Labour are in trouble.
Their inability to bring real change is because they had no plan to challenge the neoliberal Wellington Bureaucratic Elites.
Labour won by accident in 2017 and Covid overshadowed 2020 so none of them have any real reform platform for the Public Service which allows the neoliberal public service to call the shots.
Labour’s failure to do anything meaningful in housing, welfare, mental health, poverty, climate change or inequality means desperate voters who elected Labour have been horrifically betrayed by Jacinda’s neokindness.
Labour will hold the middle classes in 2023, but the Greens have an opportunity to take the desperate voters Labour have betrayed from Labour and snooker Jacinda into being reliant on the Greens for a majority.
To do that, the Greens have to mute the alienating identity politics bullshit and focus on real issues with real solutions that have an actual impact on the lives of the poorest…
- Doubling welfare
- Free public transport
- A Ministry of Works to build 50 000 green State Houses to remove the desperation in the rental market and crash Landlord privilege.
- Rent controls.
- Free school breakfasts and lunches
The Greens need to champion these and promise to pass all of it in the fist 100 days of the 2023 Government.
Labour’s inability to actually do anything presents a genuine opportunity for the Greens to outflank Labour and force them to make changes.
The question is, are the Greens capable of putting aside their middle class identity politics bullshit to actually be politically effective.
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You summed up your own hopes/musings in your last paragraph…and, as I think you know, the answer is NO!
Ever notice when on slow news days Marama and Golritz are nowhere to be seen but one headline about a poor immigrant or an opposition MP makes a statement about safety in the capital and suddenly they appear.
The Green Party will continue to alienate potential voters as long as The Green Party continues identity politics.
Even their new gay mexican ‘rising star’ is tarnished already.
+1 Im right
You forgot to mention *helping* renters by reducing supply of landlords renting out homes while increasing the demand side with more immigrants, so the aforementioned poor immigrants can get on the NZ property ladder with their first home sold by the landlords and unable to be rented anymore.
Sad for the Green voters who really wanted real and total environmental change and sustainability in a political party that could have taken massive vote share in NZ that used to be known for that. Now NZ environmental standards are more fake news and propaganda than anything real.
BTW – many houses were always under government noses and it’s housing NZ and the councils with all their wasteful spending (or in the case of housing NZ, removing their ability to do their jobs well by spinning off other companies or taking excessive dividends) that allow them to decline into rack and ruin, and then give to their mates in separate companies that are not transparent.
Million dollar dumps: Publicly-owned properties fall to rack and ruin
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/property/300262139/million-dollar-dumps-publiclyowned-properties-fall-to-rack-and-ruin
So rip off the ratepayers and rip off the renters at the same time. Win, win.
And funny enough the worst neoliberals and the ones always talking about personal responsibility seem to be the ones who take zero responsibility themselves for their own ideology and preaching of it which has failed miserably aka COO’s spear headed by the Neoliberals like Phil Goff who turned a blind eye for years to all their dysfunctional boards and said business knows best but now after yet another report, trying to pretend he had no responsibility as the Mayor of Auckland Council and MP for years. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ports-of-auckland-review-mayor-phil-goff-delivers-grim-message-to-management/H32UXBITRA73NIJG5EKY2GXNHI/
The sheer volume of fact, and the timelines of the activities that led to the situation you attempt to portray display a breathtaking ignorance of the reality of this situation… I despair of this country when i see this kind of total ignorance, and narrow, self serving drivel being spouted by the chattering classes…. Is it so hard to remember the fraught situation that 9 years of exploitation economics had led NZ into? If this is representative of the “average” thinkers mindset, then this country is headed for servitude to whoever gets here first, when push comes to shove between the real powers in this region… And that would be a best case scenario, as things here will have become untenable by then for the majority of the population..
Still waiting for your point on this topic? I’d say one of the biggest problems in NZ is that people are so busy bashing other people’s opinions while self grandiosing their +hidden+ true knowledge (that they fail to share), and wasting other people’s time reading nothingness.
But I guess that approach of bashing others while offering nothing themselves has been successful for many in politics.
@ im right. No. You’re not. You’re full of piss and wind just like the barbers cat. One of my mum’s favourite sayings.
The Green Party aye? Yep siree, Them ol Greenies.
I was saddened to laugh out loud at a sticker on the door of a rather ramshackle yet kind of funky duck shooting wagon-thing at the mouth of the Matau branch of the Clutha River. It read ” The only wilderness area left is between a Greenies ears”.
