RICHARD PREBBLE reckons the Aussie election should be read as a harbinger of doom for the Labour Government. It will all be about the cost of living, Prebble says, and that is only going to get worse between now and election day. So, its ‘Game Over’ for Jacinda Ardern, says Prebs, just like it was for Scott Morrison a week ago.
Hmmm.
If Prebs’ analysis is correct, then the complexion of an incumbent government simply doesn’t matter anymore. Left or Right – it makes no difference. The highest rate of inflation in 40 years is bound to evict them from office. They’re gone-burger.
So, according to Prebble’s gospel, Boris Johnson and his Tories must be considered gone-burgers. After all, the UK inflation rate to April 2022 was a staggering 9 percent. That is actually a record for the statistical series going all the way back to 1989. Given the sheer awfulness of that inflation number, we should be rubbishing any prospect of the Conservatives being re-elected at the next UK general election, two years from now in 2024.
Oh, really? Leaving aside the obvious point that a hell of a lot can happen in two years, and ignoring the Tories’ 80-seat majority (that’s right – 80 effing seats!), the state of the parties in the latest round of the UK opinion polls shows the Conservatives an entirely competitive six percentage points behind the Labour Party.
If Boris Johnson can’t reclaim that ground from a constipated prat like Sir Keir Starmer then he’s not the tousled Teflon toff the Brits seem irreversibly programmed to forgive over and over and over again.
No, the Aussie election result wasn’t driven by the cost-of-living stats, it was driven by the widespread assessment of Australian voters that Scott Morrison was a boofhead – and a pretty sorry specimen of boofhead at that. They certainly weren’t all that impressed by the Labor leader Anthony Albanese – who, by outward appearances, had also been manufactured by Stepford Industries. It was just that the thought of another three years of Liberal-National boofheadism was just too much to bear. Painful though it may be for a Kiwi to admit it, Australians just aren’t that dumb.
Which pretty much puts the skids under Prebs’ vulgar Marxist analysis that everything is driven by economics. Most Kiwis know that the inflationary pressures pushing up their living costs are practically all sourced offshore. That being the case, there’s bugger-all Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson can do about the price of oil; or the Russian blockade of Odesa, Ukraine’s wheat exporting port on the Black Sea; or the disruption of Chinese supply-chains due to Omicron; or the ever more serious effects of Climate Change. No. When it comes to deciding who to vote for, Kiwis’ preferences will be driven by factors that have very little to do with Prebble’s dialectical-materialism.
Watching Jacinda Ardern’s performance on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, I was struck by just how extraordinarily good she can be when the wind is in her sails. While there’s no disputing that her confidence took a pummelling during the inevitable transition from lockdown to living with the Coronavirus, and that a downcast Jacinda Ardern is no bloody fun at all, there’s equally no disputing the fact that, as we have seen, even prime minister’s moods can be changed.
What may not be all that easy to change, however, is the growing perception that Christopher Luxon is just another tory boofhead, and that his National Party has long since crossed the line separating rational conservatism from the same sort of boofheadism that brought down the Liberal-National government of Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce. I mean Simeon Brown? Mark Mitchell? Are we really supposed to take these characters seriously?
And while we’re on the subject of ineptitude, who the hell was it who talked-up Nicola Willis as some sort of economic whizz-kid? Her recent performances as National’s shadow finance minister have been woeful. Pitted against Grant Robertson, she risks being exposed as just another empty National vessel.
Similarly, I have no doubt that when the election debates roll around next year, Jacinda Ardern will easily outclass Christopher Luxon. Providing she holds onto that poise and confidence she displayed on the Late Show, she has every chance of demonstrating to New Zealanders the foolishness of changing political horses in midstream.
She’ll need something to say, of course. Something over and above simply sounding like a credible and competent prime minister. Thinking about it, that’s what made her time on the Late Show so productive. She had something positive and progressive – gun reform – to hold up to an American audience horrified by yet another massacre of innocents. Something that the Republicans she didn’t name, but who were clearly in her mind, could never hope to match.
