TV3 Poll – Winners & Losers

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
93
2775

This Poll was always going to slam the Left.

Cast your mind back to last month and the Polls just picked up Faafoi’s trainwreck free speech interview followed by Jacinda’s trainwreck free speech interview. Labour quickly leaked the internal UMR poll promising all was good.

It wasn’t.

The sudden slump in one month of 9points by Labour is fucking significant but what is most telling is ACT jumping up to the third largest party stakes.

There is real danger here.

This wasn’t the Farmers protesting because men in Utes don’t vote Labour.

This wasn’t angry Nurses because they never vote ACT.

This wasn’t angry property speculators because they already vote National and ACT.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

Oh no, this is the suburbs turning on Jacinda.

This is left wing men already alienated by woke identity politics becoming genuinely questioning of the Hate Speech and woke justice purge.

Social media is ubiquitous and everyone has seen woke activists lynching people as care free as the street fights of the 1930s.

They are leaving on principle and Labour are hemorrhaging votes.

This isn’t economics, this is cultural war.

 

WINNERS

Left Wing Males – The Right can’t win back the 45+ women who Jacinda inspired with her Covid Leadership – they are emotionally melded to Jacinda. What the Right can do is target left wing males who are already feeling alienated by the grim identity politics. Expect left wing males to be the new target of Right wing propaganda.

David Seymour – TDB has been predicting for sometime that ACTs rise is no fluke or protest vote, but instead a seismic shift on the Right which seals National into a political death spiral. ACT is the right wing values party now. Freedom of speech, gun rights, cancel culture – these became rallying calls for disaffected right wing vote who were sick of National’s social conservatism and yearned for a modern values based right wing politics. ACT have stepped into that culture war gap and as debate polarises, they will cannibalise Nationals vote and are better at culture war value positions than National whose openly racist dog whistles are ham fisted and banjo twanging. While Seymour is Leader, this reactionary right will stay within the spectrum of decency however if one of those vile social climbers beneath him took over as ACT eclipsed National, we are in for trouble. The magnitude of how far right ACT are isn’t acknowledged while they’ve been fringe but this will come to a head in 2023 when ACT vs Labour-Green are the parameters for a vastly more polarized political debate.

Winston Peters – If he’s on 3.4% now he is certainly over 5% by Election Day. Will sell himself as a handbrake on Jacinda while making the Greens irrelevant.

Simon Bridges – Judith’s brutality in forcing out MPs to ensure she has a naked Caucus majority now terrifies more MPs than Simon Bridges possible  punishment for the Muller disloyalty. Bridges’ book on masculinity this month weeks after the National conference is timed to ensure if there is a coup his name is at the top.

Culture war politics – The idea that the State will judge your words in a cultural landscape dominated by easily triggered millennial micro aggressions is as socially anxious as Jacinda personally breaking into your kitchen to police healthy lunch boxes live on TV with an outraged John Campbell calling for your immediate arrest for the inclusion of gluten. Because social media is ubiquitous, people are watching the woke lynch mobs gleefully cancel movies they haven’t even seen with pre-censorship, they are watching the inconsistency of woke culture by banning the Charlie Chaplin musical but then putting on one produced by Harvey Weinstein, they are watching unleashed woke desire to punish all those who disagree with them. Now they see the Police handed the power to arrest you for words construed as racist, sexist or transphobic by woke activists whose starting point is all white peoples are racist, all men rapists and anyone defending free speech is a Nazi. Drop a drip of power onto your average Middle Class Identity Politics Spinoff/Stuff subscriber and they mutate into a thousand Tiny Hitler’s, a phalanx of little sisters whose eyes gleam with the same Dogma Cult of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The Left’s activists are more concerned with cancelling voters than recruiting them.

Maori Party – Their ongoing ability to speak up Maori aspiration continues to build them towards bringing in another MP off the list as their Party Vote grows.

 

LOSERS

Greens – With Winston back, Greens lose all leverage and will become politically irrelevant again. The Greens have gone so far down the Woke hole that I don’t believe there’s any coming back for them now. Middle class identity politics has utterly over run their Party and I just don’t believe they can ever return to an environmental party with a view to fix the economy. It’s all woke virtual signals as policy and they aren’t actually serious players beyond pure temple woke dogma.

Maori bashing – With National gaining no traction on their ham fisted racism via segregation crap, it’s time to admit that most Kiwis under 50 know enough about the injustices of our past that they don’t see co-governance as separatism. Give it up Judith.

