Rather than tell us why after 9 years they have failed the homeless, the first home buyers, the mentally ill, the hungry kids, the workers on flat wages, the women on gender biased wages, our waterways choked with cow filth, the children in underfunded and overcrowded classrooms and a health system strangled by debt – rather than tell us why after 9 years they’ve failed each of those segments of our society, National have spent this entire campaign lying about Labour.
I am sick of it! It is disgraceful and desperate behaviour that undermines the trusted positions they hold.
There is no $11.7billion dollar hole in our budget! It is a total lie!
Not one New Zealander will pay more in income tax than they are paying now if Labour win! Another complete fabrication by National!
And as for Paula Bennett’s claim that the only reason inequality is so high is because of the Christchurch earthquake and not deeply flawed social policy – well, anything that comes out of Paula’s mouth is questionable at the best of times, but trying to blame inequality on a natural disaster is a delusional dangerous falsehood.
And I was rapt that Phil Twyford gave it to her and the National Party this morning on the AM Show and said it how it was, which was National are without doubt, just a bunch of liars.
The thing that gets me though is that National know they are lying, and then they are supported by a right-wing media.
Take the latest Colmar Brunton Poll – added together, Labour + Greens + NZ First will be the new Government, but is that the story the right-wing media are telling you? They are saying that Jacinda’s ‘fairy dust’ has failed her, that the momentum has stopped and that anyone wanting real change this election should just go home, head bent with their tail between their legs for daring to hope.
I call that out and denounce it!
This will be a once in a generation victory if you and your friends and whanau vote.
Never before has Labour come from 23% to be neck and neck with National. Jacinda has touched people and made them feel like they can believe again and that is a force that cannot and will not be told by rich right-wing broadcasters to go home and be quiet.
Now is the time to show National that lies, deception and deceit will not be rewarded by the people of this country! Let National learn that vision, hope and compassion will always beat cynicism, corruption and venal self-interest.
I will never stop fighting for the people – Māori, Pasifika, women and working class; and I call on each and every decent New Zealander to rush to the voting booths now and bring in a new empathy and a new direction.
Vote as if your life depended upon it – because for many of our children, sick, elderly, brown and poor, it really does.
Kia kaha!
Yes! yes! yes!; – we are voting National to the dust bin of history tomorrow.
Yeh Yeh Yeh!!!!!
Stirring words Willie .
I’m glad to hear you call it as I see it and have been telling all & sundry.
The election is Gnats vs rest ,in reality.
It’s been obvious to me since before the blitzkrieg on Metiria and the Jacinda Coup that the Gnats were gone and what was at stake was the makeup , overall direction and common planks of a 3 way coalition . Labour/Green /NZF .
There’s been far too much dog whistling and outright lies in the campaign but I’m confident that the work you will need to do when the ballot is counted will be done pragmatically and with the goal of reversing the divisions , real and perceived, in our fair land.
Kia kaha
C’mon all you Kiwis !!!… come on over to the winning side and vote National out !!!
HEAR HEAR WILLIE!!!!!
Yes Willie you have the situation well described.
Jacinda has lit the flame of hope.
Thank you those who voted early.
Today, if you are not enrolled you can both enroll and vote for hope.
Tomorrow it is vote only, and the result.
If youth turn out in numbers Labour Greens could win. Let’s do this.
Do it for friends and family for the many not the few, and for New Zealand, land mountains rivers and seas.
We are supposed to be falling for the anodyne, salt of the earth, good honest hardworking bloke from Speights country narrative.
But we’re not.
Labour has a great group of Maori electorate candidates and
Willie Jackson !
I am hoping that you get the chances you deserve to lead change.
Voted last night labour 2 ticks
Voted 2 ticks Labour on Monday 11th when early voting started. Regardless of the result Jacinda has been outstanding in my opinion.