The most effective “over and above” policy constellation, IMHO, would be a bold and unapologetic pledge to reform the way the New Zealand state operates. If Jacinda Ardern and her ministers were to explain how ineffective the state has become under the administrative protocols of the past thirty-five years – offering up its pitiful outputs on health, education, housing, social-welfare, transport and Climate Change as evidence – her government’s collective failure to deliver would, at least, be explained. Blend into that narrative the need to improve the delivery of services to Māori and Pasifika, and then top it off with a promise to comprehensively rejig our electoral laws. That would give the PM plenty to talk about: plenty of opportunities to display her hallmark idealism and empathy
Of course Prebs would dismiss all this with a derisory snort. Constitutional reform butters no parsnips, he’d say – especially with Anchor butter at $8.00 for 500gms!
Except, a halfway competent Finance Minister would explain that if Anchor butter’s at that price it’s only because Fonterra and our dairy farmers are creaming it on the international market – and that’s a good thing, isn’t it?
What voters want more than anything else is the sense that an incumbent government continues to be a work-in-progress: that it’s still got plenty of things it wants to do before its through – changes that promise to make their world a better place.
Voters want to know that their leaders aren’t just thinking about them: they want to know that they are thinking, full stop. In sharp contrast to American voters, the electors of Australia and New Zealand still possess fully operational crap detectors. They will not vote for boofheads – or, at least, not indefinitely.
Richard Prebble, tells a really good yarn, quite convincing even, having read a couple of his books back in the day, until what he says is confronted by the facts. Much like the cycle lobby.
But really all it is is white noise and public manipulation from a tribal redundant politician who can’t see his part in it.
Ironically the increasingly fractious situation we find ourselves in today can be traced right back to this man and his friends at Labour in the 1980’s.
Thanks for the early morning smile. Luxon is plain awful, the boring neighbour we try not to answer the door to ( apologies for that end preposition); he and the dog boy of Iraq could be locked in a room with Nicola or Simeon to spend eternity Sartre-like together, played out at arts festivals as a warning to earnest persons searching for the meaning of life and not finding it. What good Nats there may have been in the past, and have gone, kaput, and this bunch are the wilted flowers on the compost heap, they’re finished.
There was a good Prebble, SSC, wrote me a point by point letter, answering each of mine – Jonathan Coleman did the same – but it wasn’t a Prebble called Richard, and it certainly wasn’t about money, it was about workplace stuff which impacts on performance and ergo on everyday people. PM Ardern may be good on the optics and better than the dried out old Nats, but Labour’s practical connectedness to the people needs to be improved upon – and not sabotaged by wokey wokey preachiness from the ghastly Greens.
Yep – there was an OK Prebble – one that seemed to have inherited a brain while the Richard’s intelligence was simply an ability to respond to stimulus – as in a prod, not unlike an amoeba.
As for one or two of the OK gNats, they’re probably grieving at some regular meet at a twee little Khandallah cafe where Chris Finlayson buys the apple pies and lattes.
OnceWasTim: “….a twee little Khandallah cafe where Chris Finlayson buys the apple pies and lattes.”
We don’t have any twee little cafés in Khandallah. And, a while back, I was told that Chris Finlayson now lives in Auckland. So I doubt that he frequents cafés here in Wellington, twee or otherwise.
I would guess that the Aussie election went against the Libs just because they’d been in office for a decades and had run out of steam. Arden will go for the same reason.
Sure some bad economic data might be a contributing factor but is not yet a motivating one. Given a year of recession then things might be different.
The natz dirty politics brigade tried hard via the am show to down play Jacinda’s trip to USA like they did with her Japan trip. They also hoped that Biden would snub her. I was proud of her today – no politics, topical subjects and much appreciated by the audience. Its 16 months until the election and only foolish losers like Prebble and right wingers are still salivating over luxon and Willis who are big failures. The only time Pebble looked good was when he and Lange were able to respond in kind to Muldoons comments. He was useless at economics and its no wonder that he and Douglas, Bassett, Quigley, Brash and others ended up in the failed gun-touting Act party. Now Jacinda has a meeting with Biden – is that going to satisfy the Tory times herald readers and Tory Talk ZB listeners. What is the NATZ dirty politics going to promote next?