That was rich because it’s wee bill english country. No greater, greedier dumb fuck exists unless hamish walker or todd barclay are to be considered for the title. But they got caught. Emboldened by arrogance wasn’t enough to protect you from the truth was it, you fuckers? Greedy wee billy aye? Multi generational farmer traitor and arse kisser to Auckland’s evil urban elite.
The Green Party could wipe the natzo’s and their bent, Machiavellian sidekick party, labour, out. Gone. Done. And after the delight of witnessing the results of a royal commission of inquiry coming home as if carried aloft by conquering Gladiators, the heads of our enemies would be slung jauntily over the saddle horn. Then, we’d witness a renaissance of a graphic and colourful nature because once unfettered by the Natzo/Labour firewall of trans generational lies, swindles, theft, brazen treachery, deceit and breathtaking acts of treason against us, our primary industry and our systems of governance they’d be done for.
All the Green Party has to do is get the farmer on-side. And that wouldn’t be difficult because our farmers are in dire need of Green Party action. Our planet’s over heating, the biosphere’s dying and pretty soon we must all come to the realisation that if we stay on this present trajectory we’re fucked. Bees are dying, general insect populations are in sever decline, our fresh water supplies are dangerously polluted and all the while farmers are under merciless pressure by banksters and corporates to spray glyphosates and insecticides etc just to stay functional. Watch ‘ Kiss The Ground’ ? https://kisstheground.com/
And all you have to do to understand what I’m writing about is to imagine an AO/NZ without farming. It’s not that difficult? All you have to do is not eat or expect to be able to spend the money sequestered from our farmers income stolen at the farm gate and never to be seen again. Aye Boys?
I believe the skeletal, anorexia look is ‘in’? And you wouldn’t need the things our farmer money buys for you. You know those things, right? They’re like everything. ( Except foods and clothing etc. Our farmers to that for you. But they’re luxuries right. Not essential goods like electronics, cell phones, cars, TV’s etc.)
The Greens? If you want to scare the be-Jesus out of the natzo crooks and flaky, lazy, lying logical fallacy spouting labour then go get the farmer. Go on!? You can do it !
Chloe Swarbrick? Remember that conversation we had?
The real question is why would the betrayed poor and starving disillusioned Labour supporters want the Greens? Does their track record warrant support?
Howls of derisive laughter Bruce…
That’s so laughable. Commenters arguing over which party is most incompetent.
The end goal can only be speculated on but at the end of corona we will be far less free.
Egad. The first sentence so sad and so true. There is no one to vote for.
1/Doubling welfare
2/Free public transport
3/A Ministry of Works to build 50 000 green State Houses to remove the desperation in the rental market and crash Landlord privilege.
4/Rent controls.
5/Free school breakfasts and lunches
…”The question is, are the Greens capable of putting aside their middle class identity politics bullshit to actually be politically effective?”…
—————–
Well,… are they?
Labours in trouble with a tiny but noisy fraction of voters who don’t influence elections and never vote Labour in the first place. They are still polling what they did on election night, meaning a majority government. they are the most popular Social Democratic party in the world, find another soc dem party getting over 50% of the popular vote not just in a proportional system but in a two party system. Hell find me a conservative party doing that tbh . They have more donations than ever before , more resources than ever before and all the funding that goes with holding a gargantuan number of electorate seats, an opposition in complete chaotic disarray and the most popular prime minister since polling began, an economy doing much better than predicted and an unemployment rate that hasn’t exploded despite predictions. If Labours in trouble, I too wish to be in trouble. Many of the greens votes this time and last time came from labour voters worried the greens wouldn’t hit 5%, not voters who genuinely liked the greens manifesto. Though I liked pa
You’re last paragraph nailed it. The Greens will never be a vehicle for the working class, just look at their vote counts outside of middle to upper middle class electorates it’s abysmal. For all their talk of diversity, their votes arent all that diverse , by and large their votes come from well off white people. National, new conservatives and Nz first get more working class votes than the Greens because the working class which is a constant disappointment for the woke, is by and large too socially conservative to vote for a party that’s obsessed with intersectional woke identity politics. How can a working class person doing a shift job catch the train or bus at 3 am or afford an EV, they can’t. You nailed that one the greens will never venture outside their bubble . The working and unemployed people I know may have issues with labour but they hate the greens, one socialist beneficiary yesterday refered to Chloe as Dengue fever. Entitled, privileged pointless useless overrated are words I associate with the greens of today, but I have nothing but love for the greens of rod donalds day.
