VOTER ABSTENTION should now be Labour’s and the Greens’ biggest fear. That tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders, normally supportive of these two parties, may simply choose to stay home on the 14 October and abstain from participating in the General Election altogether. Asked why they are considering this drastic course of action: why they are opting-out; the most common reply is: “Because there’s no one I can bring myself to vote for.”
The reasons for these voters turning away from Labour and the Greens are many and varied. Some are registering their displeasure at the way the Centre-Left parties responded to the challenge of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Locating themselves, politically, among the 30 percent of New Zealanders who thought the anti-vaccination mandate protesters encamped on Parliament’s front lawn had a measure of right on their side.
Others may be planning to abstain in response to what some are calling the “Maorification” of New Zealand. The He Puapua Report, Three Waters, the whole “co-governance” project, may present an insurmountable hurdle to casting a vote for Labour and/or the Greens.
Not that the abstainers are considering voting for National or Act – not these “tribal” leftists. No matter how alienated they may feel from their traditional electoral options, there is simply no way they could ever cast a vote for “the class enemy”. Better not to vote at all.
Bolstering these groups considerably will be those women – and men – outraged at the treatment meted out by members and supporters of the transgender community to the British women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (a.k.a “Posie Parker”). Well-connected insiders are already reporting resignations – including a number of hard-working party organisers outraged by the scenes that unfolded in Auckland’s Albert Park on Saturday, 25 March 2023.
Their outrage has since been compounded by the apparent inability of senior Labour and Green parliamentarians to acknowledge their complicity in the whipping-up of a climate of toxic rage against Keen-Minshull and all those who accepted her invitation to publicly speak up for women’s rights.
Left-wingers who came of age between the 1970s and 90s find it increasingly difficult to relate to the “progressives” of the twenty-first century. They see activists who fought for women’s and gay rights (in a period of New Zealand history when there was strong societal resistance to both) demonised as “TERFs” by activists willing to tear apart an entire political culture over the question of who is, and who is not, a woman.
A fey mood of reckless radicalism appears to have gripped Labour and the Greens. The extraordinary charge levelled against “white cis men” by the Greens’ co-leader, Marama Davidson, declaring them responsible for all the violence in the world, epitomises the Traditional Left’s dilemma. Confronted with the Orwellian obligation to confirm that 2+2=5, or face excommunication from the progressive community, more and more of the people whose votes have kept the Greens in Parliament (and Labour in Government!) are simply saying “Fuck it!” – and walking away.
Undoubtedly, there will be some who will respond to this information with a tart “good riddance”. But those tempted to take this position should, perhaps, pause to consider the consequences of allowing so much electoral support to simply walk away.
Those perplexed and/or alienated by the actions of the Contemporary Left tend to be older voters. After all, if you can remember protesting the Vietnam War, the 1981 Springbok Tour and campaigning for the Homosexual Law Reform Bill, then you’re going to be well into your 50s – at least.
So what?
So, older supporters of the Left are among the most reliable of New Zealand voters. Their abstention will require Labour and the Greens to fill the gaps in the Left’s ranks with younger voters – the most difficult of all demographics to motivate electorally. While the ranks of the Right are replenished by middle-aged and elderly voters returning to the conservative fold after atypically backing “Jacinda” in 2020; the ranks of the Left will be thinned by the refusal of those who, election after election, have proved themselves to be the Left’s most loyal and reliable voters, to get off the couch.
There is even a worrying possibility that neither the Labour Party, nor the Greens, will see this electoral disaster coming. Left-wing abstainers are a politically astute group who, depending on how pissed-off they are with the parties they have traditionally supported, may flat-out lie to any pollster questioning. If they refuse to answer honestly, then the looming threat they pose to the Government’s survival may not become apparent until it is too late to avert it.
Respondents lying to pollsters is a real problem in the United States, where political polarisation is making people increasingly ill-disposed to co-operate with those they identify as the “enemy”. Such are the bitter fruits of political betrayals that never seem to end.
Sadly, New Zealanders are fast becoming familiar with their taste.
There is no class Left in this “country” at the present time. Perhaps, when there is a new, substantive country, there will be.
“Who ever sits at the bottom serves the function of the left.” The problem that presents is that we are a house divided amongst ourselves. The left is pulling in multiple directions simultaneously.
Now you said that there are no class left in New Zealand which is reasonable to say. Now the question is to what extent are subjective experiences real?
There’s no sense that Labour or the Greens hold up the highest values that the left can bask in awe.
