Currently sitting within striking distance of the 5% threshold, Winston has directed NZ First into the crowded Right Wing market of screaming apartheid at Co-Governance.
I think that is a failed strategy for the election for NZ First because if you are motivated by manufactured apartheid, ACT is the cross you’ll want burning for you, where I think NZ First would have far more resonance is in a debate about economic sovereignty at a time when geopolitical shockwaves will be hitting us.
Winston’s mentor, Robert Muldoon, articulated a Fortress NZ economic nationalism that was ahead of its time, triggered by stagflation and geopolitical shockwaves, it parallels the same threats we face now.
Why shouldn’t we have our own basic pharmaceutical industry?
Engineering industry.
Industrial industry.
The supply side shocks caused by Covid and war are not going away, and they are being compounded by catastrophic climate change.
The arguments pushed forward by Muldoon for Think Big infrastructure resonate more importantly now than ever before.
Radical adaptation and communal community resourcing alongside a Big State approach to lynchpin infrastructure for basic self-reliance as an Island country facing enormous economic shockwaves is the only means to build the muscle mass to respond to the ever intensifying external disruption of late stage capitalism.
The need to increase military spending to 3% alongside the new costs for this infrastructure must be funded via new taxes aimed at corporations and banks.
A financial transaction tax and windfall profit tax would take the yoke of taxation off working people and place it upon the shoulders of the wealthy.
National and ACT see mass immigration as a means to create fake growth at a time when we should be focused on de-growth.
Climate Crisis is here and adaptation is now.
We need to start rethinking Isolationism as a strength and ‘Think Bigger’ as Economic Sovereignty.
This will have far deeper narrative cut through than more Māori bashing will.
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Interesting view of Sir Robert and his policies.
Some say he was the last New Zealand Prime Minister to have a conception of government defining and acting in the national interest.
Others disagree, but it is so encouraging to see him as a totem for The Left.
Well, Muldoon was a complete autocratic head in the sand failure who needed to be dragged from power before he did more damage. So, you can see he had a lot in common with the current Govt.
Agree with independent growth away from the sugar high of mass immigration/migrant exploitation and the dead end tax cut horse shit from National and ACT.
But in co-governance; if it’s so good, why hide it or try and just put it in, no mandate, like 3 waters?
Never doubted Muldoon’s patriotism … but hasn’t ” Think Big ” been thoroughly discredited….
Err – no. To quote the economist Stuart Birks, in Birks & Chaterjee, eds, The New Zealand Economy: Issues and Policies (first published 1992),
“By late 1991, the manufacturing sector as a whole was in a very sorry state with rapidly declining employment, sales and investment. The main factor which prevented the figures from looking too serious was, in fact, the export success of the capital intensive manufactured commodities, including those from the ‘Think Big’ projects. These commodity exports increased by 83 per cent from 1988 to the year to June 1991, while exports of high value added or elaborately transformed products fell in real terms. As The Manufacturer of September 1991 reports, ‘This suggests the restructuring to date has produced minimal productivity gains – most have resulted from the “think big” projects.’”
The problem that Think Big just had not yet paid off by 1984, when the Rogernomes were still able to claim that it had been a waste of money. Since Piggy was so unpopular for other reasons, that myth has never been revisited, save by Birks and a few other policy obscure wonks that the MSM have never heard of.
Isolationism will work only if the majority working people (those who work for a living, not live off the workers) take over control of the country from China and the US.
And from their proxies in NZ, the comprador capitalists and their petty bourgeois allies who are hostile to workers.
3% more spending on the military while it is under the control of the compradors is a dead loss because it arms the class enemy.
Defending Aotearoa as a workers’ republic requires the armed working people fighting a defensive guerilla war against imperialist occupation and the rule off its proxies.
We are back to the old story of colonisation vs decolonisation which underlies all the big debates about class and in Aotearoa in the world.
The decolonisation and national liberation of Aotearoa by the working class and working farmers, will be possible when men and women, whites, blacks and browns, unite as one revolutionary class.
Exactly. Neo liberal hegemony and post modernist philosophy have really put the proverbial into the works when it comes to collective action.
But hopefully the three successor gens to us boomers have a different take on things including post colonial issues, and will organise before it is too late.
