1 Year of Labour in power and what do ya get? Another year older and deeper in debt!

44
1982

So it’s been one year since Labour won an unprecedented MMP majority (as I predicted) and what did we get?

Another year older and deeper in debt.

Covid has exacerbated poverty, inequality, housing and social collapse.

Labour are still an accidental Government  trying to ascertain an ideology baptized in fire.

The Party who dismantled the State under Rogernomics is now desperately trying to rebuild it to function under an avalanche of crises.

There are 3 lenses to look at Labour from over the last year – Policy, Leadership and Covid.

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Policy:

Labour didn’t expect to win 2017 and they didn’t expect to win an MMP majority in 2020 so they had no reform agenda to force the Public Service to act in the interests of citizens and not themselves.

Grant Robertson’s Central Wellington wonksters however had other plans.

The policy wonks saw an opportunity to reform policy and expand the State that way rather than take cattle prods to the eyeballs of their Wellington bureaucrat comrades.

The Wellington Central Wonksters allowed their Wellington bureaucrat brethren to keep their fiefdoms while expanding the State by building a bigger kingdom.

And so it has come to pass:

  • 3 waters – will take all local water for the glory of the State!
  • Radical Public Health Authority – goodbye failing DHBs
  • Universal Union Membership – watch as the capitalists scream
  • RMA reform – watch as the capitalists scream more

There isn’t any beauty in the Frankenstein State monolith Labour’s wonk team have welded together, but sweet Jesus it’s huge.

The danger is the wonksters for a bigger State won’t limit themselves to policy and will also create a Big Sister State that criminalizes speech and stomps on civil liberties to punish breaches of woke dogma.

The Wellington bureaucrats will allow this policy reform to pass as it doesn’t impinge on their glass palaces but at some stage the Left have to urgently reform the neoliberal welfare system or allow these unelected bureaucrats to continue to call the shots.

Dave Dobbyn’s ‘NeoMarxism’ saves Labour

Leadership:

The left love Michael Joseph Savage. Every Labour MP who wishes to push their left wing credentials have photos of him hanging in every electorate office and Minister’s room.

Savage is lauded as the creator of the welfare state in the wake of the Great Depression.

He was swamped when he went into public as NZers gushed over how he had saved them all.

The most hilarious truth, provided by insights from John A Lee who served in Savage’s Cabinet and was the anti-Phil Twyford of his day, (in that he actually built Houses) paints a very different picture from the mythology the left have given Savage .

The truth is that Savage was incredibly centrist and not a radical at all. Backed up by the neoliberal Walter Nash and conservative manipulator Peter Fraser, Savage did all he could to stop transformative change, it was actually Savage’s Caucus who forced his hand repeatedly to be transformative.

The exact same dynamics are at play inside Jacinda’s Labour Government.

When there is a crisis, the Prime Minister shines, but when it comes to domestic policy, she is super cautious to the point of being timid.

Her decision to rule out revoking a racist drug law simply because 50.7% want to continue supporting the racist drug law is an example of this timidness.

Her decision to rule out a capital gains tax, a wealth tax and refusal to increase benefits are also evidence of it.

The counter argument is that she needs to hold the centre, but if you aren’t going to be transformative with an outright majority, when the hell are you going to be transformative?

The reality is there won’t be transformative change unless we the people demand it, or if the Caucus demands it, or if a crisis demands it.

Just as it was with Michael Joseph Savage.

 

Covid:

I think Jacinda has done an incredible job navigating us through this nightmare and the lack of gratitude and hate and crazy conspiracy madness vomited on her is an indictment on us as a fractured social media crazed culture of resentment, not on her.

Covid deaths per population:

US 1 in 451
Italy 1 in 457
UK 1 in 479
Spain 1 in 540
France 1 in 566
Austria 1 in 789
Germany 1 in 874
Turkey 1 in 1, 211
Canada 1 in 1, 305
India 1 in 3, 008
Australia 1 in 15, 494
New Zealand 1 in 175, 607

But sure let’s shit on Jacinda’s response!

