Politicians lose respect when they know something needs to be done but won’t do it for fear of losing a few votes.
The loss of respect is even greater when what needs to be done is very popular in the electorate, as is the case with marijuana law reform, assisted dying legislation and bringing down house prices.
A recent poll showed 66% support for the legalisation or decriminalisation of cannabis, yet Labour and National continue to resist change. Most Labour MPs would personally favour change, but as a party they are scared of alienating the more conservative voters. Only the Greens have a consistent drug law reform policy.
Polls over the years have shown that around two thirds of New Zealanders support assisted dying legislation. Most Labour MPs would agree, and seemed to support their colleague Iain Lees-Galloway’s End of Life Choice Bill. But when he became leader Andrew Little forced Galloway to withdraw it from the private members bill ballot. ACT’s David Seymour then picked up the Bill. Hopefully the current parliamentary select committee examination of assisted dying will create a momentum for change.
A recent UMR poll found that 60% of Aucklanders and 55% of New Zealand homeowners want house prices to go down. This was embarrassing for Andrew Little, who last month knocked Green co-leader Metiria Turei for proposing a significant (but managed) drop in prices. Little put his fear of losing votes from existing homeowners ahead of the needs of the nation and first home buyers in particular. What the UMR poll showed was that existing homeowners are more charitable than Labour thought and weren’t just for protecting the value of their own asset.
We need National and Labour to be braver on such issues and not stymie initiatives by the smaller parties. Around the world things are changing. In Canada, the new Liberal government has promised to legalise marijuana use and in June a law enabling medical assistance in dying came into force. Canadians also seems more determined to bring down house prices, with the British Columbia government imposing a 15% tax on home purchases involving foreigners.
Politicians always put their own interests ahead of the interests of the nation. End of story.
Andrew Little needs to be more Trudeau and less Key
Closer, ever closer; the Truth is closing in.
I hate to be the one to bear unsavoury news but Labour and National are clones cut from the same blood stained cloth and that’s why ‘ voters’ are losing their faith. There’s no difference between either party. Not one.
National.
A brutalist Nazi party comprised of narcissistic sociopaths bathing in the glory of their cleverness which is that of helping themselves to the life spans of others for the free meal ticket that, that particular endeavour provides while honing the art of deception to have those whom they parasitise feel guilty for being stupid enough to be preyed upon on an on-going basis.
( How many of you Right Wing trolls are now having fantasies about paula bennett and judith collins doing a tag team Dom session in jack boots, leather G Strings and whips and chains? )
Labour.
As above but with one important difference. A vile and some might argue, evil, difference.
They pretend to be the opposition but in fact they play a parallel game and by them doing that, they’re even worse than Nationals jack booted Leather Queen, Goon Squad.
The economy.
One of you wonderfully erudite intellectuals must surely, one day, ask these simple questions. Who earns our export revenue? Who’s export revenue built the infrastructures Labour Party confederates then latterly National Party fascists stole away with to build their empires and mysterious, tax – dodge bank accounts? Where is that money now? What’s the NBR rich list telling you?
Why does National Party Dollar-Zombies court the farmer and yet Labour does not? Never has. And my guess is, never will. Too big a meal ticket to throw away for silly old values, morals, empathy and peace aye Labour Boys and Girls?
Why? Because of the lie Ladies and Gentlemen. The Great New Zealand Institutionalised Lie.
That Farmers earn the money and the fancy 1 % er city people spend it. It’s that simple. Clearly too simple because none of you Big Brain people have figured it fucking out yet.
Any Labour government who refuses to try to weld the urban work force to the agricultural export earning infrastructure is lying to you and this abysmal situation, getting worse daily, will continue until we lose sovereignty of our beautiful NZ / Aotearoa.
Dear Countryboy
I am very fond of reading your posts.
However: sometimes I am snacking as I read.
Might you do one of those ‘strawberry box alerts’ at the top before you issue images of this nature: “paula bennett and judith collins doing a tag team Dom session in jack boots, leather G Strings and whips and chains”?
The den (big enough for a small stoat) has now been spackled with carrot fragments.
