1 Year of Labour in power and what do ya get? Another year older and deeper in debt!
So it’s been one year since Labour won an unprecedented MMP majority (as I predicted) and what did we get?
Another year older and deeper in debt.
Covid has exacerbated poverty, inequality, housing and social collapse.
Labour are still an accidental Government trying to ascertain an ideology baptized in fire.
The Party who dismantled the State under Rogernomics is now desperately trying to rebuild it to function under an avalanche of crises.
There are 3 lenses to look at Labour from over the last year – Policy, Leadership and Covid.
Policy:
Labour didn’t expect to win 2017 and they didn’t expect to win an MMP majority in 2020 so they had no reform agenda to force the Public Service to act in the interests of citizens and not themselves.
Grant Robertson’s Central Wellington wonksters however had other plans.
The policy wonks saw an opportunity to reform policy and expand the State that way rather than take cattle prods to the eyeballs of their Wellington bureaucrat comrades.
The Wellington Central Wonksters allowed their Wellington bureaucrat brethren to keep their fiefdoms while expanding the State by building a bigger kingdom.
And so it has come to pass:
- 3 waters – will take all local water for the glory of the State!
- Radical Public Health Authority – goodbye failing DHBs
- Universal Union Membership – watch as the capitalists scream
- RMA reform – watch as the capitalists scream more
There isn’t any beauty in the Frankenstein State monolith Labour’s wonk team have welded together, but sweet Jesus it’s huge.
The danger is the wonksters for a bigger State won’t limit themselves to policy and will also create a Big Sister State that criminalizes speech and stomps on civil liberties to punish breaches of woke dogma.
The Wellington bureaucrats will allow this policy reform to pass as it doesn’t impinge on their glass palaces but at some stage the Left have to urgently reform the neoliberal welfare system or allow these unelected bureaucrats to continue to call the shots.
Leadership:
The left love Michael Joseph Savage. Every Labour MP who wishes to push their left wing credentials have photos of him hanging in every electorate office and Minister’s room.
Savage is lauded as the creator of the welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression.
He was swamped when he went into public as NZers gushed over how he had saved them all.
The most hilarious truth, provided by insights from John A Lee who served in Savage’s Cabinet and was the anti-Phil Twyford of his day, (in that he actually built Houses) paints a very different picture from the mythology the left have given Savage .
The truth is that Savage was incredibly centrist and not a radical at all. Backed up by the neoliberal Walter Nash and conservative manipulator Peter Fraser, Savage did all he could to stop transformative change, it was actually Savage’s Caucus who forced his hand repeatedly to be transformative.
The exact same dynamics are at play inside Jacinda’s Labour Government.
When there is a crisis, the Prime Minister shines, but when it comes to domestic policy, she is super cautious to the point of being timid.
Her decision to rule out revoking a racist drug law simply because 50.7% want to continue supporting the racist drug law is an example of this timidness.
Her decision to rule out a capital gains tax, a wealth tax and refusal to increase benefits are also evidence of it.
The counter argument is that she needs to hold the centre, but if you aren’t going to be transformative with an outright majority, when the hell are you going to be transformative?
The reality is there won’t be transformative change unless we the people demand it, or if the Caucus demands it, or if a crisis demands it.
Just as it was with Michael Joseph Savage.
Covid:
I think Jacinda has done an incredible job navigating us through this nightmare and the lack of gratitude and hate and crazy conspiracy madness vomited on her is an indictment on us as a fractured social media crazed culture of resentment, not on her.
Covid deaths per population:
US 1 in 451
Italy 1 in 457
UK 1 in 479
Spain 1 in 540
France 1 in 566
Austria 1 in 789
Germany 1 in 874
Turkey 1 in 1, 211
Canada 1 in 1, 305
India 1 in 3, 008
Australia 1 in 15, 494
New Zealand 1 in 175, 607
But sure let’s shit on Jacinda’s response!
If Jacinda liberates NZ from our economic straightjacket while avoiding a mass public health emergency, voters will gleefully and gratefully forgive her.
