INTRODUCTION:
The 2020 Election was put off till October because of Covid, it is likely Jacinda will serve a full term just to avoid the Opposition and ZB fuelling a sense of panic by framing it as an ‘early election’, so after some of the most unprecedented events in our collective history, we have 13 months till the 2023 Election and TDB gives the election battlefield the full 360 degree analysis.
Remember.
If you see the importance of our blogging journalism, please note we don’t get any money from NZ on Air and your donations are welcome below.
NZ on Air can shit gold bullion down the throats of The Spinoff, Stuff and RNZ because they are woke middle class approved media. It’s identity politics conclave sanctioned performance art masquerading as journalism, like being stuck at a dinner party between Toby Manhire, Morgan Godfery and Alison Mau arguing over who hates heteronormative white cis males most.
If you want Professional Managerial Class virtue signals, The Spinoff, RNZ and Stuff await your visit.
Don’t let the blog hit you in the arse on your way out.
While you’re here though, how good has Ben Morgan’s analysis of the Ukrainian war been on TDB?
Fucking amazing right?
I mean apart from the cutting and brilliant political commentary alongside the number 1 political podcast in the country and some of the best Class Left pundits this nation has to offer, put that and the fact we aren’t the dreary Standard or craven Chinese apologists like the quisling Socialist Equality Group aside, how good has our coverage of the Ukrainian War been?
I predicted Putin would invade the Ukraine and we’ve followed that insight up with Ben Morgan’s extraordinary coverage that has been 24 hours ahead of the CIA and MI6.
TDBs coverage has even been ahead of the blog no one reads, crabby old Gordon Campbell! The blog where Lyndon Hood was last funny in 2019.
I say extraordinary coverage of the Ukrainian conflict while acknowledging that the “A View From Afar’ podcast by Comrades Selwyn Manning and Dr Paul Buchanan that plays here on TDB Thursdays are the masters of NZ international commentary!
All power to their arm! Why the fuck isn’t NZ on Air sponsoring that amazing show rather than another batch for Duncan Grieve over at The Spinoff?
Put our coverage of the Ukrainian War up against the domestic coverage by NZ Herald, Stuff, NZME or Newshub and we have been fucking light years ahead of them!
Oh, by the way, the Working Group on Monday will have in studio Meta Economist Bernard Hickey AND Jack Tame. Yes. THAT Jack Tame.
Yes. The one from Q+A.
How did we get him as a panelist on The Working Group?
Because we are the coolest weekly political podcast in the country, that’s how!
Here’s the political analysis for the 2023 election.
WARNING: If this introduction has triggered you in anyway, you’ll probably need your emotional support peacock for the rest of it.
POLITICAL PARTIES:
LABOUR:
Labour have failed utterly to be transformative in any true sense of the word. The total focus of this Government has been in trying to save the country from a once in a century pandemic.
Their extraordinary management of Covid saved 5000 lives, in a country as small as NZ, 5000 extra deaths over the 2000 we’ve already lost would have caused a shockwave throughout our communities, a tidal wave of grief we’d struggle to overcome emotionally and economically from.
Sure, pumping billions into the banks for property speculators to make money from our collective suffering is disgusting and represented the largest transfer of wealth to the richest ever seen in NZ, but Labour saved our lives and deserve another gratitude vote.
Yes there were fuck ups in the covid management and Trevor Mallard managed to radicalise 5000 stormtroopers for Qanon, yes there are more kids living in cars than when Labour first won in 2017, sure there are now 27 000 on emergency wait lists and a million dollars a day spent on kettling beneficiaries into dangerous Motels, sure to all those things, but Labour tribalism is such that any of those criticisms are ignored.
To get an idea of how off the fucking plant Labourites are now, check out Facebook Journalist and Labour apologist Gerard Otto whose torturous allegations against the mainstream media conspiracy to frame Jacinda while polls are being conducted is so far from reality it may as well be Qanon rantings, yet he is utterly believed by the Labour faithful.
Labour are now dominated by the Professional Managerial Class and Public Service wokeness but they are good for 35% on Election Day so the same nothingness and meaningless trite bullshit passed off as social policy won’t be challenged in any sense, which is why the collective dynamic of the Greens and Māori Party will be forced to negotiate a far more progressive policy platform than cautious Jacinda and Grant will attempt.
The latest UMR internal Polling released to the Caucus over the weekend has National on 37%, Labour on 35%, Greens and ACT about 10% each and the Māori Party being the Queenmaker.
The only hope for transformative change from Labour will be what the Greens and Māori Party are able to hardball them into.
Labour are good for 30%-35% on Election Day.
NATIONAL:
The last two polls should worry National.
Roy Morgan had tham at 35.5 while Taxpayer’s Union Curia Poll had them at 34%.
These are both down from the highs Luxon’s Honeymoon had projected the into of 40% and 39%.
It follows after Luxon’s Te Puke via Hawaii blunder and his constant u-turns where he gets caught out on detail that underpins his justifications for change.
His desire to punish teenage beneficiaries misread the middle and his flakiness under the high ball always underwhelms.
Luxon believes in evangelical prosperity theory meaning his 7 properties are proof positive Jesus loves him. This false certainty of knowing he is blessed is what National are selling a frightened electorate, his self certainty, not the numerous counter-productive policy positions National keeps taking.
Because Luxon is only interested in the first class customers (those who can’t fly are ‘bottom feeders’), he’s too intellectually vain to bother with policy and prefers ‘management’ and in Christopher’s world, the little people do the policy stuff.
This is dangerous because David Seymour desperately wants a life beyond politics so will pass radical policy so he can hand on hart tell Free Market Satan he did all he could to mutilate the State before leaving ACT.
I think Jacinda will smash Luxon during the campaign. Despite some of the worst media and press they’ve received since coming to power alongside extreme economic problems looming, Labour are still solid mid 30s, that’s extraordinary.