Woke activists – They are incandescent with rage that their noble pursuit of Social Justice and moral bullying through woke cancellation is becoming so toxic that they are alienating voters and they will punish those stupid voters, punish any commentator who points that dynamic out and any MP who tries to push them away. The woke have become the Tea Party but with less guns.

Hate Speech laws – The Edgeler has spoken, no purge for the wokies.

Putting a parent in prison for 5years for stopping their child from taking puberty blockers – Personally I can’t see any justification whatsoever to waste legislative time on woke virtue signalling when we have 190 000 children in poverty, 4000 kids living in motels, 22512 people waiting on emergency housing, generations locked out of home ownership, the largest spike in inequality since Feudalism and a planet on fire. But hey that’s just me. Criminalizing Christians is one thing, criminalizing parents who stop their teenagers from using puberty blockers by putting them in prison for 5years is another fucking world!

 

Conclusion

The adults of the Left inside Jacinda’s Office have to punish the Political management of this and the bullshit woke social engineering crap.

Locking people up for 3 years in prison for hurting a millennials easily triggered feelings means we are going to have a million in prison.

Locking parents up in prison for 5 years for stopping their kids from taking puberty blockers is fucking insane let alone political cyanide.

Labour’s 9point plunge and ACT at never before highs is a direct response to woke backlash – TDB have been warning about this since 2020 election – jailing people for 3 years by criminalizing free speech and 5 years for blocking puberty blockers will only win votes for ACT.

People want solutions to housing, inequality, climate change & covid recovery, what they are getting are blasphemy laws, criminalising the misuse of pronouns and an $800million bike bridge.

Shitting on Mike King also isn’t helping.

Labour urgently needs big vision stuff.

Jacinda needs to announce a Cabinet reshuffle and announce a new agenda moving forward after listening to the people.

  • Hate Speech laws – dumped and replaced with anti-discrimination and anti-harassment laws.
  • Ute tax removed if owner lives in rural postcode.
  • More flexibility on planting seasonal crop.
  • Dump the gay conversation law – you can’t quantify it and it’s inadvertently including the minefield of Trans issues and it’s 5 years in prison for Christ’s sake! How can we on the progressive left criticize prisons yet as soon as it’s bashing homophobes we get all medieval and want 5 years hard time?
  • Announce satellite towns and mass house building and public transport hubs built by a Ministry of Works.
  • Step into the Supermarket duopoly with a State owned supermarket and lower food prices.
  • Healthy free lunches and breakfast in every school.
  • Free public transport.
  • Medicinal loose herb cannabis in a fully functioning market now to generate jobs.
  • Acknowledge the borders are closed for another 5 years and start our own domestic pharmaceutical industry.
  • Give Gumboot Day some bloody money! Mike King has committed the cardinal sin of embarrassing the Ministry and is being punished for doing phone counseling far more effectively than their ticket clipping.
  • Bike Bridge – dump it, give cyclists a ferry crossing and when the underground bridge is built give the Harbor Bridge to them.

Labour need to start delivering above keeping Covid out. It needs policy that directly impacts people’s pockets and gives them hope that there can be a better planned future.

Woke virtual signals and an online activist base who make piranhas look kind is poisoning the Labour brand.

 

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93 COMMENTS

  1. It’s a lot of things @ Martyn.
    It’s also the year of delivery that wasn’t. The frittering of a huge mandate. The cruelty shown after promises of compassion and kindness. Tinkering. Spin and bullshit and constantly trying to manage the message instead of doing stuff. Public service reform that wasn’t – as Reid says – a bigger handbrake than Winston ever was.
    It’s probably now too late for Labour to redeem itself even IF they scrape back in ’23. It’ll be because they’re the least worst option

    • Good summaries all round..

      The troubling picture being formed is Labour are incapable of delivering. Jacinda is going to contort her face off trying to sell the next excuse as to why Labour have failed at something they promised.

      I really worry about Labour’s DHB reforms, not because that is wrong as such but because based on every other thing they’ve said they’ll do but failed to deliver on, they will have no detailed plan, rather a vague idea and nothing and no one within the cabinet to back it up and have the attention span to care. Health is already the sick man in government, it must be allowed to get worse.

      • the DHB were a gift from Clark, surely the current crew can set something up similar. Labour, no matter what, won’t deliver for you.

