I’ve been working on a “Where to now for Labour, Greens, Māori Party and the NZ Left?” blog since the election loss, and was supposed to post it 5 weeks ago but my first 7 versions of it were just rants on which Wellington Woke Wankers we need to assassinate in a night of the long tweets backlash for their alienating fuckwittery that cost us the election, and while that was enormously fun for me, on reflection of the sheer scale of hard right racist agenda being pursued by the Right, I have rewritten it and pulled my punches.
I know, I know, I know.
When I’m pulling my punches of criticising the Woke Left, you know shit is bad, and that’s because it is.
We now can see the full hard right racist agenda of this Government and the obscene direction they intend to take for their political donors.
This fight against the most right Government ever elected will demand a level of resistance that crosses into civil disobedience because it will require mass civil disobedience protests to fight this Government’s hard right racist agenda.
The very soul of NZs egalitarianism is at stake here and if we don’t recruit and broaden our appeal as a movement, we will lose 2026 and the vandalism this new hard right Government passes becomes the new benchmark.
As someone who has set up new political parties for the Left, ran leadership coups for the Left and helped put together Labour’s 2017 election strategy with then Chief of Staff Matt McCarten, here are my thoughts on what we need to do as a movement to win in 2026.
Labour:
Keep Chippy. He has walked back comments about not going ‘left’, he meant not going woke.
If we can marry Chippy’s leadership qualities up with a policy agenda that is actually left wing, we could win back the treasury benches in 2026 (or earlier if they implode).
Look, I’m not saying there wen’t some gains over the last 6 years: Free school lunches, trust tax, new top income rate, free prescriptions, most state houses in 50 years, record investment in housing, healthcare and investment, regulate property managers, clean car discount, apprenticeship scheme, benefits to wages, FPAs – all great first steps, but after 6 years of ‘first good steps’, you realised you were just jogging on the spot!
We were promised transformative, what we got was less left wing than the British Tory Party!
Labour are over run by the Professional Managerial Class, they see the solution is better bureaucratic structures rather than an upgrade of the Capacity of the State and so spent 6 years recreating bureaucratic structures without the necessary upgrade of capacity.
Labour refused to explain what the hell 3 Waters or Co-governance meant because Jacinda hated conflict (her Cabinet meetings were nicknamed ‘The Good Ship Lollypop’ because she wouldn’t tolerate any negativity) and wouldn’t engage on co-governance or 3 Waters which allowed astroturf dark money to take over the debate and manufacture it into an existential race issue.
Fundamentally Labour needed to tax the rich to pay for the social infrastructure we needed, but because Labour at heart are intellectual cowards, they refused to engage in that, which left voters asking, ‘why bother voting for Labour’.
Labour have to make the argument for a bigger capacity State funded by taxing the mega wealthy. They have to show where the money will come from and they have to show they will have a plan ready to go.
Green Party:
They did very poorly within context. Labour lost 24points, the Greens barely picked up 4 points of that.
The worst mistake the Greens could make now is to misconstrue this result as proof positive their alienating woke middle class dogma was somehow successful, it wasn’t.
Greens only gained because Labour were so spineless.
The Greens need to step back and consider the future because resistance to what National/ACT/NZF are about to attempt will be desperately required.
They need to be on the streets with every protest moment building their credibility deep within the activist community.
Renters, Beneficiaries, Workers, Māori and Environmentalists should be their branding. The Wealth Tax was a a strong idea and they need to stick with that.
It is obvious Chloe is the future leader and that transition should occur after the Summer.
A Green Party led by Chloe is a 15%+ Party.
Māori Party:
The backlash to this being the most racist election ever held generated an enormous drive within Māoridom to step up for themselves. Nanaia being beaten by a 21 year old highlights the power of demographics that now rule Māori politics. 70% of Māoridom are under the age of 40 and they won’t put up with the Right using them as a political punching bag any longer.
When ACT start their racist race war inducing legislative process to rewrite the Treaty Principles, the resistance will be based from these Māori electorates and will generate immediate friction.
This next 3 years will be the making of the Māori Party.
