Dr Bryce Edwards has already begun his autopsy of Labour before they’ve lost the election and Chris Trotter has put in a few boots as well, but I’m old school and you wait until all the votes are counted before admitting defeat so I will hold my tongue until then.
However, it is important to note in the midst of political oblivion for the Left that there is a glimpse of a new true Left voice emerging in the battlefield of this election.
CTU Economist Craig Renney and First Union’s Edward Miller have written an incredible rebuttal of the economics the Right are using and has expertly dismantled the bullshit of National’s argument…
Reserve Bank shouldn’t clobber poor when oil prices are to blame
Oil prices are rising again, and are likely to keep inflation higher than we would want. This is prompting many commentators to suggest that interest rates should rise again.
But with today’s official cash rate (OCR) announcement, is it time to crank up mortgage rates, close businesses, and throw a whole bunch of workers out of work?
Since 2019, oil prices and inflation have been in lockstep. It’s easy to understand why.
Food at the supermarket is trucked there by lorry. Imported items are shipped here by tanker, cargo vessel, or by air.
When oil producers like Russia and Saudi Arabia decide to limit oil production, prices rise. That in turn causes the OCR to rise, and there is an impact on mortgage rates and employment levels here in NZ.
…as The Daily Blog has spent 5 years screaming, our woke middle class identity politics activists have done nothing but generate culture war ammunition for the extreme Right and that by playing to identity politics, we have driven voters away from the Left into the arms of the Right, EVEN THOUGH the Rights economic policy will do nothing but rob them!
Only 3000 households will get the $250 tax cut National have been campaigning on yet Kiwis are taking it hook line and sinker
That’s 3,000 out of 1,930,900?
So… 0.155%?!
National’s ‘plan’ isn’t trickle down economics, it defies political gravity and demands trickle up! They are taking $2b from the poor and giving it to the rich! This isn’t a plan, it’s Egalitarian vandalism!
Yet the Polls show the Left have become toxic!
Thanks Wokies, we get it, your manufactured identity is far more important than our common shared humanity.
The true demarcation of power in a liberal progressive democracy is the 1% rich plus their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us, unfortunately woke middle class identity politics dogma is more focused on division than solidarity.
The holy trinity of Woke Dogma is, ALL white people are irredeemable cross during racists, B-E-L-E-I-E-V-E ALL women that ALL men are rapists and anyone supporting free speech is a Uniform wearing Nazi who hates the Trans Community.
This mindset pushed by the Wellington Woke Twitter has driven voters from us as they struggle to find solutions to the pain they are caused by
Because most Woke Wellington Twitter are also part of the Professional Managerial Class, they have their foot on the first home and their economic well being is more important than challenging the hegemonic structure of free market Capitalism.
That’s why the low hanging fruit of identity politics is so important to them.
Because they are easy.
No poor family in NZ is sitting around the kitchen table cancelling each other for
The backlash to the cancel culture of MeToo, Black Lives Matter and the radioactive trans debate has been so easy for ACT and NZF to manipulate into their narratives and we all have the middle class woke to thank for that.
That’s why Renney and Miller are so important. Their focus is not on virtue signalling woke politics, their argument is on the economics of the Right.
The enormity of the political gravity climate change adaptation and infrastructure resilience has created alongside the solidarity of a shared universal experience is materialising politically in a State that has to do things itself.
The 30 year neoliberal experiment in NZ cut the State back to the bone and the political project of the Right ever since is to tax-cut starve off revenue for the State so it can’t redistribute it in the first place.
What we saw with Covid and this latest weather event disaster is that you desperately need a State with capacity. So many of the problems we encountered was the shear slowness of an underfunded, under capacity public service.
With the economic recession, the geopolitical shockwaves and catastrophic climate change upon us, we must have a debate about the capacity of the State!
That is how the Left have to re frame 2023 – vote for the Right and get an amputation of the State, vote for the Left and build new capacity for the challenges ahead.
We need more Drs, more nurses, more teachers, more Police, more State houses, more infrastructure NOT LESS!
We need to debate for a bigger capacity State using the example Covid just gave us.
We need more Scientists, Drs, nurses, teachers, Police, more State houses and more infrastructure alongside policy that directly subsidises the cost of living like removing gst off food, free dental, free public transport, free food in schools and we will fund that extra increase through targeted new taxes to rebuild the capacity of the State.
The obviousness of our need for a Ministry of Works that actually builds shit is painfully clear to everyone by now.
Take Police in NZ, we have a pathetic 203 police per 100 000 NZers!