  2. Also confirming Labour’s incompetence that I think is hurting them in the polls was this gem from Newshub in a response to the Human Rights Commisioners statement says everyone has the right to a decent home, but successive governments have promised and failed to make this a reality, the PM said this;

    “I believe we have a housing crisis and everything we’ve done as a Government has been an acknowledgement that we need to act and we need to do what we can,” she said.

    Firstly I nearly fell off my seat hearing Jacinda remember there is a housing crisis.

    But secondly Jacinda avoided the obvious, it’s a gross breach alright and yet had the bare faced temerity to say “everything we’ve done”??. WTF lady? Your government inherited a housing disaster, campaigned that you would fix it, got elected and let Winston take the blame when your tinkering rather than actions worsened the situation, got relected with a majority and have in the past 10 months basically ignored the crisis aside from some fine tuned post dated tinkering and have led this country to its worst housing disaster ever.

    But Jacinda, be reassured. A house in Pt Chev, a simple ex state looking house on a full site just sold for $4.3 million. I think you and your equally culpable Finance Minister should give yourselves a well deserved pat on the back or preferably an upper cut for the nouveau riche and old money your tinkering so earnestly works for.

    Auckland house prices: Two-bedroom Point Chevalier home sells for double its CV
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12462116

    Well done you!

    • Given Labour’s mandate at the last election, I’m forever falling off my seat when I hear some of the more competent Ministers in the media.
      For a while there, I was prepared to give JA a pass – wondering whether or not she lays awake at night thinking “Geez! do I have to do everything myself?!”. I don’t wonder about it any longer. She’s a scholar of media and marketing and managing/manipulating the message, so it fits fairly well with all that’s been happening (and NOT happening) – and it fits superbly with how our handbrake senior public servants now operate.
      It’s actually WORSE than the incrementalism and supposed pragmatism that characterised H1 and H2’s government.
      Sad shit really. The chance in a lifetime squandered

  4. The joint gong shows at Auckland University and conversion therapy haven’t been borne out in these numbers yet. Nor has the theatrics of the pacific apology. This is all going down like cold sick in a flask in suburbia (which I live in). The cult of (little) Aotearoa is showing real signs of diminishing and we still have the joint issues of covid opening and hyperinflation to consider into the next 18 months.

    IF numbers in the UK and Europe continue to trend where covid mortality is less than a 3rd of a percent for those are vaccinated then the game is up. Back to normality for the elite, the bureaucrats and the plethora of “health” professionals will be forced back whence they came from. At which stage focus goes on traditional issues such as the economy, infrastructure, law and order and health which have all been ignored as the Blairite went all in on covid.

    P.S. There is no adults in the Blairites office – just comms “experts”, spin doctors and the woke

  5. “…most Kiwis under 50 know enough about the injustices of our past that they don’t see co-governance as separatism.”

    While I’d agree with much of your overall summation, I think you’re wilfully missing the point there (Chris Trotter & ACT don’t). Conflating treaty grievance settlement processes with co-governance is a cheap shot that ignores the fundamental democratic principles at stake.

    ACT Party Principle (a)
    All people should be equal before the law as guaranteed in Article III of the Treaty of Waitangi, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, religion or political belief.

    ACT Party Policy
    Remove the Māori seats. The seats are an anachronism and offensive to the principle of equal citizenship. Māori New Zealanders have shown they can be elected to Parliament in general electorates or on party lists without assistance.

    • I agree, Robbie. The intense suspicion and outrage many NZers have for the “soft coup” that is happening under our noses with respect to Maori co-governance is being masked by the fact that anyone who speaks out about it is instantly branded a racist.
      Even Phil Goff, in discussing the Three Waters reforms, won’t say out loud what is really troubling him. When he says: “Control over those assets, and our ability to ensure that Aucklanders’ needs are put first, is undermined by the reform, which proposes that Auckland Council could have less than 40 per cent of the representation in the governance of the new entity” he’s talking about the fact half the seats on the governing bodies are going to be held by iwi that represent a small minority of the population. The other 85 per cent of the nation — Pakeha, Chinese, Indians etc — get the same representation as iwi.
      This is a smouldering fire that is leaping into flames.
      When you say, correctly, Martyn that Labour has suffered a 9-point drop, most people don’t understand that in percentage terms — ie from 52.7%-43% — it is actually a fall of 18 per cent.
      Losing nearly 20 per cent of your support between polls sure focuses the mind. No wonder Robertson is backing away from the deeply unpopular cycle bridge at high speed!
      Wait until the fact the new Maori Health Authority will have a veto over the plans for the rest of us — and watch for a further dramatic drop.