Totally agree Willie – I have noted some curious events in the last week that made me feel change was in the wind. Only small things but they seemed poignant. One was a father taking a pic of his teenage daughter beside a hoarding of Jacinda. Two – I was in a stream of traffic around 5pm crawling up the Pakuranga Hill. There were 10-15 Nat supporters waving they’re mini hoardings back and forth at the slow traffic. In previous elections I’ve seen lots of happy pro-National honking of horns – but this year not one horn (I delighted in lowering my car window and giving them the thumbs down – they didn’t look boiyant as in previous years. Three – and today in prosperous Howick main street the local Nat Mp and his assistant were wandering through the shopping centre with their blue rosettes prominently displayed – yet no one was engaging with them as I have seen in the past. They looked nervous and unsure of themselves. Maybe I’m just imagining these things – maybe it’s wishful hope – but something feels different out there this time. Fingers crossed – I physically gag at the thought of three more years of these vengeful haters and corrupters.
I hope you’re right Willie. However, I fear Labour have missed a big trick this election. I know Labour wanted to run a relentlessly positive campaign and not stoop to the Nats level (which I genuinely admire), but I wonder if it was a mistake not fight back harder against their lies. One small quaver over tax policy, Crosby and Textor found a target to (falsely) attack and here we are.
Another area that National should have been vulnerable on that Labour has failed to exploit is the Nat’s proposed Public Private Partnerships for hospitals and schools (charter schools on steroids essentially).
These form a major plank of the Nat’s fourth term government plans, although they’ve kept very quiet about them. Labour should have called them out on this. In the UK, and indeed all the other countries where PPP’s have been tried, they’ve been a disaster (see Serco for an NZ example).
The private contractors who own these places run up massive cost overruns and the tab gets picked up by the taxpayer. They are a very effective way of turning public funds into private profit. These companies also donate generously to the government/political party that gives them the contract to run our public services.
For the UK this has meant the Tory Party gives contracts to private companies to run schools and hospitals and those companies in turn donate back to the Conservatives, so taxpayers’ money ends up funding Tory Party political donations. Anyone who doesn’t believe the same thing will happen here is either wilfully bind or a fool.
The wheel of fortune or the downward spiral ?
10 points on what I liked and was proud of in New Zealand
1/ it was a free country and individual private enterprise was a normal dream.
2/ It’s politicians listened to the voice of the people – the anti-nuclear stance is an example of this.
3/ The underdog was looked after well, first in the world to have old age pensions, first in the world to give women a vote.
4/ It was egalitarian in nature and proud to be so. Our ancestors came here to build a better place for those that followed. They left class systems, pollution, over population, regulation and general lack of opportunity behind.
5/ It nurtured the young well: free education, schemes to get young men onto first farms, child benefit scheme
6/ it gave the population an equal opportunity to stay healthy and well. Free health care.
7/ It took care to select immigrants who would integrate well.
8/ Government Departments listened, gave benefit of doubt and were staffed by people who understood the bigger picture.
9/ The country was family friendly: one man’s wage could feed and support his family, state housing, no trading on Saturdays and Sundays. Jobs abound.
10/ Pretty much all basic infrastructure was in place: roading , rail, telephones, power, by the time I was born in 1948.
All the above was achieved in less than 130 years with a population of less than 1.5 million .
My family among them right from the start.
What has happened in the last 40 years?
1/ My grandchildren ( 6th generation NZers ) are going to start with a debt over their heads if they go to university as the rest of us did.
2/ My daughter in law has been waiting 8 months for an essential operation.
3/ My son has been denied ACC from a serious work incurred accident.
4/ Senior Services prefer to pretend I am not a resident New Zealander because I have gone blue water sailing sometimes in my after 65 years.
5/ Our farms are going to overseas investors rather than ensuring our own young farmers are settled.
6/ Our houses are going to off shore investors.
7/ My children are both married and are parents– both sets of parents are working – both parents need to work – to hold their way against the tide. (Remember one parent is working while ill waiting for that operation.) Their family life together is seriously compromised.