If Jacinda liberates NZ from our economic straightjacket while avoiding a mass public health emergency, voters will gleefully and gratefully forgive her.

 

Conclusion:

They have big radical ideas when it comes to Worker rights, water and public health but not enough Cabinet talent to implement more of that radical thinking in the traditional areas of housing, welfare and poverty.

Jacinda must cut away the dead wood in her Cabinet and advance talented MPs hungry for real reform.

You simply can not win 50% in MMP and not use that power.

That would be a tragedy for Labour and criminal neglect to those in NZ living at the bottom.

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44 COMMENTS

  1. An excellent summary Martyn. So much truth in what you say. Pity you won’t see that huge mandate result in anything transformative because I don’t think Labour will survive the next election. I really don’t and here’s why: We are all so over Covid and the state control that comes with it and the huge handbrake applied to the economy. We will be reminded of the piss poor 0performance of Jacinda’s govt in all other areas. And that paints a shocking picture. As a small example, Jacinda will have lost every single hairdressers vote for sure. And they talk a lot. And she will lose most of Auckland. Game over.

    • So NZ will ,as John Clarke was want to say “take a giant leap backwards” at the next election ?
      Not with Judith at the helm. To put it kindly, she is poison.

      • GB
        Of course she is poison. I sadi it a 100 times on this forum. That’s why she won’t be leading National into the election. Don’t get your hopes up, Labour is toast, the Greens are toast. They will not one single vote from ‘waywards National voters’ like they did at the last election.

    • So true…Apart from the deep red seats within Auckland, Labour will be chased out of Auckland in the 2023 elections…
      Its’ not the anti-vaxx group that will be the problem for Labour, it will be ordinary Kiwis who do not like being manipulated by Jacinda from announcements…

      • Lol. Normies be forcasting Jacinda’s imminent doom since becoming deputy leader and she’s consistently out performed those predictions so there’s something else going on that you either don’t want to say, or just plain old don’t know.

        • Let us know please what Jacinda from announcements secret sauce is, because from here, in South Auckland, it looks like her secret sauce is paying for soft media interviews, via the BS Community Journalism Fund –that, by the way Local Community News outlets cannot access, that do not scrutinise her too closely…I am missing sometime?

    • You might be right about the hairdressers, Kraut, but I don’t think that you are right about the rest of Auckland. Dissent in Auckland is noisy, but probably not as widespread as you think. Of course events between now and the next election could make all predictions wrong.

  2. Bring back NZF minus Winston, they have some good policy and good people, however the Party gets mired in stupid controversy and shit fights, taking their eye of the ball. Winston loves a good scrap however we need to get past that and start implementing good policy. Winston is actually better in Opposition.

    Bringing in thousands of Asian House Farmers without building the necessary Infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and transport links is mindless, we can not build enough houses for the 60,000-70,000 new immigrants let alone look after our own people first.

  3. Bring back NZF minus Winston, they have some good policy and good people, however the Party gets mired in stupid controversy and shit fights, taking their eye of the ball. Winston loves a good scrap however we need to get past that and start implementing good policy. Winston is actually better in Opposition.

    Bringing in thousands of Asian House Farmers without building the necessary Infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and transport links is mindless, we can not build enough houses for the 60,000-70,000 new immigrants let alone look after our own people first.

  4. We are grateful for Labour for Covid, as they muddled along and got most of it right. The problem is that their love of neoliberalism along with the Greens love of Woke (and cross support for both) has left our public health service in a terrible state. In spite of the disaster of opening the borders last time without MIQ to OZ and very quickly they got Delta.

    MIQ helps to stem NZ’s growing illegal subculture of drugs, people trafficking and visa frauds and thus many people are now better off with the border shut! Hense Labours popularity.

    Sadly they are constantly lobbied by the woke and Natz, so have decided to allow another 165,000 new residents.

    That will be a sweet fuck you, to those without housing and to the public health system and NZ social systems in general.