I think National’s ceiling is 35%, their challenge is to stop ACT being in double figures while trying to win the middle, something they are finding very difficult to achieve.
Worst case scenario for National is an ACT at 15%, that leaves National in the very low 30s.
I think David Seymour will be dazzling on the campaign trail despite his race war inducing conflict politics.
The rapid polarisation of NZ politics means there isn’t much middle left for National to hollow out with empty words and false promises, a truth Labour are finding out right now.
National and ACT won’t be able to get to 51% on their own, they will need NZ First getting over 5% or the TOP leader winning Ilam and bringing in a few MPs off the coat tailing.
Remember, Luxon was elected not because he was the best candidate, but because Judith Collins hate club pack voted against Simon Bridges.
That is becoming clearly apparent now.
Luxon will be removed as leader if National doesn’t win the next election.
National are good for 30%-35% on Election Day.
ACT:
As The Daily Blog has been pointing out since the election, the extreme hard right policy of ACT is simply not appreciated by the majority of kiwis.
But it’s there, oh sweet Jesus is it there.
That’s just the start…
- Cut and freeze the Minimum wage
- Interest back on all student loans
- No Kiwsaver subsidy
- Cancel winter energy payment
- Dump all climate crisis legislation
- no more best start payments for families with new borns
- cut welfare payments
- no tax credits for research and development
- cuts to working for families
- $7b a year cut in public services
- Abolish Maori seats
Oh and ankle bracelets on children, don’t forget that!
This is Romper Stomper Hard Right insanity that makes Qanon look reasonable and because there is no way National can win without ACT, every vote to National empowers ACT.
David Seymour is a very funny, very clever, very talented politician who desperately wants what the humans call, ‘l-o-v-e’.
He doesn’t want to be in Parliament for one second longer than he has to.
He wants to get out of politics and get paid enormous money in the corporate world and maybe find in-laws he can disappoint.
In short, David feels honour bound to mutilate the State so that it’s too wounded to ever grow back.
It’s called the Milton Friedman Prune.
David is a man in a hurry to try and get a life before politics robs him of one, so when he puts out these blistering policy directions that would cause enormous damage and carnage to the social infrastructure that so many people desperately require every day to survive, you best fucking believe he would do it in the blink of a sociopath’s eye.
ACT are good for 10%-15% on plus 1 electorate on Election Day.
GREENS:
As the weeping wound of social policy failure the Rotorua Golden Mile tragedy represents continues to unfold, there will be Cabinet voices asking the bleeding obvious, ‘when do we throw Minister Marama Davidson under the bus’.
Labour’s capitulation to Professional Managerial Class Corporate Cheerleader Neale Jones has meant nothing meaningful has occurred on Housing, and this was always the danger of Marama taking the vacant baubles of Office.
There was never a meaningful plan to change and all the failure can be dumped on her as the Minister for Homelessness.
With more people living in cars than in 2017, with more people on emergency housing wait lists and a million paid a day to a Motel Industry monetising misery while State Housing Builds remain anaemic, all Marama has to show is some virtue signalling of chocolate wrappers in Māori.
If Labour won’t throw Marama under the bus, National and ACT will certainly push her in front of one! The juxtaposition of Marama virtue signalling while people in poverty go backwards distills all the elitist middle class pandering into an easy to generate meme that fuels resentment.
Meanwhile, James Shaw was re-elected co-leader of the Greens with no fanfare whatsoever which begs the question, if James wins the co-leadership and no one notices, did it really ever truly happen?
James Shaw re-elected Green co-leader six weeks after ouster.
He says, “Blah blah blah blah blah blah, something something, gonna try real hard to get more Green MPs around the Cabinet Table but we don’t have no power, blah blah blah”.
So he’s complaining about being tricked by the Labour Party?
That’s his actual argument, he is explaining why they are getting nothing done because Labour didn’t really need them WHICH WAS ALWAYS THE REASON THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE AGREED IN THE FIRST PLACE!
If you are dumb enough to get tricked by the Labour Party, aren’t you too stupid for Politics?
So what the hell was that phantom coup all about then?
You just can’t trust a bunch of fucking Greenies to ever carry off a political coup successfully, they always get squeamish about the blood.
As we enter election year, the Greens are about to be blamed for all of Labour’s failures to be transformative on housing, inequality and the environment.
This is why the Greens shouldn’t have accepted the deal Labour offered, it set them up for failure.
The Greens can’t preach of better times ahead next year if their time at the helm saw things get worse for people!
There is a total disconnect between what the Greens are celebrating in homelessness and what the Minister spends her time promoting on social media and the total social policy failure that is happening on Rotorua’s Golden Mile.
The Greens are great at alienating voters, canceling people for crimes against woke dogma and a love for bikes that borders on sexual fetish.
Not good for much else unfortunately.
I think the Greens will be lucky to get 7% on election night which would be fortunate for them because their record in Office deserves less.
Greens are worth 7%-10% on Election Day plus 1 electorate.
MĀORI PARTY
With Adrian Rurawhe under pressure to accept the Speaker’s expectation to stand down from their electorate, Te Tai Hauāuru opens as a real possible gain for the Maori Party. This on top of their incredible party vote which hit 5% in the Roy Morgan Poll suggests a massive political change is occurring within Māoridom.
Part of this is demographics, Māori are a decade younger than Pakeha, part of it is the reconnection with civics the vaccination drive provided and part is the grotesque racism spewed out over co-governance and 3 Waters.
Māori represent the highest proportion of non voters, and the race baiting rhetoric is dragging those non voters over to being engaged, something we haven’t seen in the past.
If the Māori Party can hold up their Party vote they will become the Queen maker and the relationship between Māori Party President JT and Willie Jackson will become the most important one politically.
Māori Party are worth 3%-5% plus 2 electorate seats on Election Day.