    • Maybe there is an opportunity for NZ First to make some ground, I see they are back on the score board with 3.5%, this indicates they may get over 5% in the 2023 General Election ?

    • RobbieWgtn – Of course co-governance is separatism – and it is also hopelessly impractical, not wanted by many (busy ) Maori, and it would require constitutional changes which aren’t going to happen.

  6. The lack of definite planning is most likely related to the advent of Covid-19 and the impact it is having in other parts of the world and how this will eventually be overcome. Given there is no Covid in the community NZ is uniquely fortunate that we can keep the beast at bay at MIQ, however, around the world the response to Covid has been much less spectacular than NZ and at some point we will need to make decisions on how to open the borders – probably once we have enough people vaccinated here. The unpredictability of how this will unfold is making planning at the government level challenging simply because how the rest of the world copes with Covid will impact on how we come out of it – and our government has no control over this.

  7. Labour have squandered a once in a generation majority MMP Govt because of two things–which the Labour Party and Labour Caucus are not ideologically or organisationally equipped to handle…
    1. Coming up 40 years of neo liberal hegemony (thanks Roger’n’Ruth) with penetration of public infrastructure by private capital–contracting out, managerialism, fifth columnists at senior public service level etc.
    2. Failure to deal decisively with housing and poverty (in contrast Employing class aid during COVID was acted on decisively and at speed)

    This majority Govt should have put state houses and apartments and emergency and tiny houses for homeless, on a “war footing” with a modular mega build. There are NZ and Euro/Chinese solutions. Urgent non degree training programmes for rapid implementation. Solving supply would have a heavy effect on housing demand and the finance capital market element of it that has divided this country into owners and renters.

    WINZ/MSD is punitive and rotten as are other departments–pay a basic income to all citizens via IRD and be done with it. We still have some of the freest in and out flows of capital in the world, the banks and other corporates export their profits relentlessly. Capital needs to be challenged decisively with a national shipping line set up, electricity generation and supply put in full public ownership and so on.

    Has Labour really dropped in this poll because of white male culture war, or just simply for not delivering quickly enough for working class needs? Dunno, but The Daily Blog is liked a blocked latrine (where are you Jacinda Fan?) with right wingers enjoying all the anti Govt., anti Green and anti left rhetoric.

      • Maybe Jacinda Fan isn’t a fan anymore? It’s getting harder to defend Labour’s performance & goals these days.

    • Has Labour really dropped in this poll

      On one or two issues in particular they have “lost the ball”.

      However it is difficult to bring this out in a clear, reasoned way, due to the high number of commenters who did NOT vote Labour or Green in the last election and will probably never do so. The problem is that whenever a serious topic comes up for discussion, where someone is trying in all seriousness to bring out the flaws in proposed legislation, and/or to show the inherent dangers, — serious discussion is lost in a torrent of Labour demonisation, or in a Jacinda hate fest. The actual topic is drowned out.

      • “Jacinda hate fest”
        I agree there is an unreasonable dislike of Ardern out in the NZ electorate .
        Personally I have never been a fan of Ardern and I have met her.
        I have always maintained she is insufficiently qualified to lead.
        She lacks experience knowledge and education.
        She is a spinmeister and devoid of substance.
        It is only fitting that the clusterfuck that is the Hate speech legislation should see her kicked to the curb.
        It is the perfect example of her duplicity, numerous inadequacies and shallow intellect and it twill be her epitaph.
        I did not vote Labour this time or last because she and Robertson and Little shafted Cunliffe. An infinitely more intelligent and capable leader.

        • Well said Shona. As for bringing legislation flaws out in a clear and reasoned way? Or progressive thought? Go on Kheala, the floor is yours.

          • There are many comments I have made to that effect, including over the last day.

            OTOH, what is it that YOU would like to see actually happen? What specific changes do you want to see?

        • Well said Shona. As for bringing legislation flaws out in a clear and reasoned way? Or progressive thought? Go on Kheala, the floor is yours.

          • I’m trying to say that we need to be able to follow discussions through, on the topic. If we want to see actual change, it begins with really thinking about those things that need changing, and how that can happen.

            Instead, at the moment, any discussion that gets underway often ends in shouts of “Jacindadunnit!” – whatever “it” is at that time. The actual topic is swamped, is lost in the hatefest. That is not the way to getting clearer thought on any particular subject.