I’d add to your list of endangered species by adding innovators and scientists; who usually have to go it alone, or overseas, because the mainstream people ‘can’t see the point.’
I agree with your overall point that city and country folk need to create mutual interest political alliances, but wow. You’ve made a huge generalization right here.
“That Farmers earn the money and the fancy 1 % er city people spend it.”
On the earning side, your claim ignores all the money already earned by mining, tourism, international students and ICT. I’m going to stick my neck out and claim that sales of farming commodities as a proportion of total export revenue has been declining for decades. More importantly though, there’s the fact that once total global oil supply starts its inevitable decline (conventional oil already peaked in the mid-2000s), commodity farming exports of anything but low-volume luxuries (eg coffee) are basically over, and the associated dairy bubble will pop.
The 1% certainly do get to spend the majority of the money, mainly because they are allowed to take out the biggest debts to finance their spending. But they’re just as likely to spend on intensive dairy investments or rural holiday homes as they are on anything in the city. Your claim also ignores the huge amount of public and private money that gets sunk into the farming sector, including direct subsidies for drought-struck farmers (not saying this is a bad thing, just saying it exists) and indirect subsidies like Roads of Dubious Significance which make it cheaper to move large volumes of crop from farm to processing to ship/ plan for export. Arguably this money too is spent by the 1%, but as the bequest of farmers, not at their expense.
Great Post Kieth, it has been a bit of a depressing few months especially around the lack of any real traction on housing and medical cannabis. Good to see someone else pointing out that a clear and honest vision for the future is actual what people want, not the same old tired pandering and failed policies of the last 30 years.
You’re in fine form today Countryboy.
Good post CB smack on mate,
There is now very little between the right wing NatZ blue, and Labour/blue light, I agree.
So when I look at that kind face of Michael Joseph Savage I wince because he came from the long suffering generation that got up after the great war and the worst depression we even had, and built our future that neither NatZ or Labour/light will ever replicate again in their current form.
NZ First/Greens Combo now may actually be our only chance now, with help from Mana.
Good stuff Keith. I think afewknowth is onto it ( as he always is). Their self interest leads them to aiming to win middle NZ . This short sightedness leads them to being tweedledee and tweedledum. This, I think, is the big problem facing Labour – it just can’t bring itself to break away from being, in essence, Natlite. The Party is dependant on National destroying itself rather than being a real Labour Party. The country needs better than this – we need to dump the bread and circuses and start getting serious about the real problems facing our society. This means Labour needs to stand up for what is right instead of being expedient at every occasion and the protecting the “middle ground”. John Key ,with all the funding National has , owns the middle (like Helen did) and will beat Labour’s current strategy ( by both foul means and fair).
It is certainly true that Little comes over as exceptionally careful. But can you blame him? (YES! many would yell), but three terms of failure and ridicule under the bridge and with the most weedy of revival underway the prospect of losing it all on some (relatively) unimportant issue like medical marijuana, would at least concentrate the mind on a disciplined approach.
I don’t disagree, however, that a little courage would be a relief, but what would be even better: politicians struggling to be authentically themselves.
My impression is that Little is genuinely against legalisation of dope. I agree that non enforcement for medical marijuana is a bit of a no brainer (when was the last time someone using for that purpose was prosecuted? I bet you trainspotters know date and penalty), so a free vote might be gratefully accepted by all parties, and Andrew can find a subsequent engagement that may drag him away that day – he wouldn’t be alone. But, in my view, full legalisation would be a big mistake. As things are, rebellious youth can flout the law and give the finger to their parents and other elders by smoking a few joints at fairly minimal risk. Once they have to pay the Marlborough Man for their Rainbow Rothmans, you don’t think they would feel obliged to go and find another, doubtless more dangerous, drug of choice?
It is quite understandable that a party would not want to say house value reduction is a target of their policies. Indeed, in the most narrow of senses, it probably wouldn’t be. This should not stop Little observing that once there are enough houses, prices would inevitably meet the market, so long as the regulatory environment does not reward speculation. In other words, prices would have to come down if wages don’t go up. And this is exactly Labour policy. Maybe his care to answer questions in as precise (and wooden?) a way as possible, (honestly! sometimes he talks like the Little Mermaid danced – as if every word as it passes, feels like it cuts his tongue like a sword), has meant that it has never occurred to him to add this observation.
