The Labour Green deal has been signed and never before have so few given so little to so many!
WINNERS:
Labour – They are laughing all the way to the vegan tofu food truck. The abusive relationship Labour have with the Greens stretches back to Helen Clark and it feels like someone needs to intervene now. The Greens wanted a wedding, Labour have offered them friends with benefits without the friendship or benefits.
Vacant baubles – The meaninglessness of Ministerial positions outside Cabinet are to transformative change what the electric Kiwi advert is to creativity.
Chloe – Once the emptiness of this arrangement is apparent with an incredibly mediocre first 100 day policy platform, the realisation of what the Greens have lost will start to build the demand for Chloe to be the new leader will grow.
LOSERS:
Green Party Woke Apparatchik’s – They will flood this page screaming that the whole ‘winners and losers’ dichotomy is a heteronormative white cis male binary choice and as such is promoting hatred towards women and mummy bloggers, which isn’t fair as I also hate daddy bloggers as well. Listening to them trying to sell this meaningless nothing on Twitter as some type of great advance for everyone is like listening to Democrats trying to defend Hillary Clinton’s 2016 nomination.
Green Membership – They thought they were voting on this only to find out the Apparatchik’s were voting on their behalf. They will feel like people who signed up to Tinder but forgot to cancel the subscription after getting no dates.
Green Party – Should have gone in there table thumping and demanding real policy gains by threatening opposition, instead they begged and cried for whatever crumbs Jacinda was prepared to offer. Honestly, the Greens have all the tactical response capacity of slow growing moss. The Greens need to be radical on the environment and the economy rather than free the nipple middle class ally causes that only manage to alienate. This deal will gag them and make them look complicit in Labour’s tepid progress. They don’t look like members of a progressive Government, they look like collaborators for mediocrity.
Julie Anne Genter – One of the Greens best talents now not doing much.
The climate crisis, housing crisis, suicide crisis, poverty crisis and inequality crisis – You would think that having a majority would mean there was no handbrake on transformative change.
Wrong.
Labour seem more focused on nurturing their new National voters than rewarding their own supporters.
Transformative change – Last term, it was defined as ‘whatever Winston lets me get away with’ and is now defined as ‘change that sticks’, which is an incredible way to ignore the fact that after specials, Labour + Greens will be a supermajority and can change anything they like.
CONCLUSION:
Labour have brilliantly captured the Greens and silenced any meaningful criticism of Labour’s incrementalism. Labour couldn’t believe how little the Green leadership ended up wanting and were happy to down play any real policy gains for a couple of empty baubles.
The shock articulated by Russel Norman, Sue Bradford and Catherine Delahunty at how pathetic the gains are when opposition would have been far preferable should have everyone deeply concerned.
The ultimate proof to this pudding will be the first 100 days policy platform, if nothing meaningful happens legislatively during that period, it won’t happen. You have a window of 100 days to force change before the Wellington neoliberal bureaucratic elites shut transformative change down.
The idea that Labour + Greens after specials could have a supermajority and still do nothing meaningful on welfare increases, the climate, housing, worker rights, public broadcasting, mental health, prisons and poverty could erode faith in the system more than a dozen Donald Trumps ever could.
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Give them a chance. Labour will have to make some good moves with the mandate they have and the Country’s expectations of change. If they don’t then the Greens are free to walk away from this deal.
The country has no expectations of change. That’s why previous National voters, voted Labour so the Greens were stymied and look at what’s happened. Ardern is an incrementalist, time people on the left woke up to that fact. Nothing will change, neoliberalism is here to stay.
If Sepuloni is again given MSD, then I will probably join you all in the misery-gutsing.
It will feel like game over.
(They HAVE To find someone better than that!)
…And if anyone other than Willy Jackson is Minister for Broadcasting.
(This is his sphere. It belongs to him.)
MB: “Should have gone in there table thumping and demanding real policy gains by threatening opposition…….”
Labour: “Go ahead. Make my day.”