Conclusion:
They have big radical ideas when it comes to Worker rights, water and public health but not enough Cabinet talent to implement more of that radical thinking in the traditional areas of housing, welfare and poverty.
Jacinda must cut away the dead wood in her Cabinet and advance talented MPs hungry for real reform.
You simply can not win 50% in MMP and not use that power.
That would be a tragedy for Labour and criminal neglect to those in NZ living at the bottom.
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Bring back NZF minus Winston, they have some good policy and good people, however the Party gets mired in stupid controversy and shit fights, taking their eye of the ball. Winston loves a good scrap however we need to get past that and start implementing good policy. Winston is actually better in Opposition.
Bringing in thousands of Asian House Farmers without building the necessary Infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and transport links is mindless, we can not build enough houses for the 60,000-70,000 new immigrants let alone look after our own people first.
Tracey Martin’s gone mate
Ron Mark gone too, probably the best Minister of Defence the country has ever had.
Bring back NZF minus Winston, they have some good policy and good people, however the Party gets mired in stupid controversy and shit fights, taking their eye of the ball. Winston loves a good scrap however we need to get past that and start implementing good policy. Winston is actually better in Opposition.
Bringing in thousands of Asian House Farmers without building the necessary Infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and transport links is mindless, we can not build enough houses for the 60,000-70,000 new immigrants let alone look after our own people first.
We are grateful for Labour for Covid, as they muddled along and got most of it right. The problem is that their love of neoliberalism along with the Greens love of Woke (and cross support for both) has left our public health service in a terrible state. In spite of the disaster of opening the borders last time without MIQ to OZ and very quickly they got Delta.
MIQ helps to stem NZ’s growing illegal subculture of drugs, people trafficking and visa frauds and thus many people are now better off with the border shut! Hense Labours popularity.
Sadly they are constantly lobbied by the woke and Natz, so have decided to allow another 165,000 new residents.
That will be a sweet fuck you, to those without housing and to the public health system and NZ social systems in general.
Meanwhile, it’s all good for some!
Liquor store owners designed mansion while company probed
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/119602924/liquor-store-owners-planned-mansion-while-company-probed
Court orders forfeiture of $42.85 million in alleged money laundering case
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/83450345/court-orders-forfeiture-of-4285-million-in-alleged-money-laundering-case
More jobs from foreign rich listers mooooving to NZ, not jobs for Kiwis silly!
“Our plan to expand the veggie operation and get the animals off basically sort of got derailed by the pandemic, because we needed a lot more labour for the veggie operation than we do to run the stock, and our access to labour from the Solomon Islands or Philippines and things like that basically just went away.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018791897/james-cameron-explains-dairy-cows-on-wairarapa-farm
Buyer tries to stop US billionaire Peter Thiel selling luxury Queenstown home to rival purchaser
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/buyer-tries-to-stop-us-billionaire-peter-thiel-selling-luxury-queenstown-home-to-rival-purchaser/YOAYUC6Y2WZOFWGU6DAX7LV5TA/
Russian billionaire Mikhail Khimich skips court on drink-driving related charges
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/114186132/russian-billionaire-mikhail-khimich-skips-court-on-drinkdriving-related-charges
Ex-All Black Ali Williams, Zuru Toys’ Anna Mowbray demolish 12-year-old Auckland home for 3-level, 6-bedroom replacement
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ex-all-black-ali-williams-zuru-toys-anna-mowbray-demolish-12-year-old-auckland-home-for-3-level-6-bedroom-replacement/ANGLKIASBWGA4VTPXKMKUWSU3I/
Some might feel that it’s first world problems not being able to find a decent 24 million dollar mansion so you have to demolish and start your new McMansion from scratch, when your staff are being bought into NZ on minimum wages and subsidised by WFF wages and accomodation subsidies, but it’s a real issue in NZ!!!
We need more construction workers and more farm hands for the mansion owners! 165,000 of them, next year!