So the future of the country is based on a personality competition not policies or how those policies will be carried out .
…that have very little to do with Prebble’s dialectical-materialism.
Ho!Ho!Ho!
I really like that one!
May I use it please?
Me too? I think Chris Trotter is a very talented writer.
That was a good read. Something positive about our embattled PM, and Labour.
Grant Robertson has shown his political and financial skills, they are proven even if
you are on the other side.
Jacinda Ardern has done the same, again proven.
Can’t say that about Luxon and Willis.
Small error CT – Russia is not blocking Odesa port. That would be the morally
corrupt Ukraine. Odesa and Mariupol ports are open and protected by Russia
Navy and they are providing safe passage thru Ukraine mine fields for shipping.
This is fact not Western and Ukrainian bullshit. You need to get with it.
Anyone can google Odessa port blockade
Google? The likelihood is that you will get torrents of US/Western propaganda long before you find – if ever- an independent unbiased account.
The Russians are not providing safe passage through the mine fields to shipping – no shipping is leaving the Odessa port. Russia is saying they will allow it only if sanctions on Russia end.
And no problems from mines set but now uncontrolled by the Ukrainians?
Keep up.
SPC: GreenBus is correct. Russia isn’t blockading Ukrainian ports. Those ports are indeed mined, but the Ukrainian regime did that themselves. Best not to rely on Western reportage in this regard.
Thank you GB. I like what you’re saying.
I cannot get it: there’s a lot we don’t like about our present government and there’s another lot we don’t like about the possible next government. What we have at the moment may be as good as it gets for now and jumping to the other side seems like cutting off your nose to spite etc. The Ardern bunch may not get it right but I cannot help believing that there is a more genuine wish to help the poor for example, than there will ever be in the opposition.
And anyway, all the comments about housing, poverty, crime, inflation etc are exactly the same in my country in Europe. It’s universal sadly enough.
Over there they’re worse off I’d say with the lack of care for the people during the pandemic over the last couple of years, and now with the war breathing down their necks. New Zealand is the best place on earth and that’s partly because of the government and partly in spite of the government. What’s new.
The night before Jacinda extols the success of the post chch massacre gun control we have 7 driveby shootings. Makes the needle on the bullshit detector twitch for sure…
Well Cricklewood she did point out there was more to do. If find it weird that people keep saying “drive by shooting” like there were actually people shot at. Warning shots fired at a house are obviously not acceptable and concerning but talk about sensationalism.
Sensational! And just scary when three of the four dairies we regularly use have been ram raided or smash & grabbed this year. And the other dairy owner was stabbed last year. And your work colleague heard driveby gunshots in his neighbourhood the night before last. Yes every local I talk to have had their sensations tweaked.
Yeah I wonder if she was even told that had happened.
Or indeed told any of the 12+ shootings in less than a week had happened…
Cricklewood thinks she was. He may need to look at his own bullshit needle which is on critical.
Oh look the police have arrested seven in relation to the Auckland firearm incidents. It’s almost like it’s their job and not PMs
Oh look the police have arrested seven in relation to the Auckland firearm incidents. It’s almost like it’s their job and not PMs
Obviously the drive by shootings were done by licensed and legal gun owners. Not by criminals who ignore Jacinda’s regulations
“Watching Jacinda Ardern’s performance on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, I was struck by just how extraordinarily good she can be when the wind is in her sails.”
Yeah, Adern is amazing when she’s preaching to the choir or has a fawning US celebrity blowing smoke up her arse, but is she any good when she’s on the back foot? No, she is not.