Wages rose, so did inflation.
Benefits rose to match the claw backs.
NZDF, police and fire took budget cuts.
What the hell are they teaching in university.
Where’s all the engineers we need to take climate change?
Where’s all the houses?
History will judge Ardern as a monumentally weak leader who lost control of her Govt and wasted a unique mandate on racist undemocratic policies she never put to the electorate.
She killed it with kindness.
Without question – She was always a totally inadequate person for the role. She had zero substance for leadership.
What the hell are they teaching in primary school? In High School?
You think teaching still occurs? Are you a teacher?
Education is far too racist to be taught. Kids are encouraged to sit around and analyse their ‘identity’ and find it wanting, instead.
If you can imagine a generation of Green Party kids flying around the world, mobs cancelling others for perceived micro aggressions, not engaging with the world’s environment as too busy writing self published books about their depression/ADHD/mental health due to the sea of racists and homophobes who need to be cancelled and more taxes needed to pay for all the vulnerable people like them, out there.
Gender woo and te reo.
Our oldest, Olin Maori class at high school had all pakeha kids kept back in to lunch time while Maori kids went to lunch, supposedly to show them what white privilege was.
Yes that’s right they were punished for being white.
Some families left the school over it, our kid doesn’t want to do Maori anymore, he was getting merits and had done a project on getting people to pronounce the town name better.
Apparently (on questioning child) all year the Maori kids sit at the front and get to go on their phones, white and non Maori kids to the back, no phones.
What they taught those kids wasn’t what they thought they did.
My 9yo got home last week. The class is doing research and project into migration.
She said ‘Maori only took what the needed, the British came and took everything’.
Just yet another confirmation that our decision to move to another country is the right one.
We leave in December.
we’re a prosperous country. our social services are good. our social strata is relatively flat. capital is the only class in our society. we don’t retain enough of it because… financial-ization. too many foreign interests clipping the ticket on imported resources. if we could be more self-sufficient and still productive, we’d be sweet. that’s the only real class left to take – lets work it out.
I believe the appalling scenes at Albert Park followed by the extraordinarily inflammatory comments made by Davidson will sink the Greens and Labour.
I am of the demographic you speak of.
A working class lefty who has moved between Labour and the Greens for 40 years.
I have been swallowing dead rats for years watching particularly Labour desert its traditional mandate in favour neo liberalism and lately woke ideology.
I simply can no longer vote for parties i no longer recognize in order to keep National and ACT out.
Barring a vote for Top I cant identify with any of them.
Im out.
Thank you Jack for being supportive of women. It means a lot, especially when the politicians and the police aren’t. Kia kaha.
What bollocks. Seeing through Posie Parker who is now, surprise surprise, starting her own political party does not mean you don’t support women.
There is nothing to see through.
Parker has cleverly triggered the radical trans mob to blow themselves up.
The scenes from Albert Park have although been ignored and suppressed in NZ have created outrage worldwide.
The government, media except Plunket and all of the enabling agencies like the PSA are looking very foolish right now.
Most people who have bothered to go in search of the plethora of incriminating footage are horrified.
Boycotting which used to be the norm before cancellation is back.
Completely agree Jack.
Unfortunately (as someone who has voted TOP at the least 2 elections) they are no longer an option for me seeing as they supported the Hate Speech legislation.
No Jack, you’re not out! While you’re alive and kicking you’re IN – whether you like it or not. I don’t like it either, but we just have to keep on truckin’ until we find someone who says it somewhat for us – otherwise the bad guys win. Vote – please.
Another “moaning Minnie” speculation. I know some Labour people hosed off with not getting to talk at the Parker event, a couple were trotskyites in a former life. But surely they do not indicate a wide trend at this brief remove.
Really, politically aware older types are likely ingrained “lesser evil” voters regardless of the sins of Labour or Greens. Vote Green or TPM, and strategically Labour electorate is my tip.
Boomer numbers are declining, as elder poverty rises, a number will have noted however the recent rise in NZ Super payments and may reward Labour with their vote-Natzos want to raise super age.
Just vote TOP, they are more ‘progressive’ in achieving economic equality anyway
TOPs policy is to steal from people who worked all their lives to provide a home for their families and handout as a UBI to people who can’t be bothered getting out of bed.
