I think that most voters don’t understand how NZ politics work and they don’t understand how Labour is failing to be transformative when Labour have an MMP majority.
They are legitimate questions and are valid ones, how can a Party with an unprecedented MMP majority still seem to do sweet fuck all on the big issues confronting us as a society, economy and culture.
It starts at the 2017 election.
In an act of desperation and true leadership, Andrew Little handed Jacinda the leadership months out from the 2017 election which was strategically designed to eliminate the Māori Party and United Future and on election night the specials and overseas vote weren’t counted leaving a deflated Jacinda to tell the country we hand’t won when in fact the specials and overseas vote were always going to go our way and I believed Winston was going to go with us.
The strategy of knocking out National support parties won us the 2017 election but because no one in the Labour leadership expected to win, there was no 100 day legislative agenda to ram through the moment you get into Parliament and if you don’t do that, the Wellington Bureaucracy will kill off any of your reform agenda for their own interests.
This is what most NZers don’t understand about NZ politics, winning power is VERY different from managing power. If you don’t arrive on day one with with a clear legislative agenda and enough mana to intimidate the Wellington Bureaucracy, you get nothing done.
Representative Democracy in NZ is a masquerade so that you will participate and give it legitimacy, the truth is that the Wellington Bureaucracy runs the country and their middle class neoliberal pandering decides policy implementation, not the feckless and easily manipulated Ministers.
Labour didn’t expect to win 2017 and they didn’t expect to win an MMP majority in 2020, so they’ve had no real 100 day legislative agenda to ram through and as such have been stymied every step by the Wellington Bureaucracy.
The Greens and Māori Party must avoid this by clearly telling voters now what they will force Labour to pass in the first 100 days of a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government so that the Wellington Bureaucracy can be thwarted. Unfortunately the Greens are socially connected at the hip to the Wellington Bureaucracy and have all the offensive capacity of slow growing moss.
Luckily this time we have JT who is an alpha at forcing policy issues pst the Wellington Bureaucracy.
The last chance for Left progressive policy is a list of bottom line first 100 day laws to force Labour into being more Bernie Sanders than cautious Grant and Chippy are confident to attempt.
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.
We need more real economic solutions on the Left and far less pronoun policing.
We need to be kinder to individuals and crueller to Corporations.
We need to ram real changes through ink the first 100 days or the Wellington Bureaucracy will smother real reform again.
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But to “force Labour into being more like Bernie Sanders”, someone would actually have to play the role of Bernie, and actually share the same policies.
Is there even one such politician? Whoever it is, they’re not currently in Parliament.
The nearest poĺly we have Bernie Sanders is Winston!!
Remember him, portraed as the “hand brake” but in retrospect was actally the voice of reason
If you look at Bernie Sanders economic and immigration policy they’re closer to National than Labour. Much of the left even claimed Sanders was a Jew hating nazi. That’s how much aesthetically pleasing lefties hate economics.
Labour have been transformational alright, just not in the way kiwis wanted.
Your idealistic nonsense, that somehow Labour will change for the better in a third term, when they have been incompetent and inept in the first two, is laughable.
Jacinda wasn’t incompotent.
I’m a former Labour voter from 2017 and 2020 in the Remutaka electorate but, owing to Labour’s timidity on tax, I’m weighing up voting for TPM or TOP this election (I’ve given up on the Hreen Party). We need a minor party propping up the next government in order to force its hand on tax reform. I think TOP has the best and most well articulated ideas on tax, but I also think TPM would be best at shaking Labour from its complacency. It’s going to be a difficult decision.
Agree Jonas, me too. I’m a bit worried though about a wasted vote. Labour need a bollocking from electorate but I’m hopeful, if they can just scrape in, it might be enough to save us from the right. Hopeful. Will depend of course on their election policies. It’s gotta be capital gains / wealth tax, shifting tax brackets for me.
Kiwis are actually incredibly politically aware, understand how to use an incredibly complex political system and often vote tactically and strategically.
It’s our politicians who deeply misunderstand the difference between Campaigning, winning, governing and reforming, not our citizens.
For 40 years our politicians have been actively working against what the public voted them in for, we even changed our electoral system (despite the politicians protests) to straight jacked them and all we got is more bullshit and excuses from a more expensive and more diverse group of politicians.
Kiwis understand politics perfectly, that’s why so many don’t give a fuck about it.
Our relationship with our politicians is like an abusive relationship, every three years they tell us this time will be different and then the second we take em back they start abusing us again.
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