It’s hard for any progressive voter to get excited about Aotearoa New Zealand politics in 2023.
The various branches of the media, as a way to keep as many eyeballs on their screens as possible to maintain their advertising revenue, will breathlessly tell us every couple of weeks who is in front in the latest poll, who is in front in the preferred PM stakes and which parties could or could not form a government. It will be politics by media distraction rather than by policy.
We are heading into our sixth year of Labour-led governments and Labour will continue to do the least they think they can get away with for those on low and middle incomes while doing its best to look the other way from the catastrophic lack of quality, affordable housing for people on low and middle incomes.
Provided there is not rioting in the streets, Labour will be content to wring its hands on housing. As it enters its sixth year, the government of transformation – it was always just a slogan – has presided over the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich since the Labour government of the 1980s. The government blames covid of course – we will hear a lot blamed on covid before the year is out.
The only truly significant policy change under Labour is the legislation for fair-pay agreements which could genuinely result in transformative change: this is the reason employers are so hostile to them.
Progressive voters will of course be assailed by tribal Labour supporters who will paint National/Act as a horror show – “you mightn’t like Labour but National/Act would be dreadful”. Yes, they would. But more awful than Labour? Could three years of National/Act have increased inequality as much as Labour has?
Under MMP of course we could consider the Green Party but, tragically, the Green MPs now look comfortable and complacent – happy with virtue signalling – but no strategy to drive real change despite their supposedly ideal position to hold Labour to account. Their co leaders in particular, Marama Davidson and James Shaw, look contented, telling us they have had a marvellous year in 2022. Just awful. Marama once had a political edge. Like Carmel Sepuloni, who was great on a loudhailer when National was in government, Marama in government has been lethargic. The fire has gone out in the Greens, leaving just a few warm embers.
The Māori Party, with the best environmental and social policy of any party in parliament, deserves much closer attention from progressive voters. It’s always easy to find reasons to dislike a particular party but we shouldn’t let side arguments detract us from using MMP to its best advantage to help shove Labour and the Greens along.
As things stand, If we want a coalition government with at least a reasonably progressive political outlook then the Māori Party is the only sensible place for a progressive to put their vote.
Yep we now have the science curriculum teaching us Maui hauled NZ out of the sea.
Why no mention of TOP – the most economically progressive party in NZ by a big margin. For some reason they are ignored by the left in NZ.
Maybe it’s a credibility problem. They seem unable to gain any real mass following, regardless of how interesting their ideas may be.
In 2017, in terms of the percentage of votes cast, TOP finished 4th, well ahead of both ACT and the Maori Party. In 2020, due probably to the perceived tightness of the race between Labour and National, they bombed out. 2013 r3mains to be seen but I suspect that the same thing may happen again unless one of the main parties collapses – Labour probably. The still have the best policies, at least as far as housing and taxation are concerned.
Interesting thoughts from Gordon Campbell at Scoop:
…Suggestion: Directly or indirectly, it could offer an electorate deal to Raf Manji and TOP in Gerry Brownlee’s old seat in Ilam, much as it did years ago to the ACT Party in Epsom. On current polling that would get three TOP MPs into Parliament. They would be considerably to the left of where National and ACT currently sit on the political spectrum. Bingo! National suddenly looks centrist, with potential partners on either wing.
This outcome would have the bonus effect of reducing any lingering need to rely on Winston Peters post-election. Plus, it would pull across some “soft left’ votes to boot. In some ways, TOP is the ideal package: Reliably conservative on the economy, but fetchingly liberal on social issues. In short, it is the ‘blue green’ combo that National has strived so hard before to grow in a barn but which, in the shape of TOP, has grown up all by itself, free range. Could TOP now be ripe for an investment in its future that might enable it to significantly expand its market reach? ACT is electoral poison, even though it may take a term in government to make that perfectly clear. TOP looks like a more palatable prospect, longer term.
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2301/S00012/on-nationals-fraught-journey-back-to-the-centre.htm
Wow so much underlying racism in most of the answers here.
Very little actual engagement with the article, just the usual Minto doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Michal. Settle down. I deliberately refrain from referring to dirty John Key as a ‘Pommie’ immigrant so as not to appear racist, and in any case am a bit of an Anglophile, but I daresay that’s racist too, and what’s more we’re all allegedly suffering from unconscious bias nowadays, and racism tends to be an accusation mainly flung around by racists, to counter different thinkers. It’s a soiled word.
Read it, recognize it and ignore it unless you can think of something that might change some ones view point. Tolerance and understanding to all people is the best answer to the intolerant.
The choices are all terrible.
No plan for returning to true Full Employment, no plan for bringing the high wage jobs back through industrialisation, no plan for rebuilding the collapsed transportation system, no plan for energy independence, no real solution on housing.
Mr. Minto had the right idea back when he started up his labour movement newspaper. So did Martyn when he was producing a labour movement television show.
If the labour movement does not have its own press, nobody will ever hear about genuinely progressive candidates, or even know the truth about all of the issues.
This may require some new people to start winning in union leadership elections. The unions are still shackled to the Labour Party, who would likely sink any attempt to do this.
Agree it is the union movements shackling to the Labour party that is a huge problem.
Full properly paid full employment. It is not like there aren’t thousands of jobs to be done around the motu.
thank you John. agree. but omg the fucking racist comments here….
The difference between Labour and National is not just the fair pay agreement legislation …
food in schools, the higher pay for nurses, the end of mortgage interest deductability for landlords, the increased base benefits/indexed main benefits to average wage growth/introduced the Families Package, the biggest boost in household income in a decade for thousands of families, the higher MW (now beyond $20 an hour and rising), the winter power bill income supplement, increased the number of public and transitional homes (14,000 claimed), made targeted trades training and all apprenticeships free, increased Pharmac funding, permanently halved the price of public transport for Community Service Cardholders, delivered more than 90,000 insulation and heating retrofits in low-income homes through Warmer Kiwi Homes, introduced Healthy Homes Standards, to ensure all rentals are safe, warm and dry
others at
https://www.labour.org.nz/our-record
SPC – sure they have tinkered around at the edges but definitely not transformational.
Is this the same Maori Party that propped up the Key/English government for nine years, which everyone (including them) seems to have forgotten about? No thanks, John.
No it is nOT THE SAME MAORI PARTY. they know they made a colossal mistake back then and that won’t happen again.
Thank you John Minto. Great post. We need realists in the here & now, for who is not tauiwi in some form or another? Don’t forget, people, it is Andrew Little who has put those unintelligible government-maori language posters on the dank walls of the slaughterhouses.
Hi Guy,
Its great you are real, and have enough courage energy and hope left to post this comment. Thank you. Thanks also to Cowboy whose comments are always a thrilling read.
Every free trade agreement we sign seems to be another nail in our freedom coffin.
We are gifted by nature to be an island nation, not threatened or cowered by a bully neighbour which we can’t avoid, and can pick and choose with intelligence, pride and courage the policies to make our lives freer and improve fulfilment and health for most if not all.
Instead we are now lazily enslaving ourselves to the so called “free market” which is so corrupted compared to what Adam Smith had in mind. Slavery, to the 1% and DAVOS clicque. Slavery to United Nations resolutions that other states ignore and (still remain members). Norman Kirk may have been the last true hope, but his untimely passing snuffed that out. Why was there no security posted at the facility where he was recuperating? Great material for conspiracy theorists.
May be the Maori Party could bring such flower as Big Norm to burst upon us again? I can’t see one as yet, but here’s hoping if they get more support. Another Big Norm arriving today would not likely get a chance with present LINO, and not a Greens type.
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