First rule of politics: Don’t rock the boat; someone might get wet. And if the boat gets rocked too much everyone will get wet. Try to always maintain your focus on peripheral issues and never mention anything fundamental, significant or likely to be controversial.
Second rule of politics: Don’t say anything or do anything you don’t need to; saying something or doing something could result in you becoming responsible. Always use as many words as possible, and vague or meaningless phrases to say as little as possible.
Third rule of politics: In the event of breaking rule two, when cornered, deny you said it (or did it), or pretend you cannot remember anything about it.
Fourth rule of politics: When absolutely cornered, load the blame onto someone else.
Adhering to these rules ensured a long and profitable carreer as a politician.
And it is, of course, adherence to these rules that has resulted in NZ being in its current, deplorable state.
The manner in which politicians have dealt with the importation of tobacco and the sale of the toxic (lethal) products manufactured from tobacco since the US Surgeon General’s damning report of 1969 is indicative of the quality of politicians over the past 47 years.
Other examples of the deplorable quality of politicians and politics in general include the utter failure to address greenhoiuse gas emissions, the utter failure to address the ongoing energy crisis (which will shortly demolish current economic arrangements) and the utter failure to address the dependence on industrial agriculture, and the promotion of highly-destructive and very-short-lived tourism, to name just a few.
Yes, so true, Keith, we have the same though on social security, where Labour pays only lip service and is otherwise pretty much in line with what the Nats have done in “welfare reforms”, putting pressure or expectations at least on sick and disable to “ready” themselves for work. They have done so also by putting pressure on the medical profession, using totally flawed “evidence”:
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/senior-scientist-and-legal-experts-discredit-evidence-used-by-msd-and-dr-bratt-when-claiming-the-health-benefits-of-work/
Does anybody, even within the Greens, bother looking at the challenges that have been thrown at the government, MSD and even Labour? Nope!
The mantra about the supposed “health benefits of work” seems to be the solution that is shared by most in Parliament, eventhough evidence is flawed or at best inconclusive:
‚In the expectation of recovery’, Faulkner, Centre for Welfare Reform, Scrib
https://www.scribd.com/doc/308613502/In-the-Expectation-of-Recovery
(criticism of biopsychosocial model, Aylward et al)
“Is the statement that if a person is off work for 70 days the chance of ever getting back to work is 35% justified?”
https://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/read-the-journal/all-issues/2010-2019/2015/vol-128-no-1425-20-november-2015/6729
More on all this:
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/msds-selective-and-poor-responses-to-new-oia-requests-on-benefits-advisors-reports-mental-health-and-sole-parent-employment-services/
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/msds-selective-poor-responses-to-new-oia-requests-post-nzsjb-27-11-15.pdf
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/msd-and-dr-david-bratt-present-misleading-evidence-claiming-worklessness-causes-poor-health/
https://nzsocialjusticeblog2013.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/msd-dr-bratt-present-misleading-evidence-on-worklessness-and-health-post-09-08-15.pdf
We have too many arrogant, self serving MPs in Parliament, certainly in government, who think they know everything or enough to pass the crap laws we get, but who are too up themselves to bother studying the details and analysing the stuff they are expected to deal with.
Maybe the debate due on this will bring some more informed discussion, but with a hopeless social security spokesperson for Labour, who seems to be unable to get on top of things, or even chase up her own questions, where an Associate Minister misled the House, there is little hope:
http://www.inthehouse.co.nz/video/39670
(C. Sepuloni 17 Sept. 2015, question to the Associate Minister for Social Development, Jo Goodhew)
The question challenging the Minister on the unconvincing outcomes for ‘mental health employment services’ was NEVER answered. And the answer that some report was going to be made available by the end of the year, was not honoured, as there NEVER was any evaluation report published.