NZ Left:
The Woke and social media proxification
After handing so much culture war ammunition to the Right, our woke middle class identity activists literally drove male voters into the arms of the political right. In woke Wellington world, ALL white men are irredeemable cross burning racists, B-E-L-I-E-V-E ALL women that ALL men are rapists and anyone defending free speech is a uniform wearing Nazi who hates the trans community. Turns out that identity politics mentality alienates rather than brings together. ‘Pure Trans Joy’ probably helped cost us the election.
It’s important for openly woke to leave Facebook and Twitter and go to bluesy or threads or Masterdoon, because those platforms are padded echo chambers and the woke can scream their herts out on platforms that don’t generate ‘proxification’.
Because social media is now so ubiquitous, everyone has seen flameouts and vicious knife fights on contentious issues in their timelines and that activist screaming you are a Transphobic, Racist, Sexist, Vaccine-peddling, Satanic pedophile is enough for you to personally hate and be hurt and align yourself against that activist regardless of policy.
It wasn’t Trump saying outrageous things that attracted angry reactionary white working class vote, it was the intense reaction by middle class woke activists to Trump whom they had been insulted by that made the election so febrile.
Voters cut their noses off to spite their face because it angered people they despised.
If we on the Left aren’t talking about material progress in people’s lives (because challenging the neoliberal economic hegemonic structure is hard) and instead focus on the navel gazing of middle class identity aesthetics, those suffering economic misery walk away from us.
While we are arguing over pronouns, they are trying to find ways to pay for the rent!
So the woke need to go to platforms that don’t matter and they need to generate anonymous handles on mainstream social media that just to send out facts which aren’t connected to their identity because they are so toxic people will hate anything that comes out of their mouths.
The NZCTU
Craig Renney’s late entry as a critical voice to eviscerate National’s nonsense budget was urgent and necessary, which led us all to ask, Where the fuck has this CTU been?
Since the passing of Helen Kelly the CTU has drifted without any real purpose or direction as woke identity politics seemed to become more important to the Wellington clique than you know, worker rights.
The breath of fresh air CTU Economist Craig Renney injected in the last month of the election with research that undermined the economic credibility of National’s deeply flawed tax policy was what the Left should have been doing for the last 3 years! The Left have walked away from economics and focused on the low hanging fruit of identity politics which only divides using pure temple politics rather than Broadchurch Solidarity. The common ground between people is their class, not their identity and Craig Renney is the blueprint for how the Left wins in 2026.
The CTU need to either form around Wagstaff, Ansell-Bridges or Renney as the ‘face’ of the CTU to lead the resistance against this far right racist Government, or they all appear as a united front, but they need to work out a clear leadership role now because you know, the Right are smashing us weekly right now and the CTU should, you know, probably be against that if they want to be politically relevant again.
The self serving Public Service is not our friend
The fundamental difference between Labour and National is that National MPs are all management psychopaths who excel at bullying others for results where as Labour wants to give everyone a cuddle at a hui with a vegan menu in Te Reo and side-order of pronouns.
The public service fear National, they don’t fear Labour and so when Labour pour billions into the Wellington Bureaucracy, they laugh and use it for more glass palaces.
The vast chunk of Labour/Green activists are placed and work within the Wellington Bureaucracy either with NGOs, Unions or State Agencies and their own sense of righteousness never allows them to consider if they are the baddies.
If we are to pour billions more into the Public Service, we must ensure these neoliberal managers don’t divert it for their own fiefdoms and pet projects.
MMP tactics and Ratana 2
The shockwave of naked racism that emboldened so much race baiting this election highlights how the Right wil always use Māori as a political punching bag for votes.
As New Zealand faces the absurdity of a referendum to redefine the principles of the Treaty and is about to have the Māori Health Authority disbanded, the question for the Left is how to work together strategically and tactically to stop the Right from winning by race baiting.
I believe the answer lies in our existing MMP system and requires a new Rātana alliance.
The Rātana movement into politics in 1923 helped seal gains for Māori and Pakeha with Michael Savage in 1936.