🙂
The lure of BMWs, larger offices and bloated salaries were always too much for Jimmy. What is more surprising is the membership voted for this insult. On that basis the party deserve all they get over the next 3 years. A sad decline for the party of Donald and Fitzsimmons.
Usual dogwhistle bullshit Frank. Try some facts for a change
Trolls don’t tend to employ facts to write crap.
Labour won the election Martyn. You seem to be the only one that hasn’t noticed.
D J S
David Stone. Hear hear!
But I think Judith and Gerry may have noticed. Well perhaps not Gerry.Zzzzz
Such a majority, and yet there has been no indication that Labour will move one millimetre from Blairism or Roger’n’Ruth’s legacy.
Jacinda Ardern mentioned when first made PM, that there was an unfinished book-by mild critic of Capitalism-French academic Thomas Piketty, on her shelf. She is not an idealaogue, but a managerialist.
And here we will all stay, in stay sis as inequality worsens and the middle class and corporates get bailed out.
The Greens experience should warn the rest of us that the only way out is community organisation and direct action! Reignite Ihumatao, fight for Fair Pay Agreements and more union rights, get involved politically in something, anything, rather than sitting on the sidelines.
Half the government’s strategy will be explained by third way Tony Blair politics, the other half by Animal Farm. Most of the crew have realised how comfortable the treasury benches are and don’t want to lose it even if means being slut shamed at their next Grey Lynn Tofu barbecue.
Hats off to the Key-like discipline even from the likes of Twyford. The only one that doesn’t get it is Homer Davis.
Julian Genter did little to make roads safer . It is still only $80 fine for using a cell phone while driving and we all know that is a major cause of accidents.
Thank goodness Sage has lost her role she was useless . At the end of her 3 years more water is going to China in plastic bottles than ever.
You make the roads safer by having fines of $100 or $1000 for using a phone while driving?
If you’re going to get serious and employ dedicated staff to do the job, do it properly.
No mucking about, whether by having 1000 times more cameras or whatever. Anyone caught using a phone while driving the vehicle, regardless of who the owner is, it is confiscated for (say) a month.
We have a lot of arrogant arsehole, people who know they can do whatever they like and should be able to do what they like. Then again they think being told to wear a mask makes us a Nazi state.
Sort of like Act isn’t it? You know, let people have choices.
Not sure that this was an election that Labour promised transformative change. They tried that in 2017 and ended up painting political targets on their backs. This was the COVID election with much less promises. There will be opportunities to do some things different, but the emphasis is on sailing to recovery on a steady ship.
COVID will become the handbrake/excuse. Robertson will keep saving for the rainy days, wishing he could do more but mindful of rising debt and impressing National voters. Economic stewardship will be the focus of this term. What better way to keep a foot on National’s throat?
Despite this documentary The Green Party still has no mates.
‘ Kiss The Ground ‘
“The must-see controversial trailer for Kiss the Ground is finally live! Watch it and discover the simple solution for climate change.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iknWWKZOUs
I drove south out of Balclutha in East Otago on SH1 a couple of days ago and past a terrible sight.
A farmer had sprayed what looked like his/her entire grass lands farm with Glyphosate AKA Roundup. Beautiful rolling hills now yellow like a smokers beard.
And around Balclutha and its surrounds there has been spraying along the road sides and around road markers, around bridges and gate ways.
As is pointed out in the above documentary, glyphosate finds its way directly into new born’s via their mothers milk, a chemical or a synthetic as it’s called in the doco linked to ADD and child cancer. I saw a contractor to the CDC spraying glyphosate while it was raining. That run-off would have gone directly into the creeks and streams leading into the Clutha River and glyphosate is deadly to aquatic animals.
@ The Green Party? What’s really going on? Who’s got you by the short and curly’s ?
Why am I paying you your ministerial salaries to look the other way from what’s in plain sight?
AO/NZ’ers? Are you going to let that shit happen? Are you going to turn the other way?