The Greens aren’t the great hope for people left of labour, they can either join labour and vote on policies internally to try push labour left in their next manifesto like momentum for $5 (because the greens will never be the party of proletariat and will never even be in cabinet, any party where rank and file membership can roll a sitting cabinet minister is too unstable to be in a labour cabinet and they were openly planning on rolling james shaw at the next agm the week of the election)
Or recreate new labour and the alliance. Focus on one electorate seat for the next term not hitting 5%. It’s a great tragedy that the alliance fell.
But the Greens are never going to be the proletariat party ever… They are as bourgeoisie as it gets… Go to a party meeting it’s all upper middle class karen’s with kitchen islands obsessing over vegan cheeses and gourmet snacks who agree with national on just about everything except for conservation, electric cars and veganism and their Rich kids flirting with trotskyism in uni and upper middle class id pol looney’s obsessed with gender, sexuality who focus on the singular rather than the collective “me, my identity, I” and pc white people who will ruin your life if you mispronounce a word in Maori even if you’re Maori and they are white. The greens and the self indulgent woke are the militant faction of neoliberalism, even though they’d never admit it or see it.
I’d give you a thumbs up for that Corey if TDB had that function.
Re your final question, the answer is: almost certainly not. But for those of us who voted for the Greens in spite of the identity politics/microaggression nonsense (not because of it), it is nice to dream.
Great post.
I do wonder if a new party will emerge to become a new equivalent to NZ First or maybe the Alliance. It seems the Greens are not a comfortable choice for centre-left voters, nor the Labour party itself.
My last sentence is clumsy. I mean that the Greens do not seem to be a true preference for either the Labour Party or centre-left voters.
It is fair to point out that the Green Party hates the working class.
The Greens hate their polluting cars, their sports, and their TV watching habits, their holidays on the Gold Coast, their asperations (like for a bigger house in a nicer suburb), and their social conservativism. And the working classes’ pragmatism, and their inability to be persuaded by beautiful dreams from Green visionaries.
Corey Humm.
If you had been at the latest Green Party Conference you would have found out that.
Within the Greens things are being turned on their head.
Identity politics wasn’t even one of the policy discussions all weekend.
2023 is going to be very interesting from a Policy perspective.
Expect healthcare, Medicines and the ACC policy to be a part of that.
Expect more of the 2020 long term poverty policy to be more out there.
That was my take from the whole weekend.
Healthcare had a whole workshop of it’s own with not only patients but Doctors , Nurses , GP’s and Surgeons being in the Workshop.
Labour I feel is going to feel a shitload of heat on this front alone.
My 13 suggestions went to James Shaw and also to the Health Policy committee.
My 13 suggestions for an overhaul of how healthcare is handled outside of our hospitals has been taken seriously and has more and more public support the more people I share it with.
People are becoming more and more aware our health system is 3rd world.
Labour are only tinkering National has no interest whatsoever of fixing it nor has act or any other party except Social Credit. The Pharmac review is a joke and the Simpson review only dealt with hospitals and did absolutely nothing towards fixing what happens outside the hospitals.
There are a million people in this country being denied access to affordable medicines along with unacceptably long waiting lists.
That is a huge vote waiting for a home who are getting more and more pissed off by the lack of action.
The medicines petition alone has close on 100,000 signers as of today 9/4/2021 .
So lets wait and see.
I’m still waiting for the Greeds to come up with some policies appropriate to the times we live in – in fact for them to come up with ANY polices appropriate to the times we live in would be a start!
They were starting to get the right idea in the early 2000s, but since then…WTF!!!???
Our predicament has got a lot worse since the early 2000s, and the Greeds have stuck to their greed agenda.
Oh weel, not long top go now before ALL the forecasts of the ‘Limits to Growth’ group (1972) start to manifest in very nasty ways.
Give a hungry man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Give him a diesel-powered fishing boat and he’ll strip the oceans till there’s nothing left.
I agree with your sentiments, but I just cannot see the Greens having the will to actually enforce those policies if they are indeed the queen makers. They are more likely to settle for some bs confidence and supply agreement that will in reality give them nothing significant.
I don’t know about that. Marama and Shaw are still intelligent. We can only watch them as they walk a tight rope between trans and feminists while holding the furniture up.