    Meanwhile, it’s all good for some!

    Liquor store owners designed mansion while company probed
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/119602924/liquor-store-owners-planned-mansion-while-company-probed

    Court orders forfeiture of $42.85 million in alleged money laundering case
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/83450345/court-orders-forfeiture-of-4285-million-in-alleged-money-laundering-case

    More jobs from foreign rich listers mooooving to NZ, not jobs for Kiwis silly!

    “Our plan to expand the veggie operation and get the animals off basically sort of got derailed by the pandemic, because we needed a lot more labour for the veggie operation than we do to run the stock, and our access to labour from the Solomon Islands or Philippines and things like that basically just went away.
    https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018791897/james-cameron-explains-dairy-cows-on-wairarapa-farm

    Buyer tries to stop US billionaire Peter Thiel selling luxury Queenstown home to rival purchaser
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/buyer-tries-to-stop-us-billionaire-peter-thiel-selling-luxury-queenstown-home-to-rival-purchaser/YOAYUC6Y2WZOFWGU6DAX7LV5TA/

    Russian billionaire Mikhail Khimich skips court on drink-driving related charges
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/114186132/russian-billionaire-mikhail-khimich-skips-court-on-drinkdriving-related-charges

    Ex-All Black Ali Williams, Zuru Toys’ Anna Mowbray demolish 12-year-old Auckland home for 3-level, 6-bedroom replacement
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ex-all-black-ali-williams-zuru-toys-anna-mowbray-demolish-12-year-old-auckland-home-for-3-level-6-bedroom-replacement/ANGLKIASBWGA4VTPXKMKUWSU3I/

    Some might feel that it’s first world problems not being able to find a decent 24 million dollar mansion so you have to demolish and start your new McMansion from scratch, when your staff are being bought into NZ on minimum wages and subsidised by WFF wages and accomodation subsidies, but it’s a real issue in NZ!!!

    We need more construction workers and more farm hands for the mansion owners! 165,000 of them, next year!

    Not doctors, silly! We have less doctors, but 165,000 more NZ residents. It’s ‘new maths’ to solve first world NZ problems being bought to government.

    • saveNZ. The Public Health Service has no problem finding funding for woke projects. Capital Coast Health
      provides a free tax payer funded speech therapy service at Wellington Hospital for transgendering males to learn how to speak like women, men with no more impediments than anybody else.

      But the Hutt physiotherapy service for wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis patients/clients/customers was disbanded apparently for lack of funding, and these physically crippled folk banished back to the social isolation of the suburban wilderness and I daresay, muscular atrophy, pain, whatever.

      Waste of time even querying the prioritising here when we all know that gender issues are more flavoursome than boring cripples stuck in wheelchairs, and that some glib politician may even believe their own pr bilge if asked for a please explain.

  5. “The banks remain in charge.
    Situation normal.
    Get back to your slave job & consume on weekends.
    That is all.”

  6. Genuine question – what other talent is there? Surely these people should have been promoted already?

    As for Jacinda being able to liberate NZ from our economic straightjacket while avoiding a mass catastrophe, well that’s not going to happen. It’s clear that we have so far been spared the fatalities that other countries have tragically suffered however I suspect that we will be paying the bill for this so called escape for many, many years to come.

    When all is said and done, the numbers tallied up I do wonder who will actually be better off. Sadly, I think NZ is looking down the barrel at years of austerity, cuts to services and a future less prosperous than many others who took a different path.

    Interest rates will soon rise and those repayments that we are all on the hook for will need to be made after all, we all have to pay the ferryman in the end.

    So, what will be Jacinda and Grant’s legacy? Out of control house prices, 100,000 living in motels, increased child poverty and no real change other than centralised behemoths serving no one but themselves and their Wellington masters. Oh, and masses and masses of debt.

    So yes, whilst we have very low rates of mortality today we will pay for it in the end as every extra dollar required to pay down the interest let alone the principal is a dollar we can’t spend on health, education, nurses wages, etc.