8/ The nurturing of private enterprise has now been overlooked in favour of big business pandering; The secret negotiating of the TPPA. (If the international pushers succeed, this is a very dangerous contract, New Zealanders will be stripped of their right to rule their own country that has only been 170 years in the making! ) New ideas and innovations are stymied before they can get off the ground.
9/ The voice of the people is not being listened to eg: the sneaky manoeuvres to facilitate the release of GE pine trees in NZ, the calls to halt most immigration now, the calls to stop foreign purchase of NZ land. And again, the secret negotiating of the TPPA.
10/ Democratic parliamentary procedure in parliament is being contemptuously skirted. Sending our troops to Syria without a vote in parliament. Short cutting by passing a bill under urgency and backdating legislation to “legalise” situations that were not legal.
11/ Immigration is creating huge social problems going forward. There is no such thing as a great big melting pot. It does not work in America (I have been there and clearly seen that) Why would it work here? Sir George Bernard Shaw wrote something about having our minds so wide open our brains fall out. That’s where we are with immigration.
Because of this “open minded “policy, corruption levels are already on the rise. Our sensitive state services positions should be in the hands of New Zealand born people…
It seems that our representatives in parliament are not representing our NZ wishes. It seems they are allowing big business, global companies and the big countries -China and USA – determine what is good for…. No, not us, the money makers, usury, the 1 % at the top of the money tree. Money does not trickle down, it races up. What is good for us (my family), is self-employment, a secure family life, uncompromised food on the table, a roof over our heads in our own warm house, and some time on our hands to be creative and talk to our friends.
The Power of Freedom
(from the epigram by Parmenco in the Greek Anthology)
The homely cloak is good enough for me,
Fed by the Muses, from your proud fools free,
I shun the banquets rich, and will not live
A slave – for all that luxury can give.
I am contented, for I keenly feel
The blessed pleasure of a frugal meal.
12/ Legitimate issues are not being resolved properly within government departments. In my immediate family alone, student loan issues, ACC issues, senior citizen issues. All not resolved. The institutional knowledge within the governmental departments seems too fragmented so that staff are not competent or confident to act. The buck stops nowhere and to quote another’s comment
“We feel badly dealt to without the wherewithal and assistance needed to continually fight back against the weight of the State that continues to be ready to crush any individual without regard to justice.”
These are just notes to convey how one extended family is feeling about what is going askew in New Zealand.
But tell me, when my grandchildren are my age in 40 years time will the Wheel of Fortune have turned; will they and their grandchildren be enjoying the quality of life we had in New Zealand 40 years ago or will they be entrapped in an environs akin to that in The Hunger Games?
Excellent post.
Neo liberalism, the curse of New Zealand.
New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html
Labour shoots an own goal. (again)
Bill English will bow to Winston Peters bottom line demand on a divisive referendum to abolish the Maori seats. And instead of making common ground with the Maori (and Mana Party) to counter Peters, opportunist Trump like race baiting, Labour has empowered NZF to prop up another National governmeTnt.
The Labour Party’s blind determination to keep a death grip on the Maori seats, just as last time, will leave Labour short of the support votes it needs to govern to again deliver up a National led government. This time propped up by New Zealand First, which has been opportunistically milking the anti-Maori sentiment whipped up by Don Brash’s Hobson Pledge movement.
God help us all
My wife and I made two ticks for the Labour MP for Napier Stuart Nash today Willie.
The voting booth was stacked full with a line half watn to the road with what my wife believes were mostly no National voters.
‘Womens intuition’ is a powerful thing here and I believe her dhe is never wrong.
A vote for New Zealand First is a vote for a National led government.
Over several key issues, Winston Peters has made it clear that he will not be part of any Labour/Green coalition government.
Peters has made it even clearer. Winston Peters will support a National led coalition, even if National get less votes than Labour.
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