Savage was gifted a potato, a broken gold watch, a pounamu hei-tiki, and a huia feather as symbols of the new alliance.
The potato represented loss of Māori land and means of sustenance, the broken watch represented the broken promises of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the pounamu represented the mana of the Māori people, if Savage was able to restore those 3, he would earn the right to wear the huia feather.
It is time for Labour to earn the right to wear that feather.
What was fascinating about the Māori electorates this election was how tactical Māori voters were, once again proving why they are one of the smartest tactical voters each and every election.
Overwhelmingly Māori in the Māori electorates voted Labour Party vote and Māori Patry candidate vote and this has generated the focus on the power of the MMP Overhang the Māori Electorates generate.
If there was a Rātana 2, the Labour Party and Māori Party could strategically work together and push a tactical voting plan that calls for voters in the Māori electorate to all give their candidate vote to the Māori Party candidate and their Party vote to Labour.
This would end up creating up to 7 overhang seats in the Parliament which would cement an enormous block that could (with support from the Greens) become an unbeatable tactic that would ensure victory.
If this new alliance could demand better material conditions for those on the socio-economic bottom, working class aspirations and Māori aspirations could combine to finally deliver the promise to Rātana made in 1936.
If Labour want to wear that huia feather, they must rethink their MMP tactics and strategy.
Appear on media outside echo bunkers
The woke left have become so reliant on cancel culture to end the argument for them that they have lost the art of debate and have lost the ability to argue our case. That has led to echo chambers and left wingers incapable of winning people over.
Pure temple identity politics vs Broadchurch class politics
The solution to the woke identity politics alienation and the cost of living crisis are universals.
Rather than die in ditches for tribal pure temple dogma, the Political Left actually have to make people’s lives materially better!
We look to the State to provide market regulation and a pooling of resources for the best outcome.
Universal provision of well funded public services scares the bejesus out of the Right and the neoliberal public service who prefer to manage contracts than actually do the mahi.
Universal provision of well funded social services is the harvest we all share in a democracy!
If we provide real ways to reduce peoples living costs we can get everyone to buy into the system because for the first time in their lives they see a State focused on reducing their costs not increasing them in an economic system that is rigged for the rich.
The Woke are great for organising mummy blogger free the nipple bike lane protests, not so good at challenging the neoliberal hegemonic structure.
Vision
Bernard Hickey has argued, “We could have gotten $200 billion in extra tax revenues if only there had been a fair tax system which meant that capital gains were taxed at the same rate as every other type of income.”
In a liberal progressive democracy, it doesn’t matter what role you play in the complex super structure of our society and economy.
It doesn’t matter of you are a garbage collector, a dr, a nurse, a drain layer, teacher or tradie – if you all stopped doing your jobs the system can’t work.
Everyone deserves to share the collective harvest of civil society with public services and policies focused on the public good enshrined in the intrinsic civil liberties each individual has.
Wealthy individuals who become mega rich thanks to the landscape generated by those values are required to pay more back into the system they have benefited from beyond the bare necessity of ruthless accountancy practices.
These rich pricks have designed the system for themselves, ‘you can’t tax unrealised capital gains’ the Right scream, like bullshit we can’t!
If it means the mega rich have to sell a mansion or two to pay the tax bill, so fucking be it!
The obligation of the Government is to regulate Capitalism so that we the people benefit from the competitive dynamics of competition!
Our top tax rate is the 39th highest in the world behind all the Scandinavian countries plus Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and South Africa!
Australia’s top tax rate is 47cents!
Our GST rate doesn’t even get us into the top 50 and our corporate tax rate is 40th while Government spending against GDP ranks 56th!
And we are voted easiest to do business by the World Bank!
Total hours spent at work per year (OECD):
Germany- 1330
Denmark- 1346
Japan- 1598
Australia- 1683
Canada- 1644
UK- 1367
New Zealand- 1739
I’m not looking for socialism here folks, just basic garden variety regulated capitalism!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 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.
You should be angry, NZ Capitalism is a rigged trick for the rich and powerful. The real demarcation line of power in a western democracy is the 1% + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us!
