But at a time when the Labour Party should be telling a story so that their Capital Gains Tax policy (and wealth tax more generally) makes good sense to people, they kept getting caught up in telling a story about how bad tax is.

The importance of the cake

It’s bleak out there. It’s winter, people are struggling to make ends meet. With the exception of the extremely wealthy, most of us have not arrived at the promised land of a nice life with a warm home, affordable food, work that pays, hospitals that can care for us, communities that have plenty of resources.

During an election, that means political parties need to offer people a picture of what life can be with them driving the country forward. The cake.

A cake is more than a few decorations (individual policy promises), and not simply pointing to the burnt cake your opponents baked. A cake is your vision for what this country can be and how people will be in it. And it has to look like enticing.

Labour has a cake (of sorts): Jobs. Health. Homes. Though it’s less of a vision and more a list of nouns. If it was an actual cake it would probably be a box of pre-made cake mix.

National has a cake too: less tax and more economic prudence. It feels like a date cake to me, one made with less sugar than usual, no luxuries. Kind of dry.

The smaller parties do a bit better on the cake front.

Explaining why do we not have the cake & how to get the cake

The cake is the invitation, especially for those who don’t already consistently support you. So you don’t stop at the cake. It’s important to give people an explanation - why do we not have this cake? What is the problem? Who made it? Importantly that explanation about why we do not have the cake serves the purpose of making your proposed policies sit cohesively in the wider story you are telling. Without this explanation (A), the danger is that the solutions (B) you offer don’t make sense to people: A plus B is not adding up to C(ake). It also leaves you open to attack from your opponents that you find difficult to defend.

Which brings us to Labour’s wealth tax policy.

While Labour has a cake of sorts, it also has a bunch of solutions. One of which is a capital gains tax. What they don’t yet have is a meaningful and easy explanation they all use consistently as to why we need a capital gains tax. And it leaves them in a tricky space. In fact it leaves them in a space so tricky that their default tax story is often: “We kind of also hate tax”.

IMAGE: Poor old capital gains tax doesn’t even get called Labour Policy, on their website.

Tax is tricky to talk about because of one dominant cultural model

Tax is the boogeyman this election. More generally, tax as a frame activates a pretty negative story. Conservatives have done a brilliant job of creating a story that gets switched on whenever the word tax is used. That story is: tax is a burden, government takes my hard-earned money and wastes it, either on stupid ideas, dumb rules and regulations or bludgers. It’s a simple and powerful frame that activates the thinking.

Here is that thinking in operation on a linked post of mine about wealth tax

And National knows how to activate that thinking

IMAGE: Tax is a burden says National

For progressives and left leaning political parties this simplifying cultural model has always been a massive challenge. However the point in politics is not simply to meet people where they are at, but to convince people where we need to go and how to get there. And wealth taxes are collectively without a shred of doubt where we need to go if we want a) to redirect our economic set up out of unproductive stuff (housing) and b) get rid of the ever rising inequality which is a major barrier to all of us having nice things.

Labour gets stuck reinforcing the dominant frame about tax

As National ramps up its tax, tax, tax is bad bad bad approaches many people in Labour frequently accept the frame that tax is bad too. Whenever they are accused of 500 new taxes or whatever the number National has come up with, or they are accused of sneaking in more ways to “tax hard-working kiwis”. They firmly state "it's only one tax, we won't tax people on anything else, only this tax and it won’t affect most people" etc etc. They get defensive, they deny that there will be more taxes. I get it, it’s natural, when someone tells a lie, you say it’s not true. And if you are worried it’s a negative story, you want to reassure your audience you are not the bad guy. However, the defensiveness and denial plays straight into the story that tax is a burden.

Last week Helen Clark (Labour’s most outspoken representative whether she sees herself as that or not) told us all that a property tax is the craziest thing you could imagine.

Here is Henry Oliver summarising his thoughts on Labour’s election strategy in the Spinoff Bulletin “Labour’s apparent strategy of keeping its head down, keeping the focus on National’s errors and quietly reassuring centrist voters that a Labour-led government wouldn’t introduce a bunch of new taxes”

By falling into the frame, Labour is basically saying to everyone: We hate tax too.

The less problematic, but still problematic way Labour tells the tax sucks story is by using the words tax breaks, and relief from tax. You only need a break from something, or relief from it, if you think it is a burden.

But Labour doesn’t believe tax sucks. It just believes everyone else believes tax suck.

Labour believes that tax gets us nice things. They know that tax settings shape behaviour, which directs where the economic activity happens (or doesn’t). They understand that the current configurations of the tax systems are causing a massive imbalance in the economy and driving wealth inequality, and is a barrier to many people getting ahead.

Tax sucks is not their story, but they somehow keep telling it.

Of course this is not all down to Labour messaging. The story we hear is the sum of many parts. But people in political parties do have control over the core message and how disciplined they are at using it. If everyone in Labour, including their big shot supporters are singing from the same sheet, the story gets out there. But without a clear story there is a 0% chance.

Labour needs their own story about tax, that reflects what they really know and believe, and they need to be able to confidently tell it.

Changing the temperature on tax is possible

People are multitudes. By that I mean we have access to many different perspectives on the world, the problems in it, and ways to solve it, some quite contradictory. Just because one way of thinking about tax is easy to activate (and easy to see and measure in opinion polls) doesn’t mean Labour should just accept it. Though of course that would be me assuming Labour wants to do more than simply get into power, which is up for debate.

If leaders were only ever prepared to meet people where they were at then nothing would ever change or get changed. Yes, conservatives have framed the tax is a burden story over and over again so it dominates, but words shape the world, and new words told often enough by enough people reshape it.

The good news is that people have alternative ways of thinking about tax already in existence that Labour can activate, and in even better news the window of opportunity is wide open.

The present opportunity

I understand that transformational change was a thing for the Jacindatime, and that didn’t work out so well for Labour. I imagine they don’t want to make bold claims or take big swings again (and the current leader isn’t that kind of person anyway). But as any good therapist will ask: you developed a set of behaviours to keep you safe a few years back, but how are they serving you now? Because the context is different.

The country is full of fed up people looking for some answers not just to the cost of their groceries and rent, but to why working hard gets you nothing and nowhere, why going to A&E means you are just sick in a different place, why when 80% of people in the world want stronger action on climate, most people in governments are doing nothing because fossil fuel companies say no. And why the wealthy are literally going to the moon off the resources they are sucking up, while the rest of us are stuck going no-where, not even into a home. The system is rigged, and people look at many people in politics and think “they are in it for themselves and their wealthy mates”. And the evidence is pretty clear that some of them are.

There is room for a new story about tax from Labour (and all progressive orgs).

IMAGE: When people in politics allow the people who are stuffing the planet to dictate the laws so they can keep stuffing it, you know things need unrigging.

Wealth tax - a tool for fixing what is out of whack

To be fair to Labour, I think they are trying to tell a story that explains that tax is how we pay for nice things for all of us. The means to get more teachers, shorter A&E wait times, homes for people who don’t have them, good food for everyone, transport for everyone, and a proper response to climate change.

Here is Kieran McAnulty nailing it

“If you’re ruling out revenue, you have to cut spending. So what are you going to cut?

“More nurses? More hospital services? More front-line workers? More support for families?”

McAnulty said New Zealanders had a right to know what “National is planning to take away from them”.

“Putting everything on the chopping block is not responsible government,” he said.

Because people can and do think about tax as the means to fund the things all of us need collectively. It is a better way of thinking about tax than tax sucks, and with the right framing is relatively easy to activate. Say “Tax cuts for polluters and billionaires means funding cuts to hospitals and schools, nurses, teachers, and firefighters” and people get there pretty quickly.

Labour can and should work on telling this story far more consistently and comprehensively across the board (as well as cutting out all the we hate tax stuff).

There is another story about tax to tell

There is another story that needs to be told about tax too1: Tax is a tool for rebalancing the economy.

The current dominant story suggests that tax is simply used to raise funds for paying for things (and that is up for debate). What isn’t talked about but is absolutely true is that tax serves another purpose also: it shapes behaviours. Tobacco tax is used to disincentivise tobacco use. Carbon taxes to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Conservatives tell us that wealth tax will drive out wealthy people from the country (up for an evidence debate). Tax influences how people act, and how people act shapes what type of economy we have. And the economy we have is very unbalanced.

By unbalanced I mean, there is a whole heap of unproductive activity (e.g. property investment), and not nearly enough activity that gives us what we actually need to thrive as a nation: more care homes, top-quality teaching and educational institutes, planet-positive industries, good food everywhere for everyone, high-quality low-cost long-term rental and other housing, sustainable businesses, health technology and systems that work for aging populations, infrastructure that will work in a climate that is forever disrupted. In other words, it is more than just not having the funds to pay for nice things. The settings don’t encourage people and organisations to fund people or the activities we need to keep everyone well and thriving.

Instead, the tax settings encourage the accumulation of private wealth, and the end result of that is prosperity for a small group of people while the rest of us struggle: it is all very unbalanced. That is not all down to the tax settings. It is about the goals people in government set out for the country, and how it uses employment, business, education, health, food, science policies to achieve those goals matter. And tax plays a big role.

So it’s also time to talk about wealth tax’s role in rebalancing the economy. To be upfront about how tax drive people’s actions. To talk about tax in the context of what it is doing to us collectively. The framing for that, I am not yet sure of - this stuff is science and art, so I am not big on guessing. If I was to take a stab at it, perhaps something like:

“A balanced economy means everyone has the opportunity to do well, and the country has all the things we all need to thrive.

But at the moment many of us who work are struggling to get ahead, while wealthy families and co-operations get an easy ride by way of low or no taxes on the wealth they accumulate. This warped approach to taxing work but not wealth has got the economy out of whack. It leads to money getting directed into things we don’t need and even cause us harm - things like land banking which stops the homes we need being built.

To rebalance the economy, and deliver prosperity for all of us, people in government need to encourage funding into the things we all need: quality warm homes, sustainable energy, and affordable food to New Zealanders. Taxing property wealth is the first step to this rebalancing.”

People in Labour know the tax setting needs to change to rebalance things. Their tax working group agreed in basic terms with the inequality and wealth hoarding problem and recommended broad extension of capital gains tax. With some bravery they can start to dip their toes into the wealth tax to rebalance the economy story.

Politics looks hard. Having enough time and money for developing cohesive messaging when you are reacting all the time to media and a 24/7 information environment must be challenging. Getting all your people on message even more so. Nevertheless. Perhaps “Let’s do this” still has some cachet for Labour?

_{Photo by Ali Kazal on Unsplash}

In 2023 I got Covid-19 for the second time. I’d been immunised, so I didn’t get too ill and seemed to recover ok. About six weeks later I found myself unable to complete one of my normal runs. I hit the wall, got shaky and faint, and couldn’t run another step. I plodded home, got some sugar and electrolytes on board.