            If we want solutions, then we need to look to those, to think about them. Regardless of which topic is being considered.

  8. You forgot to include the environment in the list of losers. With the Greens neutralised due to a focus on woke issues, that leaves no party with any power championing the environment

  9. Pretty much agree with everything here, but also think the rape laws are worrying the middle class too, husbands, parents with sons etc, because combined with 25% mental health breakdowns there is a lot that can go wrong with this. The beauty of the woke seems to be to take a valid stance aka many rapists are never bought to justice, but then somehow wokify it into human rights abuses in the name of justice with woke reasoning more akin to red guard thinking that human rights! Remember the principle tenant of justice is that you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

    Also you left off immigration, but that is what got Labour into power in the first place with NZ First. The voters booted the Natz out with the list MP seats sold for $100k and Labour promised 10,000 – 15,000 new residents max, but COL did a shifty and imported in hundreds of thousands of people on temporary permits, who then failed to leave and actually refuse to leave. So far NZ First took that punch, but the situation has not improved because every week a new sob story but sounding less sob story and more aggressive and woke legally orientated and entitled. That’s among the latest murders and criminal activity.

    From the professor who spent most of their career outside of NZ presumably not paying any NZ taxes, suing the minister of immigration because his love interest from China doesn’t get a visa fast enough while Kiwis can’t even get home, or foreign students that came to NZ, have children in NZ, then get more visas to work here and then suddenly they ‘feel’ they are Kiwis and thus will fight all the way to court for years to make sure that they get free care and citizenship for themselves, their future children and their autistic daughter and of course there’s always the grandparents, relatives ….check book please tax payers.

    If you follow these stories often after gaining residency the parents invariably get divorced, quit work, as they need to look after their disabled child… Autistic children become autistic adults and are generally very high needs (especially if diagnosed so early) so a lifetime of care will be required, we can’t even get our autistic people a dental appointment at present.

    FYI does the minister of immigration and NZ policy advisors realise that the foreign woke militant students and anybody on temp permits believe they are entitled to stay forever in NZ and be supported and they keep setting precedents to do that. Cos that’s a lot of people adding to our housing burden and the welfare list!

  11. Martyn. I feel sorry for you. This is genuine. I watched Davidson on The Nation and not a word about the environment. She doesn’t know anything about it. All she talked about was making Maori co-leadership mandatory. She is a disaster and probably the most ineffective official on our public payroll. And she is arrogantly cocky and confident in her ineptitude…she looooves herself being a woke socialist.
    Mate it’s the Greens own doing. They could easily change it. But they won’t. So sorry Martyn because a proper Green Party would be good to have.

    • The Kraut. “ Davison … is a disaster.”. Agree 100%. Improvement in Green polling is in spite of Davidson. I think her racist too – her ignorance of New Zealand history is disgraceful – environment creds zilch – dim.

    • Davidson’s behaviour is a classic demonstration of how our political parties have been taken over by identitarians and/or neoliberals. If the current “Labour” and “Greens” were honest they would change the names of their parties to reflect the real focus of their politics.

      But as for Davidson being the most ineffective official on our public payroll – that’s a big call. There’s so much competition for that award! Meng Foon? Paul Hunt? Jimmy Shaw? Gohlriz?

  12. If people aren’t happy here in little Covid free Aotearoa they can always bugger of to Covid ridden Australia and join the anti vaccine protest lockdown civil unrest protest movement. And please don’t cry to come home or asks for our taxes money to bail you out.

    • Yes remember the outcry from Hosking way back when..” we must be like Australia, Australia is doing this, Australia is doing so much better”.

      Probably why he is a laughing stock.

      • Dear Bert
        Is he Bert?…a laughing stock? Ok, maybe in your mind. But how would you know, listening to the Edge all day. Has he the lowest listenership in NZ? Maybe not? Maybe he has the highest? Oh look, he has! But yes, I admit you have a good point there, he’d be even more popular if he asked real cutting questions like: “Did dear little Neve smear gooey chocolate all over her cute face when she ate her birthday cake?”
        Bert sometimes you have more credibility if you acknowledge problem instead of blindly worshipping: the problem is your beloved Jacinda govt is not doing a great job at all, or are you going to disagree with every single blogger here including MB? Yeah yeah…John Key this, John Key that…the previous this, the previous that…we get it.