Do not allow their smears of ‘Envy’ dilute the righteous rage you should all be feeling!
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 $300 000 per year.
-Capital Gains Tax
-Windfall profit taxes
-First $10 000 tax free
Lift the tax yoke from the workers and the people and place it on the mega wealthy and have them pay their fair share for once!
The true demarcation off power in a liberal progressive democracy is the 1% wealthy + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us.
This is the message Labour must master!
Policy! Policy! Policy!
How do we use the power of the State to universally subsidise the lives of the poorest in a way that is meaningful to them? Paying higher benefits is one way but the vile MSD finds ways to claw any of this increases back the way thy did with Labour’s last pitiful rise.
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.
5: GST off fresh fruit and vegetables and essentials like tampons, toilet paper, condoms, oral health plus a sugar tax and a State backed 3rd Supermarket chain.
6: Free Dental services for everyone through public health.
7: Debt cancellation – student loans, welfare overpayments, beneficiary debt, easier debt cancellation.
8: Taxation focused on corporations like financial transaction tax, Ghost House tax and first $10 000 is tax free.
9: Renter Rights – (rent freezes, end accomodation payments, long term tenancy arrangements) plus universal union membership.
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.
11: Expand the capacity of the state, we don’t just need more teachers, we need more schools. We don’t just need more drs and nurses, we need more hospitals! We need a new Ministry of Green Works to build the adaptation required to survive climate change.
Ones to watch:
Arena Williams, Efeso Collins, Steve Able, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, Barbara Edmonds.
Conclusion:
We are seeing a new hard right racist Government who are politically assaulting the most vulnerable amongst us so they can give policy wins to their rich mates.
They are implementing an anti-Māori, anti-renter, anti-environment, anti-worker, anti-beneficiary agenda and to challenge them will demand a united front.
Waiatangi 2024 will be a focal point of resistance leading into the next year, but it must be extended well beyond Māoridom to include, workers, renters, environmentalists and beneficiaries because this Government intends to implement an extreme right wing agenda that will set this country back decades while solving none of our current problems!
This Government isn’t even a month old and the level of protest at the extreme nature of their agenda actually offends many peoples egalitarian sensibilities.
We are a fair people, what National, ACT and NZFirst have all agreed to is extreme and nasty.
Kiwis aren’t extreme or nasty. Some are, they vote ACT and NZ First, but National voters will be aghast at what they’ve seen so far.
This is the time for the political Left to walk away from woke pure temple politics and embrace Broadchurch class solidarity.
Our under funded social infrastructure, our ‘me first’ consumerism, our 30 years of neoliberal mythology, our disconnection from one another, our untreated pain, our lack of hope from grinding poverty in a first world country, our damaged masculinity, the intergenerational consequences of colonialism, our unspoken rage culture, our inability to express emotion beyond anger – all of this demands questions we don’t want to hear as a society.
The Right look for recruits, the Left look for traitors.
If we don’t provide people with Hope that there is a better way of being for us all, if we don’t provide vision that actually addresses the material well being of our voters, if we aren’t prepared to debate the expansion of State Capacity by taxing the megawealthy and funding the climate change adaptation, if we don’t do all that, this hard right racist Government will win again.
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They’re destined to become experts in cleaning the wharepaku for at least 10 years or more. And in that time, the gweens are the most likely the one party of the 3 to disappear.
TMP follower’s growth will shrivel up and shrink like an elephant’s dick in the cold because their virtue signaling will become as old-fashioned as cosplay does when your dad dresses up in leopard skin one-piece outfits for fun.
Labour is fucked forever.
The end.
Well said Den.
They said the same thing about National after 2017 and look where they are now.
Add to that you say National and Labour are the same thing so does that mean they’re both fucked forever?
The end.
Youre onto it MHK. Didn’t take you long to work that one out.
Well said Den
This coalition won’t last ten years they will be lucky to get past 3yrs stop talking kaka Den.
I’m predicting a reign of at least 9 years by the right.
It certainly will only last 3 years at the very most, judging by any of your previous predictions.
