The danger of Darleen Tana’s Greenwash
Green members elect their candidates and Darleen was a dream.
A female Māori small business owner of E Bikes on Waiheke Island with a moko?
She couldn’t be more perfect for the Greens!
The allegations against her of exploiting migrant labour are deeply embarrassing and on top of all the other recent bad news, paints a picture of middle class hypocrisy.
To those who hate the Greens, this is mana from heaven, but this is survivable for the Party as a whole as the allegations are at the low level of offence.
It does however highlight the vacantness of that Green Capitalism if the change isn’t structural.
Chloe’s first test as leader and she has done the right thing.
If there is any validity to the allegations, Darleen should stand down altogether.
What the entire Darleen issue has inadvertently exposed is how deeply rooted the need to exploit migrants labour is to the low wage economy.
If a bougie E Bike company on Waiheke Island can’t pay proper wages without exploiting migrant workers, who the fuck will?
Our economy is built upon stealing Māori land (and never paying it back), allowing agricultural producers to pollute without constraint and exploiting migrant labour for our low wage economy. This is what we is, this is who we are and minus any attempt to unionise the exploitation will simply get worse.
Reviewing Labour’s retreat for casual revolution
Their retreat last week had very different internal polling numbers:
Labour are too intellectually insecure to host the Opposition Summit and believe they just have to wait the Government out and voters will come back to them, which is fine but misses the extremism of the first 100 days of this Government and allows them off the hook for a visionless election campaign that had zero to offer voters.
Labour will continue to sit on their hands meaning the CTU needs to step up alongside Greenpeace, Auckland Action Against Poverty, Child Poverty Action Group to host an Opposition Summit with a far wider focus than Labour would have given it.
Yes Labour need to take from soft National voters, but they also need to appeal to their actual progressive base as well!
Labour are staring down a generational loss of the Auckland vote and if you can’t win Auckland, you can’t win the election.
If Labour are gong to sit on their hands, at least rearrange the talent pool to win those soft National voters WHILE appealing to the base.
Put Greg O’Connor into Police ffs he’s far more credible than Ginny and you know it!
Babs can keep Finance but give Parker the Economy and allow him to make the argument for a Capital Gains Tax AND a Wealth Tax AND a Ghost House Tax AND a Financial Transaction Tax AND a Sugar Tax! He’s the only one with the brains to manage this!
Make Arena Williams spokesperson on Auckland (she’s an incredible talent and Auckland needs a voice!) and make Damien O’Connor the spokesperson for rural economy and rural environment.
Will the quick Green Chloe leap over the lazy Red log?
The other main problem with Labour’s decision to sit on their hands and wait it out is that other political actors won’t do that!
Chloe is a unique candidate and allowing her to become the de facto Leader of the Opposition in terms of passion and vision is that you will get an demographic and class collapse in the Labour vote.
Without meaningful progressive policy, Labour lose the working class vote to apathy in Auckland and they lose the middle class vote to the Greens in Auckland.
Why would anyone under 40 vote Labour?
By sitting on their hands, Labour risk permanently losing that demographic to the Greens.
If the Māori Party and the Greens agreed to on Opposition Summit, Labour would have no choice but to attend.
The Political Left have to understand they are in danger from this Government because National/ACT and NZ First intend to fuck us up permanently.
If we don’t start fighting back now, there won’t be anything left to Govern if we do win in 2026!
What more proof do you need to see that this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government intends to permanently harm our movement?
This is the Government’s motto:
This Hard Right Racist Climate Denying Beneficiary Bashing Government is going to fuck over a vast chunk of NZ.
Is Labour going to stand with us and resist or are they going to wait the fight out and pretend to turn up later?
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Labour is full of privileged people with arts degrees who have never achieved anything outside of academia. You are probably expecting too much from them.
Blaming creative and intellectual people for the terminal, arrogant greed of the flat footed neo-liberals is about as fascist as it gets. You’re a part of a wider problem for all of us bennie, not a part of any solution.
