The 2002 election was virtually unique in that it didn’t centre on the economy, in fact it was hardly mentioned. The raft of issues of burning concern to CAFCA and other likeminded groups hardly got a look in. Which is not to say that they were completely absent. Genetic engineering (GE) per se is not our issue, we’re not qualified to have an opinion on the science of it one way or the other. But what we are very much interested in is - who owns and controls GE, who is pushing the agenda? Answer – some of the very biggest transational corporations (TNCs) in the world, and that is of direct interest to us (to give another example, exactly the same applies on issues such as whether rubbish should be disposed of in landfills or not. That is not our issue and we’re not qualified to comment. But who owns the landfilll and pushes the landfill agenda is very much our issue, and we are eminently qualified to comment on that). GE is high on the TNC agenda for New Zealand, and one of the reasons for the savage attacks on the Greens from Labour, Big Business and the media is precisely because of that party’s staunch opposition to the commercial release of GE in this country. In the absence of an argument about the economy, and with the virtual sidelining of National from the campaign, this became the GE election, fought out between Labour and the Greens. GE is fundamentally a middle class issue (just as the 1987 election was fought over the middle class issue of New Zealand remaining nuclear free), so both those parties were competing for the fickle attentions of the bourgeoisie.

Clark may have wanted Nicky’s head on a plate but instead what she got was Young Nick’s Head on the agenda.

The huge subject of foreign control wasn’t touched on by any party but a high profile aspect of it became an issue, because of the controversy surrounding the proposed sale to a rich American of Nick’s Head Station, including the historic headland of Young Nick’s Head, which is of great significance to both Maori and pakeha. The never ending series of rural land sales to foreigners is essentially a sideshow to the takeover of New Zealand by TNCs but it is one which gets the emotional reaction and the media coverage (we can vouch for that with the long running saga of Lilybank). This proposed sale had everything – a placename known to all New Zealanders as the first piece of the country spotted by Captain Cook’s cabin boy in 1769; the fact that it is privately owned by a Kiwi absentee owner who has lived in Australia for decades; the promise of the wouldbe American buyer to be an environmentally and culturally sensitive owner; and, the trump card, the fervent opposition of the local Maori iwi, Ngai Tamanuhiri, to the sale of Te Kuri a Paoa (the Young Nick’s Head headland). The iwi spokesperson was the very media savvy Tu Wyllie and he ensured that this local issue became a matter of national discussion and controversy. Wyllie, of course, used to be a New Zealand First MP (he went out when the party was almost swept from Parliament in the voter backlash at the 1999 election) but that party, which once campaigned fiercely against the foreign takeover of New Zealand, wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.

From this one threatened sale flowed a media and public discussion that widened to include the issue of whether historic landmarks should be in private or public ownership; whether they should be allowed to be sold to foreigners at all; what protections are there for "culturally sensitive" land?; and on to the whole issue of land sales to foreigners. Even our old friend, Stephen Dawe of the Overseas Investment Commission (OIC), had to pause from his rubberstamping long enough to emerge blinking in the bright lights of Holmes.The Government certainly didn’t want this issue flaring up and upsetting its carefully stage managed Presidential campaign, featuring Helen reading us reassuring bedtime stories before sending us all to sleep. So Michael Cullen, invoking his rarely used powers as Minister of Finance, assumed responsibility from the OIC and delayed any decision on selling the farm until after the election. Ngai Tamanuhiri had offered to buy it but was outbid by the American, who was prepared to pay way over the market value (an easy choice when considering the exchange rate with $US). Tu Wyllie made it clear that the iwi did not want the whole 661 hectare farm, just the 220 ha of significance to them. If they got that, they were not opposed to the rest being sold. To reinforce the point he led iwi members in occupying the headland during the election campaign and they started holding protest actions in Gisborne, plus staging a high profile hikoi to Parliament, accompanied by a protest camp in Parlaiment’s grounds. All of this ensured that the fate of Young Nick’s Head itself, Nick’s Head Station and the broader issue of land sales to foreigners achieved a high profile. Wyllie stressed that the iwi was acting in the interests of all New Zealanders.

