Labour has found its voice, now it has to say something

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The latest Roy Morgan poll should put to rest any complacency on the left and expose the disingenuous notion of some commentators on the right that next years’ election is a sure bet for a Labour/Green win.

With National up 3.5 to 45.5% and Labour/Greens down 2 to 44.5% Gary Morgan says it’s too close to call. Under MMP elections are won or lost by just one or two points so this is worrying by any analysis given that Labour’s new leader David Cunliffe has just had an extremely successful annual conference with over 600 fired- up delegates.  Gary Morgan puts Labour’s drop and National’s rise to, in my opinion, fixing a problem that barely exists:

 “The Labour Party’s new policy – which the press have dubbed the ‘man-ban’ – calls for female representation in the Labour caucus to be at 50% by 2017. Currently, 42% of Labour MPs in New Zealand are women and judging by this week’s result the policy has not provided a boost amongst women, but has achieved the outcome of driving men away from Labour in large numbers”.

National’s already in campaign mode with a bevy of MPs retiring making way for big new lineup of fresh faces and its website is highlighting three good news stories: 5 years Delivering for NZers; Helping Families; and Better Public Services (despite cutting over 5000 jobs and closing regional offices throughout NZ, WTF?, but that’s spin for you). The Greens never leave campaign mode and that leaves Labour playing catch-up at a crucial time.

We knew that the new leader would have to move incredibly quickly to get the Party together and credit to Cunliffe for what he’s achieved so far.  In his own words (loosely)from The Daily Blog Crossfire interview, David Cunliffe’s first tasks were to: have a great conference, get membership up, win Christchurch East, mobilize the base, complete an internal reorganization with a caucus reshuffle, new staff and structures and sharpen up Labour’s reaction to its opponents.

David Cunliffe said in the Crossfire interview that his key focus is to “mobilize the base, mobilize the Party and mobilize our union friends – making sure that they are sure that we are a party that has strong, true Labour values at hearts and are prepared to do the work on a policy set that will give us a new government that is distinctly and definitely different from the right wing drift and crony capitalism that is Mr Key and his mates”.

No problem with any of that, obviously.  What I am concerned about is transforming talk into action.

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In the past two months I’ve had three messages from the Labour Party: one inviting me to one of three Campaign Colleges (for candidates), one asking for help in Christchurch East and a local request to attend a fundraiser for Stu Nash.

I just had a look at Labour’s home page. The latest press releases tell me that Labour’s been saying stuff about climate change, paying compo to the Pike River mining families, Sri Lanka, Sky City, fixing small business tax, the Chorus review and Tony Ryall doctoring health stats.

All good stuff except (bar the small business tax story) I hadn’t really heard any of it until I went and looked for myself. Maybe it’s all there on Face Book somewhere and I’m just not receiving the notifications, I don’t know. But the Party should be able to make easier than this for people to know what’s going on so they can help spread the gospel.

As I’ve said many times, a press release does not communication make. Labour’s doubled its membership, that’s a whole lot of brand new eager people ready to serve, willing to work to get Labour back on to the Treasury benches.  Labour can’t afford to leave them virtually in the dark until next year. New members (and old for that matter) want to feel involved and useful in relevant activity and they want to feel in the loop, in the know and part of a movement that can change peoples’ lives.

Labour now has many thousands of voices – the Party needs to give them something to say.

 

 

 

14 COMMENTS

  1. Go Labour lets talk voting and motivate people to vote november 2014
    will be the time for john key and his government to be sacked !!!
    the next time to vote will be four years if national have there way as to extending from a 3 year term to 4 years term in power lol.. in my opinion 🙂

  2. National’s peeps and wannabes listen and talk ‘up’ – while Labour’s peeps talk across and down.

    Could some more people remind Labour that their potential voters are educated people, aspirational, and quite safe to tell ‘secrets’ to? Quite safe to listen to, and include in the attempt to gain the Treasury benches, in fact.

    Excellent piece, thank you. This is a long-standing Labour and union problem – a hangover from the earliest days of political action by workers. We don’t seem to have moved on much at all.

  3. You have highlighted what you think needs to happen/be done Jenny but not so much the how beyond sending more Labour related emails to members and supporters. I would be interested to know what you’d suggest for getting people engaged and keeping them motivated? Serious question btw.

    • Have you got a week Alex? Because I could go on for that long about how to get people involved and active. But for now let me give you the short short short version:

      1. Have a strategy
      2. Let your supporters and activists know the strategy and that they are welcome and appreciated.
      3. Show them love and respect.
      4. Listen to them – they have experience and something to offer.
      5. Give them meaningful stuff to do.
      6. Thank them often.

