A cosmogonic myth is a narrative about how the world came to be in its present state. Often, such myths involve the bringing of order from chaos or nothing. The Genesis creation story is a good example of this.
That book, of course, is not taken literally by most Christians. Nevertheless, those who identify with a cosmogonic myth they do not believe to be literally true may nevertheless ascribe to it powerful and profound metaphoric and symbolic truths. You might not believe that the world was actually created when the children of Rangi the sky father and Papa the earth mother were pushed apart but that doesn’t mean you see no value in the story.
The Labour Party is our oldest surviving political party and, for many, it functions as a mild form of substitute religion. Former prime ministers are deified in ways that the National Party never seems to countenance even for its most succesful leaders. People don’t hang icons of Sidney Holland on their walls in the same way some people still do for Michael Joseph Savage.
Accordingly, the onset of a new Labour government is often accompanied by a new cosmogonic myth for how that government came to be. Like all legends, new details and themes are added and entrenched over time while the narrative becomes more layered and complex. And this government is no different.
Looking at the hard facts of election night in 2017 the picture is pretty clear. Compared to the prior election, National was down a bit, Labour was up a lot, the Greens were down a lot and NZ First were down a bit. The Maori and United Future parties were wiped out but that was due to changes at local levels. On the whole, the balance between left and right didn’t really shift too much.
Just who would form the government was up in the air because NZ First had maintained the paradox of refusing to comment on who it would go with before the election because of a claimed aversion to backroom deals. This, of course, meant the ultimate outcome election had to be decided through dealing in a couple of back rooms. Some people now think the party was always going to go with Labour but even if that’s true, it wasn’t something of which voters were aware.
After Winston Peters decided to instal Jacinda Ardern in the Beehive the narrative quickly started to shift. In the revised telling, New Zealanders had “had enough” and make a bold decision to vote National out in favour of a progressive new government. See this piece by Simon Wilson which is the ne plus ultra of the genre, for example.
But the days of Camelot weren’t to last, alas. Before long, the realities of coalition government and the often zero-sum nature of actual responsibility began to assert themselves. The government found itself unable to politically act upon the recommendations of the distant experts and hangers on to whom they had outsourced their policy agenda. Where they did try to be bold, as with Kiwibuild, unexpected difficulties kept getting in the way.
And so over the past few months we have witnessed the further refinement of the internal cosmogony of the sixth Labour government. In particular, there has been specific and detailed development of the period of chaos that preceded it. For the government and its supporters, this period has become known as The Neglect.
(For an illustration of how fixed this article of faith has now become, refer to the astute observations of Jason Walls at the Herald).
Looking back at the “nine long years” which encompass The Neglect we see that, in fact, it was a period of generally improving prosperity and broad satisfaction. Some things did not improve, of course, and other things got worse. That’s always the case in human society no matter what the colour the government of the day is.
But for narrative purposes, it is necessary to see The Neglect as a unique period in New Zealand history where the running down of government services reduced us to a void-like state. Where the first version of the government creation story involved the immediate dawning of an Aquarian Age, the current revision emphasises that Jacinda Ardern and her cabinet are only partway through the process converting chaos into order. We are only up to the third day of creation, basically.
Very little of this is literally true, naturally, but that’s rather beside the point. We can assume that most people involved in developing and articulating the myth understand and are aware of the fact that The Neglect didn’t actually happen. Or not in the way it has been presented, at least.
Of course, as with all faiths, it pays to keep a close eye on the fundamentalists.