How damned useless do we have these persons in Parliament need to get, I ask? When we have such useless MPs sit there, not doing their jobs, then we may as well pack our bags and emigrate to somewhere else and render this nation lost.
In the meantime the pressure on those on benefits is continually increased, and no sickness or condition seems serious enough to exempt people from work obligations:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/286914/jobseeker-benefit-for-cancer-patients-'ludicrous‘
This link was meant to go with that earlier comment:
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-proposed-laws/document/00DBHOH_BILL68669_1/social-security-legislation-rewrite-bill
The Social Security Legislation Rewrite Bill gets no mention in the MSM, is not discussed in public and seems to be going through, like other law changes, largely unnoticed.
It is a disgrace what goes on, and few out there will know that significant new changes are proposed in that Bill, which is not really just a “rewrite” of legislation.
I suggest people read it and study also the submissions:
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/bills-and-laws/bills-proposed-laws/document/00DBHOH_BILL68669_1/tab/submissionsandadvice
I fear we are just seeing the beginning of fascism in NZ, they are heading that way in Germany, once again, see this protest and counter protest in Hamburg, Germany not long ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9vmYgHH1Q0
Fear the future and prepare to FIGHT.
Another taste of Hamburg revolutionary fervour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3-NbrhUD8
100% Mike.
Key is coming to HB/Gisborne soon maybe the people will again throw eggs??
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11242854
Protesters egged Prime Minister John Key’s ministerial BMW as it collected him from a state housing development in Napier this afternoon.
Mr Key was unhurt in the incident but one man was later arrested for obstruction.
The incident happened about midday in Maraenui as Mr Key concluded a visit to a new state housing development.
Earlier, about 10 protesters, some clutching Mana Party banners, greeted the prime minister and challenged him about child poverty and enabling synthetic cannabis to be sold.
They shouted: “One, two, three, four, stop the war on the poor,” and “Maraenui under attack, stand up, fight back”.
As Mr Key went to leave the development a group of children converged around the prime minister and resumed the chanting. His ministerial BMW then appeared, which was egged as it whisked him away.
As police tried to move the group, one man was arrested for obstruction.
Earlier, Mr Key answered media questions about Shane Jones announcing he was quitting the Labour Party to take up a position created by the National-led Government.
Mr Key said he wasn’t personally involved in the discussions and could not recall when he found out Mr Jones had been offered the role.
He added that Mr Jones had seen an opportunity, and had been an “effective” Labour MP.
He also said Mr Jones was perfect for the job.
Priceless Cleangreen. Dirty politics again, with grubby PM’s fingerprints all over it.
And what was his response?
“I can’t remember”, “I can’t recall”, “the detail escapes me for the moment”, “nothing to see here move on!”
Priceless Cleangreen.
I turned channel the other night and found myself donkey deep in The Real Housewives of Auckland.
I am still shaking my head. Is this the level New Zealand has sunk to, from that the once pristine-watered, egalitarian paradise we once knew?
While Auckland people live in cars and mouldy, cold garages, these parasitic vapid numbskulls inhabit Auckland, like cruel, Joan-Rivers-Skinned pastiches of Louis XIV’s court. The birthday cake at the end of episode 1, could have fed a family of poor people for a week.
The neoliberal dream has been realised. Unabashed soul-less wealth rules the airwaves, on Julie Christie’s Reality [sic.] channel. When does the trickle-down happen?
Where are Sir Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble, John Banks, Don Brash, Jamie Whyte and David Seymour to tell us when the trickle-down wealth stream will commence?
I’m waiting, with baited breath.
I’m sure the others in your list don’t frequent this site, but I am prepared to write and tell you Winnie. The job is still only half done.
There are still unproductive state assets that need to be sold to private enterprise in order to maximise the benefits to New Zealand.
Health and education need to be privatised to fully realise earning power and prevent excess and waste of taxpayer money.
Superannuation needs to end and people rely on Kiwisaver, whether Winston Peters, or the PM want to keep sticking their heads in the sand and hoping that it will go away.
20% GST, 20% Business tax and 20% Personal tax and then the money will start flowing into the country and paying off the debt caused by the Labour Party.