Well said CIP
Who says it will be another coalition govt of the same?
Great article again Martyn but I don’t see Labour being capable of fulfilling your very sensible & humanitarian Social Wishlist, they just don’t possess the hardnosed idealogical zeal or ability to articulate & sell that Wishlist to the NZ Public to push through this agenda, contrast them with Luxon’s 3 headed Hydra, say what you will about the Right, but you have to grimly admire the fact that they achieved more in only 2 weeks of being in Power than what the incompetent Labour Party did in over 6 yrs in Govt, 3 of those years with a Supermajority, which was reprehensible because they could have pushed through anything they wanted, including your Wishlist but they did nothing with it? And the buck stopped with Jacinda Ardern who proved to be both a blessing & a curse, she set up Labour & Chippy to fail, she should have stuck out this Election & resigned after it, not resign 2 months before, it was Political cowardice on her part, a true Captain stays with his or her Ship & goes down with it, if it sinks, but she cut & ran like a coward? I’ve voted Labour all my Life but I’ve been so disappointed with their incrementalism & woke nonsense that I’m leaving the General role & going onto the Maori role & voting Te Pati Maori for the first time in 40 yrs! They are the only Party Martyn that has your recommendations as their Policy platform, I’m done with Labour, I’m out, their just a sellout, a Neoliberal light Centralist Party, not a a Left wing Party & nothing will change that? Dropping the stupid Ute Tax & the dumb speed limits & other dumb woke things Labour saddled Kiwis with unnecessary bureaucratic nonsense are the only things I agree with in this Right wing Govt but at least they are doing most of what they campaigned on & said they would do, no matter how catastrophic because delivering on Elections promises is important & sadly Luxon’s Coalition of Chaos is achieving what Labour failed miserably to do, to deliver on it’s promises to the working class & the poor?
I don’t completely disagree with you Antforce, but National haven’t done anything yet, repelling Labour policy is quite different to writing and passing their own legislation
The left doubling down using the same toxic branded front persons will ensure their respective parties are in the wilderness for longer.
A cull is required.
Be careful what you wish for Jack? Take a gander around the World at the Geopolitical level, every Western Nation, that has Neoliberal deathcult Capitalism as its economic model, a model built entirely on unsustainable & unprecedented levels of debt, are all in freefall & in recession! NZ is in one
& has been for over 3 yrs now, we can all feel it at the Supermarket & the bills we pay & is has nothing to do with Labour because every other Western Nation including Europe is in a State of Collapse, the US, UK, Canada, Australia & NZ, all the Colonial, Imperial Angloshere Countries have begun their race to the bottom due to out if control money printing? BRICS & China with the BRI, is birthing a Alternative Financial system based on Commodities not the western debt based model, it’s now coming into existence & nothing can stop it! And NZ’s trajectory is headed down the shitter with the rest of the Western Colonial Settler Nations!
My, how you underestimate Capitalism and the AngloSaxon.
Yeah that’s what they call REALITY Hetzer, come back when you wake up from tour slumber?
The right simply being their toxic usual selves. The repealing of the smoke-free legislation shows contempt for the lives of all NZers. No sugar coating it by way of blaming the left will change this. Worse still hard right supporters are responsible for those deaths.
“I’m not looking for socialism here folks, just basic garden variety regulated capitalism!”
I’d vote for that. I won’t vote for any more bullshit from Hippy Chipkins or anyone in the Greens or TMP. Here is the line for me. They’ve had their opportunity for cowardly and hateful killing-everyone-you-don’t-like parroting, now it ends. If they won’t end it, then any party that has those usual suspects as members will not get my vote. It’s not like they are the only politicians on the planet. I agree that somewhere after “women are people too”, and “all men are rapists” the woke perspective well and truely lost it’s way. Most people understand what it was supposed to say on a number of overdue and constructive discussions, now the hate is overwhelming and divisive. Base policies on raising the people left behind in a way that doesn’t favour the top 20% and building back attitudes that support community, not private enclaves. That’s as best as we can hope for a turn away from the kind of attitudes that try to get a council to recind a heritage site for the sake of a home renovation.