And when she’s back in NZ trying to explain why she has delivered on NONE of her promises to a media that is finally taking the gloves off, she will be a complete shambles. Luxon doesn’t have to be very impressive in that scenario, he just has to be less terrible which won’t be too difficult.
“Yeah, Adern is amazing when she’s preaching to the choir or has a fawning US celebrity blowing smoke up her arse, but is she any good when she’s on the back foot? No, she is not.”
Sorry what’s your background in people person skills?
Oh, I’ve got bachelors degree in “people person” skills, just like Jacinda
You’ve got nothing!!!!!!
Please list these promises she hasn’t kept.
Clowns to the left of me
Boofheads to the right
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.
Not sure about Jacinda, what’s up with that manic grinning while talking about death. I saw her do the same thing talking about suicide, very strange. I see she’s still on about censorship and surveillance as well, not good.
Luxon seems afraid to be forthright about things, his waffling response when asked about cancel culture for example. It looks like a lack of courage or authenticity or originality to most people. Mind you I’ve never heard JA say anything interesting or original either so a bit of a black hole all round. I think I’ll vote for ACT, much more authentic.
Act is the looney gun-touting hill-billy party. Prebble was the dumbest financial spokesperson any party has had. He’s a dinosaur so why does the granny herald waste time and money on his articles.
I doubt that most kiwis actually know much about inflation other than they’re paying more at the checkout and pump. Where and why inflation is happening are irrelevant, what matters to the man and woman in the street is that they have less money at the end of each week and the paltry $27 a week bump on offer with little to nothing else available won’t suffice to keep people voting Labour. Add to that the consistent and steady decline of polls for Labour and I think old ‘Mad Dog’ Prebble may well be closer to the outcome than the above suggests.
Didn’t they call Richard Prebble ‘Mad Dog’ Prebble. Was he bitten by one some time ago, and is living proof that humans can recover from Rabies? Cultivate him as a scientific curiosity.
And remember that Labour has joined with National in this neolib degradation of every hopeful aspiration that our young country had, following on from another youngish country the USA which was going to show the world how to live and be brilliant at doing it. Hah. One of the systems that have emerged from under a rock in highly thought of business studies is that of the unimaginative, robot-ready one of generic management – one size fits all. Here are a few headings from google indicating what a CEO would need to have to run a business well. Does Luxon fit these criteria?
And then there is the ongoing query in the objective citizen’s mind – is a businessman trained to act to produce profit, and willing to dispense with people workers and embrace machinery of some sort instead because of business advantage including profit, the right sort of person to head our human, organic systems and structures?? Should we bre reading Kafka who applied his mind to metaphysics of which I doubt that we receive more than a few hours of learning in our lifetimes. We might in future move from a mainstream humankind to being ‘streamed’ into different types, the majority being classified by the archaic word ‘wight’ meaning luckless; or going further, in literary use, ‘a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being’.
https://hbr.org/1989/07/six-basics-for-general-managers – Harvard Business Review
The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study
https://hbr.org › 2018/01 › the-fastest-path-to-the-ceo-j…
31/01/2018 — We conducted a 10-year study, which we call the CEO Genome Project, in which we assembled a data set of more than 17,000 C-suite executive …
How To Become A CEO: These Are The Steps You Should Take
https://www.forbes.com › christianstadler › 2015/03/12
12/03/2015 — Just over half of Fortune 100 CEOs have a degree in business, economics, or accounting, while 27% studied engineering or science, and 14% law.
The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study
https://hbr.org › 2018/01 › the-fastest-path-to-the-ceo-j…
31/01/2018 — The path to CEO rarely runs in a straight line; sometimes you have to move backward or sideways in order to get ahead. More than 60% of …
(It’s interesting how Harvard comes at top of google listings when seeking info on management matters
which seems to indicate they may be premier in the western world in training the sort of managers we have.)
So in summary, Labour good, National bad, truly pathetic.
Maybe if we give Ardern a third term she will finally deliver on her rhetoric? Yeah, no.
Keyboard Warrior…National good, Labour bad, truly pathetic.