Compare that with 212 in England, 264 in Australia, 318 in Scotland, 349 in Germany, 422 in France, hell even Fiji at 227 has more Police per 100 000 than we do!
We don’t have the capacity to create a functioning State that lives up to our expectations in a liberal progressive democracy because we won’t tax the rich to find that infrastructure!
We need to actually sell the 2023 election in those explicit terms – vote Right and amputate the State, vote Left and rebuild the capacity to actually face the challenges ahead.
These new taxes will be a sugar tax for free dental, a financial transaction tax to lower GST on everything, a bank windfall profit tax to build more State houses, a social media journalism tax.
Taxes aimed at speculators and the wealthy to fund services for the egalitarian country we want NZ to be.
Let’s have the courage to actually argue and win over our fellow citizens for solution based policy that actually builds the capacity to have the extra drs, nurses, firemen, police, and teachers.
Let’s champion policies that subsidise people’s cost of living by redistributing from the few to the many.
The voters of NZ are still waiting for the Transformative change we promised them in 2017.
We need a Ministry of Works that actually builds the infrastructure we desperately need.
We need the State to do this because the Free Market has failed.
There has already been amazing work on the creation of a new Ministry of Green Works…
Rising To The Challenge: A Ministry Of Green Works For Aotearoa
Two of the biggest crises of our times – housing and climate change – could be the target of a new Ministry of Green Works that would integrate important responsibilities related to safeguarding Aotearoa’s future, according to a report released today by FIRST Union.
A Ministry of Green Works for Aotearoa New Zealand: An Ambitious Approach to Housing, Infrastructure, and Climate Change is a policy report commissioned by FIRST Union from co-authors Max Harris and Jacqueline Paul that considers Aotearoa’s systemic infrastructural problems and how they could be addressed by a new governmental entity that builds on the former Ministry of Works and integrates several key departmental responsibilities to future-proof the country for significant challenges to come.
“From our experience in workplaces, we know that contracting is a broken model that has driven down wages and led to massive inefficiencies in construction and infrastructure,” said Jared Abbott, FIRST Union Secretary for Transport, Logistics and Manufacturing.
“As the report describes, the private sector doesn’t have the capacity to deliver on large-scale housing projects and inevitably there are now worker shortages due to poor conditions in the sector.”
“Finally there is insufficient coordination to tackle climate change under the current model – the public sector has limited powers to ensure green building standards in housing and infrastructure, and it’s not equipped to respond to other unexpected challenges, like quickly building managed isolation facilities, for example.”
The report argues that the right response to these problems will be consistent with seven values: honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi; manaaki whenua, manaaki tangata; Indigenous innovation; collaboration and coordination; creativity; safety and accessibility; and transformation of our economic model. The authors note that any new Ministry of Green Works must learn from its historic namesake and considers twelve risks related to its establishment.
The report contains feedback and interviews with experts including Ganesh Nana, John Tookey, Rosslyn Noonan, Len Cook, Andre Brett, Matthew Scobie, Syd Keepa, Judith Aitken, Susan Krumdieck, Alexis Harris, Murray Parrish, Jen McArthur, Troy Brockbank, Brendon Harre, Joe Gallagher, Ben Schrader, James Muir, Patrick Cummuskey, Andre de Groot, Ben Ross, Huhana Hickey and Nick Collins.
The report is being launched as the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) begins in the United Kingdom over the upcoming weekend.
“Even with our best intentions to fix our housing, infrastructure and climate problems individually, we will miss the boat if we don’t consider their interrelatedness and set firm goals that integrate core functions of all agencies – this is where a Ministry of Green Works comes in,” said Mr Abbott.
“When the last Ministry of Works was cut up and sold off during the extreme ‘reforms’ of the 80s, we ended up a decade later with the leaky homes scandal and a lot of pressing questions – we can’t afford to wait for the consequences of climate change to set in before we act.”
…we have better solutions and we need a bigger State.
It is time to go beyond the neoliberal 30% GDP debt straitjacket and build a new State to build the infrastructure that a allows adaptation and resilience.
Bernard Hickey argues that even if we agree to the neoliberal Wellington Consensus of 30% GDP debt, we could still borrow $60Billion and remain within that absurd ideological economic straight jacket so where should that $60billion be spent on resilience and adaptation?
We need future proofing ideas, we need a Ministry of Works to do it, we need big ideas and we need big new taxes to fund those big ideas, we need to build in self sufficiency, we need mitigation and adaptation.
While we are talking ideas, isn’t it great that Woke General, Morgan Godfrey is finally catching up to the issue of State Capacity…
As the state’s ability to deliver has shrunk, so has the people’s willingness to vote
…TDB was pointing this out in February.