  7. Oh boy, can we please stop celebrating the winning of the war, when we have barely began fighting.
    As for her 1st year of her Second Term, as inspirational and useless as the previous 3 years of her first term.
    Housing crisis – Some day some day house prices will fall to make a difference, but hey that wont be anytime soon.
    Homeless crisis – well the Taxpayer will pay for slum rooms in run down motels to keep the rubble out of the mind and the sight of the nice and polite class of pundits, journalists, opinionators and politicians into towns where the aforementioned only go to for weekends to ride a bike, hoon a boat down a river and have own a batch mansion.
    Hunger – yes, Martyn, there is much hunger in NZ, and the hungry can hope for a charity food parcel, or NZD 5 – with a grand anouncement too – otherwise would anyone know that they are doing something – next year in April, cause that is Labour. The need is today, but we are doing something for next year. Vote 2023.
    Schooling – a farce for many who try to find a hotspot in the wilderness and have the kids online learn from a car. If they have the tools for online learning. IF the kids don’t leave school to work to make money to help the family that has lost jobs.
    Medical Care – don’t get sick with anything not Covid related. Chance are like many of us, you won’t be able to see the specialists that only settle in Auckland, chances are you won’t be able to get the surgeries that are only done in Auckland, never mind the underpaid, understaffed and under resourced nurses. Lets hold another fundraiser for ICU beds for adults and children alike, cause dear Jacinda and her Person of Helath Mr. Little ain’t gonna be paying for it. Well Grant Robertson prolly can’t see the reason to set a budget for such trivial matters. IF one is a MP one will get healthcare, without waiting lines and times, and with all the bells n whistles that our system can provide. Just you, You better not get ill.
    Infrastructure – a bibaprtisan bullshittery since ages ago. We don’t build roads, we will potholes, ever six month, bring on these Logging trucks, and those MIlk trucks, cause that is all that is left of Export NZ.

    And don’t pretend that this crew is not in its Second term. Year 4 of the reign of Labour and dear Jacinda. She has been a ‘leader’ since 2017.

    As for the future, the best that anyone can hope in this country is that L and G must go into a coalition with a third party, lest they be the same washed out and useless at anything team we got right now. Ditto for N and A. In fact that is the sad reality in NZ, that the 4 parties that make up the old two party system are still as fucking useless as they were under FPP.

    • Correct. To pretend that Labour hasn’t been in charge for four years because of of big bad Winston, yet scream “9 years of neglect!” when National required a coalition for all of their 9 years is counterintuitive.

      You can’t have it both ways.

      If she really wanted a CGT she could have called Winston’s bluff, I mean, where was Winston going to go? He had burnt his National bridge (hehe no pun intended), so was he going to force a new election? He was toast because he already shown his hand on where he had set up his tent with…or maybe she really didn’t want it herself and staying in power was far more important. Which makes her just any other politician.

      • “You can’t have it both ways.”
        Therein lays the problem.
        That is exactly what Labour in its current form has been trying to do – bless their trendy little cotton socks.
        Relying on its heritage and hERstory to advance an agenda (STILL trying to advance an agenda) that’s utterly at odds with what it now supposedly stands for. Give me a hand someone (@Bert maybe…..someone, anyone). I’ve bin thunking that it’s all rather gorgeous in this space going forward.
        Give it a while though if you’re intending to reply (not holding my breath) because I’m busy listening to the Congentital Hipster and his guests on The Panel

  8. Well she certainly won’t get the protesters votes judging by the quality of protesters, they don’t look capable of filing a vote anyway, especially those holding MAGA flags.
    Her biggest mistake was to allow the majority to influence the cannabis referendum. All she needed to do was to ignore the democratic process of the referendum , as Key did selling off our assets. Key said that his government would ignore the referendum results as the 2011 general election gave them a mandate for the sell -off, even though the referendum showed a two to one majority against the proposed asset sales.
    The majority of people vaccinated, 90%, will remember the leadership that helped keep them alive.

