For the last couple of elections I have been focused on trying to create political vehicles for the Left that can use the coat tailing provisions of MMP to help Labour + Greens = 51%.
The problem as I have always seen it is that a truly progressive Government can’t rely on NZ First because they are about as socially progressive as Russia. To that end I helped set up MANA, the Internet Party and the MANA/Internet Party.
The rotten fruit of that harvest has been well explored.
So what are we to do in 2017 if we want a change of Government?
The simple reality is that getting to 51% right now will require Labour + NZ First + Greens. This means that getting a Labour led Government into power is just the beginning of our fight.
Labour are being purposely shallow and ill-defined in their policy so as to not give National any ammunition. As activists we are all being asked by Labour to hold our tongues for the sake of unity and trust them once they get into power.
I know lots of Labour MPs personally, and they are all great human beings with real passion for social justice, and I am prepared to give most of them that trust, but the reality is that NZ First will have a significant say in any Labour led Government, so that trust only goes as far as the day after the election.
Once a Labour led Government is in power, it is every activists obligation and responsibility to remain engaged and start immediate lobbying of Labour for the progressive change we demand.
Take Phil Twyford.
I like Phil, he’s a bloody good bloke and he gives a damn about the housing crisis in this country, but his policy of building 1000 State Houses per year until we house the homeless is a joke, and I’ve told him that to his face on TV. While 1000 State Houses per year won’t do anything real to solve our homelessness problems, I know that as Minister for Housing Phil’s door will always be open and it is that open door we need to focus on if we want to push for substantial policy like 3000 state houses a year.
Post the election, The Daily Blog will hold a god damned blowtorch to the Labour Party to ensure they change the country and not merely manage it.
If you think change will come to NZ just by voting in September, you are grossly underprepared for the truth because the reality is that our fight only begins when they get in.
[…] be voted out in September. But that is only half the job. Once a Labour led Government is in power, it is up to all socially progressive activists to continue to lobby and push the new Labour led Gove…. Simply getting a Labour led Government into power is not the end of our activism, it’s only […]
A wee few extracts from this website and some good historical catch up material :
New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html
The Business Roundtable
”In the fourth Labour Government, real power lay in the hands of Douglas and his two closest associates in the cabinet, Richard Prebble and David Caygill. Prime Minister David Lange was just a figurehead, as New Zealand News financial columnist Warick Berryman told a journalist from the Executive Intelligence Review at the time, “As far as the business community goes, Lange is basically irrelevant. Roger Douglas is running the place. Make no mistake about that. He is doing anything in this country that has any real meaning… Lange’s more of a sideshow. He keeps the rabble amused, while Douglas, Prebble and Caygill get on with actually running the place.”
To help implement Douglas’ programme, the Labour government called an “economic summit” in 1985, chaired by Sir Ron Trotter, chairman of the Fletcher Challenge corporation. By early the following year, Trotter revamped an existing business group which he chaired, known as the Business Roundtable, to become a high-power lobby for “free market” reforms. And high power it was: firms associated with the Roundtable had a total capitalisation of $15.4 billion, representing 64% of the value of the New Zealand share market! Directors of the Roundtable companies sat on the boards of over 100 other New Zealand corporations.
As the New Zealand Herald of 12 Nov. 1986 observed, about the Roundtables clout: “Among them, these men help control 76% of the country’s newspaper circulation, the bulk of the private radio stations, the biggest bank, the biggest exporters of meat and horticultural produce, the biggest rural servicing conglomerate, the three biggest forestry companies, the two biggest supermarket chains, both brewery companies, and a sizeable chunk of the rest of the manufacturing, finance and other sectors.” Very shortly, Roundtable members involved in manufacturing quit in disgust, and the group became a puppet of the finance sector.”
………………………………………………………
Yet here’s the interesting bit about the Bolger govt and what they were up to ,….