NEW ZEALAND FIRST:
Winston has done a deal with The Necromancer. The Necromancer is a Dirty Politics operative who can’t be named, but their foul stench surrounds a People’e Initiated Referendum that is being planned to coincide with the election next year against Co-Governance. Winston intends to ride the race baiting against co-governance and 3 Waters all the way back over the 5% threshold.
This is currently ACT Party territory and Winston and The Necromancer intend to rob their vote, the only way ACT can fend Winston’s push to take some of their 10%+ support is by ruling Winston out of power altogether.
NZ First are worth 3%-5% on Election Day.
Tamaki’s QGod antivax Umbrella:
The good news is that Brian’s current umbrella of Sue Grey’s antivaxxers and his Destiny Church QGod squad aren’t nearly enough to get over 5%. However if they added Matt King’s vanity project and the anti abortion New Conservatives, that cavalcade of political circus freaks could get over 5%.
Thankfully they are all toxic narcissists who couldn’t work together if their lives depended upon it, if they do though, don’t underestimate how many feral Qanon antivaxers who have been brainwashed by social media hate algorithms there really are out there.
Tamaki’s QGod antivax Umbrella are worth 2%-5% on Election Day.
TOP:
The Opportunities Party leader Raf Manji has a chance of winning Ilam now Gerry Brownlee has stood down. Sarah Pallett won the seat in 2020 during Labour’s red wave, but Manji was competitive against Gerry back in 2017. If Manji can steal the seat off Pallett and against a weak National newbie, TOP could enter Parliament AND bring in 2 MPs off the Party list.
TOP are talking about Housing and the political tax impasses that prevent Housing from being built, if they can convince the public that he can win in Ilam, then a vote for TOP isn’t wasted. If National were smart they would consider talking to TOP and offering them an Epsom deal in Ilam.
TOP are worth 1 electorate plus 2 MPs coat tailing off MMP list.
Hamilton West:
The Sharma Drama ends with Karma Nirvana as the good Dr is banished to sit with Trev.
The Right will continue to hail him as a hero while the Left will utterly ignore him.
The danger is that his narrative of bullying and victimisation that sounds so self interested to our ears will find deep resonance amongst a migrant community who in Hamilton West feel his narrative as racism everyday.
The Right will hand Sharma questions during election year and he will lob grenades under the protection of Parliamentary privilege, I also think he will find a local electorate drawn from both sides of the idealogical divide that could win him an Independent seat in 2023.
Many are writing him off, but I think he’s more popular in his electorate than most suspect.
Sharma is worth one electorate seat.
ISSUES:
Professional Managerial Class, Woke Culture War & free speech:
The Professional Managerial Class is an issue TDB has focused on. We’ve argued that middle class virtue signalling dogma has over run the activist base of the Left and while the Woke fight over pronouns and the militant pronunciation of Te Reo, the voters trying to pay their bills weekly are disillusioned and alienated from our cause!
This same Professional Managerial Class are over represented in the Wellington Twitteratti and the nexus of hashtag activism and Elite Radio NZ smugness that allows for Neale Jones to exist.
We’ve seen how the Wellington Middle Class Marxists panicked and wanted an immediate Police State to deal with the protestors…
…middle class fear has always driven social policy so it’s no surprise the vast amounts of money now being sunk into the domestic intelligence apparatus.
If a middle class person is threatened on social media, Western Civilisation has ended.
My feeling is that the political polarisation we are leading into will be so extreme that it just won’t matter how alienating the woke get because people will have already fixed their identity flags to their flag poles.
The danger of woke over reach occurs when the woke get frightened. Whenever the middle classes are frightened, Politics jumps.
That fear was evident in the Fire and Fury middle class docudrama and it’s evident when they come across it on Social Media.
It’s middle class fear of crime that drives punitive get tough on crime rhetoric and politics, similarly it’s their middle class woke dogma that is triggering a desire to criminalise free speech.
The woke are frustrated that the hate laws failed after both the Minister and Prime Minister couldn’t even explain what would get people arrested, so the energies have gone into the secretive National Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism who will tell the Intelligence Agencies who the Eye of Mordor should be turned on.
Rather than risk political backlash by passing an actual law, Woke Academia have simply partnered up with the domestic intelligence and security services to help them target the new enemies.
With our failure to de-escalate the Dumb Lives Matter protest, we have radicalised an entire army against us and now desperately need to ascertain who is violent and who is not in a social media landscape driven by hate algorithms and desperate loneliness.
We are feeding the whirlpool into a maelstrom.
The only winners are the security apparatus budgets.
The Economy Stupid:
No amount off ticker tape tantrums can sway Fed Chair Powell any longer, the reality of unwinding $25Trillion in quantitive easing is upon us and Powell has to keep pushing the stake into the heart of these Global Zombie Corporations because there is nothing else left in this Late stage Capitalism meltdown.
All that debt, all that speculative bubble in property and stocks, all of it is about to get hit be demand side and supply side destruction.
If the Fed comes out with 100 point raises rise, the pressure will be on Orr to follow with 75 points.
What Treasury are wanting to claim is inflation is dropping because demand is dropping, but this is a supply chain and scarcity problem as well, as Consumers retreat, the natural scarcity of products also compounds issues by driving prices up even as people can’t afford them.
The super rich and super wealthy will benefit, middle classes and below however will suffer.
With supply chains broken, with geopolitical tensions bringing supply chains back to friendly territories and the inflationary pressures of bringing those supply chains home, the day of reckoning here suggests a spectacular 1929 stock market crash.
NZ House prices are predicted to drop 21%, inflation could hit double digits in December and Orr has no choice but to ramp up interest rates.
Business NZ vs Unions:
The big political fight before the election will be between the Unions and Business NZ. Fair Pay Agreements would allow a vast new unionisation agenda to sweep NZ and seeing as NZs economy is based on stealing indigenous land and never paying it back alongside a low wage economy that exploits migrant labour, Business NZ don’t want any Fair Pay Agreement process.