It is vital that real Left voices like Miller and Renney take centre stage in any rebuild of the Left because the main problem with woke middle class politics is that once white men see themselves as victims, we are fucked politically.
There is more common ground between us than the woke want to admit, and that common ground must be taxing the rich to ensure the infrastructure and social institutions are properly funded.
The 10 point Left wing Economic Justice Plan for Aotearoa New Zealand.
1: Feed every kid in NZ a free nutritious and healthy breakfast and lunch at every school using local product and school gardens with parents paid to come in and help.
2: 50 000 State Homes for life built using the best environmental and social architecture standards using the public works act to seize land and immediately start building satellite towns using upgraded public transport hubs.
3: Free public transport plus vast infrastructure upgrade for climate crisis.
4: Doubling welfare payments and student allowances minus any bullshit claw backs from MSD plus Living Wage universally adopted as minimum working wage plus implementation of all WEAG recommendations.
5: GST off food and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health.
6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.
7: Debt cancellation – student loans, welfare overpayments, beneficiary debt, easier debt cancellation.
8: Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements)
9: Buy out houses that can’t be saved, look at universal insurance for climate change events to cover those with no insurance, survival packs in every home, solar panels on every roof, vast increase in Civil Defence equipment, social licence of essential service resilience.
10: Properly funded public broadcasting with TVNZ advert free and merged with RNZ alongside properly funded journalism through NZ on Air with more money for the Arts and Science. If you can’t have good public journalism, the right wing media will destroy these other 9 advances.
Don’t tell me we can’t afford any of this because we can if the wealthy are taxed!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ, and 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.
There’s no point making workers pay more to rebuild our resilience, tax the rich!
-Sugar Tax
-Inheritance Tax
-Wealth Tax
-Financial Transactions Tax
-New top tax rate on people earning over $250 000 per year.
-Capital Gains Tax
-Windfall profit taxes
-First $10 000 tax free
There is a better way to fight and win politics than middle class identity politic virtue signals.
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Such a shame that the Labour Party died withNorman Kirk. They’d have been a shoo-in for ‘23.
A return to Kirk-era policies is the bare minimum that the labour movement should be demanding.
The labour party didn’t so much die with Norman Kirk, it was murdered later by a deep state far right traitor called roger douglas who was Labour’s two term finance minister prior to 1984 and it shouldn’t be overlooked, that, that same traitor went on to create the ACT monster with an accomplice called derek quigly who, like douglas, is still alive thus able to be charged with treason.
Thanks as ever for the major invective I love so much. For my minor stuff in comparison I’m often disbarred from ‘free speech’, which even ‘the Left’ are supposedly keen on these days. We do tend to take your rhetoric as metaphorical — true in spirit, but not literally true.
Douglas is and was wrong, but he thought he was doing right for the people. Still does, why he attacked ACT recently. All the pricks thought they were doing right. Funniest thing ever to hear them rationalize how their betrayal aligned with our old virtues.
I do wish Winston and NZF would not buy into the Culture War and just concentrate on what is good for NZ, and how we are going to improve NZ and grow the Economy. He could have done some great things for NZ however he gets himself tangled up in the Bullsh*t. NZF have got some good people and policies, unfortunately we never hear about them.
The people who accuse the left of being obsessed with identity are always obsessed with it themselves lol
I don’t see why social justice and economic justice have to be an either or, we can figure for both
I don’t see why social justice and economic justice have to be an either or, as leftists we can fight for both!
Transing children is not justice of any kind.
but its good business.
Because Critical Social Justice post-structuralism is anti-scientific, anti-socialist, pro Wall Street demagoguery.
Time to wake up, Labour is the problem.
Problem is woman take all the easy jobs and think they should be paid the same as the men.
@ no comment… if only.
Indeed, time to wake up. To cunts like you who are the problem in that you eagerly go to bat for the terminally greedy and lazy. National Party Dungeon Queens like douglas etc are the problem. ACT is the problem, the banks are the problem. The useless, wasteful, lazy, psychopathic billionaires and multi millionaires are the problem. The foreign owned banks we’re forced to support with our hard earned money to feed vast nett profits to them are the problem.
A genius above wrote this:
The labour party didn’t so much die with Norman Kirk, it was murdered later by a deep state far right traitor called roger douglas who was Labour’s two term finance minister prior to 1984 and it shouldn’t be overlooked, that, that same traitor went on to create the ACT monster with an accomplice called derek quigly who, like douglas, is still alive thus still able to be charged with treason.
