A FOOL'S PARADISE

Paul Henry : 'I'm posing like this because it makes me look more intellectual.'

Paul Henry wants to rebuild his free market paradise, just like the one we apparently had before. Excited yet?

THE CLUE  is in the title. Rebuilding Paradise suggests that we once had paradise and now we will have to rebuild it. There are many of us though who think that the many economic and social injustices of the past three decades of neoliberal rule has hardly constituted paradise. Some of us also recall Paul Henry repeatedly declaring it to be 'another day in paradise' during the nine year reign of the National-led Government. This is the same Paul Henry who regularly bashed those who weren't 'lucky' enough to be part of his paradise, including beneficiaries and the poor. Unlike other more coy television presenters, Henry makes no secret about where his political loyalties lie. He worships at the altar of 'the market'.

Even though Duncan Grieve at The Spinoff has suggested Henry has gone 'woke' on the basis that he has praised both Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson, a cheetah doesn't change his spots. Its more an indictment of the market friendly policies of the Labour-led Government that an arch-conservative and former National Party election candidate like Henry feels comfortable praising two of the most prominent members of the present government. Henry, cleverer than most of its fellow TV hosts, knows too well that this Labour-led Government represents no threat to the economic and political status quo. It too wants to rebuild it.

If Rebuilding Paradise plans to be some kind of television talkfest about getting neoliberalism up and running again, it'll have to do better than the first episode. The closest the show came to offering any way forward was rambling jeweller Michael Hill pontificating that we have to set long term goals. This sort of aspirational hocus pocus merely deflects attention from the structural deficiencies of the New Zealand economy. But I guess that's also why Hill was so quick to deny the existence of a class system in New Zealand. We can't have the working class recognising its future lies in taking collective action in pursuit of its own interests.

In his upcoming conversations about 'rebuilding paradise' I don't imagine Henry will be talking about New Zealand upending a market economy that has generated so much economic misery for the many, while benefiting the few. I don't think Henry will be about talking New Zealand implementing a policy package, a Green New Deal, that would be all about addressing economic inequality and climate change. That's not what Henry means by 'rebuilding paradise'. His vision of the promised land is based on the false belief that the free market can provide prosperity for all. The last three decades provides ample enough evidence that it can't.