        • Kraut, anti Jacinda this, anti Jacinda that we get it ! Vinyl is back in and your a broken one. Hosking is popular with your own thinking, that’s where it starts or ends. Probably very popular with John Tamahere given Tamahere’s court case success against Hosking costing his company thousands and thousands of dollars which helped fund the Maori Party. Oh dear, oh look Hosking was wrong! He has the highest listeners of who, stale pale Krauts? How many radio stations does he compete with, one other?

          The John Key issue you just don’t get at all, never have never will…

          Hosking was far to close…

          https://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2015/08/sick-of-mike-hosking.html

          One day you will learn.

        • I’m still looking at your posts for any credibility, no seriously I am. Rather than asking questions about Neve( which I find imbecilic at best) have you done just one piece of research to see the achievements of this government. You come with an agenda Kraut,we get it, even your name represents narcissism.

    • That would get rid of the poor, the homeless & mentally ill, as I’m pretty sure they aren’t happy here, however I don’t think Australia will take them or care for them either.

      The people who would leave are the ones we can’t afford to lose. The ones that stay are the ones we can’t afford to keep.

        • A lot of people in New Zealand don’t seem to care about New Zealand, that’s why we are seeing a polluted & exploited environment, increasing poverty & inequality, homelessness, worker exploitation, eroded working conditions & pay rates, greater rates of drug dependency, gang related shootings, increasing petty crime & violence.

          Society is becoming increasingly stressed as less people feel able to care about their environment & people around them, as they struggle to get by in their daily lives. Things need to change considerably before they stand any chance of getting better, and that doesn’t seem to be the focus of the Government.

      • Yep, BTW loved your comment about why people can’t get workers in NZ. Bang on!

        “I need workers with a high level of skills (ie able to do the job I want done well without me having to pay for additional training / productivity loss), but I only want to pay the minimum possible (… and it’s a crap job/ short time/ difficult/ dangerous/ requires relocation to nowheresville), thus you will have difficulty finding “skilled” workers. You could offer more money, better conditions & additional training, then your problem would probably disappear, but that’s not how we roll in Kiwiland.

        If you are wanting someone with a specific skill set that requires many years of study plus true ability, such as a neuro-surgeon or real IT specialist, then the supply is very limited & you will have to work hard to attract a suitable candidate. That is a true skills shortage.”

        Essentially in NZ with the student to visas we are filling NZ with graduates with often questionable quickie ‘masters’ and no experience… about 10 years ago companies loved this type of candidate as they were cheap and looked good, they were not trained very well, but now it’s coming out that workers decisions were not so good, the work did not get done and we have buildings falling down, IT systems being compromised, laughable reports that have serious and stupid mistakes https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/124879183/councillors-call-for-budget-check-after-5m-swimming-pool-budget-bungle

        NZ is a mess!

        • Thanks, we appreciate your tireless work also. NZ is a mess, but it can be fixed, though not easily. We live in hope.

      • Do you seriously believe anyone would leave to go to a covid ravaged country and play Russian roulette. Why would anyone go to a country where many states are in lockdown just because of the hysterical rabid right wing factions political preferences? Labour still hold a strong lead mainly because of the poor homeless and mentally unwell, who see Labour as a much better bet than National or ACT. Proof of that is Seymours arrogant dismissal of the Human Rights Commission, yet pro guns.

        • You forgot us Maori (for why Labour still hold a strong lead) however we are over represented in the poor, homeless and mentally ill Bert.

        • I know 2 people who left for OZ and 1 person who left for the UK for work. Sadly many will not tolerate NZ wages from 20 years ago and prepared to brave Covid for economic reasons. One of the people going to OZ was a migrant turned NZ citizen. It’s happening.

          The unemployed stay in NZ and many workers including migrants are leaving NZ for work. For a start OZ employers value their companies enough to get off their arses and recruit and offer incentives to work there, NZ employers just whine to government to open the borders and let cheap workers come in, willy nilly because they will NEVER and deeply resent paying market rates and would prefer to close their businesses before that happens aka The French Cafe owner who has 3 restaurants and 50+ staff but decides he wants 65+ staff and announces via the media he is closing ALL of his restaurants for weeks. Anyway sounds like more scamming (paying for job perhaps, who knows) or maybe a deeply stupid business person, having a media meltdown and stamping his feet. Which the woke lap up – the new normal of dysfunctional, unproductive NZ business – against OZ organising recruiters, offering incentive, 50% more salary!

        • If I wanted a $50k pay rise I’d go back (except I have commitments here so can’t leave), the risk of COVID in rural Queensland is low, the climate warm but the gun laws are completely screwed over there (you need a firearms licence for toys unless you’re a member of an organised crime syndicate then you can have a sub machine gun).