  4. All Labour and David Cunliffe have to do is let Truth be their guide .

    No more lies . No more selling out . No more crypto , double-speak gibberish . No more pretending that the poorest are the most dangerous . No more putting money ahead of humanness and genuine endeavour . No more cruelty to prisoners while arguing it’s the only thing that’ll fix ‘ em . No more man / woman pay disparity . No more tax breaks for the rich . No more fucking lies . Shock people with kindness and truthfulness . Surprise people back into hope . The well-off don’t want to live in shitty , graffitied ghettos either . The well-off want to park up their cars and go out of an evening without some angry , frustrated lost soul scratching it up . No one likes their houses getting burgled . I doubt there are many burglars who think much of doing it anyway .
    Life would be so much more comfortable is people knew that todays basic cost of living was going to be the same in one year , two years , ten years twenty years . That’s why electricity , water , public transportation , educations , basic communications systems , non profit housing and food should be carefully monitored for greed infections .
    I’ve just driven a significant part of the lower South Island and I never saw people out and about ? Smaller towns , tiny little Dairies and outpost shops are dying of boredom and a lack of money but for the odd few tourists .
    90 % of us Kiwis are crammed into the larger , north island cities and are having our lives stolen from us by foreign corporations sporting ‘ Clean Green ‘ and ‘ Kiwi As ‘ lies .
    They trade off what was once about being an ‘iconic’ Kiwi . The Batch that no one can afford to go to much less own . The Jandles . You need steel toe caps mate because you’re working two jobs to pay the power bill . The Kiwi Fruit . Poisoned by the Chinese because we tried to fuck them over . The caravan by the beach . No freedom camping , so sorry but Nah . What the fuck’s that about . I can understand that for tourists to a degree but to us . Us ! We’re New Zealanders for Gods sake . We should be able to park up and camp on public land to our picnickers delight . Provided of course that neoliberalism hasn’t turned us all into Libertine sociopaths and we just leave our shit and rubbish behind , you know ? Like we do in our streets and neighbourhoods .

    The Truth . Tell us the Truth Labour . We can handle it . We can handle the truth , unlike Tom Cruise in a Few Good Men .
    Before some nut job declares code red .
    Our corporate ‘ heros ‘ need to be shown as the abusers they in fact are so that we can heal and move on from this frustrating , seemingly never ending beige nightmare of blah and meh . Great post Jenny Mitchie .

    Labour also needs to understand one other thing . If Labour tries to win people over by using politician speak and show figures as percentages ? Forget about it . It makes peoples eyes dull to resemble the eyes of those after having been heavily struck over the back of the head with a stout club .
    Labour has to woo the 800,000 who just couldn’t be arsed to vote . And why could they not be arsed ? Because they felt as if it’d be a waste of time . Why ? Why would voting be a waste of time ? Because that’s what they’ve been trained to expect . Things will get worse . Not better . My wages can’t keep up with foreign corporate inflated living costs . My kids don’t do much more than sit and swear and I have no idea what they get up to at night . I’m just too depressed and exhausted to care and the cops will take them to hospital if it’s serious . Every year in beautiful New Zealand is a grind and I get so desperate and anxious that I honestly feel like killing myself . What’s the point of all this struggle and work and I just keep getting hit , harder and harder by faceless corporations constantly warning me of cut offs , mortgagee sales , increased insurances ( when those fuckers are making record profits ) and disconnections .

    Does labour seriously think those whom fit the above scenario give one small flying fuck about political details and figures ? No , they do not !
    They want a firebrand politician who can bare knuckle this currant pack of scurrilous anti human fuckers into the dirt where they belong AND THEN ! Shepherd us into a new way for us to live . In peace and sameness for a long period of time so we can reflect and heal and become good Kiwi human beings again . It might be easier if instead we all just left for the South West of France .

    • Thanks Country Boy. I agree with what you’ve so eloquently said. Like you (when I sit down to think about it) I feel we’ve lost so much of what makes New Zealand so good. But let’s hope that we really are on our way to a new beginning. It must be possible surely?

  5. great post countryboy ..as usual, very entertainingly told how it is.

    “But let’s hope that we really are on our way to a new beginning. It must be possible surely?”…..I wish too, but certainly not holding my breathe!

  6. Jenny, I am not surprised about your “promotional” here, and while I am pleased that David Cunliffe has replaced David Shearer as leader, I am not quite happy with Labour as yet.

    After Sue Moroney took over social security as her spokesperson’s role from Jacinda Ardern, I have been missing questions to Paula Bennett. Now Jacinda was a bit lacking in some ways, but she did in general at least try to challenge Bennett on the radical, ruthless and draconian welfare reforms of the National led government.

    Only a couple of days back did Sue for the first time put a question to Bennett, and while this was overdue and good, I still feel, she and Labour as a whole have not done much to convince us that depend on welfare support, for health and other reasons, that we should vote Labour next year.

