The latest polling is good and it shows how successful the toxicity campaign against Jacinda was, but ultimately voters are still waiting on Labour’s 2017 promise to be transformative.
The looming economic recession is going to be far more damaging than most appreciate and Chippy has to give Voters who are struggling on the fringes real promise of actual change which will demand a level of policy courage from him that Jacinda was too cautious to attempt.
Here is how Chippy fights (and wins) the cost of living crisis:
Free Breakfast and Lunch in every school: Apart from an enormous reduction in the cost to parents each week, it will do more to counter truancy than any other policy.
Free Public transport: With the petrol tax going back on next month, the cost of transport will surge and everyone will need to look at alternatives. For most working poor, a quarter of their wage is taken up with public transport costs
Smash the Supermarket Duopoly: The changes that have been made so far would work if things were normal, but they aren’t normal and they won’t go back to being normal. The Government must smash up the Supermarket duopoly by backing a third player to generate real competition.
If the spending is targeted, that ends up being social justice and misses anyone who doesn’t get the diversity tick, but if the services are universally subsidised and provided, that is economic justice and benefits a far larger group.
Putting more money into lifting benefits doesn’t work because WINZ and MSD claw so much of it back, funding universal services is the solution to winning over the majority and ruling for the many and not the few.
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Not saying they are bad ideas but there are some practicalities that stand in the way.
I know in Chch the half fares caused an increase in public transport but it quickly fell away as the bus company was so unreliable. Lack of drivers poor fleet maintenance and lack of covered bus stops soon had people back in their cars .
Free school lunches sounds like a great idea but what happens when there is no school and is it fair on teachers to have yet another role to fill .If parents cannot afford to feed their children why are they parents .I know circumstances temporarily change up this is why we have a welfare system which should be adequate to feed the children.
NZ is a small country so there is always going to be limited competition that services all areas of town and country
The problem is not that these things aren’t possible. The problem is that the economy is so unbelievably weak, it has become unable to support basic infrastructure — it has been on a downward spiral ever since the disastrous policies of the 1980s (which are still in place).
In the 1950s, there was an enormous railway, tramway and trolleybus network. Milk was being given away for free in the schools (with school cafeterias being the obvious next step).
This was all possible because the economy was diversified, and becoming increasingly advanced as it became more industrialised. The economy today is the opposite of this.
Yes Kristoff NZ is weak and unproductive thus an unprofitable country when it doesn’t have to be. We need to generate (make) money by selling other stuff than dairy. As it stands we as a family are stealing the pocketmoney from our kids, not having earned one cent more to bring into the family. Our main income is tax, when it could be big overseas dollars for oil, gas, minerals, you name it. Of course the NIMBYs will not let that happen. Even. Until someone says Fuck You this is what we are doing so suck it up.
The Neoliberals stripped the Country’s Assets in the 1980’s and we have never recovered.
You have distilled the list down Martyn, and good points. On RNZ today sounds like Mr Chipkins may keep the half price public transport and fuel tax reduction, but we shall see. Baldrick on the same programme would not say he supported those measures! Amazing.
The supermarket duopoly requires a good knee to the nuts, they impose oppressive trading terms on smaller suppliers and rip everyone else too. I predict weight loss across the nation–have seen people literally shake their heads when they read the price tags. $20 for a kilo of tasty cheese is here.
We buy vegetables from markets at Kaitaia, Taipa and Mangonui these days. Affordable, fresh, not half rotten like at Pak’n’Save. In Kaitaia there is not even a duopoly! And we grow some of our own food which we are ramping up.
That is not even a trickle down.
Rents is the main issue. And there is not a person – handsomely paid by the tax payer – in this Labour Party that would regulate the rental market, force some showdown with market forces to build to rent, regulate the building market, and so on and so forth.
And with the floods, and a good chance that many many houses are fucked beyond believe rents will raise, more accomodation benefits will have to be handed out, more motels that are empty will be filled with the poor sods that lost everything this weekend in various parts of the North Island, nothing is changing on the inflation.