Over the following weeks this happened more often, and not just when running — in the middle of meetings, or on gentle walks. My heart rate would shoot up, I couldn’t sleep for the palpitations, and an impending sense of doom hung over me. I had a relentless headache and couldn’t think properly. One day my sister said, “Do you think you might have Long-Covid?”

The answer was yes. After ECGs (nothing found), a brain scan (nothing), blood tests (nothing), the GP diagnosed Long-Covid. By then I could barely function at home or work. I went from being indefatigable — running 5 times a week, riding my bike everywhere, writing flat out, managing an organisation and supporting two kids with very high needs who were not in school — to being in bed for most of the day. By December 2023 I went on leave from work, and hoped like hell this would get better. And it did.

Slowly, over the months after, resting and figuring out what worked to stop me overdoing it. I buggered it up often, pushing too hard too fast. The absolute hell of my type of LC is that I can feel totally fine, think this is a great time to do normal people stuff — have a meeting, write a blog, do the garden — and end up causing a flare-up that puts me back on my arse for a couple of weeks (its called post-exertional malaise and its a mind fuck). You have to get used to doing things that feel way below your threshold of capability. Absolute hell for a Type A person like me (my GP’s words, not mine). But two years later, by mid-2025 I was 80% better, and by November I was 90%: back to running regularly, riding to work, able to travel again, working full time.

And then I went all the way back to the start. I’d had a stressful year — closing down the organisation I started, caring for the kids’ still-high needs. One Saturday I hit the wall on a short run. I had a two-day training event on the Monday. In hindsight I should have cancelled and gone to bed, but people had flown in, the clients were ones I had a long-term relationship with, it felt easier to keep going than to cancel everything. Halfway through the first day I was lying on the floor in an empty room in the events centre, barely able to string two words together, as my entire energy system went into failure.

A short-circuiting nervous system

The best way I can describe my Long-Covid is this: sometimes my nervous system behaves as if everything I do — thinking, showering, a short walk — is running an ultra marathon for the 5th week in a row, without training, food, or water. My body simply can’t produce or access the energy I need for the most basic activities. Why is unclear — researchers are exploring this, including what’s happening at the mitochondrial level. What it looks and feels like is my brain and nervous system just shutting me down mid-activity. Brain fog, shakiness, palpitations, nerve problems, reflux, headaches, massive spikes in dread and anxiety — my autonomic nervous system short-circuiting.

The hardest thing for me is accepting the disability. Long-Covid has made my life so very small. It has limited what I can do with my family and at work. It slows my brain and my body, something I had come to rely on working as I wanted. It has changed how I see myself. I hate having to explain that at any point I might just drop off the map and no, I have no idea until when I will re-appear because it is an illness with so many unknowns. It makes contract conversations tricky. Though people have been nothing but kind and understanding. I just hate the reality of it.

This is the story familiar to everyone who ever had something unexpected and shit happen to them I suspect. “This is not how I believed my life would be and it fucking sucks and I want my old life/body/brain back”.

And then I had to stop fighting the reality. Because seeing Long-Covid as something to hate, to deny and hide from, that I was a victim of, wasn’t working for me. It meant I pushed too hard too fast when I pretended I was my old self. However, I also wasn’t just going to accept that I couldn’t or wouldn’t get better until someone came up with a magical cure (don’t get me wrong I still dream about that happening).

Neuroplasticity: common to Long-Covid and framing for change?

About a year into my first major bout, I read an article by a couple of GPs from New Zealand talking about approaches to chronic pain and how that might apply to Long-Covid. Chronic pain is something that happens when pain that has an original structural or biological cause just keeps going long after the initial cause and source of pain has gone. Here is a quote from the article explaining it:

“Persistent pain often arises from a hyper-vigilant nervous system which perpetuates the warning signal. The underlying neurophysiology in persistent pain is known as “central sensitisation”. This term describes an overly sensitive warning system causing exaggerated pain signals even after damaged tissue has healed.

Central sensitisation depends on the phenomenon of neuroplasticity. Neurological pathways we use frequently become more established, efficient and dominant. In persisting pain and fatigue, the associated neural pathways become highly developed, even if this is counterproductive to normal functioning.

While neuroplasticity contributes to the development of unhelpful neurological pathways, the converse applies, too. Unhelpful pathways can be down regulated, improving symptoms.”

The interviewees suggested that there are aspects of Long-Covid fatigue especially which may have similar mechanisms. The brain and nervous system (which is just part of the brain) perpetuates a warning system long past when it is useful - i.e. after recovery from the Covid virus. My nervous system has rewired to become oversensitive to exertion.

This immediately made sense to me because of the work I do on strategic framing: a field based in the cognitive and neuro sciences.

We come to understand and make sense of the world in very particular ways because of dominant ways of thinking about it; shared simplifying models which are present as neural networks in our brain. Say the word “red tape” to people and it causes a set of neurons to fire that brings up a whole set of ideas and images about how government should be structured and run and how it should not. The more we use the word in our communications and the more detail we provide about what government should look like in the context of this word, the more the neural pathways get activated, the stronger and more dominant they become, and the more cognitively easy they are for people to access. The ideas seem normal because neurons that fire together wire together.

Likewise we can shift how people think about and make sense of the world by offering other ways of thinking about the world, and different words that activate them (through our framing choices). If repeated enough, and accessed frequently enough the thinking becomes dominant because the neural pathways have been strengthened. Strategic framing is all about creating new or stronger neural pathways to change how people think and act. It relies on neuroplasticity. And maybe some part of Long-Covid management does too.

A biological cause with some cognitive solutions?

The idea that we can think our way out of Long-Covid is not without its critics. Especially those who believe that this approach implies that it is only psychosomatic. It is a very raw wound for those suffering from chronic fatigue and related illnesses. There is a long history of telling people with chronic fatigue that it is all their heads. In my postgraduate health psychology papers in the early 2000s, chronic fatigue was still attributed to psychosomatic causes.

The framing is: you are hysterics. The simplifying model is: you caused this illness by thinking your way into it so just think your way out again. The anger this framing drives is something I can relate to. Women’s pain and illness have long been ignored or pathologised in ways that have meant we miss out on research, funding and treatment, or worse we get harmed through bullshit “treatments”.

However, I see this rewiring approach to Long-Covid through a different lens. I see the cause as biological, I see my nervous system dysfunction as a physical thing, AND I see some of the solutions as being in my head. If neural pathways start off working to protect us from a real harm, but then continue to be activated when the harm has possibly passed (I say possibly because there are theories that the virus is still sticking around in our bodies and this is causing the issue), the pathways are still real. It is still a real dysfunction in my operating system with a biological driver - it’s just that it may be possible for me to use my thinking to change what happens next.

To me, looking to how my thinking (my mind) continues to affect my functioning is a more expansive and holistic way of approaching this illness. It may not be the only thing going on with why my nervous system is so buggered, but my work tells me that it is worth seeing if retraining my nervous system both through cognitive interventions (meditation, visualisation, mindfulness) and physical ones (resonance breathing, recumbent paced exercise, nutrition) would have an impact.

The main thing exploring this idea and approach gives me is hope. Hope that I will get better, and can recover, and hope that there are things I can do to help and things I should not do. It certainly helped the first time I got better. I hope that it helps me again now.

The tactile power of cognitive hope

Hope is more than a political tool or idea. Hope is tactile and felt. Hope matters because certain types of hope lead us through different pathways to action. While despair can lead to inaction. I know this deeply at a personal level. At my worst, in the middle of the night when more than anything I just want to be well, all I feel is deep despair and helplessness. I want to give up. But when I have hope (not a guarantee, but a concrete path that might effect a change) I am able to see a way forward for myself, and better engage in the strategies I need to — even if that means 5 days of Netflix because my amygdala thinks watching anything more than melodramas is “high exertion”. This type of hope doesn’t make me blind to the reality of what I am suffering, it doesn’t magically wipe away the pain and frustration and the fear. Hope does help me live with it actively, rather than want to give up.

Interestingly researchers emphasise that explanations about chronic illness that offer hope are critical to people being able to engage in the things that help them get better. I think the same is true of those chronic illnesses the world is suffering from.

To help people act on those huge challenges - climate disruption, poverty, the undermining of democracy, the reckless commercialism of AI - hope matters. A tactile sense that something can be done to move the dial to a better (not perfect) outcome.

We have to be careful when talking about hope as a concept in this context though. As there are different types of hope. The type of hope I have just been describing is what psychologists would probably term cognitive hope, as opposed to emotion-based hope.

Cognitive hope is where we can think about actions to take to reach the outcome we want or prevent the bad thing from happening, where we work to activate these pathways and strive to reach the goal. Cognitive hope has a sense of self-efficacy in it - if I take this action it will take me closer to the outcome I desire. Emotional hope is just that — an emotion that is aroused that things will change or get better. This is the type of hope people working in the climate and environment space get really pissy about. It has a fantasy element to it, and tends to hide the reality of the situation we are in within fluffy clouds of optimism.

In the climate change research it is cognitive hope that has the most solid findings - it leads to more engagement in climate action. How do you engineer cognitive hope? By combining a vision for what is possible, with a clear explanation that the current negative reality is what is standing in our way. I would add that it is wise to lay out for people some clear pathways for action and evidence of success to build a sense of self-efficacy as well as naming who can do what. This also happens to be all the component parts of the vision-led story structure that I advise people to use to improve engagement on big complex and overwhelming issues.

The relationship between hope and action and outcome is not simple. Action can lead to more cognitive hope, just as cognitive hope can lead to behaviours and action that build more hope. The impacts are different for different people also, depending on where they are at on thinking about climate change. My view is that you first need to engage a simplifying model that activates people’s values in terms of care for the environment and following generations. That is an instinct of mine based on research showing these values are consistently useful in engaging many different people in climate action.

And like with my Long-Covid sometimes I also just need to stop trying so hard, to take a beat from the active solutioning and just feel the shitty emotions and let them be, to accept them. The same is true of so many of our big issues. Howling at the unfairness of the situation and letting the fear and anxiety sit down next to us for a while, before we can get up again and look for the pathway forward. That feels like an honest type of hopefulness.

I am Opportunity Party adjacent. Not through choice, but through a twist of fate. From 2014 through 2017 I worked for Gareth Morgan at his economic think tank The Morgan Foundation.

Gareth published my first book “Pennies from heaven: Why cash works to ensure all children thrive”. The research I did was part of a suite of quality economic, social and environmental policy work that the Foundation had been doing for some years. My research added to the strong case the Foundation made for a form of unconditional basic income. This collective work is the basis for the UBI policy the party has now.

