I think Verity Johnson is a very important political cultural weathervane, her latest column at the deep frustration many 18-40 year olds feel at the vast lack of progress under Labour is painfully real.
Add to that a deep residual anger in Auckland over the last lockdown and the incremental gains made post Covid and you have an electorate wanting to punish not reward.
The only thing that will shock the non ideological Left vote into action is the ongoing economic pain of sticky inflation and rising mortgages.
This election, the costs of living crisis means no one can afford apathy.
People want to vote, they just don’t know who to vote for.
ACT and National will unleash a level of privatisation beyond the capacity of the non ideological Left to visualise and appreciate.
People are either voting to actively punish Labour or they are actively trying to avoid voting for Labour altogether.
But people want to vote.
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I get her point of view to a point. But this iteration of Labour and this iteration of “the left” has left me totally demoralised.
First up Labours ideology over reality has been a substantial part of the reason they continually miss the target. Their assumptions based on flawed reasoning had led to the wrong answers to the wrong questions, time and again. Their approach to crime for example and law and order based on criminals being lovely but sad people who just need a hug and a seond/third/fourth/56th chance means NZ has become a hostile criminal environment. We are less safe by quite some measure because of Labour and their fluffy naive philosophy.
And secondly Labour haven’t failed just on the basis they didn’t deliver their lofty unreal almost fantasy like ideals, no, they failed because they have demonstrated they did not know what they were doing, they were hopelessly wrong for the job. Plain incompetent! Te Whato Ora, a gold plated example!
And thirdly, Labour had the shop front caucus most of us could see and the Maori caucus that actually ran the cabinet for their hidden agenda. The results of that conflict between the caucuses are now being read in the polls.
There’s just so many things bad about this government that you simply have to vote them out this stop the damage to this country. That’s why I’m voting! And I always voted Labour!
100% xray
Xray spells it out. Lacklustre Labour needs to try harder and bend over to get under the limbo stick; bending over with humility as they have much to be humble about. But to understand how to do the dance properly, play the political game fairly, is required for humility – they have to have a standard to measure themselves against. Fact is, they don’t care anymore, they have sold their souls to the money and power men and women who proliferate from overseas under the worldwide capitalism-rules-okay system. We have walking and talking hollow men and women.
They need a Road to Damascus revelation and we need to have a heartfelt apology for going private, but with that would be a warning that the dogs of capitalism will proceed to bite our legs, if we try to change from the onerous rules that any alert Labour or worthy administrative advisor should have read and warned about in the fine print of the international treaties, from nipping at our ankles to biting our achilles tendons out from the the muscles of our legs. Example? Look to Greece; we smiled – we hadn’t fallen prey to such tricks – no we have tripped over our own way. And in comparison I feel that their national dancing is more intricate and graceful than ours – though I bet they couldn’t manage the poi. So we have a lot to learn, but no time left, no settled centuries, just unsettled fleeing from cataclysms, both climate and constant psychopathic human conceptions and machinations.
We can’t have it easy anyway; face it now and accept the immediate pain, or let it play out inexorably while being hit with climate change and anarchy in the near future – possibly short of food, drinking water and decent shelter for many.
What Labour needs is a good salesman like John Cleese prepared to find buyers for stringetts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzAB0P5KFyY
“Vast lack of progress” LOL
This country has gone backwards in leaps and bounds under Labour.
I find it odd that people think real changes will come for all to benefit from one party.
Labour have proven with the biggest mandate that so much cannot be done.
I kind of like the idea of two parties together competing to get more done.
It really might be a “best policy for me” wins election.
The other problem with Labour and Greens is that everything in NZ is now about identity politics. Even this article about 18 40 year olds dissatisfied with Labeen but my guess is that it is across the board in age – not just stopping at 40!
When everything in NZ is now aimed at segmented groups, not everyone that it effects, it becomes increasingly alienating.
Tired groups under Labeens ‘wing’ who seem to be making a fortune often involving fraud and criminal activity, while other groups are cancelled out.
Even the new dental policy stops at 30 years. NZ is becoming an ageist, discriminating society that is being spear headed by government themselves.
The debate on crime in NZ has become a joke.
NZ officials have plenty to time to daily hand wring on issues like mental health (that they spend nearly 2 billion on, but seems to be making it worse) but they keep making peoples lives worse off due to a fixation on help a crim and grow their network.
Increasingly crime pays handsomely in NZ, encouraging more into the crime craft, from small to large, aka this man just got fined $2000 for pretending to be a registered plumber https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/crime/unlicensed-whangarei-plumber-sentenced-following-shoddy-bathroom-renovation/5F5P3NJWZRGH3I2H3KWLIDWFSY/ (you can make a fortune by pretending to be qualified in NZ, from engineers, plumbers, doctors – if caught the fines are minimal – leading many to just continue!) Why bother studying???
Obviously as people increasingly become victims of crime, dysfunctional services in NZ (health, transport, education, justice, construction) then their mental health suffers. So many people now are irreversibly maimed by some thugs deciding to beat someone up, while fraud clearly has a toll on victims mental wellbeing.
I am not sure that the woke therapy is going to help, as the country increasingly alienates and discriminates against the majority of people who are not crims and not Labeens favourite ages and ethnicities.
Saenz. Yep “…about 18- 40 year olds” is a loose demographic. Many well over that, including me, feel much the same way, and fed up with all the major political players, not just Labeen.
Winston Peters.
If ACT secure more than say 15% of the vote which seems possible given current polling, National will have to implement some of the ACT policies. This would likely see a far more assertive approach towards government in NZ than has been seen for a long time.
In this I partly agree with Bomber than the outcome would be a shift to the right however I don’t believe it would be as radical as he suggests.
What will be fascinating for the political propeller heads amongst us, is whether ACT as a minority partner is able to bring about lasting ‘transformational’ change. If they do, the contrast between ACT and the Ardern / Hipkins government will be stark and somewhat ironic.
Voters we’re sold transpercy and ‘ we are in it for you’ But the exact opposite occurred. peeps don’t like lies and decepit and tricky smokes and mirrors from the same old talking heads.
& Question time has become a joke. With irrelevant pasty question s from Government back benches.
‘Pasty’ – I thought pies were the fave.
Verity isn’t exactly the cream of the journalistic crop, even by Stuff standards.
The new generation of young people are conservative. They dont drink, they dont have sex, they focus on health and families. We can see this in heaps of stats.
The great wave of socialism isnt coming folks.
A bit of a stretch calling Labour left. That boat sailed with Roger Douglas and Richard Prebble and never returned.
You are right about the last lockdown though. It was too long, it farked everybody off and covid still ran rampant when it was lifted.
Yes we may have got some more people vaccinated, yes the strain may have weakened but nobody cared. You could feel the anger everywhere you went including North Waikato that got dragged in as they went by health board borders.
That sealed their fate.
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