I’m sorry but your sentiment amount people ‘too lazy to get out of bed’ is a lazy generalisation and a distraction from the point. The UBI would replace all forms of social welfare and so there is no longer ‘stigma’ attached to people on benefits as we are all in the same boat. In coming decades there will be a loss of jobs (through tech, e.g. driverless trucks). Therefore, a UBI is a good way of providing some form of safety net for everybody (its universal). Its not enough to live on, and so there is an incentive to still work. You would be getting it to. Other countries often pinned up as achieving great social outcomes e.g. Scandinavian are trialing this already. Do we want to really be progressive and move with the world, or do we want to keep our heads in the sand?
RobbieWgtn. Marama Davidson who’s never bought her own home, is the pollie who seems to think that home owners are millionaires and wants them taxed when their properties reach a certain value – thanks to inept govt policy.
Economic equality for younger people Ed and at the moment, that will mean they will never get real traction.
That’s the way I’m thinking too. We all know this is the reason the Greens especially want to give naive 16 year olds the vote, I expect we’ll be hearing more about that in the next few months.
Yes again. Who who choose a 16yo to manage their lives?
Who who give a 16yp power to make decisions for them?
I almost always voted Labour since Kirk (only 2 exceptions decades ago), including twice for Jacinda (fool me once etc).
Then a couple of years ago I saw the MSM go feral, read He Puapua & the PIJF ToW propaganda conditions. I will be voting 2 ticks ACT this year, never again in my life for Labour.
Yeah my 40 years with Labour is dunzo from henceforth.
You dont get to use the police as an arm of the State and get away with it! Saying ‘we have changed’ will never get me to trust you again.
the PIJF ToW propaganda conditions…
It’s still unbelievable to me, I can’t quite believe it’s as bad as it actually is.
Trust is gone.
Belief that NZ is the best, is I’m afraid, gone.
Chris is ignoring the bigger picture “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” While Martyn (& many others) denies the existence of higher powers everything is happening as prophecy tells us along a path where false worship is forced on all by a church-state combination due to the fear people have over problems in the world.
And some of us will protest vote. I’m a former hard-core Labour voter, union delegate etc. I don’t identify with this arrogant bunch at all and disgusted my the weekend’s events. Labour, give us a call when you drop the hateful SJW BS & go back to being about a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Brooke van Velden has impressed me most. Voting ACT this year.
Brooke Van Velden would be one reason I wouldn’t vote for ACT. Her comments about teaching NZ history sounded so US Republican Bible Belt like that it’s an instant turn off.
“more and more of the people whose votes have kept the Greens in Parliament (and Labour in Government!) are simply saying “Fuck it!” – and walking away.”
That hits the nail on the head for me. Chippy gave it a good shot but when it comes to the crunch he is unwilling to draw a clear line between the economic left and excesses of the cultural left.
I’ve always been aware that voters tend to drift to the right as they get older. I used to assume it was among the middle class for financial reasons. As people got older earned more money, bought houses etc they wanted to build capital and pay less tax. Perhaps this is true for many but in my circle it’s overwhelmingly a reluctant recognition of how self-righteous, authoritarian and untethered from reality the centre of gravity within the left has become.
I know several lifelong Labour/Green voters supporting ACT as the ‘lesser evil’ this time round. Pick your preferred flavour of woke or non-woke corporatism.
Same Tui.
Somewhere someone said this week, maybe here, that hits the nail on the head about this left drifting right thing with age.
“We didnt leave the Labour party, the Labour Party left us.”
And that is it in a nutshell. We stayed largely the same and they threw our values back in our face, called us bigots and dinosaurs and danced off into their brave new world (And effed the country along the way).
@Fantail – agreed, a concise summary.
That’s “progressivism”, keep pushing and changing even when the change is madness because otherwise you aren’t being progressive, the institutions preaching it are all echo chambers with no grounding in reality.
If you attempt to insert reality you are a racist or TERF or transphobe or whatever word gets your identity group cancelled.
Post modernism is a mental health issue.
If Winnie is King maker then at least we will have a 3 year break from nonsense and little achieved.
Yes. Elder statesmen, experienced Parliamentarian, who cuts through the crap faster than a hot knife through butter.
Too woke, no vote.
Go woke, lose votes??
FFS – so you’re all happy for the Conservatives to go through unchallenged and will bite off your nose to spite your face – what a bunch of morons.
You’d rather plunge us into the bland morass of middle class culture wars, while the capital classes are ripping us off blind. Shame.
