TWITTER WATCH: Ummmmm – about that list of achievements by Jacinda – cough

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
24
1969

It’s great that Jacinda is getting plenty of global praise on Social Media for all the ‘achievement’s of her first 2 years in power…

…and she is totally correct, she has done lots…

Ardern, sitting at her desk, spoke about how her government created 92,000 jobs, banned semi-automatic and assault rifles, built more than 2200 state houses, introduced the zero carbon bill, deployed over 1600 new police officers, and banned single-use plastic bags.

She also spoke about the 140 million trees that were planted, the free lunches in schools programme, and increased wages for police, nurses and teachers.

…b-u-t there’s also a lot of things, and I mean A LOT that still hasn’t been done.

  • 14000 NZers are waiting for emergency housing. That’s a record and 2200 State Houses aren’t anywhere near enough.
  • There are still 295 000 kids in poverty
  • We still have 40 000  homeless
  • We have 668 suicides per year
  • We have appalling domestic violence rate
  • Generations are still locked out of home ownership
  • Infrastructure gridlock continues.
  • DHB debt continues to build.
  • We have a measles outbreak that is bigger than most of the planet combined.
  • We capitulated on Capital gains and Climate emissions.
  • The Families package increased the “clawback” rate of Working for Families to 25 per cent once the $42,700 threshold is reached
  • The Best Start Payment does not apply to children born before the start date and therefore cannot address the plight of many of those under the 40% poverty line.
  • Sure we planted 140million tress but we were supposed to have planted 212 302 700 trees by now.
  • Kiwibuild. Say no more.
  • The Zero Carbon Bill doesn’t take effect for another 31 years.
  • Oranga Tamariki weaponised child uplifts that target Māori

Brothers & Sisters, while we must never allow the perfect to defeat the good, Labour were swept to power on the promise of transformational change that simply hasn’t happened. Yes, we’ve got some gains, but sweet Jesus on close scrutiny they are very, very, very thin wins.

If Labour want a second term, (and I certainly want that),  they have to be serious about that transformational change, espouse a real 100 day vision and think big for 2020.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Then Jacinda will have something to genuinely feel pride in.

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24 COMMENTS

      • No but they did at least achieve something for their core constituency.
        So did Helen Clark.
        This lot are bloody hopeless.
        I blame Clark for thinning the herd in order to consolidate her power.
        When she stepped down after her defeat, the power (and talent) vacuum left behind has been nothing short of devastating.
        At least Key didn’t intentionally thin the herd. National are left without natural leadership for entirely different reasons.

  2. I won’t vote for Labour again. Celebrity politicians have personal agendas that have nothing to do with pre-election promises.

  3. Big article in the Guardian about how everyone is chuffed here in NZ that the population is about to hit five
    million. I didn’t see that on the list. Could any of our problems have something to do with that ?

    • @Alan, say that, They did not mention the growing homelessness and poverty!

      Phil Tyford is quoted as saying he wants more people here!

      Foreign planners & neoliberals always go on about London population and how we can fit more people into NZ. I’ve lived in London, totally different, the UK put in public transport 100 years ago and it goes every 2 minutes, they have massive amounts of existing housing already to cope, high wages for the most part and an extra allowance called the ‘london’ wages, but like due to growing neoliberalism & rampant immigration into the UK their housing has run out, because like NZ they relied on foreign investment to make new housing which was profit driven and expensive and sold off their state housing. The expanded Europe made immigration easier than other EU countries while attracting questionable riches from Russia and the Middle East and Africa, so that huge amounts of money come into ‘gold bricks’ investments there, (like NZ 0% tax havens) which mean’t local people could no longer afford to live there on the wages and it was in a hyper unreal state which eventually led to massive social disagreement there, aka Brexit.

  4. Bomber they weren’t swept too power.

    Jacinda and the rest of the Blairites are in government thanks too Winston who lied when he said he would get rid of neo liberal policies.

    The last time i looked a lot of what National were presiding over hasn’t changed one bit.
    The lack of movement on fair pay agreements and much needed tax reform too name two has not happened.

    Jacinda and the coalition has moved thank god on funding for mental health and begrudgingly moved too pay teachers and nurses more but only because they were pressured by strong unions that they had too act.

    They have one more budget before she goes too the country next year and i hope they really deliver too the kiwis who have been waiting a long time for some of the trickle down too finally reach them and reward them for all of the hard work in playing their part to enrich a lot of people in this country who have forgotten the plight of their fellow countrymen and woman and took full advantage of Keys much vaunted ” brighter future ”

    Stop the cliches and lets have some real action.