Sealord are due to lose 10 million dollars because they have not got the workforce to proses the fish they catch. Millions are being lost in the horticulture industry due to lack of workers.. Immegrants both permanent and short term are finding NZ unwelcoming and due to this government policy. All this lost production leads to less tax take and less money to support our 1st World lifestyle. National can see this and hopefully it will not be too late before they get control again.
Your comment that Muldoon was ahead of his time with “fortress NZ” is not right. Muldoon was holding on to a vision which probably started with Savage imbedded by Hoĺland and Holyoake. A NZ not reliant just on agriculture for it’s income.
Muldoon sort to build on this with “think big” and thus build a multi faceted economy. He was rubished for this by his succesors and what he put together has been systematically dismantled by them.
And where are we now?
Back fairly much dependent on agriculture for our income.
Winston is a child of the Holyoake years, without doubt the best years for everyone in this country. Real full employment, true free education easy access in home ownership with State Advances 3% mortgages.
Bring back those good times Winston !!!
Just to clear a few things up. My comments have been a bit all over the place, one minute god, Nek minit science or what ever.
I just want to say I’m not opposed to implementing Fortress Aotearoa to its fullest I’m just opposed to any combination of 20/21st century politics implementing Fortress Aotearoa.
To me it’s looking increasingly like we are going to have to have another World War in order to destroy enough of the old system that a new generation can say okay enough of that I want to try Fortress Aotearoa.
Winston remains a pain as far as I am concerned. His letter of no confidence to the Governor General at the last General Election showed the depths he can sink to. He could have gone out on a positive note but that little effort soured his departure for a lot of people that were even somewhat fans of his at various stages.
It must be said though that the NZ First inspired Provincial Growth Fund has achieved a lot, in my territory of Te Tai Tokerau anyway. State Highway round abouts, business hubs, infrastructure such as the Mangonui harbour board walk and scores of replaced and new wharves and jetties in the Kaipara, Hokianga and other tiny hamlet inlets few would have heard of. Marine transport is making a comeback, and a freight depot in Moerewa.
The thing is to decouple PGF from NZ First and get bloody Labour and Greens and TPM pushing such projects.
NZ First might be able to throw a spanner in the works for a sensible tax policy that would provide a base for carrying out essential things.
I think Gordon Campbell over at scoop puts it well when he refers to Luxon ” wittering on”
about low tax and lots of improvement in government activity – incompatible.
Gordon Campbell: On National’s Incredible Disappearing Tax Policy
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2208/S00008/on-nationals-incredible-disappearing-tax-policy.htm
During the years of the Key government one hardy perennial of political journalism was that whenever the Labour Opposition would suggest a policy alternative to the status quo, the hard bitten response from the Gallery realists would be “But how’re you gonna pay for it?” National in Opposition has been almost entirely spared that level of sceptical scrutiny. Until now, that is. Until now, Christopher Luxon had largely been left free to witter on that it is entirely feasible to (a) repay debt faster (b) cut taxes significantly and (c) maintain, or even increase the current levels of spending on health and education and (d) do all that at once…
Corrected – obscure policy wonks.
Bring back car less days. Mouldoon was even trying to save the planet back then.
Labour can shut NZ first out by introducing a bold climate change policy/ rebate for the working poor.
Every car of 2005 and less vintage & done 200k on the clock should be able to be traded in for a govt sponsored EV car.
Not a bad idea, EVs are ridiculously over priced at this stage. But our family has one, and an electric lawnmower. Many people, bar double cab Ute fans, know EVs are the future combined with home solar panels and inverters & grid connection, or small local networks-storage batteries not being such a thing as they once were.
This Govt. was instrumental in closing fossil fuel refining down, so imo have some obligation to assist working class people into EVs.
Winston Peters is a fool. He lost all respect from me when he jumped on the anti-vax bandwagon. But the guy was never really left wing in the first place. He sold off Contact Energy as Treasurer, slashed the sickness benefit, and tried to bring him a superannuation scheme that would have privatised pensions.
As for Think Big, people forget that a lot of these projects had heavy private sector involvement. For example, parts of the Clyde Dam were designed and built by private contractors, and not the MOW, similar to what happens now.
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