canada, they are called Frontier for Policy Research where David Seymour was trained. And in NZ they are called Taxpayers Union and NZ Initiative.
These connections have about as much significance as environmental groups allying themselves with the Climate Action Network, which describes itself as a “global network of more than 1900 civil society organisations in over 130 countries driving collective and sustainable action to fight the climate crisis and to achieve social justice”.
Is CAN a shadowy organisation manipulating like-minded groups around the world too?
Yes Graham, we were in Australia for a few weeks just prior to the actual vote; it was obvious where the big money was being spent and the level of "Yes" agitprop coming from big business and the legacy media. Hat's off to The Australian newspaper though; they had two daily columns by informed and interesting protagonists from each side of the debate.
What an extraordinary long diatribe of drivel. Your central thesis that the right present a public with a better alternative than the left conveniently ignores the reality that the right in virtually all western based democracies control the narrative via the media and have a bottomless bucket of money to sell their lies. Even a cursory study of the donations at the last election would have informed you of the outrageous imbalance. A disenfranchised and indolent public that has been taught to turn on themselves for the answer to their predicament by this same media controlled narrative; black against white, men against women, straight against LGBTQI, unionist against independent. Libertarianism is the politics of those who would grab everything for themselves at the expense of a caring egalitarian society. It is the race to push the interests, wages and conditions of service of the average hardworking Kiwi to the bottom of the barrel whilst siphoning off state assets, state subsidies and all control to a tiny elite. At what stage in your political decay did you accept your ‘forty pieces of silver’ to be spokesperson for such appalling antisocial, anti worker politics?
Junk tanks peddling short sighted donor politics. Junk tanks advancing a new feudalism. Junk tanks working for banksters, oil and gas. Junk tanks whose policies have rotted out the west.
Some people on the right lost their damned minds when Ardern was elected. They imagined that she was controlled by the WEF, or by the International Socialist Youth of which she was once president, or Soros, or Davos, or whatever. It was all stupid. She had views and talked with a lot of people who broadly shared her views. There was no conspiracy.
Same is now happening on the left. Impossible to say whether they're just stinging from the election result and looking for something external to blame (as you suggest) or whether they're throwing mud because they think it'll be effective against those with opposing political views. I think it's both.
Hey Eric, great to see your comments, and agree there is no conspiracy here. It is all in public, and think tanks like NZI are a response to the university/ intellectual classes being “captured “ by left leaning ideology. The pay for play of the commercial sector looking to externalise the social cost of their products and services is what makes the left lose their minds. Example is NZI commentary on tobacco laws in nz, while tobacco industry are paying members of your organisation. There is a lack of clarity as to how much influence they have on NZI. Unlike political party influence there is not monetary value that can be found as this level of organisation is a closed book. Atlas network is just like a master franchise of policy sharing/ influence techniques that helps to advance the franchise. You have been to their conferences, what are your objective thoughts on their system?
Well said Chris! I spent some time with David when he was in Canada. I took him for his first ice skating adventure at the historic Forks Market (Centre of Winnipeg, therefore centre of Canada) where fur trading originated in Canada hundreds of years ago. We skated on the famous Red & Assiniboine rivers. -Buzz Grant
The Atlas conspiracy theory was largely developed and promoted by Joanne/Mihirangi Forbes based on reckons from her far left mates. Turns out her oversized media influence is funded by hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars, apparently far more money than the Atlas group ever spent . Sean Plunket has a look, 5 minute clip: https://youtu.be/QnQBsJJm7YI
Chris: "If the Right’s stories were made more convincing by a sympathetic think tank, then the Left should not be getting mad at their opponent’s effective apparatus, it should be getting mad at itself for not having one of its own."
Really Chris? With almost the entirety of academia and the substantially "progressive" media arrayed against the Right it's not a lack of fire power that's lacking.
Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals
"Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich".
I think Roger Douglas was in fact a Labour Party minister, but this is, otherwise, an excellent antidote to the nonsense that's poisoning the public debate on these issues.
I think the loss was worse than you describe in that the Labour Party and coalition abandoned both reality and the majority and were entirely non progressive.Labour immediately resorted to Stalinist type public controls which were not equitable, legal or fair at all when faced with a crisis everyone had been warned would happen for years. They simply aren’t up to the job and did, as the Government today continues to do, really dumb and borderline illegal things to people. They seem to still want to double down on their mistakes and ineptitude thinking no one will notice. But of course people do. I can’t see any of them being aware of their obligations to citizens in the slightest. Like kids in a playpen but they’re vacuous adults with facile prejudiced and bigoted views. Which are not laws.
Kath, deep breaths. Once in a generation pandemic with people making decisions in the best interests of all citizens especially those who are vulnerable. These decisions were made with input from experts and in the context of a health system that is stretched in normal seasonal winter illness loads. Certain amount of building a plane while they were flying it… you may want to familiarise yourself with the time line: https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2023-10/pr-timeline-significant-events-activities.pdf
Not perfect, but not a disaster on a country level?