  9. Cue Bert’s ‘whataboutisms’….”would be worse under National!”
    Then again he does tend to miss posting on the Ardern/Labour failure threads.

  10. Labour haven’t realised that building slum housing is attracting the world’s poor and unskilled to NZ.
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-council-releases-images-of-labour-and-nationals-intensification-plans/BLXZENE2OIC6NUBI6JGHXZLZVI/

    They are not addressing why NZ can’t retain smart workers and professionals but are creating Ponzi’s around certain industries easy to fake or gain skills in, that Kiwis can easily be trained into, very quickly.

    So we have slum housing, in the middle of nowhere, with not enough hospitals, transport, schools, prisons, justice systems, police, that the councils then are sued over with remedial work with the ratepayers paying for it, so that the world’s chefs, takeaway owners, farm hands, construction labourers and support workers (on ghost and minimum wages for the most part once the get the paper work for residency) can move to NZ to partake in our extensive welfare system.

    Not sure what NZ is gaining as a country? More crime, more poverty, less ability to retain professional people long term here?

    Work visa numbers soar
    https://croakingcassandra.com/2018/03/31/work-visa-numbers-soar/

    Who has been getting residence visas?
    https://croakingcassandra.com/2017/06/29/who-has-been-getting-residence-visas/

    Looking at this suggests that for 860 chefs, 675 retail managers, 598 cafe managers, 213 bakers, there are 520 aged nurses and he makes the point that (aka we need the extra nurses due to the amount of extra people coming into NZ and to stagnate NZ wages, leading to more shortages aka less people stay in NZ in nursing and less people want to train into that profession here.

    “The large numbers of aged care nurses (and there are many more, and aged care workers, in the work visa numbers) stands in striking contrast to the recent pay equity settlement. In that settlement, the government concluded that employees in the sector were so badly paid that a direct government intervention was needed to drive up the wages. I don’t usually focus much on the arguments about whether immigration lowers wages – my focus is more on overall economic performance – and I’m not (at all) a fan of “pay equity” interventions, but it is hard to look at these two things and not conclude that there is a certain incoherence about policy. Had fewer aged care workers from abroad been granted visas, it seems likely that market wages in that sector would have been rather higher.”

    This also seems in contrast for a couple of decades, parent visas made up a pretty large chunk – around 10 per cent – of total residence visas issued. From 1997/98 to 2015/16, 75000 parent visas were issued.
    https://croakingcassandra.com/2019/10/14/reopening-parent-visas/

    “And Parent visas weren’t the only such questionable streams, although it was the largest. Over the same period, for example, almost 20000 people got residence under “sibling and adult child” provisions.”

    Needing more foreign teachers for the increasing numbers of children from overseas becoming resident in NZ, reducing wages and conditions so locals don’t enter those professions in NZ, and the Ponzi continues…

    https://croakingcassandra.com/2018/08/30/work-visas-for-shop-managers/

    https://croakingcassandra.com/2015/06/23/immigration-policy-106-per-cent-of-net-new-housing-demand/

    https://croakingcassandra.com/2021/06/18/immigration-policy-for-new-zealand-post-covid/

  11. Also why the government are obsessed with migrant workers and bringing 165,000 new migrants to NZ next year, things seem to be going downhill in society, FAST! So many kidnappings, brutal beatings, intimidation, is becoming part of NZ ‘the hunger games’ life. Just a couple of headlines from the last few days about life in NZ.

    Rotorua Black Power women inflict brutal attack over methamphetamine debt
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/rotorua-black-power-women-inflict-brutal-attack-over-methamphetamine-debt/QGBRP27AHFPSWDPEGXKATEHAOU/

    Dunedin bakery owner fined after underpaying workers, threatening bodily harm
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/dunedin-bakery-owner-fined-after-underpaying-workers-threatening-bodily-harm/ZPZBXDHPKJAHTC7GT2C4OHKNVM/

    Jail over plot to steal friend’s car
    https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/crime/jail-over-plot-steal-friends-car