By 2017, Gareth decided that the think tank was not getting the traction he wanted. Instead of trying to influence policy, he wanted to become the person who made it. The Opportunities Party (TOP as it was called then) was created. I was asked, and politely declined, to stand for the party. The Morgan Foundation was closed and I was made redundant, going on to start a new organisation trying to influence policy decisions through strategic framing.1

TOP messaging then

Gareth and the men that led the party after him, as well as TOP’s base, followed a pretty clear messaging line. I characterise it as: “We are the smartest guys in the room”. Of course that wasn’t the actual messaging, but that’s the thing about framing the narrative that comes through is the sum of all the things you say, the people you use as messengers, the actions you take. Some people are very intentional about creating that narrative, I have no insight into whether TOP’s intention was this narrative but it certainly came through, not helped by some of the doozies from Gareth.

It was messaging that drove The Greens a bit nuts because they too are pretty nerdy in terms of policy development, they just don’t use it as a central plank of their political messaging. TOP’s messaging implied the use of evidence was what set them apart from other parties.

I can attest that TOP’s original policies were thoroughly researched and evidence based. However, “We are the BEST of all nerds” is limited as a framing strategy because believe it or not, most of the general public in NZ couldn’t give a rat’s arse about whether policies are evidence based or not. And being intelligent is a value that is prioritised by a relatively small segment of the population - not even 5% it turns out.

The tone of the messaging also felt a little smug to me. Telling the story that you are the smartest guys in the room (which is by the way very masculine coded messaging) is not hugely engaging for people further than your already very enthused base. And TOP always needed to build a wider base.

As a message it isn’t that defensible either. While politics does have its fair share of idiots, there are some incredibly smart people in all political parties. The idea that none of them have thought about or considered advice on the best evidence-based policies doesn’t stack up. Of course they have. The thing about evidence though is it very much depends on what you are trying to achieve and for who. Evidence is not neutral. It’s why right leaning parties says conditional and bare minimum welfare systems “works” and left leaning parties say more generous less conditional welfare systems “works”, because works means very different things.

Even when there may be a wide agreement and understanding of the evidence base, successful politics isn’t solely (sadly often not at all) about that evidence. To be successful political parties and people in politics need to first engage with the values and beliefs that a largish group of people in the public hold, and present policies that make the most sense in relation to those values and beliefs.

National and ACT are “Tough on crime” because many people are easily activated to think that imprisonment IS accountability and that harsher punishment is critical to deter crime. That the evidence doesn’t support increasingly harsh justice policies is irrelevant, because they still make good sense in the context of thinking about imprisonment as accountability and deterrence. I have written about the different ways that political groups and the public think about such issues and how that affects what policies they support.

Of course people in politics can shift people’s reasoning and thinking on things like crime in order for new or different policy approaches to make sense. They just don’t often do it. We are in an age where the main political parties are interested in “meeting people where they are at to get voted in” rather than “moving them where we need them to be for the greatest common good”. If people in politics were ok with the idea of toggling people to different thinking, then climate change would be well in hand by now. Rather in the wild timeline we live in, that work is left to underfunded and increasingly criminalised or legislated against advocates.

I actually do think that old TOP was trying to shift public thinking with their messaging; away from reactive, shallow reasoning on economic, environmental and welfare policies. And as a new party it is easier to do that because you are not a slow moving and conservative established political institution. However, “We are the BIGGLY smartest” is not the messaging strategy that works to do that. Rather you need a much more strategic and (yes researched!) values based one.

Without doubt there were many well intentioned people doing great work and saying different things working for old TOP. But as I said earlier the narrative people hear is the sum of many stories, and the smartest guy in the room was the consistent messaging that came through in a messy and gladiatorial information environment.

The Opportunity Party of 2026 are doing something a bit different with their messaging though.

The Opportunity Party’s messaging now

I do focus groups with people in the public. It is a good reminder of how little people engage in politics and policy and how low their trust is in people in politics. Also as a constant interrupter it forces me to listen properly! Something that comes up consistently in these conversations is how much people who are not politically tribal (which is most people) hate the infighting and the failure of people in politics to work together for every day people’s benefit. Push further and I hear things like “they are all in it for themselves” and even “they are corrupt”. I call this “the system is rigged” thinking. And there is a nugget (quite a large one) of truth to it.

That people want politicians to work together for the common good should give us hope. It speaks to the inherent values many humans hold and want prioritised - co-operation across differences on our common and big concerns that play out in people’s day to day lives; Flat line incomes, expensive housing and food, scary weather events, a sense of “I work and work but for what?”. And it is this frustration and experience that the present Opportunity Party is tapping into. Yes, they are still evidence nerds, but over the course of the last few months, party leader Qiulae Wong has repeated ad nauseam the messaging of better politics and more co-operation between political parties for common good. She is impressive in her discipline - something many people struggle to do - repeating the message over and over. Repetition means there is a decent chance that people will actually see it.

IMAGE: A screenshot from The Opportunity Party website highlighting their messaging of working together

While The Opportunity Party is tapping into popular concerns many people hold that have become a primal scream in recent years they re doing more than that. They are engaging a set of values and ideas about how government should work better, more cooperatively, on our behalf. And every time Luxon or Seymour or Peters dismisses, or arrogantly side swipes them, they prove Opportunity’s point. Meanwhile Wong keeps her arms open, “We are ready to work with you”, she says , “Take a beat boys and let’s talk it out”. THIS is the smart stuff. Wong is modelling exactly what The Opportunity Party says they will do - push past the nasty infighting and self-serving politics and work to co-operate. This particular messaging doesn’t lead with the policies and evidence, rather it brings the evidence based policies along in the slip stream of the values. I do think they could do a much better job of linking their policies to this co-operative messaging. Explain exactly how working together using their policies will address the rigged system.

Interestingly, it is not dissimilar from what NZ First and other rightwing populist parties around the world are tapping into. A sense that politics is not working for everyday peoples’ needs. The Greens here and internationally are also doing the same.

Of course the origin story and the fix that right wing populist parties offer, is wildly different from what The Opportunity Party and The Greens propose. Right wing populist’s messaging is: the system is rigged against you because that minority group/issue/woke non problem over there is being given more than you. We will fix that by hating on that group even more. Gross stuff.

Same feeling, very different values and very explanations and solutions.

Will The Opportunity Party’s messaging work?

Will this be the year to get them into parliament? That is about more than messaging, but when good messaging meets a window of political opportunity it dials up the success rates. A few things work in their favour.

Small political baggage

The benefit of being a new messenger and not in parliament is that you avoid the baggage of political history which can override the best messaging in the world. Labour still has post COVID/ didn’t quite manage all that big transformation baggage. The Greens are “the environmental” party, ACT - the ghost of Roger Douglas and hypercapitalism, NZ First has some seriously old baggage (though some people seem to like that). The Opportunity Party does have Gareth Morgan and old TOP but it is carry on luggage rather than a container.

Slightly less untrustworthy

Most people in politics are seen as inherently untrustworthy by the very fact they are a politician. The messenger is a frame in itself that can be hard to get around. Being ‘a person of the people’ does help, as does charm & charisma and shared values. This lack of trust is a smaller problem for an unknown politician. Wong seems an engaging and approachable person. And she is beginning to look like the grown-up in the room.

Relevant & disciplined messaging spread by media

These factors, in combination with the more relevant and disciplined messaging, and the social proof that the polls and media are providing is looking positive for the Opportunity Party. There is a strong component of self-fulfilling prophecy to it also - the more the media talks about them as a possibility, the more the people being polled get exposed to their good messaging, which provides social proof that they are a credible option, and the more people are willing to consider them. And so the polling creeps up.

Political window

As I noted, this is a wild timeline we are living through. People feel the system is rigged. They might not understand exactly how or what the fix is, but it means they are looking for something new and different. The Opportunity Party may be it. Their policy offerings may not be anything wildly different from say The Greens, but the package is. New and shiny can be good for people of a more progressive leaning.

The fly in the ointment is that The Opportunity Party have never had to actually work within the chronically ill system that is our parliament. Sure people in politics make an active choice not to work with others or support the opposition’s bills. But the current system incentivises and shapes this behaviour even when people go in with best intentions to collaborate. The current rules of democracy and party politics prioritise self-interest values, encourages competition, winners and losers, aggression, proving someone else wrong. And that spills out into our social media and media environment also.

Would they actually be able to overcome all of that and do what they say they will? Those who have been in politics for some time might smirk and say “unlikely”. It’s pretty interesting to watch.

Imagine this. You are having a super fun Christmas conversation about the firing of public servants. Uncle Trevor smugly tells you that “It’s a good thing Nicola is firing all those public servants because they are incompetents not doing any real work” You take a deep breath and tell Trev “Without people figuring out what our health looks like, how many nurses and doctors we need, and where they are needed, then more people get really unwell and die”. You go on to say “Actually, Trev, we need more people doing this work not fewer”.

Trevor remains immovable, possibly because Trevor is a dick. More likely however, is because the conversation is not actually about the relative contribution of public servants to our wellbeing. It is really a conversation about the purpose of the government. Trevor thinks getting rid of all those public servants will improve things because of a simplifying model or deep frame about government that is active, one in which it is very logical to have fewer public servants.

When people don’t agree with the facts, evidence or solutions, we instinctively try to fix what we assume is a gap in their logic or empathy. Most of the time getting into fact-offs doesn’t work to change people’s mind, because people are already using logic - the logic of the deep frames or simplifying models we all use to make sense of information. New facts and problems don’t change the frame. Rather the frame needs to change so the facts make sense.

The diagram below is one I use in my work to help explain what the science (for example Daniel Kahneman’s work on fast and slow thinking ) tells us about how most of our decision-making happens. Information gets filtered through frames & values (also called simplifying models, mindsets, cultural models, schema etc), which spark an emotional response (i.e. we feel something in our bodies to signal how it makes sense in relation to that frame) and we find data and facts to fit that frame and support the decision we have already made (the logic part). We don’t always make decisions this way, just most of the time when we are being efficient in our thinking.

Deep Frames and Simplifying Models About Government

Grover Norquist, who founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 declared in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

When cognitive linguist George Lakoff did an analysis of the deep frames and moral values that inform American’s thinking about government he concluded that Americans see the nation in terms of a family. In this simplifying model the head of the family (the government) is a parent to its children (the citizens). For conservatives that parent appears in the form of a strict father, for progressives it is a nurturing parent1.

A strict father believes children are born inherently bad, and will make poor decisions unless he provides discipline and consequences. He runs a tight ship, and expects everyone to do as he says. He believes children should stand on their own two feet and in a world built on competition they should embrace self makingness and hard work. He provides encouragement and support for children who behave this way. As a patriarch he is disciplined and efficient. He protects his family and those he cares for from outside threats, of which there are many - everyone is out to get you.