As soon as the new Centre Right minority Government (the Gleesome Threesome of Labour, Progressive Coalition and United Future) was settled, in August, Cullen announced his decision: he approved the American buying Nick’s Head Station, with the latter promising to gift about 33 hectares of cliffs, the peak and a pa site to the nation. The American, John Griffin, also agreed to form a trust to protect the property’s cultural and historical sites and not to develop it as a tourist resort or golf course. This was less than what the iwi wanted and further action is possible. But it was enough to let Cullen wiggle off the hook and approve the sale.

But that was it for anything remotely resembling discussion or action on any aspect of foreign control. The re-election of Labour, minus any constraining influence from the late departed Alliance, means that there will be an acceleration and intensification of the policies pursued for the past two decades (Labour has halted the excesses of Rogernomics, such as stopping public asset sales, but done virtually nothing about rolling any of it back). It took from 1998 until 2002 for Winston Peters’ minor tinkering with the Overseas Investment Act (from his disastrous foray into Government) to become law. Literally days before the 1999 election the National government increased the threshhold for company takeovers requiring OIC approval from $10 million to $50m. We took this issue up immediately after that election with all Labour and Alliance MPs – nothing has been done. The Government initially barred the sale offshore of Brierley’s stake in Sealord (over the fervent objections of the OIC) but later allowed it to proceed. It reluctantly renationalised Air New Zealand in 2001, to stop it going the way of Ansett. And it brought back the Auckland rail corridor from TranzRail, for an extortionate price. Apart from those few instances, the last three years have been very much business as usual, with the Government smiling benignly at the TNC takeover of the country. Ever since its first few months, in 2000, when Big Business launched a sustained attack on it, the Government has gone out of its way to be "business friendly". The end result was that Big Business abandoned the stumbling, bumbling National Party, happy that Labour was representing its interests.

The Labour/Alliance government was very eager to be amongst the first to volunteer for this American-led "war on terror". It later transpired that the Americans had told New Zealand that the way it responded to the September 11 2001 attacks would be seen as a "touchstone" for future relations with the US. With little further ado the Government committed the Special Air Service (SAS) and relations with the US have warmed rapidly since then, including Helen Clark making the first State visit to the White House by a Labour Prime Minister since the 1970s, and indulging in an orgy of mutual backslapping with Bush and his Cabinet.

The SAS has always been wrapped in an absurd mystique, so successive governments keep secret everything about it. The war in Afghanistan proved no exception – however, in March 2002, Clark was embarrassed to be told that details of its activities in that country (fighting in the east, alongside Canadians) were freely available from a White House Website. The SAS is not New Zealand’s only military contribution – there are also 30 New Zealanders among the British-led peacekeeping forces headquartered in Kabul. This 14 nation force is basically a Euro-army, with New Zealand being the only non-European nation invited to join. This left the Canadians with their noses out of joint and they teamed up with the American-led forces in Kandahar. The Government has made it plain that it has not ruled out extending its commitment to the war in Afghanistan.

Clark has made no secret of her wish for New Zealand to be favourably considered by the US for a free trade agreement between the two countries. This is basically a rehash of the Holyoake-era "guns for butter" policy, whereby New Zealand soldiers died fighting an American war in Vietnam in return for better trade access for our primary products. Clark may very well be disappointed. James Gibney, a US foreign policy expert, said: "Even though New Zealand has made this commitment of troops to Afghanistan and has been very vocal about its support for the US, I don’t think that is necessarily going to translate into progress on other areas, like the free trade agreement…There’s always a certain bit of taking friends for granted…We’re like the absent-minded Dad – you sometimes forget to do or say the right thing, and that can end up creating problems in your relationship with even your closest friends and partners…" (Business Monthly South, July 2002; "Trade-off not a done deal – warning: New Zealand ‘fairly well down the list’ in American thinking"). Neither foreign policy nor free trade featured as election issues (in days gone by, whole elections have been fought over foreign policy), and the Greens, to their discredit, backed off from emphasising their opposition to unrestricted free trade and investment deals. They did not respond to Helen Clark’s repeated nonsensical description of them as "anti-trade", nor can we find any proof that their policy on trade was ever actually launched. They were obviously content to stress their opposition to the commercial release of GE as their one big issue.