    We had the last Labour government oversee welfare reforms that also put into office one Dr David Bratt as Principal Health Advisor, who seems to wholly embrace the selective “findings” of one “professor” Mansel Aylward (former Chief Medical Officer for the Department of Work and Pensions, then private insurer paid servant for the new “model” of “research” based policies to dis-entitle beneficiaries and insurance claimers) in the UK!

    One must wonder what Labour really stands for to accept such “pseudo science” to throw sick and disabled of welfare benefits. But that is what it really means. While David Cunliffe was ambiguous on “Cross Fire”, I question what will Labour do to reform welfare and to treat sick and disabled, same as other beneficiaries with respect, and fairly?

    I wish to throw this into the debate, for people to consider. This is stuff that people should perhaps read and research, before they comment on welfare, and that includes David Cunliffe, Sue Moroney and others in Labour:

    http://accforum.org/forums/index.php?/topic/15463-designated-doctors-%E2%80%93-used-by-work-and-income-some-also-used-by-acc/

    http://accforum.org/forums/index.php?/topic/13301-what-to-do-if-you-are-required-to-see-a-winz-designated-doctor/

    http://accforum.org/forums/index.php?/topic/15188-medical-and-work-capability-assessments-based-on-the-bps-model-aimed-at-disentiteling-affected-from-welfare-benefits-and-acc-compo/

    They can all come back to me and the wider public, once they may have absorbed that information presented in those posts!

    Unless Labour present a clear, convincing and progressive line on social security, I will rather vote Greens or Mana, to be honest.

  7. Good Post Jenny. I agree, Labour need a message that will inspire a whole generation.

    Also great comments couldn’t find one I disagreed with.

  8. It’s simple Labour. Make housing affordable in NZ ASAP.

    Building housing is a great long term idea, BUT IT WON’T fix the problem within a month or two or three. More like 10-15 yrs.

    So before lunch on the first day in office, go after the housing speculators in the NZ.

    Start by introducing a severe Capital gains tax, back dated (starting in a month if you still own a property, to give them time to get out quick) on ALL but Citizens and permanent residents (that are LIVING in NZ and paying their taxes here).

    Then go after NZ property speculators, by introducing similar CGT on any one owning more than 3 properties (inc their primary residence). Plus remove ALL tax breaks for them.

    Then do as Australia does and only allow new immigrants to buy a house IF they have it built (thus building up the property pool and growing the building sector).

    Finally (within three months) ban all oversea’s people owning more than one property in NZ (i.e. speculators).

    If the property prices still haven’t fallen to the long term stable norm of………….three times average salary equals average house price………THEN ban all foreign ownership of land and property in NZ.

    Kiwis in their own country shouldn’t have to become debt slaves, to people who can ‘invent money out of thin air’ and then charge us interest, to buy a house in our own country.

    This is the NUMBER ONE issue facing NZ today. If this isn’t fixed by a political party then ALL else is lost.

    Then maybe, all money saved-gained from this exercise can be used to with raised taxes (so we still pay what we pay in total today) to pay for all the other reasonable needs (child poverty, feel school meals, education, health etc etc) that politicians are happy to talk about instead, for fear we’ll realise what really needs fixing.

  9. The problem really is the Tory media putting a negative spin on Labour and a positive one on National and this is going to become the dominant narrative.

    Only tonight Patrick Gower did a piece about Kiwi Assure being a fizzer. It makes it sound like the vast majority don’t wont it, when actually it was 49% of people. Cunliffe handled it well, but then Key is saying the insurance business is “risky” which of course is crap and just feeds into to peoples fears and misinformation. Since Cunliffe became leader there has been a concerted effort by the msm to slant things extremely unfavourably for him, or give him no oxygen at all. Its really important that we on the left see it for what it is and don’t be into the negative narrative. Cunliffe will by far be a better PM for NZ than Key (light years better). I wonder if the key to winning isn’t to focus on those 800000 people who didn’t vote rather than polls. I know that has been said before.

  10. “Labour has found its voice, now it has to say something”

    By Jenny Michie / November 15, 2013 / 12 Comments

    – See more at: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/11/15/labour-has-found-its-voice-now-it-has-to-say-something/#sthash.E5KfiJ7f.dpuf

    I tautoko that Jenny

    Gathering Storm

    http://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/winston-churchill-and-the-gathering-storm.html

    From his backbench seat in Parliament, Churchill badgered, “Germany is arming- she is rapidly arming – and no one will stop her.” But Winston was seen as an alarmist distraction by the coalition government of Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties focused primarily on domestic issues.

    The coalition partners agreed that economic problems engendered by the Great Depression were Britain’s greatest threat and disarmament was the way to peace. It was difficult for anyone to face the prospect of another war after one million British and Empire deaths in the Great War less than twenty years earlier.