    It has not been a level playing field for a hell of a long time.

    Now that would be transformational

  5. Im sorry but im calling bullshit on her achievements because they are all the truly simple things that even she couldn’t fuck up.
    Banning shit? Thats easy, you write a law and its done.
    Increased wages? Throw some money at it and its done.

    However anything requiring more than this, they have fucked up monumentally.

    Make housing affordable? Requires transformation of the housing sector so good fucking luck.
    Reducing child poverty, homelessness or family violence?
    These are problems that require more than simple money, much more.
    They require well thought out policy which this government was NEVER PREPARED to write because they were as shocked as anyone when Winnie handed them the steering wheel.

    Other than “not National” i can honestly think of no reason to vote for them and right now im sorry but that is not enough.
    I think id rather abstain.

  6. Yes, when all is said and done the big promises that motivated voters are MIA.

    Zero carbon, well only if you leave it the biggest polluters, making it more like zero different

    Housing, trying to fix this growing mess with huge negative ramifications, using the same neo liberal economic settings that made it and wonder why doing the same thing over and over isn’t working is as insane.

    Transport, massive failure in almost all areas but some small gains in rail but only because of NZ First.

    Talked a storm, delivered a whimper and seem mired in indecision.

    Some of those things on your list are probably beyond most people but you are right, Labour have to get their act together, like now. Tick tock tick tock, time is running out.

  7. You can abstain jays but don’t moan if you don’t like what you get. Nothing can be worst than our brighter future bullshit government whose policies create more inequalities and now they have jhonkey the 2nd (luxon) who has come out with his brown tongue and praised national like they are some sort of gods

    • the thing is though as I see it if she doesnt get stuck in and do what she said she was going to do the only magic she will have done will be the black magic of empowering the gang of clowns back into government . They has still a year to go I would suggest Jacinder and winston raising the bar and getting cracking .promises are cheap and dreams are free but a smile is only going to take you so far .

      all of this is our times nuclear moment and the bombs are falling ..

  8. I’m not buying this after the CP-TPP debacle and more let downs besides. Nor am I interested in one person but the party and its polices and in my mind they “suck”. Simple as that. No vote for you Labour, NZF, or Greens. Oh and National don’t think this is a slap on the back for you either. Its not.

  9. Love (sarcasm) the self censorship when nobody mentions NZ’s record immigration and what that is doing to the existing population, housing, super, health, education, infrastructure, wages, Maori.

    One reason there is record low turnout for voters in NZ is that ordinary people are not allowed to be concerned about a full range of government policies – a friend got a survey from the Greens for the election priorities.

    Sadly there was little choice on the topics to be concerned about, or even an ‘other’ choice… no wonder Greens are completely out of touch and haemorrhaging voters (the majority of voters are not even represented in their priorities to ‘understand’ them) –

    The only allowable topics were as below.. (then only allowed 1 and 5 choices allowed), no other, did a woke slash volunteer bad marketer design this???

    Greens seem pretty doomed if their highly suggestive, priorities of their only voters being female renters tackling a woke form of racism and stopping plastic waste going into nature (not actually stopping plastic itself aka green lighting plastic water bottles to Chinese water bottlers in NZ.

    FYI spending more on education is not the same as improving the quality of education, likewise health, – health spending in going down per person, because of mass immigration. But nobody is allowed to mention it. How can we earn enough taxes from petrol attendant who on fake wages to exploiters and the kids and grandma who have zero income coming here! The local can’t live on the wages! Benefits are now a better form of income security, but surely more beneficiaries and less well paid fulfilling jobs and roles can’t be the hope of the future, surely?

    The ‘allowable’ topics

    Reducing carbon change
    improving housing quality and affordability for renters
    protecting environment
    increasing government spending on health, education etc
    reducing gap between rich and poor
    protecting waterways
    making tax fairer
    tackling racism and supporting the aspirations of Maori
    ensuring more dignity for beneficiaries
    removing barriers for women
    improving healthcare
    improving education
    growing the economy
    stopping plastic waste going into nature
    reducing domestic violence

    Ok just from a demographic point of view, only renters seem to be represented there, so 70% of homeowners (many of whom are aged, in poverty or paying off a mortgage) and the homeless are missing as even being able to have a voice on the greens list.

    Nothing about solving big problems, human rights, free trade, TPPA, buy local etc.. all ditched it seems.