Chippe and Robertson unlikely to be re booted and refreshed. Will need a new inspiring common sense leader.
Where are they going to find them prey tell?
You mean like Key and English.
Perhaps Chippy and Robbo should just abandon ship like the other two rats but they won’t because they have integrity.
It’s not “socialism.” It’s “socialise.” I’m happy to pay a bit more taxes if there are things that are free to use like free public or ridiculously cheap public transport and nice manicured areas along the water front where you would typically put bellow average coffee bean merchants (don’t at me. You are not roasting imported coffee beans in any great measure) but put open public space along the water front where people from southern and western suburbs can bring there children, watch them play and have a sandwich. That’s not socialism that’s socialise. But oh know we have to gentrify possomby princes wharf and the viaduct because you went to far right with ideologically driven taxes talking Kaka envy or some fantastic poverty porn drama they don’t deserve it because, choices. Kefe.
They will go back to protests, rants and criticising which is what they are best at while commentary that is biased to the left slates everything national do just because. We need a clamp down on public service costs and labour couldn’t do that under Jacinda or chippy. Labour need to learn to manage this not just make pretty speeches like Jacinda did.
“Clamping down” is still superficial
@ MJ That’s your opinion. How do you know how many and how much is required to run the country? You talk in an informed lordly way about over-expenditure. Has anyone done a study detailing figures for even a ballpark guess? Please give link and explain why the author is someone worth our close attention.
Yes Greywarbler…”clamp down on public service costs”
By that MJ means go back to a low wage economy and then complain that our nurses are leaving for Australia because they are over worked and under paid.
Idiots like MJ are the problem.
No, it means, “I’m okay, the rest of you can go get fucked.”
Everyone wants value for money, in private lives and in govt management. But ‘wasteful spending’ and ‘economic mismanagement’ is simply part of the narrative the Right use to support their own position, one of minimal government, deregulation and cost savings. Good for business perhaps – and if we are to believe also the ‘squeezed middle’ – but the end user always ends up paying. That’s everyone of course, including the squeezed middle, and those already at a disadvantage are further disadvantaged. The gap continues to widen. But that’s the Right for you. But here’s the rub. For the most part the so called Left that we see today play the same game, albeit with a different narrative. Call it what you like: the middle way, capitalism with a conscience, social capitalism, socialism in name only. Same deck of cards dealt a bit differently. But hey, I know where I’d rather be living!
Jacinda was the last chance hotel. You had a chance to spend a lot of dosh fixing a lot of things but you prioritised people over things because you thought it would be cheaper. Now you all have big attitude problems.
Luxon is using public service costs to learn Te Reo, what you say now?
Good on him.
“Good on him” HYPOCRITE
It is possible a new party can rise from the ashes of the Labour Party but it will take 6 to 9 years.
I suggest they start now from scratch.
The answer to the question in your headline is: Into the wilderness for at least a decade. Until National have been in office so long that they think they have an arrogant ‘right to rule’ like the uk Tories now clearly have.
Overall I suspect we’ve seen Peak Left judging by the outcomes of elections in many parts of the democratic world. So when National eventually get the boot expect a true hard line nationalist party to replace them.
“Until National have been in office so long that they think they have an arrogant ‘right to rule’ like the uk Tories now clearly have.”
Only took two weeks!
No Zealand. No Left. Throw another quarter million foreigners on the pyre!
If the union protest against fair pay is anything to go by the Coalition has little to worry about from that sector.The TPM may be better but even protesting Maori have to work to feed the family so there is only so much time they can spend not working.
The fact they have to protest shows how appalling the coalition of chaos is already. That should be of concern particularas the world are seeing the government as an embarrassment.
Think about the words “fair pay” for a moment, if not fair pay it’s unfair pay, that’s what this government is advocating.
What about fairness to the employer who takes the gamble to start a business. Many fail and lose everything but if they succeed they are called out as bad people .Fair pay is good but conditions vary from place to place some a very profitable some not so much so pay needs to be variable as well
Fairness is always there for good employers, I think you’ll find it is the rogue ones that fail and lose everything. The issue with pay being variable, as you say, is that supermarket prices, petrol price and rentals and house prices aren’t variable( to a degree) so when you live on a variable wage, you will fail.