When Norquist says he wants to drown the government in a bathtub he is all about the strict father simplifying model of government. Classic American texts like Little House on the Prairie reproduce this frame. You can also see this model in our own thinking about New Zealand as a nation. Andrew Dickson wrote about our No. 8 wire narrative in the context of our lamentable productivity. This simplifying model, in which NZ is a nation of grafters and fixers, is our cultural expression of good citizens being self-made and independent from the state (their strict father).

The Nurturing Parent model of government on the other hand, is about empathy, and mutual respect. This parent (note it is not an explicitly male figure) sees their role as being to support their children unconditionally, provide guidance over punishment. Children are born inherently good, and become responsible “through being cared for and respected, and through caring for others” (Lakoff, 2002, p. 108). Cooperation, mutually supportive relationships and empathy with others are encouraged to build their moral frameworks. Interdependence is key. The whakatauki He waka eke noa (we are all in the waka together) is one cultural expression of the nurturing parent simplifying model - we move forward together based on the strength and cooperation of everyone on the boat.

These simplifying models are more than just explanations about how the world works. They are ways of making sense of the world through a framework of values. It is why Lakoff calls them a moral framework, because at the heart of these two models are concepts about what should matter most: values. A large body of psychological and cultural research shows us that values are at the heart of our motivations - they drive beliefs and behaviours.

In the 1990s researchers did an experiment, asking two groups of people to make an assessment as to whether nanotechnology would benefit people or cause more harm. One group was given some basic information on nanotech, the other no information at all. Across those two groups the factor that determined their assessment of the benefits and risks of nanotech was their values. People who prioritised communitarian values thought it would create more risks, those who prioritised individualism values thought it would bring more benefits2. The take home is that these deep frames or enduring simplifying models we share in our culture are a way to make values-based assessments.

The Strict Father model of government has a strong leaning towards conservatism and self-enhancement values: responsibility, respect of elders, security, success, achievement. While the Nurturing Parent leans towards more collective and openness to change values. Both have aspects of self-direction values.

The logic of decision making is the moral framework

These simplifying models do not explain all thinking and behaviour about governments and nor are they the only simplifying models about government. In any culture there are many simplifying models available to us. What they provide is a helpful framework to understand the logic driving how people think governments should act and their response to specific information and policy proposals, especially economic and social ones.

When Strict Father frames are active, you'll typically see: austerity, small government, reducing government debt and spending, a focus on private business through partnerships and direct funding and investment, and also through indirect means such as lower taxes and fewer regulations. More conditional and moralistic welfare and support systems to prevent that most scary of outcomes “dependency on the state”. Social and arts sector funding is expected to be provided through philanthropy. Criminal justice is the clearest where the model comes into play, with longer prison sentences, three strikes laws etc.

You can see why the government “as a household that needs to live within its means” is a particularly prominent metaphor when strict father model is activated. A strict father shows discipline and he expects the same of others.

When the Nurturing Parent model is active in general you see: more generous welfare provision, a focus on funding of public services and more generous support for social and arts sector. Less public funding for private entities and businesses and more focus on bringing entities under public ownership. Higher taxes or at least no discussion of lowering them, a focus on restorative criminal justice systems and policies, and approaches that support a more inclusive democracy.

With both these models, as with all simplifying models, facts and evidence must fit with the moral framework that is being activated, if they don’t then other facts and evidence are found. The main point is that there IS logic being applied: the logic of the moral framework, rather than the logic of the evidence.

Look at a Strict Father response to incarceration. A significant body of evidence tells us punishment based approaches to criminal justice drive further criminal offending. They cost governments vast sums of money, and leave people worse off (in the main) than when they went in. This is especially true of young people. Yet conservative governments happily commit billions to a doomed project. Despite advocating for small government and smaller government spending. Why the inconsistency? It is because a strict father embraces punishment and discipline to teach his children a lesson. It is the logic of the moral framework driving the decisions. It doesn’t matter that punishment based systems drive further crime, because the punishment is the moral imperative, and the data and evidence that matters is that which shows the punishment occurs.

Likewise evidence is very clear that unconditional support for people struggling to make ends meet improves every outcome for the children being raised in those families and households 3. However, those who adhere to Strict Father frameworks of government further conditionalise welfare because “welfare dependency” is the boogeyman of this model. The facts that matter most here are getting people off welfare and out of emergency housing, not the facts on medium and long-term outcomes for the people, which are irrelevant to the moral framework.

What simplifying models do our political parties embrace?

When it comes to economic policies, Strict Father is everywhere we look in our neoliberal era. Small government, lowering the tax “burden”, reducing debt as all good “families” should. And not just from conservative governments. All centrist political parties in this era draw on strict father models to a greater or lesser extent. It is why the Labour Party will still talk about lowering the tax burden, strongly defend themselves from accusations of increased taxes or adhere to the idea that public debt is to be avoided. It is the water we all swim in.

Centrist progressive/liberal political parties in a neoliberal era are also scared of taxing people because of the strict father model. Here Deborah Russell reinforces the idea that tax is terrible.

These models should not be seen as absolute or monolithic — most of us can access a range of simplifying models. David Cameron’s Conservative government in the UK, for example, drew on both of these models in their policy agenda 4. When conservatives talk about tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime they are activating both models. I would argue that Bill English’s social investment programme embraced the Nurturing Parent model of government, though it has now become so much about reducing costs the Nurturing Parent aspects have been discarded along the way.

The current National party led coalition government is much more strongly strict father in nature, pushed by its coalition partners and by a worldwide trend towards the right in similar democracies. It is why Luxon, Seymour & Peters are so unhinged about Jacinda Ardern still; she personified the Nurturing Parent model of government, with her talk of kindness and public acts of caring. A model they are keen to distance themselves from.

The Strict Father framework is also why we see so much austerity from Nicola Willis. All that talk of belt tightening and debt responsibility. It is why Luxon talks about “aggressively commercialising” public goods like publicly funded science. The Strict Father moral framework is why it is so important to this government to offer businesses stability and predictability, while actively choosing to destabilise the lives of those struggling to make ends meet with their policies on homelessness, emergency housing and welfare conditionality. It is also why we have seen a strong about turn on local government devolution from the start of Luxon's time in government to now. Strict fathers need to be in total control of the things they pay for.

For those of us wanting to shift the policy paradigm, to start conversations about more progressive and just tax systems, re-examine the government approach to public debt, embed more universal and unconditional public services, move to common good government approaches, the Strict Father simplifying model is a dead end. And it is why, trying to shift policy away from the model that makes the policy make sense by speaking the language that reinforces the model is so ineffective.

Speaking strict father language will only make strict father actions make sense

When I was a baby policy researcher and just starting out trying to influence policy we were deep in National government territory. I did what many of us do to try to influence the uptake of policies that would improve public health, more generous welfare, less conditionality etc, I used their language and metaphors, their framing. I was very fond of using cost-effectiveness language for this reason: “Implementing x public health policy would reduce costs to the state”. I did not realise that all I was doing was activating the logic of the Strict Father in which unconditional support for those who had not “worked hard enough”, would be outright rejected, regardless of what the facts said about its effectiveness.

Framing is at its most simple the choices we make about the words, images, messengers, metaphors we use to present information. And many of those we reach for on big issues, like the purpose of government, are neurologically connected to those simplifying models that exist in our culture and in our brains through years of being exposed to them. Say the words “Red Tape” and you activate a whole simplifying model about how governments should and should not operate and for who. The magic of words is that they shape our very idea of how the world should be.

In the image below I show how framing activates the simplifying models that influence people’s decision making. You will see that there are many different simplifying models available to a person and specific framings will activate different ones.

Toggling people between different simplifying models of government: the power of framing to make big shifts

Let’s go back to Uncle Trevor. He is a voter, a constituent of political parties, a person who influences how decision makers behave. Like a balloon tied to a rock decision makers move when the rock does. Trevor (and people like him) are the rock. Trev doesn’t have a lot of power on his own, but together with others in society he does have power over decision makers - this is “people power”.

Lobbyists and people in industries and business also have power. Their power is different; it’s an individual form of power. The power of money, access and influence. They can shift decision makers too, but that movement will be constrained by the position of the rock. That is why those who work for the fossil fuel industry for instance use individual power, while also trying to influence the public through their public communications.

As I covered in this piece on the role of strategic framing, gaining and using power is critical when working to achieve any sort of big change.

Usually for sustained big change for common good (as opposed to change to benefit private interests), shifting the public and making cultural change is where it is at.

In short, if we want Trevor (or maybe Trev’s long suffering partner) and a decent group of others to want and then demand different things from decision makers about the size and function of the public service, our tax system, the universality of services for example, then you have to activate a different simplifying model and set of values about government. And do it at scale.

The good news here is most people can with the right choice of words, metaphors and values be toggled to a different framework about government. Usually at least 50% of the population has the ability to move between different simplifying models, which is good news.

The harder bit is the language and framing discipline.

Some practical tips

Start by making sure you never use the language of the simplifying model that you want to avoid. For example always avoid the language of the Strict Father model. You don’t repeat it, you don’t refer to it, you don’t commit limited resources arguing against it. You don’t write opinion pieces for the public about why the household budget metaphor is bullshit. Rather you just give people a new one. Researchers call this bypassing5. By bypassing the unhelpful model and presenting the alternative you are making the alternative model cognitively easy to access. Bypassing is why framing strategists are so bullish about this principle: tell your story not theirs.

The biggest STOP doing tip I can give is stop talking about government’s engaging in or not engaging in a specific policy because it is cost-effective, or financially responsible.

Consider this: if you believe the purpose of government is to support all communities to live good lives, to make decisions that improve things for all of us, not just some of us, to focus on the common good and to do that wisely using all the tools available to them: taxes, budgets, borrowing, then you would never start by framing government as being about cost. That tells people the purpose of government is to spend as little as possible, regardless of the outcome. Sure government has a duty to spend wisely in the service of its purpose. That is VERY different from spending as little as possible AS the purpose.

That is not to say you cannot talk about the most cost-effective way to achieve its purpose, just don’t lead with that. Don’t mistake the policy work for the narrative job.

Lead with the purpose of government: for example to ensure we have energy independence, for all children to know school is for them, to ensure everyone has a roof over their head and a place to call home, to have food in their belly and a place to belong. To structure an economy that works for a liveable planet rather than working to make it unliveable, or streets that are safe for everyone who uses them. The list is endless on the things that government can do for us collectively, don’t be straitjacketed into using the frame that governments are there to make sure people are taxed as little as possible and spend as little as possible. How unimaginative, and beneficial to a small group of already well off people.

The work of economist Mariana Mazzucato does just this. She reframes what the purpose of government is, how it should shape the economy, with a clear expression of the values that should be prioritised.