Riches are starting to trickle down Winnie, but we’re not quite there yet. Once the T
Glad to see ‘David See-more’ (we call ‘David sell-more’) spouting his pre election promises to sell us all out, AS HE HAS ALMOST DONE NOW, but he wont get his chance as his ACT will never be returned to Government after this kind of mindless tripe.
This “mindless tripe” you are claiming is the most popular of all macro-economic structures in the world today.
Every country has started divesting itself of costly public communistic organisations and services, owned by governments, local councils and states – state houses, state water supply, state power, state health, state education – the list goes on.
None of these organisations operate as well as private enterprise can run them. Private owners share the profits with the government (as we saw this week with the record profits of Air New Zealand). The country gets dividends and taxes and that money gets invested – or as socialist Winnie calls it – ‘trickles down’ to the whole community.
Personally, I wouldn’t call it trickle-down, more of a torrent-down, once the costly state liabilities of health, education, superannuation are diverted into their right place. Fairer taxes for all with 20% GST, 20% Business tax and 20% Personal tax will start wealth torrenting down to those that have struggled because ACT’s policies in the 80’s weren’t implemented to the letter.
Torrent-down (I made the perfect neologism), yes torrent-down riches will soon be here for everyone when 2017 party votes for ACT, make ACT the deal-makers in coalition and National can then dispense with Winston Pesky Peters.
You are preaching “trickle down”, but what we have witnessed is more like peeing in the wind, while a strong wind blows it anywhere else than where it is supposed to go.
Charter schools are coming out of fashion in the US and elsewhere, but as NZ is again a few years behind, our government has not got it yet, and also tries to please that little ACT MP for Epsom, who thinks he is so smart, the tail can wag the dog.
Thankfully all this nonsense will soon have an end. And then we will find David See More will become David Never Seen Again, I suppose.
“The job is still only half done.”
Indeed, the job is half done, because we have in our majority sadly still put up with this neoliberal madness and allowed you lot to continue riding the horse of the death battle for our society, trampling the people in its path into psychological and physical injury and even death (suicide, crime, and so forth).
The job will be finished once we have rid society from the propaganda and the persons behind it, which you are spreading here, David See No More.
The job will be finished when you lot have no chance of ever getting back into power to commit more social crimes, like the pissing uphill and the wealth shift from the poor and middle class to the better off at the top.
David ‘Sell more’ is just selling his paymaster’s crap so don’t take this phoney “trickle drown seriously” we are all drowning in it now! and we ain’t seen the money yet chump!!!
Winnie, simple, don’t watch TV, other than maybe the news, but that through an informed prism. Any programme with a name like the one you mention is clearly not worth the minuscule effort of touching the on button on your remote (but one can still rail against such vacuousness emanating from the soi-disant National Broadcaster).
Btw, you have fallen into a fairly common error with your “baited breath”. There is only one recorded correct use of this term in the published literature, this poem Cruel Clever Cat by Geoffrey Taylor:
Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
I refer you to W Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, for the correct, original spelling.
But back to Keith Locke. These 3 areas that he comments on are all worthy of attention, even if they are, as an earlier poster commented “(relatively) unimportant issues”. The third question (house prices) could respond to a restriction of immigration, as P Goff and W Peters both propose; and other levers at the disposal of Parliament. That UMR poll is encouraging, don’t you think?
@David See-More The abject failure of neoliberalism is evidenced world-wide, where yawning gaps have opened between the haves and have-nots.
An insane world where some individuals have multiple super-yachts, meanwhile somewhere else children are bombed or dying of starvation. The only trickle down has been the blood on the faces and bodies of innocent people.
And to get back to Keith’s article, all this is enabled by cowardly politicians, preying on fear and greed to maintain power. Except in the minds of these psychopaths they have done no wrong. Thus they can stare down a TV camera and lie, without a flicker of guilt. And tell us “the job’s half done”.
It is more like an endless “piss up” by the rich than a “trickle down” that we ever got. Here is where they love to put their luxury yachts and accommodate themselves, while the other side of the city lives with third world diseases:
http://viaduct.co.nz/marina/
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