“Cough-cough.”
Just found this.
The Guardian
“New Zealand Covid response saved 20,000 lives, study says”
“Government’s strategy, which included closing the border, meant death rate was 80% lower than in the US, according to the New Zealand Medical Journal”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/06/new-zealand-covid-strategy-saves-lives
In 2011 we rented a house and a business premises in Christchurch and ran a successful business. I worked in film as a Locations Scout and as a Locations Manager.
The earthquakes happened and do you know what I got out of National? Absolutely fucking nothing.
I got $1000.00 from Red Cross and NOTHING from the government.
I did get one other thing. Hero ruins which featured in Z for Zachariah, a film starring Margot Robbie, Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Yes. I’ve had lunch with lovely Chiwetal Ejiofor, Captin Kirk and Barbi.
The National Gubbimint couldn’t give a fuck about me or my partner at the time. Big Jizz Brownlee was swaggering around the airport when I was there once and as he swayed and staggered to the very edge of the escalator to head down to his limosine I discovered there is no God because I prayed he’d trip and roll down the escalater and I’d get photographs of him howling while bouncing, but nothing.
Immediately after the earthquakes we had to leave Ch Ch for a house I’d bought for my parents now both dead. We moved in, our relationship fell apart, we were soon broke and life began to take on the appearance of a horror film.
The Labour Party saved 20,000 people from covid and we got NOTHING from vile National for being dispossessed by a fucking earthquake, thus fuck you @ no comment.
The Left have failed, don’t bother voting.
Who do you not want to vote Helen
@ HnB
The Right are greedy cowards who lose as a matter of course, history will bear me out on that one.
What CB said.
“Cough-cough.”
Just found this.
The Guardian
“New Zealand Covid response saved 20,000 lives, study says”
“Government’s strategy, which included closing the border, meant death rate was 80% lower than in the US, according to the New Zealand Medical Journal”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/06/new-zealand-covid-strategy-saves-lives
In 2011 we rented a house and a business premises in Christchurch and ran a successful business. I worked in film as a Locations Scout and as a Locations Manager.
The earthquakes happened and do you know what I got out of National? Absolutely fucking nothing.
I got $1000.00 from Red Cross and NOTHING from the government.
I did get one other thing. Hero ruins which featured in Z for Zachariah, a film starring Margot Robbie, Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Yes. I’ve had lunch with lovely Chiwetal Ejiofor, Captin Kirk and Barbi.
The National Gubbimint couldn’t give a fuck about me or my partner at the time. Big Jizz Brownlee was swaggering around the airport when I was there once and as he swayed and staggered to the very edge of the escalator to head down to his limosine I discovered there is no God because I prayed he’d trip and roll down the escalater and I’d get photographs of him howling while bouncing, but nothing.
Immediately after the earthquakes we had to leave Ch Ch for a house I’d bought for my parents now both dead. We moved in, our relationship fell apart, we were soon broke and life began to take on the appearance of a horror film.
The Labour Party saved 20,000 people from covid and we got NOTHING from vile National for being dispossessed by a fucking earthquake, thus fuck you @ helen back.
The acting race relations commissioner mentioned class today, in the context of nasty electioneering no less. I was shocked. And then completely failed to discuss it at all, less shocked.
The Labour Party have been the foot soldiers for the culture wars. Instead of kicking back they have embraced them. They have encouraged culture over class. This is why they need to go down.
The Left in 6 years have divided our country on ethnic grounds which is inexcusable.
They have to go.
The new left are university educated vegan cyclists …..just what the poor people need ….
I’m over the whole election thing now: I just want the results in. The media have once again inserted themselves into it and promoted Winston; just to get some clicks, I fear.
Politics is, has and always will be about identity and culture. How you identify yourself and what culture you subscribe to determines your politics way more than what class you are.
Class is virtually meaningless and becoming obsolete as a means of classifying demographics.
bwav Rubbish. I respond to that dispensing with class as a load of bull, wealth class and education all are interlinked but I’ve been surprised at how if education brings greater wealth, class can enter in promptly. And it may be noticed in poorer families if one child finds it easy to study, goes to uni and the others don’t, there is likely to be a division of outlook between them and some resentment or negativity from some, and that is class getting in the way.
“How you identify yourself and what culture you subscribe to determines your politics way more than what class you are.”
That’s called brain washing, and the culture war has been doing it for decades.
That culture war is what indigenous people have been fighting for ages. It might be new to whitey, but not us.
19th century European definitions of class don’t mean fuck all to us.
Trying to brainwash us into buying into your class wars is more devil tongued whiteman fuckery.