Not doctors, silly! We have less doctors, but 165,000 more NZ residents. It’s ‘new maths’ to solve first world NZ problems being bought to government.
saveNZ. The Public Health Service has no problem finding funding for woke projects. Capital Coast Health
provides a free tax payer funded speech therapy service at Wellington Hospital for transgendering males to learn how to speak like women, men with no more impediments than anybody else.
But the Hutt physiotherapy service for wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis patients/clients/customers was disbanded apparently for lack of funding, and these physically crippled folk banished back to the social isolation of the suburban wilderness and I daresay, muscular atrophy, pain, whatever.
Waste of time even querying the prioritising here when we all know that gender issues are more flavoursome than boring cripples stuck in wheelchairs, and that some glib politician may even believe their own pr bilge if asked for a please explain.
@Snow White, It’s depressing, isn’t it.
I guess the NZ strategy is for the few, not the many.
Genuine question – what other talent is there? Surely these people should have been promoted already?
As for Jacinda being able to liberate NZ from our economic straightjacket while avoiding a mass catastrophe, well that’s not going to happen. It’s clear that we have so far been spared the fatalities that other countries have tragically suffered however I suspect that we will be paying the bill for this so called escape for many, many years to come.
When all is said and done, the numbers tallied up I do wonder who will actually be better off. Sadly, I think NZ is looking down the barrel at years of austerity, cuts to services and a future less prosperous than many others who took a different path.
Interest rates will soon rise and those repayments that we are all on the hook for will need to be made after all, we all have to pay the ferryman in the end.
So, what will be Jacinda and Grant’s legacy? Out of control house prices, 100,000 living in motels, increased child poverty and no real change other than centralised behemoths serving no one but themselves and their Wellington masters. Oh, and masses and masses of debt.
So yes, whilst we have very low rates of mortality today we will pay for it in the end as every extra dollar required to pay down the interest let alone the principal is a dollar we can’t spend on health, education, nurses wages, etc.
Well she certainly won’t get the protesters votes judging by the quality of protesters, they don’t look capable of filing a vote anyway, especially those holding MAGA flags.
Her biggest mistake was to allow the majority to influence the cannabis referendum. All she needed to do was to ignore the democratic process of the referendum , as Key did selling off our assets. Key said that his government would ignore the referendum results as the 2011 general election gave them a mandate for the sell -off, even though the referendum showed a two to one majority against the proposed asset sales.
The majority of people vaccinated, 90%, will remember the leadership that helped keep them alive.
Labour haven’t realised that building slum housing is attracting the world’s poor and unskilled to NZ.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-council-releases-images-of-labour-and-nationals-intensification-plans/BLXZENE2OIC6NUBI6JGHXZLZVI/
They are not addressing why NZ can’t retain smart workers and professionals but are creating Ponzi’s around certain industries easy to fake or gain skills in, that Kiwis can easily be trained into, very quickly.
So we have slum housing, in the middle of nowhere, with not enough hospitals, transport, schools, prisons, justice systems, police, that the councils then are sued over with remedial work with the ratepayers paying for it, so that the world’s chefs, takeaway owners, farm hands, construction labourers and support workers (on ghost and minimum wages for the most part once the get the paper work for residency) can move to NZ to partake in our extensive welfare system.
Not sure what NZ is gaining as a country? More crime, more poverty, less ability to retain professional people long term here?
Work visa numbers soar
https://croakingcassandra.com/2018/03/31/work-visa-numbers-soar/
Who has been getting residence visas?
https://croakingcassandra.com/2017/06/29/who-has-been-getting-residence-visas/
Looking at this suggests that for 860 chefs, 675 retail managers, 598 cafe managers, 213 bakers, there are 520 aged nurses and he makes the point that (aka we need the extra nurses due to the amount of extra people coming into NZ and to stagnate NZ wages, leading to more shortages aka less people stay in NZ in nursing and less people want to train into that profession here.