It can feel weird and uncomfortable at first because it goes against the status quo framing and language we are used to. Anyone who steps outside of that is seen initially as outside the group and we have a strong pull to do what the group does, say what the group says. But it doesn’t take much to change the direction of travel when people do it together, as Catherine Knight pointed out recently. It takes a committed minority who can effectively activate that larger group in the middle (the convincible) to shift things and hold it there.

Whether you want to talk about government borrowing, wealth or land taxes, or public universal services. Whatever the alternative and effective policy fix you think is needed, for these to be seen or to be accepted they need to be framed within a grander, more compelling purpose of government that works for everyone.

Over the next few months I will explore the language the words, the imagery, the metaphors that can help when raising these issues in public, starting with ways to frame government borrowing.

But the first job, one you can do right now, is to remind people the purpose of government is much grander and more imaginative than what we have been forced to think about over the last 50 years.

An image from Who Sank the Boat by Pamela Allen

My Nana had a Pamela Allen book that I would read when we stayed over at her house. It was called Who Sank the Boat. I didn’t love the pictures - the animals seemed kind of cooked to me. I preferred her copy of Harry the Dirty Dog. Anyway, it turns out to be a pretty influential book in scientific circles (unexpected for Pamela I imagine). People regularly use it to illustrate the scientific principle of causation. It does a good job of illustrating the necessary but not sufficient principle. Spoiler alert: You might think the mouse sank the boat because we see that the mouse got in last and then the boat sank, but in reality it needed all those weird looking farmyard creatures to sink it. The mouse was necessary but not sufficient.

Strategic Framing: Necessary but not sufficient to achieve change

When looking at framing and narratives, and the role they play in shifting policy or an entire economic system, necessary but not sufficient is a helpful principle. In social or cultural change of any type strategic framing is necessary but it’s not sufficient is the conclusion I have arrived at.

Strategic framing is a term I use throughout this piece. I say strategic framing, because framing is inherent in all human communication. We cannot avoid framing. I define strategic framing as the planned and disciplined application of values, explanatory and metaphorical frames & narratives that are informed by research and testing in order to shift how people make sense of an issue. Good messaging should encompass a framing strategy.

For more on the basics on what framing and frame are you can read my earlier piece on naming the purpose of the economy.

So, first up what do we know about framing and its impact on human thinking and behaviour?

Does framing and narrative influence people’s thinking and actions?

In short, yes. Framing and narrative experiments, which also include priming studies (the group of studies that prime people’s mental models and values to determine if they can cause a change in thinking and behaviour), show effectiveness in lab conditions. So basically, if you recruit a bunch of people to a study, randomly allocate them to different framing conditions, measure whatever you decide the outcome is that matters (from attitudes to helpful behaviours, to support for policies) you will see a causation effect.

That is framing has been isolated as THE factor to cause an attitude, behaviour or action. Some studies show large and significant effects, some show small and significant effects. Some show nothing. There are the usual academic disagreements and some challenges to the rigour of the methods used, but the body of evidence overall is solid.

And for me, the body of evidence is enough to be as confident as a researcher can be that this framing and priming lark affects people’s thinking and behaviour and we need to pay attention to it when working to bring about change. I cover many of the individual studies in my book A Matter of Fact1 . You can borrow the book from all NZ Libraries.

In addition to the ivory tower work, a lot of the research happens in the applied world - in public education, campaign and political-persuasion work, like my own. And those of us who produce the evidence have found similar positive effects. The Race-Class Narrative project in the US is a good example of such field based and controlled experiments.

Screen shot of a campaign using the race class narrative findings, watch the whole thing

The last randomised control trial I did a few years back (they are super expensive so not that common), showed a moderate but significant impact of different values frames on people’s support for transport mode shift policies. I found similar effects for an RCT I did on attitudes to welfare generosity. As an aside, I would love to publish these experiments but I have found I can either run an organisation that does the research and support people to apply it, or be a published academic. You can get the gist of the work on mode shift from this report. And if you are really curious I can probably dig out the RCT results for you.

The take home from these field experiments is that exposure to strategic frames causes people to shift their thinking, support and actions. Good news.

Okay, but does strategic framing work in the real world of change?

Utility in the real world is the bigger question, because framing and narrative work is an applied science. I use it as a tool to support advocacy groups, people trying to improve public understanding of complex issues, and those trying to make big systems shifts. And it’s critical to know if the effects seen in controlled tests hold true when frames get out in the rough and tumble of the real world. A world where people’s day-to-day reality has a big influence on decision making, where heavily funded counter-narratives are at play, and where cut through in a polluted information environment is challenging.

It’s difficult to definitively prove that framing is THE cause of any movement win or change in the real world. And that is the wrong question to ask - a bit like looking for proof that driving fossil fuel cars is the direct cause of heat waves. The better question is: does framing as part of a social & cultural movement approach contribute to real world change in people’s thinking and attitudes and behaviours (e.g. involvement in democratic processes, voting behaviour, signing petitions, writing to MPs joining a protest, advocating at work)?

Social and cultural movements cover all parts of the political spectrum, so we can look in many places for evidence.

They will steal your jobs: Isolating the role of rhetoric & narratives in the rise of anti-immigration support

Some good evidence emerges on the role of strategic framing from the anti-immigration movement in Switzerland using strong methods to isolate the different component parts2. There is a reasonable argument that it is the economic conditions, cultural and security concerns that most influence how people vote (sometimes called demand-side issues). Framing and rhetoric are seen as far less important. The authors of the Swiss study explored whether this was true in relation to immigration attitudes and political support.

The authors started off by exploring how more welcoming immigration policies in Switzerland impacted citizens’ employment and wages, sense of safety and cultural concerns. They found that while the number of immigrants had measurably increased as a result of the policy there were no significant adverse effects in terms of economic deprivation or cultural backlash. The authors noted “If anything, it seems to have increased the financial satisfaction of the people most exposed to immigration.” There was, however, a 32% increase in support for anti-immigration political parties in the places where immigration increased. So life was as good if not better with more immigrants, but people increased their support of political parties that scapegoated immigrants. The authors concluded the rise in this political support was due to a measurable rise in the supply of anti-immigrant rhetoric: “narratives of overcrowding and density stress”. Brexit campaigners later picked these narratives up and ran with them, using body and container metaphors such as “Britain has reached breaking point”. Later Trump followed suit with “our country is full” framing. The study is pretty interesting stuff. Give it a read if you are in for a hearty bit of regression modelling.

These types of quasi experimental studies add to the body of both lab-based and real-world framing experiments that show that framing strategies matter and should be one part of any social and cultural movement. Case studies give us some interesting insights into what happens when they are applied (or not applied).

Case studies from across the political spectrum

Individual case studies cannot provide hard evidence of whether strategic framing causes change and by how much. What they do give us is insight into whether framing strategies have a role, and how, in the messy real world activity of social change movements. The caveat here is I haven’t gone nerd-level deep to research these, so there is more work to do (exciting for me!).

Equal Marriage - Love is Love

The most often cited case study are the marriage equality campaigns across the world. Some studies suggest that the change in public attitudes and hence the laws that followed are best explained by people having more contact with gay people in their lives, a decline in religious practice and increasing education 3. However, the study of the framing of equal marriage in the US showed strategic framing had a strong presence. Specifically, there was significant shift in the frames use across time alongside the success of the movement. The framing approach started from rights and benefits and facts frames that emphasised what was different about gay people, for example: “The only people this law will affect is gay people, because it will give them the same rights as everyone else”, to a values based framing strategy of love and commitment that emphasises what all people shared regardless of sexual orientation 4.

The same framing shift happened here in NZ, for example there was a set of initial rights-based frames that emphasised it was an issue that primarily affected gay people - John Key, for example, said at the time he supported changes to the marriage act because it had no bearing on his marriage5. Later the framing moved towards an inclusive “greater us” framing - where what was in the frame was our relationships with gay people we knew and our shared human value of love. In New Zealand what we saw was a set of load-bearing factors that influenced the vote: from an organised and disciplined movement over time, political opportunity, a shift in social dynamics, and the use of strategic framing.

Cannabis reform in Aotearoa - The facts vs the fear

The decriminalisation of cannabis referendum is an interesting case study because despite the narratives, framing and materials of reform campaign appearing at a greater rate change was not acheived. For example researchers found “Media articles were marginally more supportive of reform, that pro-legalisation articles were re-published more often, received better website placement, and had more Facebook interactions” 6, and that the pro camp also spent more money on social media.

One explanation for this finding is that framing doesn’t matter when compared to demand-side issues like people’s experiences with drug use or traditional voting patterns. Though the evidence from the Swiss study suggests that such an explanation is less likley.

Another explanation is that the actual framing strategy (e.g. the specific values, narratives and frames) used by the vote for change people was not effective when up against the vote against frames. At the time I did look a bit squinty-eyed at the reform movement’s framing, as they ran strongly with the fill them up with facts approach and an unusual narrative of “doing what works for us”. Further investigation needed!

Vote no campaign material from cannabis referendum

Rogernomics - There Is No Alternative

The Fourth Labour Government’s shift to neoliberal economic and social policies is one I would like to do more research on. The fact that neoliberalism was already being implemented in other countries by the time it reached here, and that there was a well-packaged frame that came with it can’t be ignored. There was a significant political opportunity - the financial mess the country was in played a big role. These huge reforms were never really put to the public. Rather, the social and cultural change was driven by and implemented by a few powerful players who would benefit financially from the policies after the Labour government was elected. Such an insider-led process makes it a bit different as a case study. One thing I would like to explore is whether the Rogernomics framing strategy of “there is no alternative” and the metaphors of decay and mechanical breakdown (the country was compared to a Polish shipyard) played a significant part, and what of any counter narratives and movement? Basically, I don’t know enough about it (yet!).

Nuclear-free NZ - A Peaceful Nation and Power to the People

Our nuclear-free status is a good example of how a desire for change is led by organised and concerned citizens and then picked up and implemented by politicians. There were sustained efforts from the peace movement over many decades to change our nation’s foreign policies. The end of the Vietnam war and nuclear testing in the Pacific created a political opportunity, with the movement forcing political parties to address it as an issue. The framing strategy was a values-based one (a world of peace was front and centre) . There was also a strong solidarity frame deployed and it drew in people from across the political spectrum under the banner of our shared concern for our place.7 We now have a very strong cultural identity as a nuclear-free country. Something no politician has been able to touch because of where the public is at - something the current US ambassador to NZ should take note of.

A communication from the nuclear-free campaign.

What about where strategic framing is not used?

To further test if strategic framing matters and by how much, it is important to look at change where strategic framing wasn’t deployed. I noted earlier that framing is inherent in all communication, so it’s impossible to find attempts at change with a total absence of framing. What could be explored is attempts to make change where there was no clear framing strategy, only an information transfer strategy - for example the use of key informational messages or a fact driven approach. Also, looking at cases where a framing strategy was used that wasn’t evidence-informed would be informative. The cannabis case study may offer some answers. While the marriage equality case study suggests that a move to a different evidence-informed framing strategy was important.