With oil price rising there is a greater need to get back to drilling and getting our own oil and gas which is another reason to vote National
Given NZ exports most of its oil you are voting National on a false pretense. Or are you saying you’re voting National because you’re a National man through and through.
Even Exxon doesnt want to drill here. Where are you getting these strange ideas from?
Not sure if ya know Trev but littl’ ol’ NZ has bugger all oil. And despite what is said about the Taranaki gas field I don’t think that’s all that extensive either. Best to crank up the renewable technology I think. Solar panels mandatory on all new builds, including industry, and subsidies for installation on others.
The lab/TMP/Gweens. Are all ideologically deranged. Meanwhile (R)Home Burn!
You think the woke will wake up and realize they are a turn off to the majority of kiwis?
Extremely doubtful. If anything they will double down and become more abhorrent.
The woke don’t even think of others, they’re 110% in the right so any push back or negative consequences are because of people/reality who are wrong.
I don’t know how to deprogramme terrorists but that’s what we need for the woke.
There is no more ‘left’ in NZ. Pun intended.
If you bring down a Labour government that isn’t a Labour government how is that a bad thing for the left?
Why would you allow the media and media corporations to define what left actually means?
Y’all need to use your own brains, not someones else’s…
Jacindas abject failure to do anything to stop child poverty and lower house prices has made me not want to vote anymore. I would say this is her true legacy.
Woman power eh. Jacinda made or broke the whole of the country on her own. Makes me think of the mythic Atlas with the world on his shoulder. You want to leave everything to one or a group and then whine about them from the sidelines and pray for a saviour.
But you haven’t got that on your own, you are just part of the great majority of NZs. So you and the rest of us need to wake up to ourselves. I looked at the menu card for the ‘Loyal” Party and it was like a grown-ups Santa list. FGS stop expecting heavenly or magic intervention. J was disappointing but there is a lot of inertia there in politics – as hard to clear as the piles of sticky mud after a cloudburst.
Labour have been a do nothing Party hoping to get voted back in, however the alternative of a NACT Government will be even worse for the long term future of NZ.
NZF need to get more positive promoting policy rather than playing the Race Card like ACT and National.
Labour’s still hobbled by the neo-liberal bureaucracy it was infected by, by roger douglas. It’s up to we, the people, to fix that shit up.
Signs the Electorate is waking up.
Yes there are disappointments from the previous 3 years.
But with STRONG left wing influence, this will be rectified.
Clearly Labour will not hold the whip hand in negotiations this time.
Voting in NZFactional, with some of the dumbest, uncosted promises ever laid before voters, will make everything worse, not better. Why vote for WORSE?????????
The Nats have wasted 6 years in Opposition. No thought out policy. No vision for an egalitarian society. Nothing. They played “swap the leader”, but didn’t bother getting out their calculators. Embarassing.
They given you no reason to hand them & their owners your precious vote.
All those millions of bribes/donations from their rich donors to buy the election, and they’ve come to the gunfight holding a 6 year old limp stick of celery.
It’s that simple.
And having to rely on either Winston or Seymour Butt or Both to get across the line, It is depressing even thinking about it.
Having to rely on such duds as Winston First and Mr Seeless to get into power shows what a complete dud you are yourself.
Luxon is a plodder and not likely to keep those two spoilt brats in line. Not to mention the old plodders in his own party. Talentless and boring.
The immediate future is not rosy. The recovery from the damage the silly little brats will do, will take years.
Someone said that NZders had got stupid since the Key years. How true.
The right are corrupt and steal tax to pay for privatization.
And having to rely on either Winston or Seymour Butt or Both to get across the line, It is depressing even thinking about it.
To vote Labour back is to say doing nothing is acceptable
To vote national back in is to reintroduce bleak austerity for the majority of society, and the continued widening of the gap between Rich and Poor.
A sicker society.
Oh Trevor, you’re like a broken record. Doing nothing? Perhaps doing nothing that you approve of that is.
Martyn, the US Powerball has increased to USD $1.7 billion dollars & your got more chance of winning this than you have of receiving a $250 dollar Tax cut from the National Party every two weeks, utter bullshit from the Nats & Luxon knows it but Baldrick will tell anyone, anything to get his bald, born again christian ass in the Prime Minister’s office?
Martyn, the US Powerball has increased to USD $1.7 billion dollars & your got more chance of winning this than you have of receiving a $250 dollar Tax cut from the National Party every two weeks, utter bullshit from the Nats & Luxon knows it but Baldrick will tell anyone, anything to get his bald, born again christian ass in the Prime Minister’s office?
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