Mont Pelerin on the Left…. Mont Pelerin on the Right
” By 1990, when a population disgusted with being the guinea pigs for the most radical free market experiment in the Western world, clearly intended to kick the Labour Party out of office, the Mont Pelerinites moved to secure their “revolution.” According to economist David Steele, writing in the March/April 1990 edition of the PSA Journal, shortly before the election, a three man delegation from the Business Roundtable, two of whom were Mont Pelerin members Gibbs and Kerr, met with National Party leader, and soon to be Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, to “request” that Ruth Richardson, a Mont Pelerin asset, be made Finance Minister in his new government. She was, and Mont Pelerins revolution escalated’, as Richardson and the Nationals – again, under cover of a “crisis”suddenly discovered by the treasury – rammed through the Mont Pelerin Society programme of “labour market reforms,” which even Roger Douglas had not been able to do. Such “reforms”effectively end trade unionism as it had been known in New Zealand for decades. Indeed, the infamous Employment Contract Act did not even mention the word “trade union”once.
Mont Pelerin Society member Gibbs, the close friend and early tutor of Roger Douglas in economics, cashed in handsomely on “Rogernomics”; over the years of the “reform” he and the Mont Pelerin Society had imposed on New Zealand, Gibbs’ personal wealth had soared from $46 million in 1986 to $200 million by 1998, making him the 4th richest person in New Zealand at the time. ”….
YUP…but I will be voting NZF
NZF is to the Left of the Labour Party and has been since Roger rogered Labour
Yeah, nah…
A vote for NZ First is effectively a vote for the National Party.
It’s a way of being conservative without appearing to be conservative.
The only party NZ First is to the left of is Genghis Khan’s Empire Party.
Always has been and always will be.
Rubbish; NZ First was opposed to the Free Slave Agreement with the “left-wing” *falls off chair laughing* Chinese dictatorship. Rogernomics? That was Labour, too.
Im maori
An’ I’m drunk!
an I wanna get drunk
Why dont we get back on track?
your traditional left right economic arguments wont work any more or atleast they haven’t work at for a sizable chunk of New Zealand.
So we’ve got boomer generation voting for neoliberal policy because they got in first and benifit. Melenials are saying nah cuz last to this ponzi
watch this for a good discussion pertaining to “traditional left right economic arguments” and why they don’t work anymore …with predominant ideologies of neolib globalisation(put about by the elitist wealthiest oligarchy) ..the left has been corrupted by this ideology
‘Bullhorns: The French way’
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/385890-brexit-trump-french-vote/
“We are told we live in an era of great change – a time to question the status quo and political elites. Brexit and Trump are testaments to this. As the French vote for president, will they continue this trend?
CrossTalking with Dmitry Babich, Mark Sleboda, and Xavier Moreau.”
Yes CASTRO,
NZ First is left of the other major parties including greens.
Winston is what we badly need now to level the right wing parliament system.
“Lest we forget”;- what Rogernomics did to our country then.
We see that the national regime has just continued the move to “Privatise” NZ fully, so we will be clearly “Tenants in our own land”
Who said they would resign if that happened????
Oh John Key but he has resigned already so he knew we would become tenants in our own land and left just in time.
Likewise. National and Labour have sold New Zealand down the river.
Glad you mentioned Phil Twyford , he is a bloody good bloke.
And I do believe it is Labours turn.
National has had its innings and failed, barring some speculators and certain among the New Zealand Initiatives elite,…
And its true that when Labour get in , they need to be held to account,… there is much neo liberal damage to be undone and rectified. And for that we need to see a purge of all things neo liberal. And that wont happen without a struggle.
I predict a Labour led govt after this September general election .
English has inherited a lemon after the con man John Key. Yet English himself was the architect and the driving force behind the viciousness all along.
Do not be taken in by English.
At all.
He is vicious .
I would like to see the Greens in as well , along with NZ First. And I believe it will be so. We then get the environmental , immigration and wages and conditions attended to. Perfect , but by no means the complete picture.
There is much work to be done after that.
The trouble with our political situation, and the dim prospect for real change is based on the complex, tightly knit economic realities virtually ALL of us are tied in, whether dependent on income from employment, or whether dependent on handouts from government, which again gets its income from individuals earning incomes, and of course businesses earning revenue and profits.