The other fight will be the Unions trying to push their gold plated unemployment tax for public servants to tag in a 6 month holiday or extra maternity leave.
If the Unions lose both these fights, the question must be asked why are they even there?
Housing, Welfare, Inequality:
I am deeply, deeply, deeply skeptical about removing the Children’s Commissioner oversight from Oranga Tamariki and replacing that oversight with 6 faceless bureaucrats sitting inside the Education Review Office…
The new commission will continue to promote and advance the interests and well-being of children and young people, but its role is weaker.
In particular, unlike the current Children’s Commissioner, it will not be able to advise on establishing complaints mechanisms for children or monitor the types of complaints made.
Stripping the new commission of any powers to deal with complaints has a much wider impact on the application of children’s rights in Aotearoa New Zealand.
If the new commission is not able to advise the multitude of organisations that work with children and young people about how to make a complaint, this will significantly limit the extent to which the government can be held accountable for any failure to protect children’s rights overall.
…Labour are doing this because critics claim Carmel Sepuloni is totally captured by her Ministry and has been ever since they arrested her mother for a show trial over welfare fraud.
Labour are doing what the Wellington Bureaucracy wants because the sins of their past have been highlighted by the Royal Commission into historic abuse by the State, and they all want to make sure none of them get held accountable in the future.
The State has used despicable tactics to hide the abuse in their care and have been instrumental in removing oversight so that they can’t be held accountable for a broken and failing model.
This matters because when Aloha Luxon isn’t holidaying in Hawaii while pretending to care about the cost of living crisis, he’s endlessly preaching that he will implement Bill English’s ‘Social Investment’ model, and what is that?
Why that’s Oranga Tamariki! That’s the ‘investment model’, use funds based on how much this ‘client’ costs the country in the future, bring forward some of that money, spend it now with immediate interventions and hey presto save money downstream.
Seeing as Aloha Luxon spent his time in the UK with Right Wing Think Tanks who spin this very type of right wing welfare experiment, it is very clear that if National get into power, more welfare experimentation will very much be on the agenda and the Wellington Bureaucracy will not want to be held accountable for that.
The Rotorua Golden Mile expose on TVNZ Sunday shows that housing the homeless is a cruel joke, National are promising to cut the disabled off welfare (despite Labour being caught doing that 4000 times already) and ACT are demanding children are in ankle bracelets.
There are more people homeless, there are more people living in cars, fewer people are owning houses and there are 27 000 on waiting lists.
If you are poor in this country, you are fucked regardless of which party takes power.
Co-governance cross burning vs Labour Māori Caucus:
The naked hypocrisy of the right to twist ‘One person One Vote’ into a negative egalitarian garrotte around the throat of Democracy while screaming ‘we-are-saving-democracy’ is performative art for Fascists.
If Labour require the Maori Party to form a Government, the personal relationship between Willie and JT will become the lynchpin to it holding together.
Jacinda needs to use Waitangi Day next year to spell out what co-Governance and 3 Waters means in practise because her inability to do that has allowed the right to cast it as apartheid ethno nationalism when the naked truth is the vast number of people bitching about Māori gaining local council representation couldn’t actually name anyone on their Council.
Geopolitical Shockwaves:
An economic depression generated by geopolitical friction beyond our control is going to swamp us with enormous social damage and political carnage.
Russia and Ukraine account for 15% of tradable calories, the blockade on base line minerals, food and resources will continue to damage with the possibility a desperate Putin may even resort to nukes.
Putin turning the gas off to Europe will cause untold damage in Winter and China’s November Conference demands from Xi a gesture that could see China invade Taiwanese Island chains.
Global droughts and extreme weather events keep throwing the agricultural calendars out and the possibility of mass famine throughout Africa can’t be ruled out.
In the Middle East, Israel will continue to threaten an unprecedented military strike on Iran if the Iranian’s successfully test a nuclear weapon.
Covid still has the potential of coming back with vengeance.
Political Domestic Terrorism:
I fear the combination of intense political polarisation, a steep economic depression and the explosion of disinformation via social media hate algorithms could generate political violence in the 2023 election.
The immediate threat of political violence comes from the far right. The QAnon movement in NZ is disconnected from this dimension of reality, they believe in Sovereign Citizen Sherifs who are ’empowered’ to hang enemies of free people. They are fucking lunatics who are capable and philosophically compelled to commit an act of political violence. Add to them far right white supremacist bad faith actors and Alt-Right extremists and you have radicalisation combining with fear grifters to generate a febrile landscape of existential fears that can only be combated by justified political violence.
Out of this cauldron of self loathing and projected cultural hate is the possibility of a lone wolf actor or small cell group committing an attack on a Politician.
Climate Crisis:
The Climate Crisis is happening far faster than feared…
World’s oceans, greenhouse gasses at highest levels in 800,000 years, climate report warns
Major sea-level rise caused by melting of Greenland ice cap is ‘now inevitable’
…the speed and extreme nature of the heatwaves and floods that are destroying the planet in real time are damaging the ability for the economy to function…
Cars. Batteries. Solar panels. Food. Global shortages and soaring prices are almost certain as China’s seemingly never-ending heatwave sears on.
It’s the most extreme heat event ever recorded in world history. For more than 70 days, the intense heat has blasted China’s population, factories and fields. Lakes and rivers have dried up. Crops have been killed. Factories have been closed.
More than 900 million people across 17 Chinese provinces are subjected to record-breaking conditions. From Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the east, temperatures have been topping 40C.
…and remember, this only gets worse and worse and worse.
We aren’t doing anything meaningful on climate change, each country passes the buck to the next country, and the future is actually far more dangerous than we are currently anticipating…
‘We’re going to pay in a big way’: a shocking new book on the climate crisis
In An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen write that society needs to be better prepared for an inevitable collapse
…the scale of the geopolitical shockwaves coming our way will be enormous…
Increasingly dysfunctional society and climate catastrophe leading humanity to ‘cliff edge’
Spiralling wealth inequality is leading to dysfunctional societies unable to cope with existential threats such as the climate crisis, experts have warned.