We’re not a political party (thank God), we’re affiliated to none of them and we endorse none of them, but it’s useful to look at the various parties in light of the election. Let’s start with the woebegotten Alliance (and speaking as an Alliance voter, I must say I get a quixotic thrill out of having cast two "wasted votes"). The decision to commit the SAS to Afghanistan was the straw that broke the back of this many humped and ungainly camel, and led, ultimately, to the split which saw its leader, Jim Anderton and his faithful followers leave the party and form their own, while the remnants of the Alliance went on into electoral oblivion. But the rot had started long before then, with the party polling at a disastrously low level long before the split. The blame sits squarely with the leadership – Jim Anderton put overriding importance on coalition stability before all else, and told anyone within earshot: "We only got 7% of the vote (in 1999) and therefore can’t expect to set the policy agenda". The public rapidly came to the conclusion that if the Alliance was simply going to be a Mini Me version of Labour than they might as well vote for the real thing. Which they did. The Alliance did get some of its policies enacted – Kiwibank, paid parental leave, the jobcreating regional development programme to name a few – and acted as restraint on Labour on several issues, out of public sight. It ceased to be any sort of campaigning organisation, putting all its energy into the Parliamentary arena and "coalition stability". There was no repeat of its late 1990s major campaign against the MAI; it voted against Labour’s various free trade deals but did nothing else about them. CAFCA had quite extensive dealings with the Alliance in the 1999-2000 period, at all levels – individual branches (including of constituent parties), the party leadership, the national conference and the Parliamentary caucus. The problems and internal tensions were painfully obvious to us then – for the past couple of years, contact has been minimal. In 1999 election year when I made a speaking tour of the North Island, I was hosted and organised in several centres by Alliance branches. There was no repeat on my equivalent tour this year.

As for Jim Anderton and his new Progressive Coalition, well our reaction is one more of sorrow than of anger. Both sides of the Alliance split are represented on the CAFCA committee; we respect the courage of Jim when he walked solo from Labour in the 1980s (with no help from the gutless "Labour Left"), without him there would have been no Alliance; until electorate boundaries were changed, he was my MP for most of the 20 years that I’ve lived in my present home, and he’s a bloody good local MP. And he made achievements of which he can be justly proud in his three years as Deputy Prime Minister (Kiwibank is one, and CAFCA is happy to support it by putting a decent amount of money into it). But he carries a large burden of responsibility for the demise of the Alliance and was electorally punished for being a splittist and a partyhopper – his formerly stratospheric Wigram electorate majority was cut by at least two thirds and there are severe doubts about whether any other Progressive Coalition candidate could win it once he retires, let alone get any other MPs into Parliament. Jim talks about wanting to stay in Parliament until he is 70 (another two terms) to rebuild a party to the Left of Labour but what is he going to say to his supporters now: "We only got 1% of the vote and therefore can’t expect to set the policy agenda".

The Greens are a party with whom we continue to have a productive working relationship, with a two way flow of information and requests between us and several of their MPs. Indeed there are times when we’ve felt that we’re their unpaid research department, but that has been balanced out by the Parliamentary Questions we’ve suggested they ask and they are the one party that has done the most work on the OIC in the past three years. Rod Donald was instrumental in getting the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee, with MPs from several parties, to conduct a performance review of the OIC and to ask for tightened criteria for approval of foreign investment proposals (the Labour/Alliance government declined the recommendations). Unlike the Alliance, the Greens have remained alive as a campaigning organisation, reflecting their background as a coalition of single issue groups and activists. Green MPs clambered up Young Nick’s Head to offer their support to the Maori occupiers, during the campaign. Wearing my Anti-Bases Campaign hat, I congratulate the Greens on consistently supporting the opposition to the Waihopai spybase and on all matters to do with security and intelligence. Green MPs Rod Donald and Keith Locke have come on several Waihopai protests (sleeping in tents in a paddock like the rest of us, not simply breezing in and out), ensuring a much higher media interest. Labour’s Marian Hobbs came to a Waihopai demo once, when she was a new MP, back in 1996. She got jumped on very heavily by the Party leadership and has never been since, let alone raised the issue.