          There is a lot more hope & optimism in Australia, better pay & conditions too, and if you kill 29 people in mine, senior management are going to jail.

          • I agree Business inc doesn’t encourage or incentivise employees in N.Z. Their top priority is profit before people. Would I go to Australia based on a better salary, not a chance. N.Z is a safer country, wonderful scenery and hope and optimism aplenty( dependent on your negatively levels).

            • Australia is pretty safe, has amazing scenery & wildlife too. In the past 11 years my home town has lost over 230 lives due to natural disasters & terrorism. We’ve had earthquakes, wildfires, floods, & terrorist attacks. Personally, we’re still waiting for earthquake repairs to be done, we had armed drug dealers a few doors down & the Police fired around 35 rounds in a shoot out about 200m from our home, using our local Resident’s Association meeting as a back stop, and we live in a quite neighbourhood. Safe as? It all depends on how you look at it.

  13. Meanwhile the planet burns like never before, and ALL political parties have policies focused on making matters worse faster.

    Not just fires, of course, but further rounds of unprecedented flooding.

    And the worst house affordability since migrants were proved with tents instead of houses in the 1860s.

    And if that were not enough to shake the faith of the faithful, the globalised economic system is on its last legs, with incipient inflation morphing into 1980s-style runaway, as a consequence of the ineptitude and fraud that have characterised politics for decades.

    It all gets interestinger and interestinger.

  14. I will say this. Hopeless as Labour are regarding housing and health (the two are almost mutual), their response to Covid has been very good. We know National/ACT would have done what the UK did.

    Not perfect but 8 out of 10 and many owe their lives and health to that response.

      • COVID response is one thing I will not criticise the PM and Labour for!–apart from some of the detail with the high trust model for employer bailouts–but never mind, thousands of lives have been saved to this point.

  15. “This wasn’t the Farmers protesting because men in Ute’s don’t vote Labour.”

    A. Unlike flash, flaky townies, farmers actually need Ute’s. We’d love a fucking real estate agents Bentley but they keep getting bellied in winters muds. And you want to front up to my mother and allude to her that all farmers are ‘men’? She’d knock you on your fat arse!
    B. I’m a farmer and I’ve always voted labour as has my family. SO WHY THE FUCK do you perpetuate that zany, dangerous, generalising myth?
    C. Why THE FUCK are you constantly down on farmers? They’re the ones who feed you, clothe you and earn the foreign exchange you need to spend on Latte’s and yet you dump, like brownlee with the shits, on us.
    D. You’re surely not dumb @ MB? Or? You’re the deepest deep state Machiavellian Confederate AO/NZ’s ever, never seen? You bite the hand that feeds you and by doing so you sabotage our chances of bringing our primary industry over from the dark side Natzo’s. Your deliberate attempts to demonise and segregate townspeople from country people is deeply worrying to me. A frankly rare someone like me comes here and writes his best to preach a new thinking-vector to achieve the opposite and you keep fucking that up.
    Why??
    If farmers and their down ( Income) stream town friends got together against the blatant greed of the natzo’s and their scamming billionaire cronies that’d be the end of the natzo’s.
    And yet you and other bloggers here steadfastly keep trying to derail that ?
    Why?

    • Nobody ever wants to feel like they owe someone something. But everyone in New Zealand with a pleasant life in town knows in their bones what they owe the NZ farmer who gets up at 5 or 4 every morning to milk the cows, or works 17 hour days for a fortnight mustering the ewes with lambs at foot for shearing and returning each mob separately with their lambs to their original paddock so they can all find each other. Another group that enjoys this well earned opprobrium are fishermen. There’s nothing you can do to change this reaction, it’s just human nature.
      D J S

      • Yup, farmers an fishery’s need our support. Both living quite austere lives to bring us goods, foodstuffs and the like. All those doughty lads out there when the seas rocking and reeling,… my sons friend was in a large vessel, gutting fish during storms near the Antarctic area for weeks at a time.

  16. Absent a GENUINE left wing party that has a decent chance of getting into Parliament, L.I.N.O will get enough real left wing voters voting for them, such that they ‘just get’ into power.
    If like the (extreme) Right wing (in NZ) there were other party options, then L.I.N.O would be doing the same as Natz are. i.e. becoming irrelevant.
    Where is the real left wing option in NZ?
    Are there any MP’s in Labour with a conscience who’ll leave and set up a GENUINE left wing party? Or are they all too dumb, incompetent or just plain corrupt and happily accepting their pay for doing nothing?