Good heavens, Susie. I am astonished that you are disconcerted by the plethora of right-wing thinks tanks in the world. After all, they have only been there, in plain sight and much reported upon, for the better part of half-a-century.
And, is it really all that surprising that right-wing politicians are closely connected with these organisations? When the whole purpose of think tanks is to research and frame responses to the many economic and social phenomena by which political leaders and governments are challenged.
Perhaps you should reserve your concern (and your sarcasm) for the leaders and parties of the Left who, as New Zealanders discovered to their cost, were unequal to virtually all of the challenges they faced - bar the first few months of the Covid Pandemic.
You might also like to ruminate on the lack of transparency that characterised so much of the Labour Government's policy development - most notably on Crown-Maori relations. That is not a charge you can fairly throw at right-wing think tanks - they publish and publicise their favoured solutions.
Conspiracies are hatched and developed in private, Susie, and conspirators of evil intent do not usually issue press releases and make themselves available for interviews. It may be inconvenient for leftists of all hues that the Right possesses the advantage of wealthy backers, but it is neither immoral nor illegal for it to use them.
A left-wing government could, of course, pass legislation making state-funding available to all political parties and their respective research institutions. Oh, but wait-a-minute, isn't that precisely the sort of suggestion that a think tank might flesh-out into implementable policy? What a pity the Left in New Zealand lacks the gumption to form a serviceable one of its own.
It doesn't have to be a large or complicated affair. Virtually all of the thinking that led to the Social Security Act of 1938 took place in the home of Kurow's GP - ably assisted by its Presbyterian minister and the headmaster of the Kurow school. Ah, but that was back in the days when the Left devoted itself to working out what to do - not who to blame.
Chris, I think We should all be concerned with Right wing think tanks like the Atlas Network.
Yes, they may have a slicker and well oiled apparatus with money to burn on producing convincing messages to sway the average workers vote to the right, even more so in this era of social media algorithms. But this is not simply a competition of Right vs Left. It is a battle between Authoritarian rule and democracy.
What Act, Atlas, and these right wing think tanks are seeking is “little or no government interference in the economy”.
Unfortunately many “average voters” cant comprehend the implications of that goal achieved .
Little or no Government means Little or no democracy. Little or no democracy translates into little or no rights, little or no freedom, and a world where economic might is right. Absolute wealth translates into absolute Power.
We should all be concerned. Very concerned.
Good heavens, Mr Trotter. Astonished that you should write this. Just any old bunch of neoliberal think tanks, like any other old bunch with rich donors? Perhaps you have an exploratory journey as yet not taken. Start here and follow a few links: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/06/rishi-sunak-javier-milei-donald-trump-atlas-network. But then this article is written by another of those paranoid lefties, eh.
You might follow this one too: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374262009_Silencing_the_Voice_the_fossil-fuelled_Atlas_Network's_campaign_against_constitutional_recognition_of_Indigenous_Australia though I can’t guarantee the author isn’t a leftie either.
Btw I can’t think of anything sunny about the NZ Initiative, which, like the Taxpayers Union is an Atlas Network ‘partner’. Jordan Williams of TPU along with David Seymour are proud Atlas Network MBA graduates, but surely they have left all that behind them in their buoyant youth.
Re the Ayn Rand play-on-words in the headline - as Sir Humphrey Appleby would say to Jim Hacker 'how very droll'.
Thanks, Chris. Excellent analysis. Mihi Forbes, for one, is convinced that The Voice was voted down in Australia because shadowy cabals like the Atlas Network put money into the No campaign. She claims the same forces are behind Seymour's referendum.
What she fails to mention — including in her doco Trick or Treaty? — is that the Yes campaign was heavily supported and generously funded by Big Oil and Mining (BHP put in $2 million, among other big sector players that contributed), alongside Qantas ($500k free travel for Yes campaigners) and the big Four Banks and Accounting firms that all backed the Yes side.
The official figures of who donated what to both sides of the campaign won't be out until April 1 but it seems unlikely that the No side will have received anything like the funding the Yes campaign received (estimated by some to be $50m at least).
Maybe shadowy groups are indeed funding Seymour — who knows? — but the left really needs better evidence than the claim he worked for think tanks in Canada to make their case.
Don't be ridiculous. Big Oil and Mining is behind Atlas. One doesn't exclude the other. Atlas is not some monolithic scary entity - it's simply a network of like minded interests connected by ethos, and big money.
In the USA, they are called Heritage Foundation and have written the manual for what happens if/when Trump wins. In the Canada, they are called Frontier for Policy Research where David Seymour was trained. And in NZ they are called Taxpayers Union and NZ Initiative.
It's pretty simple stuff.
Simple only if you're simple-minded. How much do you think Atlas has spent on campaigns in NZ and Australia in the past year?
Get through this first: https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1alk4wc/comment/kpfkza9/
These connections have about as much significance as environmental groups allying themselves with the Climate Action Network, which describes itself as a “global network of more than 1900 civil society organisations in over 130 countries driving collective and sustainable action to fight the climate crisis and to achieve social justice”.
