MEDIAWATCH: Verity Johnson is right about anger at Left this election

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
52
2459

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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52 COMMENTS

  1. I believe those who don’t vote will do so more because of a lack of faith in ‘The System’, not because of a lack of choice in the parties, candidates or policies.

    Does anyone really believe the westminster system is still the best we can do ?

    It has failed to regulate capitalism. It was designed to fail and benefit the political class by doing so.

    Apathy is what it promotes.

    Tick your box and abrogate responsibility. Trust the government will act in your best interest. As long as they can bribe you with promises of security and a little extra cash in your pocket, your apathy is bought.

    But what happens when you don’t trust they are acting on your best behalf ? What can you do about it ?…Not a damn thing.

    Keep believing they’re in it for you and know best how to get the country back on track…yeah right. The system requires your suspension of disbelief.

    It’s time we had a real discussion about future systems of governance and justice.

    Perhaps Verity might want to riff on that instead, because it’s not anger out here, it’s the frustration of seeing the same types of people, doing the same things, promising the same shit.

    You’re fucking crazy if expecting different results and real change.

    The system won’t allow it…

    • You know they aren’t acting in your interest. You know that you can’t trust them, and when the Government starts heavily restricting firearms ownership by law-abiding citizens, you know the Government doesn’t trust you either. So while voting is largely meaningless, not voting as a protest is even more meaningless. Change is possible, but very little is achieved by whining on the internet.

          • KCC it is utter bollocks to say removing some classes of weapons and creating a register puts guns in the hands of criminals. Tell me how that actually works? Did having a very register put more cars in the hands of car thieves?

        • Unfortunately they’ve done that too, but that’s “OK” because that is a great tool for pushing greater restrictions and fools like you & Gun Control NZ just lap it up as your rights disappear. At least Mr Vengeance understands the rigged & manipulated nature of the game.

          • Who are you to call anyone a fool. Go on all you like about impact on law abiding citizens, it is a complete falsehood to say they have put more guns in the hands of criminals than the criminals had in the first place. There’s less guns for those criminals to steal.

      • I’m not going endorse a system I don’t believe in by tacitly voting in support of it.

        Verity believes in democracy and that a vote, any vote is a vote of faith in democracy.

        My problem isn’t with democracy per se, it’s with the style of democracy, the Westminster system.

        We have 200 years of localised data and thousands of years of indigenous governance and justice systems the world over to analyze.

        Surely we can come up with something better. We sure as hell deserve better, don’t we ?

        As is, it’s the elephant in the room no one acknowledges. Why is that ?

        • Ahhhh BWAV, and you are one of the ‘special people’ who believes it was paradise and rainbows and unicorns before colonisation?
          Lol, murder, slavery and cannibalism was the order of the day.
          There was no democracy before colonisation just the bigger tribe wiped out the smaller one…
          But please don’t vote, you have summed up nicely why some people shouldn’t!

        • Correct, as soon as we stop listening to liars like Cahill or Cook, we can start targeting the real problem, criminals. ACT will do this.

    • Disagree, I’m desperately trying to find a reason to vote and while I totally agree the system is fucked and does not work in the best interest of the country, this time there is just no one that isn’t some form of muppet. Last time the choices were bloody marginal, this time it’s a desert out there. I just feel no matter who gets in we’re not going to see any significant change so why waste my time.

      • Technically it is also part of the game to discourage Left voters from voting, and fortunately they are easily disillusioned by the performance of “their” party or just can’t be bothered voting. This doubles the value of Right wing votes, because those on the Right tend to have more get up & go when it comes to voting.

        • Agree, the right leaners tend to get out where the left leaners don’t.

          I was chatting to a left mate this morning and he is rock solid on ‘I only vote Labour and they have been hopeless so I have no one to vote for’. He’s a lot more intelligent than that comment would suggest but shows how hard core many voters are as well as how lazy many voters are. I have another mate who will vote purely on the leader, the policies, history, people around them etc are totally irrelevant. 2 of my younger staff, 19 and 20yo are voting Green as Lab and Nats are old people parties and again policies etc are irreverent.

          With our options being complete and utter dross plus so many voters trying hard out to simulate being brain dead, see above and comments on TDB amongst other places for confirmation of how few brain cells are being exercised, is there really any put in pitting in any effort?

          But this register staffing thing is pissing me off. No fucking way do we need 550 extra cock wombles, over 50 million a year just in wages, to administer a basic database WTF???. I have decided that is reason enough for me to walk into a booth.

      • It’s the old adage that…

        Aspiring to be a politician should automatically exclude you from being one.

        In traditional Pasifikan systems. The person who best serves the interests of the family as a whole gets chosen to represent the family at wider communal gatherings where issues are discussed, taken back to the families discussed, decided on and then determined by the greater good to the family.

        Traditional chiefly council meetings are where decisions are formally announced, anointed with ritual and ceremony then celebrated in acts of oratory. It’s not where you sit in opposition and shout over or belittle anyone in disagreeance.

        Its so unlike party selection processes where service to the party is paramount. Candidates are
        elected by acts of oratory. Decisions are made in private and argued over in the public forum of parliament while a bureaucracy looks to stymie structural change that challenges their perceived wisdom.

        The westminster system doesn’t promote family values, respect the right of individuals, allow for inclusivity of indigenous peoples beyond tokenism and is subject to corruption at every level.

        Its a top down model where we’re meant to trust in the process and deliberations of those who are supposedly our betters. In historical times those ‘betters’ were old rich white dudes.