A two-year research project examining different future scenarios indicates that at present, societies around the world are at growing risk of “extreme political destabilisation”, with declines in public trust, while the climate crisis intensifies.
…I’ve been following the IPCC reports on climate change from the beginning, and the criticism made against the IPCC was that due to its strict need for only unilaterally agreed science to make the official report, it was always underplaying the urgency and severity of the climate crisis.
There was always a section in each report where the science was presented that wasn’t universally accepted but included to show the reach and scope of debate.
Increasingly over the years, the worst case scenarios in the IPCC are playing out in real time.
The scientists were wrong, but only in their optimism.
You understand that each year that passes now will get worse or remain as starkly bad as they are now right?
You get that it doesn’t go back to normal after this right?
The extreme weather will get worse and worse.
More extreme than these extremes now.
Consider this baseline extreme normal now.
Sure the war run Ukraine is hurting food prices, but that’s damage on the baseline reality of a mega drought that has interrupted the agricultural calendar of major food producers.
The radical adaptation required to get us ready for what’s coming will splinter the political spectrum whether we like it or not.
This summer we will face unprecedented forest fires and could see a repeat of our sky turning orange because of the Australian bush fires.
If you think being carbon neutral by 2050 is the solution, you are part of the problem.
Overseas Vote:
The MIQ over subscription by tens of thousands hints at the incandescent rage many of our diaspora felt trying to get back into their legal home country during the Covid lockout.
There is no way their torture won’t have political ramifications.
Last election Greens did poorly in their usually high overseas support vote because Ardern’s global stardom eclipsed the Greens, this election however the frustration is directly at Jacinda’s policies so I think the Greens will take that vote back and then some.
Our diaspora are furious and if the Green Party rhetoric is too moderate for their anger, ACTs throw-open-the-borders-and-let-the-freed-market-decide-death policy is for you.
ACTs policy has the whiff of judgmental vengeance to it that is the perfect cocktail of payback people locked out of their own home want to inflict on those refusing to open the door.
My guess is that our diaspora are far more motivated to vote in 2023 than we have ever considered and their anger at being locked out will be sharp.
Specials on the day:
I think you will have so many people voting who don’t normally vote that the specials will be huge on the day, this, along with the unpredictable overseas vote this election could throw any election night result out the window when the specials and overseas votes are counted.
Demographics & Higher participation rate:
This will be the first election in NZ history where Millennials and Gen Xers are a larger numerical voting block than Boomers, because lockdown impacted so many, I think people who normally sit voting out will have a real passion to make their voice heard, even if that voice is an anguished scream of fear and nonsense.
Political Polarisation:
Because the Political spectrum is so hung and the polarisation so extreme, nothing is being collectively done to solve the myriad of problems we are facing post-Covid from crime, to cost of living crisis, to climate change, to inequality and poverty. No big ideas and no real solutions to the challenges we are collectively facing as New Zealanders.
Our focus is on hating the person who offended us on social media. I just don’t think we comprehend what a distortion of reality Social Media generates and the new subjective rage it manufactures.
We will end up with a result both sides will refuse to accept if they lose.
CONCLUSION:
I think the MMP Spectrum is about to shatter.
There is a chance for NZF, Tamaiki’s QGod antivaxx fanatics, a coat tailing TOP and even an independent all getting into Parliament!
We have lived through a political period of time since MMP that has managed to dilute and temper the idealogical extremes of Left/Right politics in NZ. The need to compromise and pull punches is fundamental to the MMP dynamic HOWEVER that completely gets thrown out the window if there is no political centre left.
The political centre has been hollowed out so much under MMP that Labour and National are almost indistinguishable in their acquiescence to neoliberal mantra.
The far left and far right have enormous pent up political tension that will rupture once Labour or National are dependent on their numbers for a majority.
ACT’s rise is fuelling a toxic polarisation of politics.
The true economic damage from Russia for our collective defiance to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine has barely begun and China will feel obligated to ratchet up tension before the November Conference.
Add to this the evolving Covid variant and extreme climate events, and I think we can make the possible predictions:
- This will be one of the highest turns outs because politics has impacted everyone regardless of who you vote for.
- The Polarisation will become obscene.
- ACT will cannibalise National vote because Luxon won’t be able to be as openly race baiting as ACT will be.
- The political spectrum will shatter and fracture with NZ First and possibly some Qanon anti-vaxx anti-abortion Christian Fringe both crossing 5%.
- An act of political violence is possible.
Because MMP has always brought in moderating forces 3rd parties, the pent up political expression of the Right and the Left has been building for almost a quarter of a century and will finally be expressed next year and with the amplification of anger will result in an election that will see resentment whichever side wins.
When you dog whistle up the worst angels of our nature by manufacturing existential threats to democracy, you generate a confrontation that you are ultimately responsible for.
I think the Conflict Policies of a National/ACT Government would be disastrous for this country.
For the Right:
I don’t believe for one second that the vast majority of Kiwis have any true comprehension of just how hard right a National/ACT Government would truly be.
Luxon can’t even get his own tax policy straight and David Seymour is already bullying him into backing down!
If it’s a National/ACT Government, it will be Seymour calling the shots.
The quick yellow fox will jump all over the lazy blue log and David Seymour will get all his crazy policy passed without Luxon caring.
- Māori going to the Waitangi Tribunal over cancellation of 3 waters: The moment the National/ACT Government scrap 3 Waters, Māoridom will go straight back to the Waitangi Tribunal, win the Court Case and force Luxon into his own Helen Clark moment and be forced to pass law to simply confiscate the water. This will cause an enormous eruption of violent protest.