Which brings us to New Zealand First. There’s not much to say that we haven’t already said (I refer you to Watchdog 84, May 1997; "Winston’s Petered Out"). Peters is a brilliant campaigner but that’s all he is, he is hopeless in Government and lacklustre in the day to day dreariness of Parliament. He’s like an immaculately coiffed jack in the box (he’s just the right size too) who pops up every three years. He picked on three hot button issues for the Pakeha elderly and reactionary – immigration, the Treaty and crime, and thrashed them endlessly with his Bob the Builder refrain. National, his old party, could learn a thing or two from him about campaigning. He has that good old fashioned charisma (as does Anderton, and it was a fascinating experience to sit between them when both spoke at a CAFCA public meeting in the mid 90s).

It might be the third largest party in Parliament but it’s been there before, rising to the giddy heights of coalition partner. The last time that Peters brought a swag of new MPs to Parliament (1996), it all turned very nasty indeed and he, and his party, came within a few dozen votes of electoral oblivion at the 1999 election. I have no hesitation in predicting the same outcome this time. Peters has been compared to Euronasties such as France’s Jean Marie Le Pen. That is neither fair nor correct. He certainly gets the racist vote but there is no trace of the neo-Nazi thuggery that underpins Le Pen’s National Front and other European anti-immigration parties. Peters is a Muldoon protege, a Tory populist who deserves credit for having courageously tackled the corporate corruption at the heart of New Zealand Big Business, in the Winebox Affair. He is a reactionary nationalist (by contrast, CAFCA defines itself as progressive nationalist) and he is carrying on the Muldoon tradition exemplified by the infamous 1976 "overstayers" campaign, with its dawn raids and police State connotations.

Now we come to the "never heard of them" party which has been catapulted into propping up the Clark/Anderton minority Government for the next three years. By signing a deal promising to let that Government govern, United Future knocked the Greens off the platform and suddenly found themselves in the, very much unaccustomed, limelight.

Like everybody else we know very little about United Future, which tends to make them something of a whoDunneit (I couldn’t resist that). They are the one party with whom we have never had any sort of contact, and ditto for Peter Dunne. Readers of the wonderful "Dune" series of books know that it was necessary to master the art of riding the gigantic sandworms. Well, Peter Dunne rode the (TVNZ Leaders’ Debate) worm all the way to the bank. Perhaps the next series of books will be called "Dunne". He came across as Mr Reasonable and who could possibly argue with a party that puts "the family" at its centre? Actually there is plenty to be concerned about with this "Centre" party. Our MMP system is closely modelled on that of Germany and Dunne wants to create an NZ equivalent of the Free Democrats (FDP), a tiny party which has regularly been the kingmaker and junior coalition partner with Right governing parties. It’s worth reflecting that the FDP once described itself as "the party of the well-off" (Time, 22/7/02; "Party of the [Rich] People") and that would seem to the natural territory for United Future.

Dunne was a Rogernaut in the lamentable 1984-90 Labour government and a defector from his own party, whose first attempt at building a party of Labour and National "Centrists" ended in electoral oblivion, at the 1996 election. He survived as a one man band by dint of holding his own seat, aided by National not running a candidate against him in two elections. He was rewarded with a Cabinet post from the National government. From 1999-2002 he consistently voted against the Labour/Alliance government and sided with National, so he’s definitely no natural ally of Labour, let alone anything to the Left of it. In his first post-election speech. He said that United Future wanted to "moderate the profligacy of the Left…with the cold insensitivity of the Right" (Press, 6/8/02). An interesting choice of words.

United Future’s economic policies are perfectly compatible with those of ACT and his merger with one of the two competing Christian parties brings to Parliament a number of brand new MPs with a conservative social agenda (at least the odious Biblebashers of the rival Christian Heritage Party remain outside Parliament, despite giving it their all at several elections now). The media have belatedly done some homework and unearthed all sorts of eyebrow raising views on subjects like AIDS and contraception, uttered by some of the new queenmaker MPs. Several Labour backbenchers have already expressed grave reservations about being forced to become bedmates with such a party. But Clark quite openly plans to use United Future as a way of getting around impediments to the TNC agenda such as the Greens’ bottom line opposition to the October 2003 end of the moratorium on the commercial release of GE.