    Nothing about people on wages or self employed or not working and not beneficiaries…

    Nothing about sustainable immigration. Nobody is allowed to disagree or mention the issue, within the Greens apparently!

    You can remove barriers for women but is that really the same as equal rights???? Men don’t get a mention with their historic suicide rate and mental illness.

    Maori get support for ‘aspirations’ and shared with tackeling racism…

    Maori don’t even get their own category to themselves..both seem pretty big topics to my mind worthy of a separate category.

    Then there is the pitfall of what someone thinks of as racism can be racist in itself….. aka the Greens seem to be the most prominent party to slag off ‘whites’ for the most part… they might need to look further as to know that racism is about discrimination about race, not pro one race or the other!

    Heads up, colour “aka white” is also not necessary a representation of ethnicity anymore and any talk on colour used to be considered discrimination black or white. More and more people are mixed races and any colour represents a massive diversity of ethnicities and views within that ethnicity so it is also not even factual on race, just generally a derogative racial slur in the way it’s bandied about.

    Greens might also might find that many Maori are concerned with the immigration levels.

    Non “white” ethnicities also don’t necessarily agree on policy and surprise surprise, can be even more discriminatory against each other or have more hate, (pro Beijing Chinese vs pro Hong Kong Chinese) and surprise surprise it’s often the locals who get shafted by government pro immigration policies from Tibet to Palestine!

    Labour need to look at what happened in the US when the Democrats did not listen, so busy telling voters to vote for the first women who was all for free trade and wars and how great globalism was for helping the third world become middle class slaves in factories working for the west!

    Shane Jones, and Kevin Davis have been accused of racism and telling people to go home if they don’t like it, but are Maori, oh no!!!

    Anyway if Labour and Greens want to get to know what voters care about – they might like to NOT have a tick box for their easy, lazy, one dimensional approaches to knowing voters. If they want to know what voters think, keep surveys both neutral and open and at least have an “other” in there!

    Also shameless gathering of people’s private information on these surveys is a no, no. Everybody knows that political lists are the first places that are hacked by all and sundry and politicians and marketers have little understanding of IT, just like treasury and WINZ!!!

    Lazy marketers might find that the 3% of people they are targeting who are stupid enough about security to answer their survey don’t actually make it to the voting booth while the soccer mums & Dads who juggle 2 jobs and multiple children, don’t have time or not political to volunteer, but are educated enough not to give out private information!

  10. I think that green party list of intended focus is not too bad at all .

    I think if you were to re read it beyond your assumptions you would see much of what you say is missing

    is covered . all workers by fairer tax , mental health by improved health care ,big problems by carbon emissions , protecting water ways .protecting the enviroment .

    all kinds of things . and I think this whole list is a distillation of what was a much broader survey to members asking where they would like focus to be .
    it would nice if we could all of us be all things to all people but it doesnt go like that .

    I like the list and look forward to seeing them go into the next elections with it .

    • retired working man –

      “I think that green party list of intended focus is not too bad at all”

      The intended focus was ‘getting to know their voters priorities’ so it does not work to then tell them what the priorities are first!

      So big fail because the Greens removed the ability to get to know voters by their set choices, while pretending to want to know them and listen!

      That’s the fail.

      Going forward Greens will likely use that failed model to bleat that is what their supporters priorities were, but clearly they were the priorities that the Greens decided that they wanted to focus on, not actually allowing their voters to have their say and get to know them at all, and even if they did, would anybody genuinely voting Green want to give them so many personal details which were not necessary?

      I doubt it.

  11. Save nz , in case you missed it . you are reading that list out of context and you are not reading it very well .

    • @retired working man, I think the Greens and also Labour and NZ First polling and election result, is going to say otherwise about what the ‘missing’ people think about how they are doing!

      In the Greens, nothing about immigration, nothing about TPPA/trades deals, nothing about privacy, nothing about buy local, nothing about food, GMO etc which the Greens also built their supporter base on as well as environmental … even surprising things, nothing about cannabis, nothing about sexuality… no choices to select other … the point is they have an incomplete list of issues effecting people, while failing to allow choice of further issues on. Pretty much sums up politics in NZ.

      Natz also believe in fairer taxes etc but interpret that differently, the devil is in the policy and anybody who feels that they have not been heard (judging by the amount of people not voting in local elections for example) instead of justifying the list, their supporters and parties should be taking the criticism on board!

      Natz got in by default for 9 long years, because the COL concentrated on the wrong issues that only effected identity groups… that were not very large groups, and the remedy often negatively effected the larger group.