- Mass immigration: National will simply implement John Key’s pump and dump policy of open door immigration to inflate growth rates while causing enormous stress on the groaning underfunded infrastructure and send rents soaring. This will cause enormous social dislocation and a rise in race relation tensions.
- Expansion of Oranga Tamariki Big Data Experiment: National created the Oranga Tamariki Frankenstein and wants more welfare decided by algorithm as a means to de-invest welfare. Luxon has already championed this model.
- Mass Dairy intensification: It’s all National have as an economic policy.
- Mass Property Speculation: They will remove any of the bare tinkering Labour did and help the speculators spin prices higher.
- Mutilation of the State: ACT are serious about wanting to amputate the Ministry for Women, Youth, Māori, Pacific People and Ethnic Communities while slashing the Human Rights Commission. The resulting Public Service strikes will gridlock Wellington. If there’s one thing the Public Service can do well, it is protesting for their own interests.
- War on Crime: Expect the paramilitary police expansion to occur quickly with a whole dump of new civil liberty breaching powers to supposedly keep us safe but will almost immediately be abused as they increasingly get used on the protesting Left.
- Prison riot and explosion in numbers: The war on crime will see far more in prison and National prefers puritan counter productive prisons so expect them to be crammed full and explode in a seething chain reaction of prison riots once National grant Corrections new powers to beat prisoners with. Corrections are very corrupt and once they gain new powers to bash prisoners with, they’ll be some prisoner who gets beaten within an inch of his life which that will trigger prison riots.
- Rise of more Mass Surveillance & Political violence: The protests such a radical agenda creates will demand the State turn its attention back on the Left while National supporters clutch their pearls appalled at the aggression the Left are protesting with and rally around Luxon rather than criticise the policy. They will call on Luxon to spy on the radical lefties.
- Higher Government Debt: Luxon is no free marketeer, he believes he has 7 properties because Jesus loves him, if debt goes up to pay for the extra prisons, extra Police, extra dairy intensification, extra welfare experiments, extra fake growth, then so be it, he doesn’t care. Oh David Seymour will hate it, but he’ll be so fat and full on his amputation of 6 State agencies that he’ll only be able to mount a burp as a protest.
For the Left:
The most important political lesson I’ve ever learned in NZ Politics is from the Laila Harre School of change.
Back when she was in Alliance, she had to force Labour at gun point to agree to maternity leave.
Can you remember and imagine that?
Having to force Labour to give maternity leave.
Laila teaches us that if we ever want the fucking Labour Party to actually serve the people and not the vested interests of the Professional Managerial Class, then you need to smash Labour’s head against a wall, pout a gun to their head and scream ‘do it’.
That’s the only way Labour will act in the interests of the people, if you put a gun to their head.
There’s no point raising benefits, MSD and WINZ and IRD claw back not of that so the beneficiary is left with the empty promise of transformation, a better way to avoid the State clawing back anything we give poor people is to fully fund universal services.
Here’s what a Labour/Green/Maori Party Government should be committed to passing in the first 100 days of the 2023 election…
1: Feed every kid in NZ a free nutritious and healthy breakfast and lunch at every school using local product and school gardens with parents paid to come in and help. The slow incrementalism touted by favourite public sector for dragger apologist Max Rashbrooke isn’t good enough because the lower middle classes are feeling the same pinch thanks to mortgage rises and universal school lunches and breakfasts would help them and reduce truancy as well.
2: 50 000 State Homes/Council housing for life built using the best environmental and social architecture standards using the public works act to seize land (Golf Courses) and immediately start building satellite towns using upgraded public transport hubs plus Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements)
3: Free public transport plus vast infrastructure upgrade for climate crisis.
4: 30% stake holder in a new Government backed supermarket operation run to provide lower food prices for kiwism better prices for supplies and better conditions for workers.
5: GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health plus a sugar tax.
6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.
7: Fair Pay Agreements that allow unionisation and real collective bargaining power for workers outside the tiny public service clique they currently cover.
8: Taxation focused on corporations and banks like financial transaction taxand first $20 000.
9: Offer nurses, teachers and Drs free education and living allowances in return for bonded time in our health and eduction systems.
10: Properly funded public broadcasting with TVNZ advert free and merged with RNZ alongside properly funded journalism through NZ on Air with more money for the Arts and Science. If you can’t have good public journalism, the right wing media will destroy these other 9 advances.
11: Refund night schools – One of the worst things Key did when he entered Office was destroy Helen Clark’s night school budgets. Sure that Italian Cooking class wasn’t generating Chefs, but the free night school classes allowed lonely disconnected people to have a social life. It allowed Schools to be used as community hubs and if well designed could become social health hubs and distribution points for community health outreach. We urgently need our people to have places where they can mix and mingle and engage because isolation sends them down fucking rabbit holes.
12: Legal Cannabis market to fund meth rehabilitation and create 5000 jobs and create quarter of a billion in revenue for the State plus remove cannabis crime from the Courts and Prison.
13: Focus on self sustainability and hyper regionalism over free market globalisation for climate crisis adaptation and community resilience.
…Kiwis have to see a progressive Government ACTUALLY doing shit in the first 100 days or they won’t believe any change is coming and when you consider the economic maelstrom we are entering, the most vulnerable amongst us will be screaming for real change.
If we on the Left don’t offer voters real solutions to their material problems and instead prefer to micro aggression police the latest middle class virtue signals of hate speech, militant pronoun demands and screaming everyone is racist, we are fucked politically in 2023.
****
In previous elections, political parties and movements have tried to win voters over, in 2023 we won’t be doing that.
In 2023, voters will already know who they hate and who they will vote for, Party’s will be focused on speaking only to their tribe and making sure their tribe votes.
We will move away from Broadchurch politics and focus only on pure temple – “if you don’t believe everything we believe, fuck off’ will become the mantra in 2023.
Shit is going to get ugly. Really really ugly.