Yep, I’m that demographic. 55 year old lesbian veteran of Homosexual Law Reform, Labour activist, Mana Party activist, occasional Green voter. My wife and I are suddenly politically homeless and completely silenced. My wife wants to vote National (prefacing that with omg never thought I’d say this…), seeing them as the only party who will stand up to the bullies who are trashing lesbians and evicting us from the ‘rainbow’ community. I’m thinking of voting TOP, but we’ll have to see what their position is in the wash-up. Otherwise I’m possibly a stay-home on the day. The Greens are sunk, which is a shame but I won’t miss this iteration of collective sanity loss.
As someone who has voted TOP twice, they lost me for good when they supported the Hate Speech Legislation. I also know some people in that party who are hard TRAs.
Ah. I’m a total newbie to them so thanks for that background. Yeah, I want to run a mile from that stuff right now.
I’m one such voter who has voted Labour all my life even after the bastardisation of the 84 Rogernomics – but this time I am considering not voting at all. I know this will allow one vote for the Nat/Act party but what can we do.
Labour is not left they are Liberals and Greens whilst well intentioned are, as seen on the weekend, lack the leadership needed. Davidson is a disgrace and to level the charge against white males shows her lack of smarts and all the bullshit excuses is making matters worse. James Shaw anyone? No thanks.
Neoliberalism was always going to end with the rest of us fighting over the crumbs. And here we are, tearing each other to shreds and for what…
100% – all this intersectionalism is just a smokescreen.
100% Divide and Rule.
I will be abstaining.
I was a left-wing activist. I care about people. Not just the well-off – all people. I do not stand for mere appearances as these parties do.
Labour has been outrageous. It has been prepared to break democracy and everything we fought for including free-speech and the right to protest. Not for left-wing progress but against it.
My people, (and this includes working class Maaori) are in greater hardship. More of our people are being destroyed. By destroyed I do not mean the middle-class definition flung about when Ardern resigned. Not hurt pride, I mean the previous meaning of the word. Actually destroyed.
I can’t imagine voting for the current so-called left-wing parties ever again. This time they went too far. If they ever came out of their fantasy bubble and mixed with everyday people they would know how furious a large swathe of struggling everyday people are. But They never do and they don’t care – we don’t exist to them.
More and more, their policies mean many of us don’t exist on earth. There is no televised count of the destruction of our people. No hyped team of five million fighting to save us. We just suffer and die.
100%
Yes ‘purer. Amazing surprising and unbelievable how they don’t care about people, humans. Yet people still give them support…
Write “No Confidence” on your voting form, make a real stand.
Helen Beck. It just gets binned as a spoiled vote. It needs to be a provided option.
Instead you could vote for ACT as a protest if you’re worried about wasting your vote. It’s the change we need.
…no…considered it but currently prefer Winston or TOP; Marama plus the Albert Park fiasco could crash both the Greens and Labour anyway.
Don’t think, just ACT!
Labour and the Greens must be punished, but I’d be reluctant to see undeserving people clobbered in the process; there’s a few months to go yet.
I am an old leftie, environmentalist and protester and I despair. Has this supposedly left-leaning blog been highjacked by right-wing bots? Many of you appear to prefer the ravages of another brutal wave of neo-liberal policies by voting Nat/ACT than voting for the insipid incrementalism/centralism of Labour. Be careful what you wish for!
The trans debate, and the behaviors of a few at the Posie Parker protest, are our latest ‘moral outrage’. Predictably, a few foolish hot-heads made the headlines. The protest was not chaotic – they were huge and joyful. Protests are by their nature annoying and disruptive. Remember that team? This conversation, like gay rights, racism, civil unions, learning Te Reo, etc, are not Chicken Little moments. The trans conversation is just another step in our social and political continuum
Unless you were the lesbian getting punched in the face…
Problem:
1. Labour/Green are currently hostile to women’s rights, in particular the right to female-only spaces, events and services. Women are 51% of the population.
2. Labour/Green MPs helped stoke hatred of women’s rights campaigners to the point that a violent mob attacked them.
3. Labour/Green MPs made it illegal for therapists to attempt to treat sex dysphoria, instead legally requiring them to encourage children who’ve asserted sex dysphoria down a pathway towards lifelong medication, surgical mutilation, sexual dysfunction and/or sterilisation.
These are not trivial issues!
f.o. watching in absolute horror the live streams of the Mt Albert fandango and couldn’t see straight for a week. your definition of large and joyful kind of contradicts the paradigm. kids are given transit or exit choices and you say joyful? f.o. again. all academia talking out of their backsides to avoid re-trenchment and no one can get across the Cook Straight (oh wait, our government chatGP will decide to call it the kai kai waka waka)
Not voting is a win for David Seymour and the hell in this world that he will bring,SACKING is his go to word,and stomping on you is his agender
Thankyou Grant Robertson for making it easier for me to electorate vote Labour.
