Last election, Andrew Little looked at the slumping polls 3 moths out from the 2017 ballot and said, ‘I can’t lead this Party to victory’, and in the most unselfish, most progressive political move in NZ history, stood aside to allow Jacinda Ardern to become leader.
Talk about putting your privilege aside.
Jacinda exploded onto the political stage with an energy and excitement that propelled her into a position to form a Government, but we also need to acknowledge that Labour’s energy was spent on winning and with little executive oversight, with no plans to reform the neoliberal public service who stymied any direct application of services and an inexperienced front bench, Jacinda has not been able to be transformative in the way her rhetoric was.
If Jacinda wants to win a second term, she needs to articulate her vision of the first 100 days of a next Government. She now knows what is possible and what isn’t, she now sees the hopelessness of public services that are management heavy and service lite. She has the room to sideline underperforming Ministers.
With those ingredients she must now be able to construct her vision of what needs to be done and what she can promise.
The Budget Responsibility straight jacket Grant Robertson signed her Government into must be dumped for a wholesale mass investment into transformative infrastructure, a mass state housing build and real work to get peoples wages higher while giving business huge tax rebates into R&D.
Jacinda has to sell us a vision and give us the time scale of the first 100 days to create the perception of momentum.
She has to be bold, confident and authentically credible in providing hope to NZers that there can be a better way forward. She must do something that makes life directly better each week for her electorate. From a sizeable increase in welfare payments; to the first $20 000 being tax free; to GST being removed from fresh fruit and vegetables – she has to implement an idea that people can feel in their pocket each week.
If she cannot sell us her vision in the first 100 days, voters she warmed with the power of hope in 2017 will turn away cold in 2020 like frost in winter.
The humiliation of a one term Government or the roots of a political legacy that entrenched the politics of kindness into the foundations of our culture.
Those are the only two options going into election 2020 for her and Labour.
First published on Waatea News.
Hear hear.
So far (helped by NZ’s extreme right wing propaganda media) this Labour Government have seemed more like a National Lite without the extreme on-screen gloating and lies of the last TraitorKey Government.
Come on Jacinda be a Labour party and not a TraitorKey do little (to nothing) just so you can have the baubles of power.
Bring back a Labour party from the era of the 1960’6 and 70’s in the UK. Sorry I wasn’t here in NZ then, so I’ve no idea what the NZ version was like.
That era gets a bad rap (from right wing propaganda media) but they made the country more egalitarian, had lower debt and less Government department with ingrained CRUELITY (e.g. MSD/WINZ etc) than modern day UK/NZ.
Had North Sea oil arrived a couple of years earlier, the UK would have been a far better place than it is today. See Norway for what could have been done if a right wing Government hadn’t given most of it’s gains away to the rich and ruined the oil wells to get the oil out as quick as possible to stay in power.
The key suggestions in article are spot on…
–Dump the “me too”–try hard ’Fiscal Responsibility’ or Fiscal Cap, and spend up large
–Tax Free first $20 grand of income
–Massive State House build, along with non degree quick course trades training
–GST off fresh fruit and veg
–Benefit Increases and introduce the rest of the Experts Working Group recommendations
…and I would add…
–introduce Fair Pay Agreements, which would lift the wage floor for people in the provinces and small workplaces
–Introduce income splitting for all Govt Depts–WINZ, MSD, IRD, ACC etc so relationships do not negatively affect assistance people seek
–Write off WINZ/MSD debts and overpayments, and no more debts established for emergency housing or food
…and, promise during the 2nd term to…
–Make senior public servants reapply for their jobs, and not rehire too many of them!
–Look seriously at UBI type payments and the total disestablishment of WINZ/MSD
–Repeal the Neo Liberal legislative base; Reserve Bank Act, State Sector Act etc.
–Restore power generation and supply to full public ownership
–Restore the Refining NZ (Marsden Pt Consortium) to public ownership
And be prepared to seek active working class support for those types of policies
Not sure how Labour, Greens and NZ First and the wokies expect to get wages up unless they lower immigration and stop all the visa recruitment scams blooming here…. They can increase minimum wages but there is a huge black economy outside of that with it becoming normal for people to be paid less than the minimum wages through various means. Meanwhile it is undermining the other businesses who are paying higher wages for labour.
Also so many ‘self employed’ that used to be employed aka Chorus workers but now get less than the minimum wages or are on zero hour contracts. So the the whole wages debate is skewed, like thinking working one hour a week is employment.
At least they are trying to crack down on some of the scams, but maybe too little, too late and the penalties like home detention, are hardly a deterrent. As well as that, it’s the little guys being caught and prosecuted, not the fat cats who require a lot more expertise and effort.
If I were blind I’d probably have more vision than this government. What I do see if more corporate catering with the CP-TPP which Labour made a lot of noise about opposing pre election plus a lot of other measures that have not met their promises pre election.
No, if we want change we need new parties. Labour was given a chance even by non supporters like myself who urged a coalition with them out of preference to one with National only to see them behave in a very similar manner to the Nats.
Suffice to say I personally refuse to vote for more of the same. End of story.
@Sean, agree wholeheartedly with “What I do see if more corporate catering with the CP-TPP which Labour made a lot of noise about opposing pre election plus a lot of other measures that have not met their promises pre election.”
But what is the alternative?
Not voting tends to get the Natz in by default.
Labour are Nat Lite, NZ First missing in action, Greens turned bueaucratic woke, but Nat Lite is better than full Natz which has created most of the worst crisis in NZ such as mass immigration numbers, mass scams, frauds and crims coming here while encouraging more local crims with Meth everywhere, 0% tax havens to encourage tax non payers to NZ, terrible pollution, more corporate welfare to sunset industries, assets sell offs, major housing, school and health crisis from turning a blind eye to the above!
Anyone already struggling or concerned at the planet now who doesn’t vote, will be worse off with Natz in charge taking from the 99% to give to the 1%.
We’ll find out next year, won’t we…
Remove GST from fresh fruit and vegetables? That’s “bold” ? The anti working class GST, initially brought in by Labour needs chucking, now, in its entirety.
I expect when the poll numbers drop from disillusioned Labour voters not intending to vote, they will misinterpret and move more to the right. The light rail debacle pretty much does it for me. Not going with a spade ready design in order to evaluate another option which will cost six times more over its lifespan as a PPP, just to avoid going over the self imposed fiscal cap really shows the lack of intellectual capacity in this government.
Many of the issues we have now, such as the shortage of social housing stem from the time of Aunty Helen’s third way government. Announcements of state house building were met by the winter of discontent and a quick shelving of the project. This then enabled the Key government to continue the sell off when they got in. I was hoping we had got over the third way triangulation politics as Labour have in the UK. That could also show how hard it is to evict the Neolibs in the party that have been entrenched so long.
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