Benny makes a good point though CB – Where are the equivalents of Angela Rayner in the NZ Labour Party then? Where are those that come up the hard way and lived through it? Where are those that washed the shit off their boots at the end of a hard shift in the freezing works, where are those whose hands are hard and calloused from the work they do?
Inside academia?
Grant Robertsons BA honours dissertation (his highest level academic qualification) was an account of the restructuring of Otago University students Association in the 1980s. This was essentially an undergraduate level essay with no central thesis other than it represented a “step to the right”. This qualification thrust him into the heady heights of Minster of Finance within the Labour Government and subsequently Vice Chancellor of Otago University – deserved or not, you be the judge?
Labour are damaged goods and nothing but a decade and a complete reinvention is going to change that.
You’re correct @ jack. Labour was infected by roger douglas under the guidance of the national party.
Since then, now forty years ago, the Labour Party is nothing more than a substrate of Right Wing pus festering away just below the surface.
We need temporary govornance while a very, very, public Royal Commission of Inquiry is conducted into our politics and our economy with a focus on historic interventions by the four foreign owned banks and our dark army of multi-billionaires and multi-millionaires.
Veteran socialist George Galloway has won another dramatic by-election victory, spanking the major parties so bad that two Third Party candidates came first and second. Labour were reduced to single digits!
Jeremy Corbyn has been booted out of his own party, despite being the most popular Labour politician. He too will have no choice but to run Third Party when he stands again.
Considering that the Clintonite parties are now despised even in “Red Wall Labour” seats, and that the Greens have near-zero support outside wealthy electorates, why would organised labour even bother with either party? The mass working class support behind the Corbyn-Sanders-Mélenchon movement needs to coalesce internationally, on the basis of Third Party runs in Rust Belt seats.
I’ve been saying this for years, but Labour are deaf and blind. Hundreds of thousands of potential labour voters simply don’t vote. Their take on it seems to be that either there is no difference between the major parties – not necessarily true these days given the influence of minor parties – all that there is simply nothing in it for them. I’ve been suggesting that Labour try to organise these people but they are completely uninterested, I suspect because it would mean hard work, because the unions don’t exist any more to do that work for them. They’d sooner do the Blairite thing of fiddling around the edges of neoliberalism in the hopes of capturing some of National’s middle-class vote.
That will work perhaps but not long-term. It cements in the cyclical nature of New Zealand elections. I’m tempted to give up voting myself except I wouldn’t then feel I had the right to be bitching about political parties and what they do to the country.
Labour aren’t deaf & blind, they know exactly what they are doing.
The purpose of the new labour movements is to make the right look good.
When they’re in we get shite lite neo liberal economic policies and a massive attack on rights and freedoms. They are the other side of the same coin. No prime minister has freedom to do anything other than the bidding of the ruling class. The only difference between the two is National do it willingly and Labour (at least some of them) appear to do it grudgingly.
‘Labour reform’ will be nothing more than a rebranding and the eventual disappearance of a large enough electorate that benefits from National’s ponzi schemes – and thus a change of regime.
…or you could vote green and have the government slowly repossess your house.
Labour, Labour, Labour … Blah, blah, blah.
Labour’s been Natzo since rogers 1984. You know that. So why the blah, blah, blah, Labour, Labour Labour?
What the fuck’s going on here @ Martyn Bradbury?
The Green Party will always be a little mouse squeaking best intentions, you know that. AO/NZ needs to get the cleaners in. Out with the whitewash and in with the cameras and the vacuum cleaner. You will have noticed that the Natzo’s have already disabled all the security MSM. As pathetic as it was, it was largely ours. Well, sort of, kind of, a bit of.
Perhaps sacrificing to Cthulhu could improve Labour’s prospects?
It’s the unions that are key, and when they hold a summit they should speak plainly to Labour:
“We created you, and if you won’t do your job, we will destroy you!