Is labour and the greens head fucking us by making it look like something’s happening when nothing happens? Are they layering farmers under a litany of exploitative bullshit?
When we can read this do we need to go “Oh Fuck ! ”
The Guardian
“Growing numbers of ‘newly hungry’ forced to use UK food banks”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/01/growing-numbers-newly-hungry-forced-use-uk-food-banks-covid
It’s my opinion that this particular version of our Green Party is placed strategically to make sure our farmers NEVER go regenerative much less suddenly figure out just how fucked they were by the natzo’s and natzo cronies spanning the last one hundred years.
I know, I know. Will read preposterous and hysterical to some of you I bet but move past that through an open mind.
BTW. The above image and caption…
Fabulous.
I’m not sure there’s anything remotely “brilliant” about silencing the only real voice for climate change from the crop of neo liberal “do-nothings” on offer this election.
In my view the Greens are now effectively Labour policy proxies on climate change which has amounted to do “jack shit”, catering as always to the farming sector, NZ’s biggest climate polluter. Of course given center right Labour now have to keep their newly minted ex -Nat voters on side you can be sure there will be no meaningful change just fluffy sound bites that will satisfy the ignorant and delusional.
It seems there’s no real left on offer in NZ so many, including myself, will be focused on supporting external voices that shame the pollies in to doing anything that helps keep our plant liveable.
Big day….Duncan Garner and Bomber share the same feeling about the greens
Right on the money Bomber. Can’t help but feel the only upside is for the two people get ministerial incomes for a few years.
The rest is all bad for the greens, not that their identity politics and dumb wealth tax hadn’t long outweighed their good and unique socialist policies.
Marama may consider buying a house now, and learn a little about the reality of getting a mortgage, maintaining a property, paying for one’s own inevitable repairs, paying one’s own local rates,
and paying insurances as so many of us did, juggling with growing kids and their costs too.
Sure, house prices are higher now, but Davidson’s salary is much higher than so many of us struggled along on, only to be watching now in impecunious dismay in case the value of the abode hits the million mark, and the Greens pounce crying, “ Gotcha, we’re gunna tax you for that, because tax is love.” Bullies.
What was the point ? Should we have all been renting and enriching somebody, instead of working often incredibly hard, to have a home ? Spending could have been quite nice.
‘The climate crisis, housing crisis, suicide crisis, poverty crisis and inequality crisis – You would think that having a majority would mean there was no handbrake on transformative change.’
Ha!
There is no handbrake on transformative change. No handbrake is necessary because the wheels are set in concrete…by the banks and corporations and opportunists.
However, there WILL BE massive transformative change, not led by the government, of course, but by all the factors the government does its best to ignore. And that transformative change is already underway.
So, the question is, how successful with Jacinda and company be at preventing Kiwis from realising the system is kaput and is running on fumes.
Formed a govt while the cannabis referendum is still hanging, no green involvement, did Labour actually want drug reform or has all this been smoke and mirrors, usually politician bullshit.
Finally tally is going up, can Labour ignore that?
All those votes, all that power and yet anyway with a brain can see that will do nothing with it. This at least 9 years will be another 9 years of John Key style politics, incrementalism whilst holding the centre. Suck it up people, you know it’s TRUE.
So few given so little to so many……………..um, the election result was Labour 49 percent, greens 7.
So more like so many gave quite a bit with few restrictions to so few I think…………….
It seems like a bunch of you forgot that transformative change cannot and will not come out of the ballot box. Not ever. The only sensible reason for the left to participate in electoral politics is to keep the far right from using elected office to knobble us, as they did so effectively during the Key regime.
The effective places to push back against the corporatist-conservative agenda are in our communities, our workplaces, and our streets. Thanks to this election result, we are in a stronger position to do than any time in more than 40 years. Time to roll up our sleeves and get on with it.
Let’s see what the National Party’s “transformative change” in THEIR lineup because of the ballot box fustercluck? Do this before pouring scorn on Labour’s plans.