The Natz have inspiring platitudes.. ‘a brighter future’ and their best.. ‘we could be on the cusp of something.. special’
i agree with you Chris. if the Govt committed to reform in such a way, it could claw back votes. But I think that the 20 – 30% old time class Labour voters who have been inexorably betrayed by this government, along with those on parliaments lawn, will make this election much harder to win.
Who is going to believe anything this kind and transparent government says after what we have all been through. Lie, Spin, Obfuscate, rinse, wash and repeat.
Labour will have to pry my vote from my cold, dead hands.
Chris Trotter,
Well written piece which I largely agree with. Although, you’ve repeated a blatant piece of propaganda.
There is no Russian ‘blockade’ of the Black Sea preventing wheat exports from Ukraine. Rather there are Ukrainian sea mines drifting having lost their anchors, thus no shipping concern can acquire insurance or insurance is prohibitively expensive, to transport Ukrainian wheat. This hasn’t entirely stopped the Ukrainians from exporting wheat, they’re busy trading it with the EU for weapons via rail over land borders. It is also worth recognizing that there wouldn’t been a food crisis globally if western sanctions hadn’t been applied to Russian grains and fertilizers.
Although I am generally a National supporter, I do feel that Chris Luxon and Nicola Willis won’t have enough time to grow enough in their roles before next year’s election and I really can’t see either of them sticking around until 2026.
Why do you think they won’t stick around?
Well keep colbert in America then
?
In the UK the 80 seat majority that the Conservatives won in the last election was from 43% of total votes. Very hard to change government on those numbers.
Major over estimation of the amount of critical thinking the average voter puts into their vote. National are up in poles because they’re something different not because of policy. Like wise, Labor could lose the next election because voters and the media are bored of Jacinda. Not because they’ve given any consideration to policy or the economy – beyond the house hold budget analogy.
Peter I doubt you are right. (I am using doubt in a past- century meaning that isn’t of today. But looking back to past century thinking and writing says much that is worth holding onto as we note that our education hasn’t advanced our thinking processes to what is needed in the modern world! OK we have got democracy, but do we know how to drive it and service it properly. Is it or us, due for a warrant of fitness?)
doubt – Wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org › wiki › doubt
The noun is derived from Middle English dout, doute (“uncertain feeling; questionable point; hesitation; anxiety, fear; reverence, respect; something to be feared, danger;”) [and other forms], from Old French doute, dote, dute (“uncertain feeling, doubt”), from doter, douter, duter (“to doubt; to be afraid of, fear”) ( …
And thinking of change, disappointment, loss of hope, clinging on – and the need to decide on an attitude and find a goal which I think is at the base of voters feelings, we might imagine that we are pop stars who have found that their balloon is popped.
A music journalist interviewed some past stars to see how they felt, and what they did. Imagine that NZ is a pop star, with a bright past. (At one time we were listed high as a wealthy nation. Don’t know about it – look it up, learn.)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018843790/nick-duerden-what-happens-to-pop-stars-after-the-hits-dry-up
UK journalist and author Nick Duerden has spent years interviewing the most famous musicians on the planet and believes, without exception, they are at their most interesting when they’ve peaked and are on the way down.
Let’s find ourselves a new image, a new goal, and help each other working towards reaching it!
At present there are too many divisions and people who sneer at what others do, finding strength in not doing much themselves and therefore not exposing themselvesto any criticism. (They get their kicks writing to Kim Hill to dumb her down. Listen on today’s show near midday for a snotty one. Tall poppy slayer.)
We are too often sad sacks, not enough goodwill to others. Get off the pot. One of the richest men in the 20th century Howard Hughes got to the stage after he had done all the conventional things, that he spent hours on the toilet. Is that us – or drinking alcohol or some drug? No bloody way.
Also – a primary factor in dislike of the current government is based on misogyny. Male friends who listen to talk radio and commenters on articles such as this – express a sneering dismissal of Jacinda based on irrational emotions.
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