John Hayes and Don McKinnon clearly need to have a chat about how they ended up in the same political party. In some ways, though, McKinnon’s anti-democratic outburst is hardly surprising. As an adult in the 90s and growing up in the 80s I well remember many of the politicians leading the New Right charge in New Zealand encouraging us to look to Singapore as an example of how things ought to be - although none of them would actually come out and say democracy ought to be abolished in favour of a repressive one-party state, it certainly seemed to be part of the appeal.
No, democracy doesn’t necessarily put food on the table, and democracies can go wrong - you don’t even need the example of the Nazis coming to power in Germany for that; simply look at the destruction wrought in New Zealand by the democratically elected Muldoon government, the seemingly intractable problems of modern Italian democracy, or the manner in which minority religious extremists have wielded power in the Israeli system.
What intrigues me is where McKinnon draws the line. During the period of South Korean autocracy there were massacres, torture, imprisonment. How many people can be killed in the name of economic progress? What’s the acceptable threshold of extermination? I’m sure Don isn’t, of course, volunteering for a bullet in the head for GDP gains, but it’s a question that ought to be asked of him, anyway - which of your kids would you sacrifice, Don? And if killing people in the name of (economic) progress is OK, does this mean Don endorses Stalin’s massacres in the Ukraine, or Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward?
(Although looking at Hayes’ maiden speech it’s rather ironic listening to a career foreign service civil servant lambast the government for manoeuvring to get a Kiwi into an important international post.)