Some questionscould be asked, but truly, only One questionWill National get rid of “dirty politics”?If the answer is yes, it’s “transformative change”
If not, it’s ‘blue bollocks business as usual’, with Hoskings, Henry, Hooting and Garner (semi-vegan), Merv, Michael and Michelle and all the other ‘smurf(ete) sychophants’, undercutting democracy and playing blue gotcha politics.
Sychophant Seymour’s sweet dirty deal with National in Epsom, taints him, National and ACT. If National put up a candidate in Epsom, then we know that dirty politics might no longer ‘yellow teabag’ the New Zealand and Epsom voters.
Transformative change doesn’t just apply to the left, it applies to the so-called ‘right’ as well.
“Thanks to this election result, we are in a stronger position to do than any time in more than 40 years.” Strypey
Spot on Strypey.
This election result has delivered us a leader and an administration that are proven to react positively to grass roots pressure.
The Prime Minister’s lockdown decision came within a matter of hours, after a petition signed by 65 thousand health workers calling for the level 4 lockdown landed on her desk.
And this not the first time that the PM has reacted positively to grass roots activism.
She did it over off shore oil drilling. On her way to a scheduled meeting with the Indonesian ambassador she stopped when she saw a protest on the steps of parliament by Greenpeace calling for the end of such risky oil exploration. Almost unheard of for a Prime Minister she addressed them and made an on the spot promise to halt all new off shore oil drilling permits.
The Prime Minister has called ‘climate change, my generations nuclear free moment’
No political leader can go ahead of the people without risking becoming isolated.
We have to provide that grass roots people’s movement that will give the Prime Minister the freedom to act on her best instincts.
“Time to roll up our sleeves and get on with it.” Strypey
I agree one hundred percent.
Let’s do this
The government caving in to Sealords demand for cheap migrant labour, has had its inevitable result
Just when we need a Green Left opposition in parliament to call the government out, the Green leaders have signed a signed a sweetheart deal not to take the government to task over their missteps.
Covid-19: New community case in Christchurch connected to foreign fishermen
Georgia Forrester
21:03, Nov 02 2020
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300148149/covid19-new-community-case-in-christchurch-connected-to-foreign-fishermen
New Zealanders of all persuasions voted for a Labour Green Government to keep covid out.
If this community case and other inevitable breaches linked to the Sealords deal with the government, turn into a full blown outbreak, both the Greens and Labour will wear it.
As Labour backtracks on the singular issue that won them their unprecedented MMP majority.
They are busy rearranging the deck chairs.
Three years, or four years, what should it be?
The government’s proposal to change the parliamentary term, Just like John Key’s proposal to change the flag, except that they don’t have the street cunning of John Key to put their proposal before the people in a referendum. Instead using their unprecedented super majority to ram it through.
To bad they won’t use their super majority to keep our country free of Covid-19 or abolish childhood poverty
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/113784911/proposal-to-extend-parliamentary-term-to-four-years-increase-mps-to-150
Pat, I am usually in agreement with just about everything you write. However on this matter, I disagree. For one thing, all the main parties agreed on four year terms being the better option, prior to our election. I think it was on NewsHub that I saw each of the leaders being asked and they all gave four year terms the thumbs up. So, it does not have to be rammed through by the majority, there are unlikely to be any objections.
Three years is just not long enough to enact certain changes in a way that will stay strong. In the example of Jacinda’s first government, the first year was taken up with clearing up some of the worst measures and tangles left by the nine years of the previous govt. As well, our PM had to steer her way through the complicated coalition with NZ First (and the Greens), which would have taken a little time to work out, and she had to get to know the full character of her own MPs, regarding how efficiently they could fulfil their portfolios.
The second year had a large chunk of time and energy taken from it by the ChCh shootings early in the year then the Whakaari eruption at the end of it.
In the third year of the term, Covid hit, and again this took away time and resources from other parliamentary business. As well, the opposition began campaigning early, so it soon felt as though we were right into the next election campaign.
We really do need a four year basic timespan for each parliamentary term.
nice
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