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Slight correction Martyn Sharma Drama is Hamilton West. Hamilton East will be a Labour seat as the previous Nat candidate Bennett sculks off into the sunset having taken the easy “family time and business route” out of politics.
Both Tron seats will go back to National. Demographically they both Lean National. The Labour MP for East is a wet blanket.
Actually Frankie he’s an intellect, who have National got again now that Bennetts gone another Uffindell? One may go to the West but most definitely not the East Frankie or should I say “ya dreamin Jonesy”!
LOL Bertie. David Bennett won Hamilton East. What does that suggest regarding demographics. One of the big outcomes of 2023 will be the return of previously safe and lean National seats irrespective of who wins the gong in the end.
https://www.parliament.nz/mi/mps-and-electorates/electorate-profiles/hamilton-east-electorate-profile/
LoL! You’re a few years behind Frankie. Even your polling predictions are coming unstuck.
No chance of Hamilton returning blue, such is the progressive nature of Hamilon under Labour.
Even the right wing NZ Herald can see the future…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/craig-renney-falling-wages-is-a-right-wing-fantasy-highlighting-a-poverty-of-thinking/QWMC27GSRJNRXWUF4XPAGY6U6M/
Thank you Labour for real time wage increases, National would have had a chance at the next election but for the slew of lies.
Imagine if they had supported wage growth in those disastrous 9 years or for those looking to the future had a policy to “narrow the gap with Australia”. Oh wait, Bill English already used that lie and idiots on here think English had integrity.
Correction number two Bomber the general election 2020 was held on October 17th after being delayed from the original September date because of Covid.
A friend and I use to do something similar while on mushrooms
What a huuuge article!
Yet nowhere in it is any incentive or candidate proposed for me to bother to go out and vote.
You seem to think this will be the biggest turn out of voters election?
Rubbish.
It will be a record number of non voters election, simply because none of these candidates, left or right, will be able to do anything for effective change.
What’s different this time around is that the general populace are starting to realise just how ineffective this system of politics is.
My children are flying out to NZ so that they are eligible to vote for the first time. My only motivation is to give them a fighting chance.
so where do they live when they don’t fly in to vote in NZ? England? US? Canada? Singapore?
” The only hope for transformative change from Labour will be what the Greens and Māori Party are able to hardball them into ”
You mean Marama playing hardball after achieving amazing results with homelessness and our Tamariki that actually have NO rights like many other deprived children ? or the Maori party that actually has never had anything meaningful to put forward for 18 years that has actually done something , anything for the whanau in Rotorua or anywhere else that did not involve more resources for the tribal elite that also subscribe to the trickle down theory !
Said it before and I will say it again and as the esteemed Sue Bradford has identified there is a vacuum on the left that can represent and stand for the many who have no representation because Cinderella and her ugly sisters are never going to be able to play hardball and make a meaningful effort to address the many levels of economic and social depravity many of our people endure every day.
I dont believe National can win with Luxon, maybe Willis but I am not convinced. Bishop perhaps but would need someone like Willis or Stanford to bolster his appeal. That and a policy to industrially build houses and raise state housing to 5% (What it used to be) along with tough on crime and I link all child and main attendance benefits to school attendance rates.
I think another pretend left govt is where we are headed. I love this country but another term like this and NZ’s fate will be irretrievable. National could stop this if they grew a backbone and became truly centrist rather than appearing to appease the population while striving all the time to do the same old things deriving from the same failed dogma.
Why would National give away all their ideas now? Because Labour would copy them and claim them. Patience, let ACT do the dirty work for now, and everything will be revealed three months before the election, by which time the population will be struggling with money and hate Labour with a vengeance!
National would need to have an idea first, they have no idea.
” There was never a meaningful plan to change and all the failure can be dumped on her as the Minister for Homelessness ”
Imho Adern , Robertson and others like Little and your mate Hipkins set her up with the responsibility and marketing exercise of trying to achieve change in this utter devastation that is people living in cars and motel hell with our children and by that I mean our future generation who are being economically deprived the right to a warm safe home and protection and access to healthcare and education that they deserve and the safety and security of a home.
Marama has never been focused on the task at hand and has been to busy being distracted by nonsensical issues that you have pointed out Bomber and LINO knew that when they appointed her.
It is an utter disgrace and a tragedy that the people who would have acted given the chance ( the departed real Green party pre 2017 ) most certainly would never have agreed to this suicide mission when the LINO government had a majority and did not need the Greens or anyone else like the shyster and Kill Bill in 2008-17.
They would be fighting and being vocal on the failure of this government just as they were when the last Nasty Nat , ACT , Dunne , Maori government were overseeing the destruction of human lives and fully funded state services.
” If National were smart ”
That is a classic Tui billboard if ever I saw one lol.
J S Bark Fantail and Mosa .Read these blogs and you have the delema facing voters Those that voted Labour last time due to their gratitude for their handling of covid will be disappointed with the measures taken on other fronts like law and order health housing and those at the bottom of the heap. Weather they are pissed of enough to now vote National will start to take shape over the next few months. zThe local elections will show a preference for the left or right to handle local affairs.
I will print out this blog to refer to after the election. I do not think TOP will get a seat in Chch their leader was a lone wolf on the council and faired poorly when standing in 2017 election.
” The Greens are great at alienating voters, cancelling people for crimes against woke dogma and a love for bikes that borders on sexual fetish.
Not good for much else unfortunately.
I think the Greens will be lucky to get 7% on election night which would be fortunate for them because their record in Office deserves less.
It is distressing for people like me who took the time to study their policies that they wanted to advance as part of an MMP centre left government where they were welcomed not ridiculed before they even sat down at the negotiating table and I refer to the last Labour led government and the current LINO middle class property owners who seem to be represented regardless of the neo liberal free market party in parliament.
Seems the first past the post mentality is not what we expected to get when we voted for reform in September 1992 and the referendum on November 6th 1993.