      Therefore election bribes no longer work. Lack of privacy and trust now, means people do not do census/surveys and so forth because of privacy issues and lack of control and security on the data. Around the world polling is often incorrect aka Trump and Brexit.

      In addition politicians not following through with their promises, aka in the US elections nobody believed that Hillary would not bring in free trade deals, she left it too late to pretend they would do it, and like in NZ with Labour, they would probably have reneged, which became a point of difference with Trump.

      The lack of reaction in NZ of the TPPA betrayal for example is not due to acceptance but more giving up on being heard by politicians and not trusting them. Being against the TPPA was one of the few differences, along with immigration that Labour had from Natz. But they failed on their promise.

      Jacinda is popular which may or may not get Labour through, but less people trust the brand of labour and Greens and NZ First now, just like not trusting the Natz which is why a lot of people don’t vote.

      I hope Mana comes back, they may be the new Greens with policy from the old Greens. They got 2% party vote with a vicious campaign against them. Now people have tried Natz and COL, maybe they will get more momentum.

  12. ‘Created 92,000 jobs’, hah, were they on government job schemes, or did employers create jobs?
    ‘Built more than 2200 state houses’, hah, did Phil Twyford and his colleagues get the hammer out?
    ‘1600 new police officers’, while many have left the job meantime, others included in that have not even graduated yet. The rest is rewriting laws, making promises and talking not walking the talk.

    BS Galore, again, I rest my case.

    • created 92,000 jobs…. but hang on how many were fake, and even if they were real jobs, if there were approx 300,000 new residents each year, with less jobs than new residents, that could be explaining why jobseeker is up 11% aka more people came than jobs created, also many of the jobs created were not exactly well paid jobs or even real jobs…

      https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/116802378/i-have-no-hope-penniless-migrant-relying-on-foodbanks-after-boss-fails-to-pay-up

      “Verma is but one example. He was on a student visa, working (legally) part-time at a South Auckland petrol station, when he got talking to one of his regular customers, a man named Shepherd Ndarowa. Ndarowa, a Zimbabwean migrant, part-owned a fibre company called GMGS and offered Verma work.

      Verma says he started work in June 2016 as a “volunteer”, working unpaid for three months before Ndarowa agreed to sponsor a work visa and gave him a contract promising him 40 hours of work a week at $20 an hour.

      That visa eventually transferred to another company, wholly owned by Ndarowa, called S-Net Technologies, and the pay rate rose to $21.50.

      Verma says he was paid properly for the first month. After that, Ndarowa would deduct money from his payslip to bring his rate down to minimum wage, and his hours fluctuated wildly.

      Verma says he’d often sit at home waiting for Ndarowa to pick him up for work, and his boss would arrive as late as midday or 1pm. “He was doing all the easy jobs by himself. When there’s the need for digging and hard work, he would call me … Just imagine, 10 or 15 hours’ work a fortnight on minimum wages.”

    • @ Marc, As for the 1600 police officers what is the quality like? Heard they don’t have to pass a fitness test anymore to get into police school, obviously you don’t need to be fit when you hand out those traffic tickets, be a translator or take the back handers, in our new neoliberal profit driven justice system!

      Like education it is all about bums on seats.

      But hang on, there can be a bit of a road bump with honesty and integrity when profits are the main focus of recruitments… look at the caliber of doctors now that they pay for their own studies…

      University of Otago investigating claims med students faked work placement records
      https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/116804351/university-of-otago-investigating-claims-med-students-faked-work-placement-records

      Dunedin doctor murder trial: Accused Venod Skantha killed teen Amber-Rose Rush to protect his career: Crown
      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12282278

      That is what happens when you replace social good with profits for educational courses, vocational training and ultimately who you have working in trusted places in your country.

      • p>S. Maybe lack of fitness could also be a move to justify more armed police and more tasers bought out during arrests.

        Hey, don’t bother chasing down potential criminals, just shoot them dead or taser them – just like in the US! We could bring in the death squads from the Philippines https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/04/philippines-secret-death-squads-police-officer-teams-behind-killings

        As for the idea that police ‘get fit during their training and then pass the exam’ clearly if someone is not motivated to be fit enough to get into police school – it’s going to be an ongoing issue!

        Just another way, as well as the trade deals, to justify lowering standards for profits and on the way to global recruitment of police officers from overseas coming into NZ sort of like the police version of mercenaries that have taken over many countries military and the corruption of state services around the world!

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