Can’t hurt to make it so. But inflation is a beast that can not be tamed with feeding kids some mediocre airplane meals, or subsidized public transport in cities that have it. Your problem Bomber is that you see everything through an Auckland point of view. Now look at places that are not Auckland and ask yourself if your three points will have that much of an impact.
The Herald has already reported on a Bread & Butter Program. Will Hipkins get on with it?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/70k-people-will-lose-their-job-to-fight-inflation-one-economist-thinks-theres-another-way/3GQ24OPXORHF5A2QYVTNTWW564/
There are many jobs that need doing, problem is that we don’ want to pay for it. Firefighters and emergency crews are the first group. We run on volunteers. Think about that.
Well he did the right thing and extended the public transport subsidy and the cheaper gasoline. Until June……
Cost of living crisis,Nationalize the electricity market,nationalize one bank Kiwi, regulate the property rental market,and bring back the true balance of inflation and its exploit, Compulsory Unionism.
That’s the most sense you’ve made in a long time goneby100 🙂
egit alway secret elect,why.
Compulsory Unionism,what a knowing.
“How Chippy fights (and wins) the cost of living crisis”
Yeah but hang on a minute…
What cost of what living crisis?
Ask Steven Minto about inflationary pricing as opposed to the true nature of inflation which is the inflationary effect of a lack of money, not spotting an opportunity to be a greedy arse hole.
We export enough food and sundry agricultural products and mostly in raw form to feed *40 million people so what cost of living crisis?
The ‘cost of living crisis’ is entirely false. **It’s a big fat fucking lie actually and I don’t care what some urban three piece suit wearing flouncing Nancy Main Stream News Bimbo / Himbo tells me.
A. We don’t have a lack of money, we have an agricultural exports earned, urban, money-tit-sucking greedy-cunt surplus. That’s all.
B. We have no political back bone to tackle the Adams Family mutants in our parliament. Those bastards do as they please which is to always please themselves and the multi billionaire clique who loom in the shadows ramming up prices via their tentacular connections to every facet of our lives which they have control of. We need to change that narrative. We need to see some running while screaming.
We have no reason to worry. We have no reason to live in fear. We have no housing crisis, we have no shortages of anything. We have a looming climate crisis but it’s not that loomie for us, for gods sake. Go inland and go up a hill. Go to any road side and put in a vegetable garden, and if some mincing local council bureaucrat makes nasal whiny noises, eat them! You’ll know they’ll be tender.
* So it was written here at TDB.
** I’ve just been shopping at New World. Cherries were under an armed guard. People were being shot trying to steal apricots, and they were E grade shit apricots too. Wattie gets the ‘export grade’ ones remember via the ‘Apple and Pear Marketing Board Mafia ‘ Aye Boys? Off the tree and into Wattie’s pocket. Ka Ching aye Sir jimmy? And without even lifting a finger.
The grower will be getting a few cents, but the Big Two supermarket cartels will be pocketing the rest and you think we have a cost of living crisis. More like a price you must pay the Mafia neoliberals crisis.
We are a country of Have’s and Have Not’s. The wealthy are the top 5-10% who are fucking creaming it and the other 90% are struggling to make ends meet.
profit caps on the duopoly wouldn’t hurt then move on to our other monopolistic suppliers….monopolies are anti competative therefore anti capitalist so right and left should agree on that one.
We are a country of Have’s and Have Not’s. The wealthy are the top 5-10% who are fucking creaming it and the other 90% are struggling to make ends meet.
The way to make things better is to stop deliberately making things worse. Giving every wage earner an 11% per year pay cut (the average since 2005, but much more at the moment) by deliberately creating more money will create a cost of living crisis. Stop doing that and stop lying in the stats, so other governments can’t reverse the policy, would go a long way to helping.
If we keep focusing on how governments must ‘fix’ things we’ll let them off the hook for breaking stuff.
Fred,what,the fucking care.
The best,wit side,Fred.
Compulsory,UNIONISM.