Of course once again the forces of manipulation had time to adjust and ensure MMP would only deliver the status quo and not the new dawn we were told it would be.
# 14 FUND ALL MEDICINES by fully funding Pharmac so it can do it’s job.
There should not be over a million prescribed items a year not funded (2019 figures from one chemists chains own survey.
Over two years from Sept 2017 to Aug 2019 an average of 187,544 prescribed items a month were dispensed at Green cross pharmacies.
This is a disgusting fact.
You c an Guarantee that figure will be now way over 200,000+ due to the change in Medicines technology that creates meds for the individual and not the one size fits old old school way.
Jesus Geoff ALL MEDICINE? Who is paying for this. We all moaned our tits off over a measly $103b estimate on Kiwi Saver reduction over 50 plus years. How do react to paying another $2b just to finance Pharmac. Incidently the GST on the Kiwi Saver fees would have cost me $35 this year.
Nats cost me $512 per year by reducing subsidy and my Grandkids $1000 by knocking off the signup bonus. They could have put that into Pharmac instead of building roads to kill people on while adding to pollution and global warming.
Fucking dumb arses.
Great call on Nats fucking up Kiwisaver funds but crying wolf on Kiwisaver fees!
This is a great write up i love the humor as well.
You’re dead wrong on Aussie bushfires this summer. Looking like another La Nina so a washout is far more likely.
The fires are a feature of a strong El Nino that has had a few years to dry things out.
My gut feel is if we get a strong La Nina we’re going to cop a pretty severe system over a heavily populated area. We’ve dodged alot of bullets in that respect.If I could be bothered looking at the Madden-Julian oscillation I could prob work out when thats most likely to happen.
You seem to have some pretty good insights in regards to the weather, so… where is the surf going to be good this summer? Askin’ for a friend. Thanks.
by severe system do you mean a Tropical Cyclone?
Bomber
Not one of your 13 ideas in the first 100 days includes a money making venture that can pay for all that. It’s all based on tax tax tax and more tax. Instead, like say Norway or Finland and now the UK, your No1 item should be drill for oil, mine for minerals, re-invigorate tourism and make some money for the country. Then we can easily afford all the other 13 ideas.
Im picking 2023 will be a re-run of 2005. Labour will be wiped out in the provinces, but South Auckland will turn up and save the day.
National and ACT have a golden oppurtunity to hack away at what is left of the welfare state and workers protections. We must not let them.
KEEP GETTING THOSE PAY RISES — VOTE LABOUR!!!
Millsy – you know the costs of all those pay rises will be sheeted back to those whose pay has risen in the form of increased prices. As such, it has always been – Amen.
So you think that workers should get no payrises at all over their whole working life?
Seems you don’t have any human decency
Did I say that Millsy? Simply pointing out Economics 101 – that pay rises feed into inflation and increased prices thus needing further pay rises and around and around it goes forever……….
So to run through your analogy to itsconclusion, if workers work for free then businesses will offer their goods for free, landlords will offer free rent etc etc?
That makes no sense at all. Amen.
Also, I see a lot of “struggling small business owners” driving round in late model Ford Rangers…..
Peasants! they should be driving government sponsored E -Vehicles.
that’s because profits are used for personal toys not reinvested in the business so NZ SMEs have little or no resilience in a crisis. millsy
in a low wage economy such as ours wage inflation is just not a thing excessive margins and ‘gouging inflation’ is the issue
U say Tamakis lot are Toxic Narcissists Martyn but the others are not. I think you would find the majority of them even the Labour party caucus have a number of People with NPD in them. It’s a fact Politics attracts this type. NPD = Narcissistic Personality Disorder if you did not know. Clinically diagnosed Narcissists to you lol.
The General Election is indeed a year away. Yes, one more whole trip around the Sun. Which is a very long time indeed. With the fucking. Short. Attention span. Of so many pundits and online commenters.
Politics is more than Parliamentary or Parliamentary Party related, it is people in action beyond their own immediate lives. Getting involved in anything beyond “what’s for dinner” is political. And it would be great to see more working class people think and act with their own agency.
An old mate of mine is standing for Mayor of Wairoa, not into Rocket Lab or self serving Councillors holding secret meetings–with a big lunch spend and their work farmed out to consultants on the ratepayer. He is campaigning among the “little people” on Marae with unsealed roads out front and all the rest, and may not win but is leading by example.
So 2023 is not a foregone conclusion, lets see how the boomer replacement generations participate. I can tell you one thing, and it is measurable in several ways–where Māori Wards have been enacted in Local Govt. participation is way up.
Next years election is National’s to lose. If they manage to fuck this up, it’s 100% on them because Labour under Jacinda is a slow trainwreck. The Jacinda regime has failed everything at every level. IMO it’s infathomable that they even have a contention of winning another term, UNLESS National somehow make thmeselves a worse option or unelectable by a self own (sure it’s possible, but I just don’t see it as likely).
Even from where I’m sitting. I can see next year’s general election will be we’ll hung.
What I don’t know is if it’s going to be a boy or a gurl?
It will be a they/thembie and they will be genderless.
I believe the result for the election next year won’t be about right and wrong policy from either side, except perhaps the lack of transparency with three waters. In my opinion it will come down to businesses (mainly small not corporate) who will vote National, along with the anti establishment group’s. And voting Labour Will be the low paid and disadvantaged along with the never say die Jacinda supporters. Both these voting groups have been let down badly by labour. I can’t think why any business owner would vote labour with the contemptible treatment they’ve been given, and the low paid and homeless will always vote labour even when they are no better off. The country’s indebtedness will also play a part. I believe for many people surviving the next twelve months will take precedence over climate change,simply because we can’t change what’s happening globally any time soon. The ice sheets won’t stop melting just because NZ farms a few less cows. It will be a them against us election and I can’t see a clear winner. The people will be the losers.
13 months out from the general election.
Why don’t they just call for an early election now and get it over with?
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