Other case studies I want to explore include: SmokeFree, euthanasia, the Treaty Principles bill and Toitū te Tiriti, so of the answers may be there.

In 1997, Robert Benford outlined some of the critiques of framing as it is applied in social movements8. Since then, the field has improved its methods, and strategic framing has only increased in use. As with everything, improvement is needed9.

What are the other animals who can sink the boat?

I started with the conclusion that in my opinion strategic framing is necessary but not sufficient for achieving change (with the caveats I have signposted along the way).

Alongside strategic framing, I would broadly define the other components necessary for social and cultural change as:

1. Organisational capacity - building & maintaining relationships and resources so people and groups with shared goals can work together across time to influence.

2. Evidence & wisdom - the means & skills to understand the causes & solutions that will make the biggest difference.

3. Political opportunity - predicting, acting upon, or creating a political window of opportunity.

Political theorist Archon Fung specifically names the need to build power to bring about change10. He identifies four levels of power (Individual or everyday power; Policy; Structural; and Discursive). The last two he argues are most important for social change. He defines them as follows:

1) Structural power, “or the power deriving from money, alliances, knowledge, leverage, membership, etc., that can often make any given playing field unequal”

2) Discursive power, “or the power of ideas, beliefs, values, and narratives to influence the other three levels of power”. Fung also calls this ethical power and notes

“..changes occur when movements successfully point out that laws and practices are inconsistent with deeply and broadly shared values, as they did in the struggles for labor in the 1930s, for civil rights in the 1960s”. Fung p. 148

To my mind, organisational capacity, political opportunity and evidence & wisdom are about building structural power, while framing and narrative work is about building discursive power.

The image below is my update of Pamela’s illustration from Who Sank the Boat? identifying the four components needed to make change.

Achieving Change: My update of Pamela’s image.

How does change happen? What order and how should the animals get in the boat?

So having identified the big components of change, what is the necessary order and how exactly should they be applied? This is a question about how change happens - a theory of change question. I’ll cover theories of social and cultural change in another piece.

I have observed that it is very difficult to develop and use a cohesive framing strategy without a group of people and organisations who have an agreed goal about what should change, for who and how, as well as having the resources, skills, money, time and relationships to mobilise and apply a framing strategy at scale across time. In other words, the best ideas and framing strategy in the world go nowhere unless you have well prepared groups of people ready and willing to pick up the baton in the race and run with it.

It’s important to note that the practical deployment of discursive power looks like strategic framing coupled with skilled engagement and communications approaches - critical now especially given the polluted information environment that has been created for us.

The framing work I do is about driving long-term shifts in cultural mindsets and thinking. In practice, that means being well prepared with people and narrative power for when a political opportunity arises. It’s arguable that people and framing work can force a political window open. The case studies suggest it has happened both ways.

In conclusion: the necessary components for change

To successfully bring about social change, people and organisations need to deploy powerful framing and narrative strategies to highlight the shared values, moral frameworks and ways of reasoning that changes represent11. To have impact, they need to be deployed hand-in-hand with different types of structural power.

And this is certainly what I observe happening - organisations and institutions across the political spectrum set framing & narrative strategy as one of the central foundations of their change work. For example, Chris Rufo’s guide “The New Right Activism: A Manifesto for the Counterrevolution,” centres discursive and rhetorical power. While progressive organisations and those that fund them are doing the same.

Some more interesting stuff

Words to Win By is a great podcast by world-leading researcher and campaign advisor Anat Shenker-Osorio, it covers many fascinating social movements and campaigns and covers the framing and narrative strategies that were used.

I sat down to write a piece on how to frame investment debt, but realised that before reframing government debt, we have to talk about the purpose of the economy. Because when the dominant cultural model says the economy exists to grow private wealth, government debt for public wellbeing makes no sense to them. So framing investment debt is the next piece. And this piece is an argument for why people need to reframe the purpose of the economy before talking about the nuances of economic policies and approaches.

I hate repeating stuff I have written before in fear of boring people, which is ironic because much of what I coach people to do when reframing ideas is to repeat ad nauseam. So following my own advice here is the basics on how people make meaning from information.

We think fast: we use feelings to assess if information supports the most active model of the economy

Humans construct meaning of information and data through existing cultural models (aka shared mindsets, mental models, cognitive maps, schemes, creation stories, narratives). Essentially a set of existing and interlocking concepts about how the world should work that allow us to efficiently and quickly predict what information means and act on it. These concepts often have an underpinning moral framework to them also. In other words they tell us what matters most.

We have access to a vast number of these cultural models (because culture!). They are developed by living in the world where lots of different ideas exist. Some are easy to access because they are everywhere and used by everyone, especially in the places we get most of our information from. They are the water we are swimming in.

The dominant cultural model about the economy is this one: the central purpose of the economy is to create and grow wealth. Therefore the policies and practices and law that people devise to operate it support this purpose. In study of mainstream economics the central principle is scarcity and based on that the commodification of goods and services based on relative scarcity. The reasoning that is connected to these models is zero sum game. You can either boost “the economy” i.e create wealth or solve environmental and social problems. One trades off the other. Someone has to lose.

I say mainstream economics because there are other economics schools of practice and thought in which these mindsets do not prevail. For example ecological economics or feminist economics (more on this later).

So cultural models or mindset are part of our fast thinking system- a term Daniel Kahneman coined to explain the process of the fast processing of information, which utilises existing mindsets and models and feelings to help us make meaning of information.

Yes indeed most of the time humans are making decisions on the basis of how the information feels (as in the signals our bodies supply us with) in relation to those existing mental models. Which is why frames, values and the feelings they create are the gateway to shifting someone’s view. I feel therefore I think.

Below is a diagram I use in my teaching to help explain this fast thinking processes. It starts with information received, which is then filtered through mental models and values, feelings are activated, and a decision is made based on those feelings (makes sense, doesn’t make sense), then we backfill will logic - for example that doesn’t fit with my experience either so rejecting the information is the right thing to do.

The main point is that logic comes last in most processing of information. Which is in direct opposition to how we often assume people make decisions. What we assume (and yes this is a mental model of cognitive map) that if humans use logic to make decisions, and if people make poor decisions its because they are illogical or stupid not because the model is wrong (this concept is know as cognitive realism). Homo economicus is a version of this: people use logic to seek maximum benefit for themselves. But like lots of economics that is just model, sometimes true in some situations for some people, but more often untrue.

This is getting a bit meta now, but cognitive realism (a shared mental model) stops us seeing what is true - that our feelings and mental models don’t give a damn about your facts. It leads us to practices that don’t work to change peoples minds, such as filling people up with more facts. A futile process when fast thinking is at work. In other words when the facts change I do not change my mental model; rather I feel it is wrong (that prickly irritated feeling in your chest) and defend the model. That rejection based on feelings is less work than rewiring the neural pathways associated with the mental model.

Yes people can change their minds, but the conditions for that to happen start with the mental models and values that underpin them and making these mental models “cognitively easy” for people. That is, they are easy to access in our thinking, they feel good, they are everywhere, and others I share an identity or values with seem to agree with them.

The good news is that while some cultural models dominate, most people can access a huge range of differing models. Framing (the values, words, images, messengers, metaphors) we choose will activate different ones. Because like magic specific words and images I use will activate a set of neural pathways in your brain and then create that image in your mind.

An economy with a reframed purpose

Ok right, so here comes the new purpose for the economy bit. If we want people to engage with and support different economic policies, ones that support the preservation of the natural world, the repair of the climate system and ones that means no one struggles to make ends meet, then we have to reframe the purpose of the economy before we get to talk and argue about about the specific policies. We have to activate a different cultural model about the purpose of the economy. Without that different model in play the information and the facts don’t get accepted. For example, when people are reasoning that more wealth for private interest means better outcomes then if we argue that to improve our lives we need to tax wealth more than earned income, or better protect people who work from injury, or to set slower travel speeds for cars, then people turn that into “that will just punish hard working rich people”, “So you think we should slow down productivity in small business?” “Slowing cars down slows down the economy”.

The new economic wave: an economy for common good

A new economic narrative has been gaining traction for a few years now. Economist Marianne Mazzucato’s new book is the latest in a line of economists who argue for a new purpose for the economy - one of common good. She echos and amplifies Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics and our own Marilyn Waring’s lifelong work on new measures of GDP. It’s interesting to me that many of those economists who have led the public discussion on a new purpose for the economy are women.

Recently a friend gave me Robin Wall Kimmerer’s short text The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance. In it she asks “what if scarcity is just a cultural construct, a fiction that fences us off from gift economies?”. I don’t think there is any “what if” about it.

Robin’s book is a good reminder that common good economics is nested within indigenous worldviews. Which matters because the dominant scarcity model isn’t inevitable — it’s one story among many.

The economy is, to many people and groups, a much more expansive idea that considers how we provide for ourselves, sustain ourselves, and enhance our lives and the quality of our lives. A market economy is hardly the only framework for how we provide for ourselves, it is just the one we have at the moment and it’s pretty torched.

It is the more expansive ideas about the economy we create that we have to exercise, build muscle, make normal and easy to access.

What does it sound like to reframe the purpose of the economy?

In summary

1. Always start with the values and purpose

2. Get concrete on explaining what a common good economy actually looks like and how we get there

3. Make human hands and decisions visible in how the economy works

4. Use messengers that people can relate to and trust (different people trust different messengers)

Every time we open our mouths to talk about the economy, or economics, we let people know that the purpose of the economy is deliver for the common good BEFORE explaining a policy or a fact.

That means explaining what you think the purpose of the economy should be: public good over private interest, shared wealth over shareholder wealth, on behalf of the planet rather than taking half of the planet, our interests over my interests, bottom up over trickle down.

That rather than asking what market failure should be fixed, we should ask how can the market now assist us in fixing what we broke?

Getting concrete about what happens in a common good economy is key to helping the public understand and moves us from grand ideas to practical everyday understandings and actions that people feel can happen.

Here are a few such examples: working together globally to find a vaccine for pandemic; public science that focus on how to reduce deaths in the increasing heatwaves; establishing resilient, carbon free, low cost energy generation for every community; creating networks of international collaboration in unstable geopolitical times; establishing food production and distribution systems that deliver nutritional low cost food everywhere, cleaning up the information environment so it builds self-worth in young people; a public service that is serving the whole public not simply the market economy etc etc.

Always make human hands visible in the economy. We drive the economy, we operate it, we construct it, we rebalance it, we lay new economic tracks, we tanked the economy. Humans need always to be visible, so use metaphors that make us visible. Humans make it and can remake it.