  17. I have completely hopped off the Ardern train. To me she is a female John Key and her government is full of incompetent, inept out of there depth morons. We are all enjoying Nationals current demise, but trust me when they get their shit together and are lead by someone semi electable, we are stuffed. Never before has so much been promised, hoped for, but failed to be delivered. The sycophancy around Ardern from many looks completely laughable right now. She is not some savior or political genius in the ilk of Savage. She’s nothing more than a semi pretty face who says the right things. We were expecting transformation and real change, what we got was incompetence, empty promises, an entrenchment of neoliberalism and a certainty of political oblivion in the short to medium term once the halo wears off. All of you who pray at the alter of Ardern are part of the problem. She doesn’t deliver anything better, because you don’t hold her feet to the fire until she does. Wake the hell up!

    • hopped off the Ardern train

      If you can refer us to even ONE comment ever that you have made showing you to be ON such a ‘train’??
      It could be on any site, not just on TDB.
      If not, Mr Boyle, then you are lying by suggesting that you once were there.

      • Look at my comments after the 2017 election. In fact don’t, I could care less what you think. You just continue to be her number one fangirl, I’m sure it’s working out great for you…

        • Mick, I had read comments by you from time to time over a few years and they had seemed to be the other way around. However I get now that you are not just another agitator troll, and I apologise.

          (It is not a person’s opinions that cause a problem, it is someone’s efforts to sabotage a discussion.)

    • Jacinda had a once in a generation mandate to unilaterally deliver real change to the real things that matter most to real people (eg. Housing, Health, Jobs, Education, Crime). Instead of building competence in these core functions of good government we have had this total sideshow of implementing the woke hysteria and racial separatist agendas because she & Labour have been captured by the squeaky wheels they should be ignoring. Covid management to keep NZdrs safe was only as good & as complicated as locking down the border on our islands 4000kms away from the nearest neighbour & even that simple task has been consistently mismanaged & compromised throughout the last year.

      Her legacy will be filed under bad joke when she leaves for the UN where she’ll fit right in.

      • You’re correct, but as long as people like Kheala above continue to wear their covid masks over their eyes not their mouths, this is what will continue to happen. When you accept incompetence, there’s no point crying later because you didn’t get the transformation you were promised.

    • Why would you expect ‘real change’ from an opposition whom did nothing for 9 years and couldn’t hold down a leader?

  18. Labour aren’t better because we don’t demand that they are. What they need is a few really shit poll results and for Jacinda to realize she isn’t that great. Will that happen? no. A two to three term Labour government, with at least one of those terms with a super majority. And what do they do, do they fight against neoliberalism or structurally change NZ for the better? No, they blow it completely, which will have ramifications for the left for decades. Well done them.

  20. ‘The average value of New Zealand homes is now $922,421, up 5.9% over the last three months’

    https://www.interest.co.nz/property/111586/average-value-homes-country-now-922421-59-last-three-months

    Houses are still affordable for first-time-buyers in Buller. Almost anywhere else in NZ , not so.

    When this ‘Zeppelin’ of a housing market catches fire and blows up, it will be the second biggest disaster in NZ history, surpassed only by the Planetary Meltdown that LINO refuse to take seriously.

    Does LINO take ANYTHING seriously? -other than churning out propaganda!!!

    Presumably the number of kids with rotting teeth needing urgent attention has increased in line with house prices.

    Anyone with a brain will be bracing for impact.

  23. Martyn, you really motivated and mobilised the 28%’er tory bunch with your pro-NACT commentary – 60 comments in just over 12 hours?????. Ive witnessed many govts from 1965 and this labour govt has shown that it has a leader and the expertise to deal with a major pandemic that makes us the safest and most free country in the world. The john key govt was the most corrupt and he didnt care about the poor, homeless, unemployed, Maori, PI’s, Asians, indians or the lower socio-economic demographics. Remember his rock star economy created by the property speculators, it made many a NZer a millionaire but was a lose/lose for most NZers. So my right-wing friends, rejoice and here is to Jacinda an team..

  26. Mr Adams your argument is flawed playing the divide and conquer card by using Chinese and Indians. When NZers move overseas to live do they have a say in these matters hell many NZers can’t even get citizenship in Australia despite living there and paying taxes for many years some have come home with their tail between their legs.

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