    But Churchill would not be silenced. In a barrage of speeches, broadcasts and articles he raised public awareness of Germany’s rearmament and Britain’s lack of preparedness…..

    ” In addition to demanding emergency acceleration of aircraft production, Churchill asked for research into anti-aircraft defense. “It is no exaggeration to suppose that a week or ten days of intensive bombing upon London would leave thirty or forty thousand people dead or maimed…”

    Churchill also proposed a Ministry of Supply to prepare Britain’s industry for wartime production. But, beset with the problem of unemployment and the depression, the government could not imagine placing Britain’s industry on a wartime footing much less how to pay for it.

    Churchill called 1934 and 1935 “The Locust Years” because time which should have been spent preparing to face Germany was fruitlessly eaten up. Churchill described the government’s position as “…decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. “…..

    In March 1938, Hitler occupied Austria. Churchill immediately responded, “Europe is confronted with a programme of aggression, nicely calculated and timed, unfolding stage by stage, and there is only one choice open… either to submit, like Austria, or else to take effective measures while time remains to ward off danger.”

    On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland.

    The Polish Ambassador called Churchill, rather than the Prime Minister, with news of the attack. Churchill passed the word on to the war office.

    Prime Minister Chamberlain’s first reaction was to negotiate with Hitler. His Cabinet revolted, insisting on an ultimatum. When Hitler gave no response, Britain declared war on Germany 3 September 1939.

    The German invasion of Poland represented a shocking personal rebuff for Neville Chamberlain. On Sunday 3 September he announced, in one of the most famous broadcasts in British history, that no response had been received to his ultimatum and that, in consequence, Britain and Germany were at war.[i]

    Back bench MP Winston Churchill declared, “This is not a question of fighting for Danzig or fighting for Poland,” “We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is most sacred to man.”

    8/11/2013: The Philippines city of Tacloban is “largely destroyed” by “the strongest storm ever measured”.

    “With wind speeds of more than 310 kilometers per hour, Haiyan was the most powerful tropical cyclone to make landfall in recorded history.”

    On the main road to Tacloban bodies were strewn across the streets, corpses were hanging from trees and the smell of death lingered in the air.

    Stunned survivors rummaged through debris looking for food as traffic queues of desperate relatives searching for loved ones formed on the edge of the city where more than 10,000 people may have perished.

    November 10, 2013

    1939 redux: Germany has just invaded Poland and independent back bench MP Winston Churchill Says nothing.

    Would Churchill have become the great leader he did if he had kept his mouth shut, would he have ever even been appointed premier when the crisis really hit?

    Jenny just as you say, “a Labour/Green win” in next year’s elections is not a “sure bet”. That is a fact, and all the commentators are stating it, all polling shows that the result will hang in the balance.

    Climate Change, the issue of this generation’s time, the cut through issue urgently needing to be addressed

    As well as wanting the big countries to do more, Polls show that over 60% of New Zealanders want the government and the Prime Minister to do more to combat climate change.[ii]

    Rather than the shilly shallying, back tracking and avoidance we have recently witnessed from Labour over climate change…..

    With clear and resolute leadership on this issue, with a clear programme and with clear explanations of the need for such a programme, the popular consensus on climate change has the possibility to increase into a powerful political movement. The leadership that dares give voice to this movement will sweep the polls.

    The NZ Labour Party can’t afford the sort of irresoluteness, and undecidedness that Winston Churchill complained of, when clear leadership was called for, against the global threat of his time.

    “…decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent. “

    [i] http://www.historyextra.com/feature/3-september-1939-britain-declares-war

    [ii] http://www.horizonpoll.co.nz/page/244/people-want-
    64.4 per cent wanting Parliament to do more
    60.6 per cent wanting the Prime Minister to do more and
    62.9 per cent saying government officials should do more.

  11. Hi Jenny,
    Perhaps we need the HAM strategy…Hearts and Minds.
    When Bill Clinton challenged Bush Senior, he pulled the emotional strings, appealing to the soccer Mums and the tireless volunteer sector.
    How about policies that engage such as:
    – full funding St John’s via ACC … so Nan doesn’t have to pay for the ambulance service
    – full funding Surf-lifesaving via ACC to reduce drownings, increase swimming education, taking pressure off the fundraisers
    – re-finance Community Education, all 300,000 potential votes
    – fast track the Auckland Harbour cycle/pedestrian crossing and capture the Auckland red/green or blue/green vote
    – promote the need in housing, using State land to focus on-campus Student/Post Graduate/Staff accommodation, plus the growing retiree/Grey Power market.
    – HAM… of youth, friends,parents and grandparents.
    It worked for Helen Clark in 2005 with a “No Interest student loan” policy…stealing the election from Don Brash.

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