Never talk about the economy like it is a deity or weather system or body. It is not a weather system we cannot control (economic headwinds), it is not a vengeful god to offer sacrifices to (we have to accept a certain level of unemployment, the invisible hand of the market), it is not a human body or patient we must care for (the economy is on life-support). All these metaphors position us as servants and caregivers to the economy, not as a tool we use to get an outcome we need.

Use messengers that people can relate to and trust. Because trust is determined by identity and shared values, use a wide range of messengers. If messengers share an identity or set of values with the audience the more cognitively easy the ideas become. And find the surprising messengers. When the message is heard from people who don’t traditionally deliver a common good message it creates social proof that the idea must be legit “oh HE thinks that? Well it must have some truth to it”.

Arguing about the ingredients in public undermines the narrative work

If there is one thing progressive nerds love to do it is to tell their colleagues, people working for the same goals, why their solution will never work. SUCH FUN! But being the smartest guy in the room, in public, screws the larger goal of shifting public thinking every time.

Sure, have a good robust conversation about what the evidence says will get us to the goal of an economy for the common good. But that is an inside conversation. Don’t waste the little access you have to the public’s attention by doing it in public. If a journalists rings you to get your take on whether x policy will actually work to get us to a different outcome, and you know x person shares the goals for a common good economy, for goodness sake take the opportunity to back up a new purpose for the economy. Of course it takes discipline and working together.

Practising collaboration in how we communicate is itself an enactment of the common good economy. Don’t tell me how, show me.

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“Republicans like to say that government should be run as a business. Well, Trump is running the US government like a family business, the mafia kind…..Trump is raking in billions in personal profit as he pushes billion-dollar government contracts to the Silicon Valley oligarchs aiding his regime—a regime that violates the Constitution, the law, and American values at every turn.”

These are the words of framing expert Gil Duran reflecting on his new book The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, and it doesn’t feel worlds away from what is happening here in Aotearoa. Not simply because we are part of a global tech world and subject to the same manipulations of the tech oligarchs in our day to day lives as our fellow global citizens, but also because we are being governed by a coalition that is far to focussed on the betterment of the already well off - and chipping away at the foundations of democracy to do it.

The system is rigged and people are shouting about it

On streets and in the homes and workplaces of every day New Zealanders, there is a real sense that the system is rigged against them. I hear it in focus groups I do, and see it in our community’s stories.

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People know that hard work doesn’t pay off in the way we have been told- certainly for many of us hard work has not given us the freedom and security we are constantly told it will bring. For those in our communities really struggling to make ends meet, to buy food, to clothe children, the act of struggling often pulls the knots around them tighter. And while not everyone can name the decisions that government has made to increase the struggle, it is clearer to more and more people that the current government is making unwise decisions that hurt people.

Some of the more visible decisions include: helping tobacco companies by winding back the high standards we had to protect people from tobacco products, funding questionable road building over transport systems that work for everyone, ignoring the need for an energy resilience plan, wound back education approaches to the 1980s when thousands of young people were made to feel school was not for them, systematically ignored what local communities want and need in their local area with Fast-track legislation, and drained away the faith that doctors and nurses and people needing care have in our health system, by asking them to constantly do more and more with less and less while telling them THEY are the problem.

In addition, people are looking at the world and feeling bleak.

We see our young people being manipulated by tech oligarchs, we are concerned about false information, we see the weather causing more havoc more frequently, and we watch megalomaniacs starting wars with no thought as to the global impacts. It seems hopeless.

Many of us are feeling this in our bones, from across the political spectrum and different communities - including many of “the convincibles” *. Those people who are not politically engaged and will consider a perspective wherever it comes from.

Use the opportunity (and avoid an own goal) to tell a better story

Groups, individuals, and institutions that tell a story acknowledging the system is rigged, that the world needs a plan, and that offer concrete solutions — these are the ones who will win over the convincibles.

Right now, however that is right wing populists. Donald, Pauline, Nigel, (Winston at times) know an opportunity when they see it, and are using people’s experience that world is just not right to stoke fear and security concerns, to activate misogyny, anti-immigrant thinking, bigotry and division. They say “look at the scary other taking your stuff”, while taking “our” stuff for themselves.

For those people with a more progressive focus (or even those with a conservative public good focus) the story that uses this opportunity needs to be one based on shared wisdom, on collective wellbeing, solidarity and on real public abundance (not private enrichment). It should be a story that provides a progressive vision based in common interest values, and names in concrete and everyday terms what is getting in the way, who is responsible, and the specific solutions that will work. It needs to draw on the evidence of what makes the biggest difference and insights from all people’s everyday experiences in thoughtful and wise ways. The recent global justice report from Thomas Piketty and team is an example of this.

The question is will New Zealand’s progressively orientated organisations use the opportunity people’s experience is offering them to give people an alternative to “no debt, small government, short-term costs” story? Will they provide a better and more consistent story about public abundance, a better life for all of us not just some?

Or will they fall into the trap of focussing only on cost of living (as if what people are experiencing is only a money problem), offering “tax relief” (a conservative frame that tells people tax is a burden they need relief from), surfacing individual interest values - focussing on what’s in it for individuals, rather than what is in it for us? Will they activate “them versus us” thinking by talking about the “squeezed middle”. A metaphor that suggests those “others” struggling to make ends meet are somehow causing pain just as much as the wealthy? Not only does this story fail to offer a meaningful alternative to the 'no debt, small government, short-term cost' story, it actively continues the neoliberal project of self-interest and self-sufficiency.

The alternative has to be to offer a new and vibrant story of a more progressive and caring world. How it should work and for who. A story that lays out a clear path as to how to achieve such a vision over the longer term. Something people can have hope in, be inspired by and make real meaning from. A story that those who work in politics and are political in the most general of terms can really relate to, to be inspired by and share.

Of course many people are suffering right now, and they need relief from that suffering. In such a story progressives must talk in easy-to-understand ways about those policies that can do double duty - those that relieve pain now AND fix the cause of the pain. Not simply those that put the pain off to another day. For example the recent public transport cap policy announced by Labour offers them opportunity to tell a much bigger story - the idea of creating public abundance via our transport system (or as part of a sustainable energy strategy) as well as providing relief right now. It’s more complex work in a busy information environment than just “helping with cost of living” but a few core frames and values done well and repeated consistently will embed the bigger story.

If progressive organisations are up for that challenge of this story, willing to try something new, then two things will help: firmly embracing common interest values and making the story exciting and hopeful to get cut through.

Why common interest values are so important to the progressive story

At the heart of all meaning making are our values - our moral framework about what matters most in the world. All human decisions are filtered through cognitive maps of the world which have values as foundation stones.

The values research shows that most of us hold a mix of common interest and self-interest values. However, across the world, around 80% of people prioritise common interest values over individual interest values (a finding confirmed from research I led last year with a representative group of NZ people).

Often we assume that if people really prioritised common interest values we would see more people acting on them, and if they don’t? Well that means people are lying about their values. But that is a cognitive bias called naive realism that reasons each of us are perfect rational actors and if others don’t act locally it is because they are unintelligent or deceitful. This bias misses how much more powerful context is in determining human behaviour at a subconscious level.

In reality, while we tend to prioritise particular values consistently, in day to day decisions, we don’t always apply values in a consistent or unchanging way. Rather, the values we subconsciously bring to everyday decisions are activated by our context. Or what psychologists call values priming - specifically what people tell us, or imply matters most, through both communications, actions, even physical structures, with regard to a particular issue. For example our values may tell us we want to reduce travel by car for the planet’s sake, but the physical environment, transport infrastructure, and car industry marketing, primes us to act differently.

Across a very large body of both experiments and observational studies, it has been shown that values priming influences the values a person treats as most relevant, and that influences their behaviour.

Why this is relevant to those interested in building a world of public abundance over private benefit, is that triggering people’s self interest values and motivations fails to build support for that world. Rather studies show by priming individual interest and self sufficiency values, people think and act in self interested ways.

Kathleen Vohs’ work on the psychology of money is very revealing on this matter. In a series of experiments, Vohs and her colleagues found priming people with money values (talking about money, having them play money based games etc) caused less helpfulness, less willingness to work with others, more endorsement of free-market systems, less disapproval of social inequality, and more anxiety (1).

This finding shows up in the applied messaging research also. In my own research on welfare policies for example when we told people that welfare generosity matters because it will make us richer, it failed to increase people’s support for such a policy. But tell them it matters because it is the right and fair thing to do to prevent poverty and it causes an increase in support for such policies. Again in multiple studies and messaging work, priming common interest values drives support for public abundance and common interest polices. The “we” over the “me” works when the issue is fundamental about the “we”.

The common interest priming finding also holds for that smaller group who prioritise self-interest values. In messaging studies, we find such people’s thinking can shift towards common interest when primed with common interest frames - because they still hold common interest values.

Why would talking about individual interest prevent people being able to think about and act for the common interest? It is explained by the integrated and relational nature of human values. Values operate like a seesaw. When one set of values is up, those values that work in opposition are forced down. More specifically individual interest and common interest values operate in opposition to each other. Not all values work in opposition to each other, some are consistent with each other. For the interested my book A Matter of Fact covers the research on values systems and suppression, drawing on cultural psychologist Shalom Schwartz’s body of work.

Activate common interest values and you suppress individual interest values.

Its about rebalancing the values context

For decades our information context has been flooded with money, achievement, status and other individual interest values. The current government has simply super charged the story that has already been told by many governments and business and advocates for some time now (I used to do it too because it is the water we swim in).

I will say that this coalition government has created a particularly toxic tsunami of money motivations - just about everything that could bring about public abundance is nixed because it has a short term cost implications: it is too expensive, will cost the taxpayer, is irresponsible spending, will leave people “short”, is wasteful spending, and will put us in the red etc. They are giving money as the reason to or to not do everything. They are reasoning that money is the central purpose of government rather than a tool government has to achieve their core purpose.

But some things, many things just have to be done when you are the government and responsible for all your citizens now and into the future. The question then becomes how do we achieve these things in the best way possible?

In terms of framing, giving money as the reason not to act or to act is subtly and critically different from talking about money as the tool to achieve a particular type of public outcome. It’s the difference between saying “We cannot have sustainable energy because it costs too much” versus “We need a reliable source of local energy that actively protects the environment, what is the most cost effective and efficient option?”

It is bananas to progressive thinking and logic to answer just about every need to spend money with “there is no money unless it’s benefiting individuals’ back pocket or business”. It makes no sense to many people. to cut funds to public systems and create more pain for citizens now and even more pain for them later (see climate planning, public health, poverty alleviation etc). However, if the story and values you prioritise and frame consistently is that the job of government is to spend as little as possible on the public need while enabling private business unlimited access to resources in order to make more money, then it makes total sense. It is this sense making that is at the core of framing theory. Different options do make total sense to people depending on the frames and values they are filtered through.