        Pasifikan systems were bottom up. It starts with the individual dedicated to family values and expressed in service, in essence, their mana. That then translates to the mana of the family, then to the wider community of families and finally society as a whole.

        If in doubt as to determining who to vote for at this election, forget traditional tribal party alliances and ask yourself these two simple question…

        Does this person’s values align with mine and my family’s and does this person have mana ?

        • 1. The Westminster system is a fake “democracy”
          2. The Pasifika or rangatiratanga system is genuinely democratic and is the way of the future for our people.
          3. “If in doubt .. who to vote for at this election” .. don’t. Ultimately, any vote for a person over whom you have no control is politically irresponsible.

        • i like those traditional systems and if you look back across British history you will find something very similar. Tribal councils of the elders selecting a suitable person for various roles including to represent their interests at the larger council gatherings. in the case of England that was the parliament in Westminster London. It was strongly oratory based. The name “Parliament” derives from the old Norman French “Parle Mon” a place to speak. A concept pretty close to Te wāhi kōrero, much closer than to Pāremata which is a transliteration not a translation.
          The problem is that between those old parliamentary days and these we’ve had 500 years of global exploration, trade, war, trade-wars and colonization, and also 200+ years of industrialization, mechanization and now financialization and digitization. The old school just doesn’t cut it anymore.

  2. 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!

    • 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

  4. 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 implicit assumption with the 2 party system or at least the 2 wings left/right red/blue is that they compete and alternate, each being a check on the other. Sometimes I like to think of the 2 wings as the excite/red/left impulse and the inhibit/blue/right impulse. Sometimes you need to get loose and then sometimes you need to tighten up. Go too far in one direction and the other faction brings you back. A Yin/Yang sort of a deal.
      In the Westminster system real coalition governments with executive cabinet minister drawn from both parties only happens in times of crisis like a war, which also makes sense on a biological level, if you are in mortal danger a lot of the other problems get passed over until later.

  5. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. With two thirds of New Zealanders thinking we are going in the wrong direction means the other third don’t think?

    • Waddayamean ???She has such a lovely turn of phrase…

      *Shriveled up raisins in labour’s scroggin.
      *Grinding out cigarettes on democracy’s carpet.
      *Deflated and punctured backyard paddling pool toys.
      *Spitefully shagging the ex’s office nemesis.
      …and my fave, Curdled green votes.

      That’s extra chur!

  11. I enjoy your calm manner here.

    I saw her headline on Stuff and didn’t read on. I adjudged it column-filler since it’s so obvious there is a myriad of choices. For instance, Green policy is the truth of reality (yeah, they’re not forceful enough).

    I suppose younger people can believe in the idealism Labour talked and are disillusioned when they don’t do it. Everyone who followed Left politics for decades knew not much chance with these neolibs.

  12. Labour is terrible but there is a huge scope for voting against the short-term pro-rich anti-climate change Right. The case just needs to be made on the mainstage. Not a big thing, if you remember the guy with the high hairstyle in the early noughts voting in his party of idiots on the basis of the TV debates.

  13. 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.

      • Ironically most of the woke are the epitome of privilege –

        That is what is so hypercritical about it.

        Woke of privilege get paid to wank on about shit they know nothing about, and are the fucked up privileged people that they complain about.

        The privilege are also not necessarily white, racism has steadily been irradiated in the west for decades while other countries are becoming rich and full of middle class lapping up the in/out discourses.

        Woke privilege are now it is just as likely to be of any race, (upper class black, Latino, while the Middle East has plenty of wealthy who are educated in the top western schools. Indian, and Chinese have become the new superpowers with the obligatory middle class sprouting up to join the rich people of colour being touted for a western education and thus they need to change that education to support the growing demographics).

        The woke movement is generally run and lectured by white woke people with a 1% claim to some other alienated ethnicity, making a generous living from being against white privilege to students who are richer and incredibly privileged.

  14. Oh sure, The economic, social and ethnic background of the Wokenistas make it look hypercritical and ironic but as the Americans say “That’s a feature not a bug”. Every policy they enact is more power and influence for them. Has anyone ever advocated for equality when it didn’t mean that they and their friends would be better off ? As Mencius Moldbug AKA Curtis Yarvin said “Progressivism is the mystery cult of power”. It doesn’t have to be a grand secret conspiracy either. As each small step on the path leads to more influence and more euphoria of being “on the right side of history” that’s the path they continue to walk down. In positioning themselves as the champions of the poor and the marginalized they improve their own position. It’s hardly unusual. What is unusual is the gigantic layer of bullshit the cover it al with.

  15. Is anyone here bold enough to tell me what the hell “The non-ideological left” actually is?
    It’s clearly incoherent, if you are non-ideological then you aren’t left.
    Bradbury is talking about the moderate left who have demonstrated that they are totally unable to reign in their Loony Left Brothers, Sisters and Xersters but will piss and moan if anyone else actually does.

    • Jake Dee I am bold enough to say that I hate your logo. You may think it dramatic but I think it is menacing – like something that would be on a canister of something toxic. If we are to discuss your comments seriously it would help to choose something that indicates life not death.

  17. 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.

    • I adhere to the ‘more mistakes than mischief’ theory. Lotta people have gone down the mischief rabbit-hole, to the pleasure of the mischief-makers, because of the lack of that simple precaution. You should see my idiot family for the rich killers of the species pretty damn soon.

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