It is not so much the will but the % of the vote that creates the ability to push labour to move.
Just the mare fact a lot of Labours votes are green party vote voters giving their seat vote to a labour mp was being taken a look at the 2021 policy summer gathering in March. The confidence and supply agreement is what gives the greens the ability to criticise and also the reason their vote share rose last year. Remember they are the only party that increased their share of the vote after being part of a governing arrangement.
Expect to see more green MP’s in 2023 if Labour do not make substantial moves on Health/welfare and medicines funding. There is a sleeping tiger of up to a million voters who are not getting the healthcare they need and the welfare funding their healthcare needs. The Greens are NO LONGER A MINOR PARTY. 50% of the people at the Greens summer policy gathering would have been below the age of 30 from what I saw at the gathering.
Good points Martyn. A return to an MMP govt. proper in 2023.
Labour are snookered by all the neo liberal/monetarist legislation that enables the public sector CEOs. And, Labour is beyond help ideologically, so disruption from somewhere else is required. Imo that will come from new gen voters and community pressure, which may or may not involve the conduit of Greens & Maori Party.
Add support for School Climate Strikes (not rush hour traffic blockades though) and your list would be vote worthy indeed.
Time for the Greens to shine, you say Martyn?
Look at them shine! Look at them shine! https://www.facebook.com/bbcthree/videos/10155513745325787/
The Greens had a place at the table for 3 years and what did they achieve. Genter did nothing to make roads safer . Davidson put distance between that party and many white males by blaming us for the massacre in Chch. Sage held of help for far to long with clean up needed after the Fox dump was exposed and did nothing to stop the same think happening at other dumps.
A lot of time and effort was spent on the marajuana vote but all that effort did not get it over the line and much of that was down to the message.
Most of those that voted Green did so because they care for the enviroment but where is any pressure from that party in this area.
Maybe Genter and Co, were prematurely celebrating the marajuana reform, and thought the concept was to make roads slower, not make roads safer. In which case they achieved their goal.
This just know identity politics is all they have.
Today as Covid imports skyrocket, the vast majority from India, the PM halts new arrivals from there until the end of the month. Common sense but Oh no say the Greens…
Golriz Ghahraman is confounded by the ban on flights from India.
“Weird we didn’t go with an all out ban as an option for US or UK entries, given their harrowing rates on COVID,” she wrote on Twitter. “Our ethnic communities of South Asian origin need to know race isn’t a factor in our COVID risk management.”
Clearly the pre test regime in India is failing but no, make it a race thing Green Party! And basic math confounds Gloriz.
It’s stupid stuff like this that guarantees the Greens will remain a bit player and nothing more.
I guess the staggering amounts of Indian arrivals with Covid at NZ MIQ, did not occur to Golriz as the reason for the 2 week ban.
Yep, Covid is raging everywhere, but only the Indian arrivals seem to be getting on a plane and flying to NZ with it consistently.
Some of the identity police won’t be happy until every terrorist like Tarrant is living in NZ and creating a living hell for everyone else, and they have decimated the small NZ population with Covid and replaced it with their preferred nationals while being offended every two minutes on twitter.
Replacing local people with preferred nationals is actually considered genocide, but I guess if you defend genocide murders for the UN – you already know that.
“Time to shine” assumes you can polish a turd 🙂
Time for the Greens to shine?
Shine my arse!
All they’ve got is empty virtue signals and middle class woke identity politics.
Lets also face facts the middle class is starting to get bit right in the ass.
1 First home buyers of them middle class cant buy.}
2 Middle class people cant afford to buy unfunded meds
3 The middle class is being forced more and more to take out USA Health insurance style policies.
4 The Middle class / working class are their own worst enemies.
I am sitting back laughing at the moment all Labour Party Party vote voters thought she would turn Health and welfare on its head a fix it.
Four years later our Healthcare is worse than it has ever been and welfare has just been tinkered with for Labour are to damn scared of losing the whats left of the middle centre vote.
The Middle and the Middle working class are as self centred and individualistic as National and Act.
Any Meaning full change will not come from Labour.
The Carmel Sepiloni interview on Breakfast with John Campbell was a total neo liberal bullshit excuse for them to do nothing but tinker to keep the anti beneficiary crowd onside.
Well that anti beneficiary crowd is now getting bitten right in the ass.
They don’t like it and screaming like stuck pigs.
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