So when people and organisations try to win support for policies, practices, or funding that drive public abundance — but frame the argument around a story of self-interest and money (e.g. 'squeezed middle needs more money' ‘this won’t increase debt’ ‘ all debt is bad’) — they actually suppress the very thinking they're trying to build: common-interest thinking. You cannot bring about a change using the same system of thinking that caused the problem.

But the good news is because in the main as a population we already prioritise common interest values the job is not to convert an entire population from self-interest to common interest from scratch.

What we do need to do is rebalance the values context we are in so people can get the opportunity to consider and act on the common interest values that make sense to most of us. Something they get little opportunity to do right now.

Rebalancing the values context does not have to be all about the peace and love tone either - it works for many audiences but not all.

• When the NZ Super fund managers say it is sensible and wise to respond to climate disruption and reduce our carbon pollution, they are using common interest values.

• When parents say we want our young people to be free from the grip of the tech oligarchs, they are using common interest values

• When teachers say that every kid should get what they need to do well in learning, they are using common interest values.

• When clinicians say we need a public health system where there is the time to care for people properly and prevent things getting worse, they are using common interest values.

Cutting through: using energy, joy, hopefulness, and a sense of being part of something

Despite what us nerds want, everyday people are not talking about the details of different policies and logically weighing up the costs and benefits (this is naive realism in action). Rather all of us make decisions based on stories and connection to the values being primed and then they decide if the facts make sense in the context of that story (see above).

What is challenging is that in the polluted information river we are swimming we are all being channelled into own toxic information tributaries, making it hard to see stories that the algorithm doesn’t want us to see. And they mainly want us to see those that enrage, polarise, and drive money into tech giants pockets.

Working with what we have right now means being creative and joyful, giving people a sense of being part of something bigger than themselves, and working together to cut through.

One tip is to locate campaigns in local spaces and places. Turn up and get attention in the places people live, work, shop, play, learn, the places where people are hurting, such as supermarkets, healthcare, streets, schools, and give them the better story.

Image: Bring the story to people in their local places

The best framing and messaging, tested and tweaked to perfection means sweet Fanny Adams if it doesn’t get passed on and engaged with at a meaningful level.

Some progressive story inspiration

When creating a progressive story - one based on common interest values, with a vision for what is possible, and clearly mapped pathways to get there, there are many different tones, looks, channels that you can use depending on your particular convincible target audience. Here is some inspiration:

The Stuff of Dreams: A vision for a Tasmania free from fossil fuels using helpfulness and love values

The Truth Initiative: Using self direction and freedom values to activate young people in the fight against big tobacco

Protect the freedom to vote: Campaign from US for democracy using freedom values

*Hat tip to Aaron Hawkins for this name for the movable middle. That large group of people who have no fixed view on different issues.

References:
1. Vohs, K. D., Mead, N. L., & Goode, M. R. (2006). The psychological consequences of money. science, 314(5802), 1154-1156; Caruso, E. M., Vohs, K. D., Baxter, B., & Waytz, A. (2013). Mere exposure to money increases endorsement of free-market systems and social inequality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(2), 301.

By about 10 minutes into my story, that started with Friedrich Hayek, meandered through a history of Argentina’s Tin Pot generals, took a long stop at the Iron Lady, all while outlining the reality of trickle down really being siphon away, they looked a little glazed. No matter this is not my first rodeo with explaining things to the teens. Small bites.

Afterwards, I reflected on what I had missed and it was this: that at the heart of neoliberal policies is a story about individualism and individual self sufficiency. A story that reasons that all problems are caused by individuals and are best being solved by individual effort. If you can’t solve them? You didn’t try hard enough. Loser. Of course business isn’t required to be self sufficient in this story, rather they get all the help they need and more from the state to do as well as possible.

I have no idea if this is what Hayek thought, but the version of neoliberalism we have now is absolutely predicated on it. Every industry who has gained from it has a story it tells about individual responsibility and action. Every person in politics who wants to reduce funding and support to social and environmental issues and work and increase funding for harm industries tells it. Worse those stories have filtered into our everyday language to such a degree that it has become a default way of thinking for most of us.

Climate change? That’s about our individual carbon footprint, choices we make about what we buy or what products consumers use. Just listen to what the fossil fuel companies tell us.

And then take note when we inadvertently repeat it:

Environmental degradation? Don’t recycle enough, or use all our potatoes peelings.

Housing crisis? We didn’t save enough and ate too many avocado brunches in the 2000s.

Online harm to teens? They use it too much

Loneliness? More self care

Disabled folks excluded and unable to participate? Families need to “step up”

Education systems failing? Children are deficient of facts and they need more exams

And so it goes on.

“There is no society”.

Well done Margaret Thatcher. You told a story and managed to get the rest of us to keep telling it long after you are gone.

What public health experts Göran Dahlgren and Margaret Whitehead called the economic, social and environmental determinants of health and wellbeing, are simply out of the neoliberal frame. And that which is out of the frame is invisible and doesn’t need to be dealt with or accounted for. All those “externalities” excluded from neoclassical economic models that dominant economic thinking, poof, they don’t exist. It’s like magic. But not in a cool way.

The challenge is to make the unseen seen

I don’t really think of neoliberalism per se as the boogey man. And to be honest it’s not that useful to just keep flinging it around as “the problem”. While it is just a system of thinking and conceptualising the world and governments etc. As a word its politicised, it jargonistic, and is associated with particular identities that get reactive responses. You could find yourself telling long boring stories about Hayek, Tin Pot Generals and Iron Ladies (see above), instead of what we really need which is to explain how it has caused the current hellish timeline we are all living through.

People understand and feel that life under the current way we have organised society, politics and business, is just not that great. “The System is Rigged” we say. And we would be are right.

When Winston Peters says he is going to nationalise the BNZ, and all the economists have a fun old time calling it “Preposterous. Crazy. Off the planet loopy” they are missing the main point: Peters is telling people a story about the system being rigged and another one about how he is going to fix it. Clearly no one in the know thinks this is the fix, but to the fed up public it looks like someone is actually prepared to do something (even if that someone was supportive of the decisions that rigged the system in the first place).

Part of the counter to the individualism story is acknowledging the system IS rigged. Because now you are not talking about what individuals can do to fix themselves, but what your countries laws, policies, politicians have done to you and need to undo. In other words you are making the system visible. A system people already feel but can’t see - like a ghost-system. And you can’t fight ghosts. Well I mean you can but you need these guys…

I also think there is something more respectful about acknowledging the system is rigged for people. When Ashley Bloomfield said we should stop saying the health system is broken, implying it drives a sense of fatalism and undervalues everything people are doing that is working, I understand his intentions. But the reality is that for most people their experience working in the health system or trying to get care from it is that it very much feels stuffed. People are already fatalistic about it because of how they are experincing it. The solution is not to stop saying “it’s broken”, but rather take a sideways step and point explicitly to the parts of the system that need fixing and by who and how.

That is what Winston Peters is doing. And when he say those arguing against it are repeating “stupid, neoliberal, nitwit comments of the past”. He is pointing to the system is rigged story. Inconsistent as he may be, problematic as he is, he is a wily old fox who does understand that people need a different story, one in which their experiences are acknowledged, the system is made visible, and concrete solutions are proffered.

I recently came across this piece by on loneliness and isolation. It does a very comprehensive job of pointing to how physical and social infrastructure (and the removal of it over decades by political decisions) has also removed our connections to each other. It’s not a loneliness epidemic, it’s a removal of the collectively funded structures and systems that enable connection to each other.

Removing individualism language from our work

There is a large body of research and thinking from across disciplines that argues for advocates, researchers, practitioners, writers, reporters, to remove the language and practice of individualism from their work to help the public better understand and support the kinds of systematic and structural solutions the polycrisis demands of us.

• American Political scientist Shanto Iyengar notes how TV reporting focussed on individuals “obscures the connections between political problems and the actions or inactions of political leaders”

• Some behavioural scientists have delivered in a mea culpa on nudge theory - saying the focus on individual responsibility (what they call responsibilisation) has given harm industries and big business a free pass.

• While public health practitioners argue that by failing to name the harm industries (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, processed food) role in people’s declining health we fail to make the commercial determinants of health visible.

Framing experiments, both my own and others, have shown that when individualism frames are used to communicate climate, poverty, public health, retirement issues and more, it directs people away from decision makers in organisations and institutions and away from systematic reforms in favour of individuals and individual behaviour change. While when framing attributes responsibility to people within a system and the system’s practices, the opposite happens.

Repeating the individualism frame and narrative is undermining our goals for changes that make the biggest difference.

When you repeat a frame, you activate the neuron’s associated with the frame and strengthen the frame. Stories are not just words — they are physically present as neural networks in our brains and like muscles get stronger the more they are used. Neurons that fire together wire together.

There are no tigers in space

So what is the next step? The shift in communications.

If you tell people a story about space, in which all the characters are doing “space things” on space systems, and then introduce a tiger, don’t be surprised if they just ignore it, or turn it into an Alien, in order to keep the story working for them. For a tiger to make sense to people then it needs to be within a story in which a tiger would be expected to appear. And so if you want people to see how systems and structures are the problem, and you want decision makers to change those systems and structures (the tiger is systems and structures here), then stop telling the individualism story and expecting people to understand systems solutions.

The alternative is a story in which our connections to each other, our reliance on each other and collective and shared systems and structures are pointed to. I have always thought he waka eke noa encapsulates it nicely.

In climate change for example, if what you really want is for people to come together, decide what makes the most sense for their community, given the flooding risks they face, and tell decision makers what they need to cope as a community, then reminding people of what community and collective work and decision making looks and feels like, and why it matters, is a good place to start. Collective care is critical to coping with the inevitable climate related disasters. But such care doesn’t just happen, it needs support, policies, places and resources for it to thrive. And that comes from many places, most notably those organisations that are bigger than any individual. Point to them, name them, explain them, don’t assume people can see them just because they can feel the downstream impacts of them.

I miss having a community also. I left twitter some years back (when it was still twitter), my nervous system was far too sensitive for it and rage baiting was too much for me. But I miss is the meeting of the minds and ideas, the sharing of perspectives and work, and yes the community (the light and dark of social media eh?).

The world is going to hell in a hand basket, and hope is harder for me to hold on to. The evidence, the policies that work, the better world that that community talked about and believed in feels harder. Yet that is just a perspective. And as I tell my kids, change seems impossible until it isn’t.

So when popped up with his newsletter focussed on hope this weekend, I thought now is the time to start writing again. To share what I think and learn in the day-to-day work I still do on framing and narratives, but more than that. To write again about how I believe we can make this place, our place, work better for all of us, not just some. And surely connection with others is the place to start.

This is my garden in summer. Just because I love it. And finding joy in the small things matters a lot right now.

Jess

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