“The large numbers of aged care nurses (and there are many more, and aged care workers, in the work visa numbers) stands in striking contrast to the recent pay equity settlement. In that settlement, the government concluded that employees in the sector were so badly paid that a direct government intervention was needed to drive up the wages. I don’t usually focus much on the arguments about whether immigration lowers wages – my focus is more on overall economic performance – and I’m not (at all) a fan of “pay equity” interventions, but it is hard to look at these two things and not conclude that there is a certain incoherence about policy. Had fewer aged care workers from abroad been granted visas, it seems likely that market wages in that sector would have been rather higher.”
This also seems in contrast for a couple of decades, parent visas made up a pretty large chunk – around 10 per cent – of total residence visas issued. From 1997/98 to 2015/16, 75000 parent visas were issued.
https://croakingcassandra.com/2019/10/14/reopening-parent-visas/
“And Parent visas weren’t the only such questionable streams, although it was the largest. Over the same period, for example, almost 20000 people got residence under “sibling and adult child” provisions.”
Needing more foreign teachers for the increasing numbers of children from overseas becoming resident in NZ, reducing wages and conditions so locals don’t enter those professions in NZ, and the Ponzi continues…
https://croakingcassandra.com/2018/08/30/work-visas-for-shop-managers/
https://croakingcassandra.com/2015/06/23/immigration-policy-106-per-cent-of-net-new-housing-demand/
https://croakingcassandra.com/2021/06/18/immigration-policy-for-new-zealand-post-covid/
Also why the government are obsessed with migrant workers and bringing 165,000 new migrants to NZ next year, things seem to be going downhill in society, FAST! So many kidnappings, brutal beatings, intimidation, is becoming part of NZ ‘the hunger games’ life. Just a couple of headlines from the last few days about life in NZ.
Rotorua Black Power women inflict brutal attack over methamphetamine debt
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/rotorua-black-power-women-inflict-brutal-attack-over-methamphetamine-debt/QGBRP27AHFPSWDPEGXKATEHAOU/
Dunedin bakery owner fined after underpaying workers, threatening bodily harm
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/dunedin-bakery-owner-fined-after-underpaying-workers-threatening-bodily-harm/ZPZBXDHPKJAHTC7GT2C4OHKNVM/
Jail over plot to steal friend’s car
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/crime/jail-over-plot-steal-friends-car
What we got was the endless hand wringing and angst and bugger all else!
Labour is like kids wanting a birthday party. They can make a strong case for the happening because they don’t expect to have to do much to achieve it. Labour will just will it onto the bureaucrats through some agency. They haven’t got a clue how to make things happen so that people’s needs are met, it’s all rhetoric.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyCCJ6B2WE Where is our wizard?
I know nothing about how Labour works but it seems to me Little will keep his high role as she owes him for the leadership and he brings the union vote. Kelvin Davies is there to hold the Maori vote. Robinson has earnt his spot as he has supported Jacinda
https://thumbnailer.digitalnz.org/?src=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.tepapa.govt.nz%2Fcollection%2F52663%2Fpreview
Oh, and that was a Black Power patch laid on the coffin of Norman Kirks casket…interestingly to lay bare the truth, it was Kirks govt that implemented the original dawn raids. Not Muldoon,… make of that what you will.
Lets have a study of Norman Eric Kirk.
Norman Kirk – Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Norman_Kirk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Kirk
MWHAHAHAHAAAA!
Waihopai spy domes to be dismantled, due to irrelevancehttps://www.stuff.co.nz › national › politics › waihopai-sp…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126952320/waihopai-spy-domes-to-be-dismantled-due-to-irrelevance
Dr. Carol Rosin in the disclosure Project
https://youtu.be/b0A-tcuZ0kY?t=2
”And the next one will be asteroids, and then the final one,… will be aliens”
Largest asteroid of the year about to pass Earth | Stuff.co.nzhttps://www.stuff.co.nz › science › largest-asteroid-of-the-
‘Potentially hazardous’ asteroid about to make pass close to …https://www.stuff.co.nz › national › potentially-hazardous…
Now back down to earth,.. and covid. And the collapse of the global economy.