We have systems in place that enslave us, make us mere little, tiny wheels in the machinery of our society, as individual wage slaves, as salary earners, as small, medium and larger business operators even.
We pay taxes, we pay rent, leases, rates, user pays and so forth.
Any tiny change has consequences, may impact both negatively or positively, more or less, on the rest of the system.
As a country we are tied into trade agreements, finance system agreements, strategic agreements, labour-, environmental-, and business agreements, some operated by the UN, the IMF, World Bank and so on.
We have traditional ties with a superpower called USA, we have “friendly” relationships with mostly neoliberal, capitalist and similarly organised countries in the world, most ‘western’.
We export and import, we trade, we sell, we work and bla, bla, bla.
People have bought into Kiwi Saver, into education and graduation systems, pay insurance for risks, put money in banks, pay taxes and expect services and security in return.
Also do people act as consumers, buy stuff, that keeps others employed and keeps incomes and taxes flowing.
Some earn well, others earn little or nothing, and that determines your “power” of sorts, what you can do, and not do.
In short, we have a largely business focused world, a world where people are resigned to the idea that you “fend” for yourself by working or buying and selling stuff, and not being able to do so means DISASTER or DEATH.
Hence people do all to seek security, that is in incomes, in housing, in this that and the other, so they are tied, they are dependent, they avoid risk like the plagues, and CHANGE is RISK.
The government we have knows this, sends us reminders all the time, same as the employers, the banks, the whole business sector. The state has lost a lot of power over decades, is dependent on big and not so big business, and they known it, so they put on the thumb screws when a government tries to get too bold and make courageous changes, whether needed or not.
There are now Labour and Greens, feeling the thumb screws already, before they are in power, the voter notices this, and learns, shit, the businesses are in control, the banks are in control, they hold it all “together”, so we cannot vote to create risk, either we vote cautiously and keep the peace, or we better not vote at all, and forget any dream about a more powerful state offering a real alternative for change.
Add the consumerist addiction or dependence of less fortunate on simply having a roof over a head, a job income or benefit from the state, and the ones dependent see, I cannot risk losing the bit I have, I will do all to not rock the boat, work with my landlord, with government, my part time employer and so forth.
People are also handing over their personal profile data as metadata and more to internet service providers, and increasingly business and government, as the systems of communication and for doing business increasingly depend on the internet.
We are all increasingly becoming ever more enslaved and dependent on ever more complex, highly vulnerable large systems, that take away the tiny bit of “freedom” that we may still have. We are about to become the least free human beings that ever existed, as at least the former humans had the freedom to keep some privacy and live on their own land and grow or hunt their own food, without government or others interfering.
Prepare for it to get worse, revolution of the old kind, activism even, is going to become a redundant activity, as what we have left, for instance in the form of Action Station, is already at times almost a ridiculously margnalised exercise, it does not reach all that many anyway.
That is how I see the shit we are in, so try and influence a Labour or Green Party when in government, if in government, when they are so dependent and enslaved like all of us, by big and not so big business, the finance sector and the tech giants.
Succinctly put as usual Mike and right on the mark.
Well said.
“So what are we to do in 2017 if we want a change of Government?”
First of all: VOTE NATS AND SERVILE SUPPORT PARTIES OUT!
Second: Prepare already for the election in 2020 (or earlier) and form a new MOVEMENT, a left of centre, inclusive movement, that would initially act from outside of Parliament, and attract environmentally concerned, socially concerned, alternatively thinking, anti neoliberal, yet economically focused people from all walks of life, and try and attract some smart brains, innovators and highly motivated, inspiring progressive people, young and old, to lead a new movement with high motivation and sufficient appeal and charisma.
Third: Form a new party that is based on this movement, to run in the next election in 2020, challenging ALL existing parties, offering dissenters and disillusioned within Greens, Labour and so forth, to join.