  12. “1 Year of Labour in power and what do ya get?”
    Another year without hideous National and odious Collins at the very least.
    I also have an issue with common parlance when writing about politics. I think certain parlance can skew the narrative.
    For example: “…Labour in power…”
    Labour like all the other parties are never ‘in power’ , we are.
    We, the people are the power. Not a clump of greedy sociopathic, narcissistic, egotistical ares holes, no matter what label they choose for themselves to best sell us, them.
    It is we, the us, who are in literal power. Not them. We’d do well to remember that, and to become familiar with the notion of it.
    A clue to what I mean is the deregulation of the unions at the dawn of roger douglas’s war on societal responsibility to each other. He ( Or is he an it ) neutered that most likely source of resistance to his neoliberal capitalist coup de tante by ‘individualising’ members of AO/NZ’s work force.
    It worked! We’re fucked and he and his mates are now old and dying, one would hope, but with all our money.
    Adern and her political party called Labour are not ‘in power’. They’re contractors, like painters and paper hangers or builders etc.
    What’s happened here is that the painters and paper hangers and builders have turned up and decided unilaterally to build then paint an entirely different house, in an entirely different neighbourhood in an entirely different part of the country and fuck us all if we don’t like it now give us some money, suckers?

  13. Yep. You can never trust an Ozzie, Savage, to not steal a good idea. J. A Lee was a maverick, detested by Savage until Lee went rogue and started building houses to the point it became successful and then Savage stole his thunder! Typical Ozzie!

    Some of those paupers houses Lee built in his constituency Grey Lynn go for no less than $3.5m+

    • Oh, PS. “If Jacinda liberates NZ from our economic straightjacket while avoiding a mass public health emergency, voters will gleefully and gratefully forgive her.”

      The Rainmaker’ Ray Dalio says it’s going to ‘rain’ again shortly because the US government can not sustain inflation when it’s broke and has to borrow more money from the Fed to pay down its debt which is on a month to month debt ceiling relief programme.
      He reckons the Federal Bank will have no choice but to fire up the printing presses again and print QE into the next decade. J Keys warning was stolen from the ‘Rainmaker!’

    • Slight correction. The house is not selling for $3.5M . The house is worthless but sitting on a subdivideable section worth $3.5M. Happening everywhere in Auckland. Even Otara. The land is more valuable than the streucture that sits on it.

  14. Labour is like kids wanting a birthday party. They can make a strong case for the happening because they don’t expect to have to do much to achieve it. Labour will just will it onto the bureaucrats through some agency. They haven’t got a clue how to make things happen so that people’s needs are met, it’s all rhetoric.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyCCJ6B2WE Where is our wizard?

  15. I know nothing about how Labour works but it seems to me Little will keep his high role as she owes him for the leadership and he brings the union vote. Kelvin Davies is there to hold the Maori vote. Robinson has earnt his spot as he has supported Jacinda

  16. labour just do a more PR friendly form of prole management, and that’s what politics without ideology is, a corporation who’s business is prole management

    • Oh, and that was a Black Power patch laid on the coffin of Norman Kirks casket…interestingly to lay bare the truth, it was Kirks govt that implemented the original dawn raids. Not Muldoon,… make of that what you will.

  17. MWHAHAHAHAAAA!

    Waihopai spy domes to be dismantled, due to irrelevancehttps://www.stuff.co.nz › national › politics › waihopai-sp…
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126952320/waihopai-spy-domes-to-be-dismantled-due-to-irrelevance

    Dr. Carol Rosin in the disclosure Project
    https://youtu.be/b0A-tcuZ0kY?t=2

    ”And the next one will be asteroids, and then the final one,… will be aliens”

    Largest asteroid of the year about to pass Earth | Stuff.co.nzhttps://www.stuff.co.nz › science › largest-asteroid-of-the-

    ‘Potentially hazardous’ asteroid about to make pass close to …https://www.stuff.co.nz › national › potentially-hazardous…

    Now back down to earth,.. and covid. And the collapse of the global economy.

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