Surely a business does a risk analysis before startup including outgoings. There is no such thing as unfairness to an employer as they own sole power.
If the risk is too high don’t start up a business.
Disagree with some of your woke bashing, but the left’s policy vision needs to be about the betterment of those struggling to get by. The Greens and Te Pati Maori should have an hui sometime next year to prepare an election strategy to maximalize their negotiaton power with Labour as a joint block pushing for a core set of commitments: Wealth tax, captial gains tax, rent control, free dental care and a guarenteed minimum income would be the main 5 I’d focus on
So what about the children then? Where are the voices decrying the callous kneecapping of the only officially recognised independent Commissioner for Children which all of our children ever had ? Sepoluni is not, and will never be a Mother Courage, and it’s a crying shame she’s not jumping ship like their mute Minister Kelvin Davis. “ Every child counts” is not an utterance of any New Zealand politician in spite of our terrible track record and dumb failure to invest in the future which children represent, and will have to carry.
‘If you’re woke, you’re left. If you’re left, you’re woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you’re one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake.
‘The confusion arises because woke is fuelled by traditionally leftwing emotions: the wish to stand with the oppressed and marginalized, to address historic crimes. But those emotions are undermined by widespread philosophical assumptions with reactionary sources. As a result, wokeism conflicts with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, the woke will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right.
‘One of the world’s leading philosophical voices, Neiman calls with passion and power for the left to return to the ideals that built the best of the modern world.’
https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/20957_left-is-not-woke-by-susan-neiman-reviewed-by-guy-lancaster/
https://www.thenile.co.nz/books/susan-neiman/left-is-not-woke/9781509558308
You won’t get it. Universities are selling trash degrees for hundreds of thousands. Students have to put up with hate speech laws, 400 dollar student accommodation and 200 dollar student allowance. They can also look forward to million dollar mortgages. The kicker is woman only appointments. 60 percent of graduates are woman and they ain’t choosing STEM. That’s why you won’t get anything done. Woman want to do the easy work the hard work isn’t getting done. Yknow building roads, rail, bridges, maintaining telecommunications so that the woman can earn the big bucks on Only Fans. Wonderful. You go queens.
Well, @ Sam, a bit of a rant but half of me agrees. The other half would say it not universities selling trash degrees but students buying a dream that is not always realised. They ‘re not to blame. “Education, education, education” we are told. Works for some. Me thinks better educated than not. But here’s the rub. Simply turning up for the parchment on graduation day doesnt always provide the key. What counts is the transformation. But granted everyone’s experience is a big different and a good few waste their time and money and/or end up in trash programmes.
As for ya other points well you’re entitled to your opinion but that’s only what it is. A good many women would argued its they who get stuff done, but not necessarily igniting the dynamite and shovelling the rock.
Exactly what got done in the last 40 years? State highway one is short about a thousand ks of highway and a new harbour crossing. Your an idiot that confuses subjective feelings for objective reality. You are not getting things done necause universities hate men it’s very simple, New Zealand practices misandry and now your sitting there with the attitude problem.
Sorry, Sam – you have gone off the rails…
Now that’s an opinion.
Andrew Tate, is that really you?
Yup. It’s a business selling a low quality product. As long as you pay the fees you’ll get your degree.
It’s a $24b education scam.
Yes – very economical if you can see through it and avoid contributing.
But are you totally sure about where and who you are?
What the fuck is this airy fairy shit? “Are you totally sure” and, “who are you.” You’re a conartist. There’s nothing wrong with debt it’s your ability to balance the books that matters and right now you Muppets suck ass at floating budgets.
” Labour are over run by the Professional Managerial Class, they see the solution is better bureaucratic structures rather than an upgrade of the Capacity of the State and so spent 6 years recreating bureaucratic structures without the necessary upgrade of capacity. ”
That is not going to change.