The Party vote is going to be a real bitch of a thing to figure out. At most, there’s about 6 months to figure it out. The trick will be how the Chipster handles getting all the various demographics his party has managed to alienate back into the fold. Seems to me people are not prepared to settle for the least worst option.
And if I were JA, I’d pick up my husband and daughter and head for a Pacific atoll somewhere for a couple of years where the chances of putting a bit of gas back in the tank are a lot better.
100% Chris!
And the comments below of this typical tribal mob prove you’re correct.
Astute as usual Chris
Unfortunately we have come to a point where voting for the only actively anti woke party in ACT has become necessary despite many of their other policies being unpalatable.
Destroying the village to save it.
I’m facing that possiblity. Can’t vote Green or Labour due to their hostility to women’s rights and the threat they pose to children. Won’t vote National or ACT because I’m a leftist. Won’t vote for parties that are unlikely to make the threshold. That leaves Te Pāti Māori, but it looks like they’ve drunk the Queer Theory kool-aid too. Abstention may be the outcome.
Psycho Milt. We have to think of the children. Currently Hannah Tamaki is the only public person who seems to be doing so. What the lying politicians and media did to Kellie -Jay Keen is horrific, and we cannot let them do it to us or to our precious tamariki. Even if we can just dump Labour and the Greens, it’s some sort of first step.
I take your point. It’s doing my head in that the right-wing parties are currently the *least* hostile to women’s rights and the only ones with an interest in child safeguarding.
A few years back, Wayne Hope, an occasional TDB commentator, wrote about the increasing irrelevance of the tradition left /right label. Perhaps that’s a bit too harsh on those who still use the distinction but I think many would agree it raises a point on how political parties position themselves toady and how voters respond (or is it the other way around, the world become more complex, politics becomes more complex, and political; parties morf to attract voters and grab / stay in power). In typical fashion perhaps a bit of both. I’m not sure if its in TDB archive but if it is its worth a read. Perhaps Mr Hope will consider re-writing it taking to account the intervening years.
Back in the day it was a whole lot easier easier. Parties either espoused socialism (and in some instances communist principles) or they were blatantly and unashamedly capitalist. A bit of a generalization but for arguments sake let’s say that. The views of individual voters could be placed along this continuum, traditionally determined by a class distinction, the blue collar working class and the so-called capitalist class. And farmers like my own father voted right, subsidies, tax credits, good for business, right. Many in the professional class I suspect voted right because the right ‘protected’ their interests, although this is undoubtedly an oversimplification. I am sure there were many a left learning surgeon, engineer or lawyer (but perhaps not accountant). Teachers and nurses were left learning, but then I may well be wrong. Journalists? Surely not so straightforward but a hell of a lot simpler back in the day.
Voters have always voted on social issues, social conservatives on one side and social progressivists on the other. Traditionally social conservatives voted right, yes, and progressivists voted left. Some exercised a conscience vote. But increasingly those social issues are in voters faces 24/7. Many are interconnected with the economic but many are not. And as TDB unceasingly points out, identity now rules. And that it is argued is simply a diversion.
So where’s this all going? A left /right distinction? Or increasingly looking like a quadrant type configuration with an additional social axis creating four spaces? If so that raises the questions:
– Where do the parties position themselves in this configuration?
– Where do voters see themselves on the multiple issues? Which really matter?
– Who to vote for (2 votes now of course and a new dynamic)?
A bit more noggin work, not blind allegiance, is the order of the day. And hopefully simply not the fuck you vote by supporting the opposition. For me its a challenge. Never voted right but when younger never voted at all as I thought all politicians had their noses in the trough. That indeed may be close to the truth and maybe I’ll revert back to my youthful distain. But where I’m at now a travesty for democracy I feel.
Mr Hope, how about rewriting that piece.
Thanks Bozo, food for thought.
An article of absolute twaddle.
I thought I was reading Stuff or the herald for a minute there, they tend to flavour opinion stated as fact.
You think the left won’t vote? Bull$&@T
The only good thing about this opinion piece is the bigotry it has exposed in the comments.
Very interesting discussion. I’m supporting Democracy NZ at this stage, getting back to grassroots politics and freedom of speech.
Only party worth voting for is Matt King- Democracy NZ, all the rest will take us to hell in a hand basket!
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