In the meantime, heavily lobby Labour and Greens to push them where they must go, to SERIOUSLY address climate change, to bring in a UBI of sorts, to bring in carbon and land or wealth taxes, to return us to a progressive taxation system, to recreate social justice and a more inclusive, collectively thinking society.
We also must push them (Labour, Greens) to set New Zealand onto a more independent course from the superpowers, and certainly opt out of the Five Eyes arrangement. New Zealand must become a country committed to peace, conciliation and to using alternative means to address conflict and crisis that is causing so much trouble all over the world.
Sounds like you talkn about the TOP party
Not really, but hey, there may be a bit of an overlap.
There’s absolutely no doubt that our entire politically corrupted system under the directive of the National Government, and guided by the dirty politics of Americanism which was brought back to New Zeland by David Farrar and John Key, needs to be removed and changed, and it can only be changed by the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, because to date, none of our politicians have been strong enough to stand up and throw National out through any of the rules, regulations, and laws of political conduct/misconduct as parliamentary representatives of the people of Aotearoa New Zealand.
A change is definitely the call, and if necessary, maybe we should take a leaf out the books of the Icelandic and Spanish people, and start jailing the politicians and bankers for their practices of conspiracy and corruption.
To me, the prospect a triangular Labour-Green-NZF government kinda helps keep the whackjob wing of each party in check.
Still keen to see where things go with TOP though.
Still , one step at a time ….
Do what you have to do to get rid of the totally incompetent National Party.
Being pragmatic and smart is important…remember , wherever you turn you are dealing with the N.Z media; the most unbalanced one eyed media in the western world.
I think N.Z First’s heart is in the right place . They have some good people too with N.Z’s core interests in mind….yes N.Z’s core interests…..not a very select few at the top end of town like the National Party, so I don’t see them as being bad bed pals at all .
Remember , you can’t do anything unless you win the election….
What we don’t want to see, as has happened in the last two elections, is The Greens coming out and publicly criticising Labour , (or N.Z First for that matter), a couple of weeks out from the election….THAT will be fatal ….goodnight nurse ….all over red rover.
Be smart …get elected…then calmly sort out any differences of opinion behind closed doors.
Anyone who leaks is instantly demoted…..discipline, discipline, discipline is what will win the election.
Labour, Greens and NZF have to work smart this 2017 Election, first of all they need to get elected. That means not shooting themselves in the foot or their potential coalition partners in the feet. If Labour + Greens get a majority, or Labour + NZF get a majority, or Labour + Greens + NZF get a majority it has to be better than the present situation under National.
All three parties have some good people so lets all work together and prove to the NZ Public this is how MMP is supposed to work ie synergy
2 + 2 = 5.
I honesty don’t think I could tolerate another three years of English, Bennett, Smith and Brownlee, surely the opposition parties have better calibre people than these ?
Here’s the thing: the right wing media commentators only say glowing things about themselves and each other. The left wing media commentators, not so much. And thank fuck for democracy that we CAN openly critique and criticise those in power who purport to represent us. However, when we do it constantly, consistently and not always constructively we only serve to weaken the movement. If I was an on-the-fence voter I would be so convinced that my vote for the right was the best thing for the stability of this country judging by everything I read in mainstream and left wing media. I’m not saying we as activists should shut up and put up or only say patsy bullshit and never challenge. I’m just saying let’s stop waging war on our own.
We have to face facts; the Labour Party is completely captive to NeoLiberalism.
The common view is that we’re damned if we vote for them, and damned if we don’t.
This is not correct however. In the US, Progressives have come to the conclusion that 3rd Parties are a FAIL, and the only alternative is to completely CLEAN OUT the existing Democratic Party, by directly challenging every incumbent Democrat for party selection in EVERY seat.
We need to do the same thing. We need to completely CLEAN OUT the Establishment of the Labour Party, and stand genuine Progressive candidates in every electorate, campaigning AGAINST the incumbent Labour candidates. Every last one.