” Keep Chippy. He has walked back comments about not going ‘left’, he meant not going woke.
If we can marry Chippy’s leadership qualities up with a policy agenda that is actually left wing, we could win back the treasury benches in 2026 (or earlier if they implode).
HIPKINS IS NOT LEFT WING BOMBER
If the leader doesn’t believe in a left wing policy prescription its not going to happen. No current LINO MPs campaigned on a real left platform during the general election campaign which is another reason why they lost but Hipkins doesn’t see it that way judging by his comments since October 14.
” Lift the tax yoke from the workers and the people and place it on the mega wealthy and have them pay their fair share for once!
The true demarcation off power in a liberal progressive democracy is the 1% wealthy + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us.
This is the message Labour must master!
When you don’t believe in the message then how do you master it ?
All fine and dandy, but slightly obscured by the westminster system shaped elephant in the room that prevents any of the deep structural changes needed to rein in capitalism.
Anything less than a review and replacement of said system is just tinkering around the edges. Shifting deck chairs to get the best look at the impending doom.
Still, if it takes speeding up the demise of capitalism as it stands to bring about real change then line up that iceberg and full steam ahead…ramming speed!
The whole economic world order is going to be completely changed by AI and automation. If we look the the projections of this technology, we could be seeing the emergency of AGI within 2 years, and if not – we will certainly see major changes in the way businesses operate, reducing levels of employment regardless of AGI. We’re also seeing massive advances in robotics, and since there systems are designed to allow for exponential unsupervised learning, they will advance rapidly, far more rapidly than most politicians can comprehend. Our current political paradigms will become worthless, the problems the left care about will be altered profusely and this will fundamentally change political narratives. Our current political systems centralise too much power, and we must look toward constitutional devolution, enhanced personal liberties, and community empowerment, this must be facilitated through tax reform that reduces income, corporate and consumption taxes, and implements wealth, land, capital gains and automation taxes. Local councils should be given more powers and more ways to generate revenue, and a binding constitution should be implemented that allows for binding referenda to establish and authorised annual rates of migration – stopping both the idiot left and the regressive right from using immigration as a wedge issue and perpetuating ethnic radicalisation. Our rates of immigration are unsustainable, both for wage growth and infrastructure. Yet the right will allow this migration for the supposed economic benefits, and the left will be too concerned with identity politics it won’t be able to conceive of a coherent migration policy. Purge all identity politics, including intersectionality from political narratives, as these are plants by corporate related entities that exist to distract and corrupt the left away from its true purpose.
The whole working hours comparison seems fictional. No way we are working longer than Japan! Our productivity is at the bottom of the heap. Seems like kiwis do lot more huis than doing in the extra long hours they are working. Govt should bring 4 day work week (keep same pay), as people will get instant payrise, and no change in productivity- win-win. This will give unmeasurable benefits to the whole society.
New Zealand’s new right-leaning government took more than a month to take shape, but Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his coalition partners are now racing to strip back policies that had earned former leader Jacinda Ardern plaudits worldwide amongst progressives.
Among Progressives but not really anyone else and also left NZ in tatters. I’d rather we’d missed all those plaudits and had an economy not in recession (thank’s Grant)…
Do some research abominable snowman. Recessions were global after the pandemic and now we have Willis raping our economy.
Rubbish.
Agree Bob yetis comment was rubbish.
Unfortunately, until the left aren’t seen as being dominated by identity politics, I can only see this coalition staying in power for as long as it likes. And given identity politics is not going to weaken any time soon, that could be forever.
Unfortunately, until the left aren’t seen as being dominated by identity politics, I can only see this coalition staying in power for as long as it likes. And given identity politics is not going to weaken any time soon, that could be forever.
This coalition is a moment in time. Next election, under mmp, Perhaps voters will support the Nats to go it alone.
If the first two weeks in power is anything to go by National will be confined to the incinerator.
Just the left David?
Why do you think Key and Now Luxon got in ahead of so many longterm ministers?
Because they were identities.
the left could do worse than educate themselvees as to the state of the world and what’s coming.
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/
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