Is CAN a shadowy organisation manipulating like-minded groups around the world too?
I see you didn't even try. Good luck though.
Yes Graham, we were in Australia for a few weeks just prior to the actual vote; it was obvious where the big money was being spent and the level of "Yes" agitprop coming from big business and the legacy media. Hat's off to The Australian newspaper though; they had two daily columns by informed and interesting protagonists from each side of the debate.
What an extraordinary long diatribe of drivel. Your central thesis that the right present a public with a better alternative than the left conveniently ignores the reality that the right in virtually all western based democracies control the narrative via the media and have a bottomless bucket of money to sell their lies. Even a cursory study of the donations at the last election would have informed you of the outrageous imbalance. A disenfranchised and indolent public that has been taught to turn on themselves for the answer to their predicament by this same media controlled narrative; black against white, men against women, straight against LGBTQI, unionist against independent. Libertarianism is the politics of those who would grab everything for themselves at the expense of a caring egalitarian society. It is the race to push the interests, wages and conditions of service of the average hardworking Kiwi to the bottom of the barrel whilst siphoning off state assets, state subsidies and all control to a tiny elite. At what stage in your political decay did you accept your ‘forty pieces of silver’ to be spokesperson for such appalling antisocial, anti worker politics?
Junk tanks, not think tanks.
Junk tanks peddling short sighted donor politics. Junk tanks advancing a new feudalism. Junk tanks working for banksters, oil and gas. Junk tanks whose policies have rotted out the west.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1alk4wc/comment/kpfkza9/
Thanks Chris.
Some people on the right lost their damned minds when Ardern was elected. They imagined that she was controlled by the WEF, or by the International Socialist Youth of which she was once president, or Soros, or Davos, or whatever. It was all stupid. She had views and talked with a lot of people who broadly shared her views. There was no conspiracy.
Same is now happening on the left. Impossible to say whether they're just stinging from the election result and looking for something external to blame (as you suggest) or whether they're throwing mud because they think it'll be effective against those with opposing political views. I think it's both.
Hey Eric, great to see your comments, and agree there is no conspiracy here. It is all in public, and think tanks like NZI are a response to the university/ intellectual classes being “captured “ by left leaning ideology. The pay for play of the commercial sector looking to externalise the social cost of their products and services is what makes the left lose their minds. Example is NZI commentary on tobacco laws in nz, while tobacco industry are paying members of your organisation. There is a lack of clarity as to how much influence they have on NZI. Unlike political party influence there is not monetary value that can be found as this level of organisation is a closed book. Atlas network is just like a master franchise of policy sharing/ influence techniques that helps to advance the franchise. You have been to their conferences, what are your objective thoughts on their system?
Well said Chris! I spent some time with David when he was in Canada. I took him for his first ice skating adventure at the historic Forks Market (Centre of Winnipeg, therefore centre of Canada) where fur trading originated in Canada hundreds of years ago. We skated on the famous Red & Assiniboine rivers. -Buzz Grant
Ever thought of syndicating this in the union press?
The Atlas conspiracy theory was largely developed and promoted by Joanne/Mihirangi Forbes based on reckons from her far left mates. Turns out her oversized media influence is funded by hundreds of thousands of tax payer dollars, apparently far more money than the Atlas group ever spent . Sean Plunket has a look, 5 minute clip: https://youtu.be/QnQBsJJm7YI
You mean Oliver Plunket. 😏
Chris: "If the Right’s stories were made more convincing by a sympathetic think tank, then the Left should not be getting mad at their opponent’s effective apparatus, it should be getting mad at itself for not having one of its own."
Really Chris? With almost the entirety of academia and the substantially "progressive" media arrayed against the Right it's not a lack of fire power that's lacking.
Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals
"Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich".
https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-treason-intellectuals-third-reich
I think Roger Douglas was in fact a Labour Party minister, but this is, otherwise, an excellent antidote to the nonsense that's poisoning the public debate on these issues.
I think the loss was worse than you describe in that the Labour Party and coalition abandoned both reality and the majority and were entirely non progressive.Labour immediately resorted to Stalinist type public controls which were not equitable, legal or fair at all when faced with a crisis everyone had been warned would happen for years. They simply aren’t up to the job and did, as the Government today continues to do, really dumb and borderline illegal things to people. They seem to still want to double down on their mistakes and ineptitude thinking no one will notice. But of course people do. I can’t see any of them being aware of their obligations to citizens in the slightest. Like kids in a playpen but they’re vacuous adults with facile prejudiced and bigoted views. Which are not laws.
Kath, deep breaths. Once in a generation pandemic with people making decisions in the best interests of all citizens especially those who are vulnerable. These decisions were made with input from experts and in the context of a health system that is stretched in normal seasonal winter illness loads. Certain amount of building a plane while they were flying it… you may want to familiarise yourself with the time line: https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2023-10/pr-timeline-significant-events-activities.pdf
Not perfect, but not a disaster on a country level?