The Establishment, and its Minions will scream that this is a recipe for disaster. But the truth is, just like in the US, when people hear the message of Bernie Sanders for jobs, education, housing and so forth, they will overwhelmingly choose it over the “Hope and Change” Tory-lite, Policy-Free offerings of the Labour Elites and their apparatchiks.
The fact is, the Labour Party is like this because we haven’t had the guts to fire the lot of them and clean house.
There needs to be a grassroots Labour Party rebellion. Now. To CLEAN OUT all of the tired incumbents and bring back real Working Class politics.
And if the Labour Party doesn’t survive the process, so be it. Because to continue on as we are is intolerable.
I hold little hope for a Labour led govt after this election. They are as dull as dishwater and invisible and playing to the middle – zero differentiation – is a ticket to lose. To have found a leader who is actually more boring than Bill English is a real achievement and about their only one of late. Peters will go with English’s Nats over Labour is my pick. He hated Key but almost certainly gets on better with English. I am what could be regarded as a core Labour/Green voter but am less inspired than I’ve ever been by both of them. I’m generally an optimist but these are fuckin’ depressing times for the left in NZ politics.
If Labour want to win the election then they have to get rid of Little. He has as much charisma as a wet blanket.
Not like Bill English – who is charisma personified!
It’s like teenagers screaming in the mosh pit whenever Bill flashes us that shy smile and tells us we are all “pretty useless”. Love that guy Bill, can’t get enough of him.
Not much difference between the Natz and Natz light ==>> Labour. Both are beholding to the United Nations and both are going forth with the World Agenda that the UN dictates and they are leading the cause.
Most keep focusing on our countries dramas rather than look at how real change can happen and how to expose the criminals behind the curtains.
The same secret criminals who control and own most govts. and most media and most banks. I know I sound like a broken record but most are just still stuck in thinking that somehow things will be different if National or Labour gets in. Nothing will change until we take back control of our country away from the bought and sold puppet politicians and they dwell on both sides of the aisle. The U.N. are not our friends and find out why.
Both parties are beholding to the U.N. and that is not a good thing.
You really think Winston would go within a mile of the Greens?
HA! HA!
Dreamin’
The Green party has sold out on some key issues. It will shock you to learn what they have compromised
and what they have been doing and not doing. I used to support them, casually, now I don’t.
Check out the editors letter contribution ( in the first few pages ) , over the past few months from either Uncensored or Nexus magazine where they spell out just how the Greens have sold out.
I agree that the political system is, for the most part, corrupt with dirty politics and over zealous priorities to cozy up the the U.S. and serve greedy criminal corporations and criminal banks. How insane that we bowed down; spread our cheeks and paid for this 5 eyes meeting, how disgraceful. They are spreading terrorism, not those who speak the truths about their invasion and demolition of countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The corporations; military industrial complex ; spy agencies etc . . . . rule the show and buy the politicians, even in the Labour camp.
Voting is also a waste of time when you realize how rigged and controlled and set up it all is.
The N.Z. PM and the U.S. president are decided on long before election day.
Think I’m nuts ? , dig deeper into the rabbit hole.
NZF will not join L/G coalition if there is so much as a sniff of ‘Left Activism’. Winston is conservative to the core. I think it is pie in the sky stuff to dream of a Lab/Green/NZF coalition.
Which is why I’m suggesting it will be a Labour/NZ First Gov with supply and confidence from the Greens
Good news is Andrew little has removed the last vestiges of the right from labour never again will the right hijack the labour party but your right the pressure must be keep on and one way to do that is join up on mass and make sure labour is a left wing movement for the people join today make a difference for the future
https://nzlabour.nationbuilder.com/join_labour_now
Changing the government will not alter anything because ALL so-called opposition parties promote business-as-usual, rapid depletion of fossil fuel reserves and environmental destruction.
Only abandoning the corrupt, fraudulent current money system and abandoning the idiotic GDP system will change anything…..and the international bankers will not allow those dysfunctional aspects of the system to be changed.
Death by a thousand cuts will continue, whoever is in government. Government -as currently configured- is the problem, not the solution.
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