Housing is a right – exploitable migrants are not – get your shit together and get the job done.
And let us hear not another peep of your fauxgressive agenda until every New Zealander is housed and fed.”
One can hope for such a revolt, but the sad fact is that union executive leadership in NZ has been infected by the same PMC types who came up in the ‘left’-neoliberal wing of student politics as occupy the official ‘Labour’ party. Just look at Tiny Andrew Little. They have to go too.
We need to support rank-and-file organizing against the collaborators.
You know it, Mohammed.
” “We created you, and if you won’t do your job, we will destroy you! ”
Stuart we don’t live in the 20th century anymore. That kind of message is lost on the current union movement and dare I say it the LINO party and its membership.
The only fight these days is waged with words in a crowded market and the message and story is forgotten while the next breaking news story appears.
While some unions do achieve local wins for their membership for the fees paid that is where it ends as far as being a force to be reckoned with or to have any real influence. Unlike the NACT party their donations don’t have any effect when it comes to a Labour government delivering real longstanding gains for its membership.
Unlike the U.K and Australia the union movement has absolved most of its responsibilities to the likes of Action station , Action against poverty and numerous other splinter groups begging for donations so they can fund their campaigns.
” Reaching out ” and a hug will make it better has been adopted over strength , unity and the courage to stand up , fight and never backdown.
Hear hear my good man. We need more good straight practical thinking like this.
And ensure it gets listened to and followed – drawing attention to it as in these past feisty memories perhaps?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0rTfmGFZys
Won’t happen Stuart because the biggest unions are all middle class now.
” Why would anyone under 40 vote Labour ”
Why would anyone over 40 vote Labour ?
” Is Labour going to stand with us and resist or are they going to wait the fight out and pretend to turn up later ”
In my opinion Hipkins and his colleagues will allow Chloe to do all of the heavy lifting while they stay trapped in their current mindset.
Chloe not Labour will speak for progressive voters after all the managerial class has to have a representative party and they have one with LINO its membership and current MP’s.
Their retreat sent the message that its business as usual and they are not responsible for handing over power to the current corporate mafia.
Looks like all the advice you have given them Bomber has been ignored.
Lino is way beyond help or hope my friend.
Dead right, mosa.
Dead right, mosa.
It is premature to say that Darlene Tana is guilty as charged. We in the public have yet to see the evidence behind the allegations, and we should suspend judgement on her case until we have.
However there are legitimate questions to be asked about candidate selection in the colonialist political system where evidence of moral character is the missing element. This problem is particularly marked in identity politics where a candidate can score points for being indigenous/immigrant/gay/female/refugee/business owner etc etc without anyone taking the time to look deeply into their moral character. Since identity politics fits naturally within the MMP system, it is a particular problem for the minor list parties, but is by no means limited to them, as the revelations about disgraceful conduct by more than a few Labour and National electorate MPs can attest.
Question. Do we actually need the Labour Party? The Green are a labour party with some environmental stuff tacked on. Who need Labour?
We don’t need Labour. They always let us down. Who would want more of that?
So best we send them that message by all moving on.
Don’t be so truthful and nasty Martyn; we don’t want to talk about it! Never. How dare you say that. NZ doesn’t do things like that – well hardly ever.
Here is someone Indian? pondering on something as we rarely think about – well thinking is what we do ‘hardly ever’.
I find this guy commendable and an exemplar for us as we need to change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2lsbmVGY1g
Dead right, mosa.
She sounded like she was useless anyway. Better for someone else to have the job.
Labour faffed around for 9 years playing musical leaders while Key swanned around pretending to do stuff.
If they sit on their hands again, they will be sunk.
Get the obvious people into positions in which they have ample experience and start making hits on this idiot govt.
Do not expect voters to forgive and forget about that pathetic election campaign. But the Nasties also ran a pathetic campaign and Labour would not have lost if they’d been decisive enough to stick to some hard-hitting policies like CGT. But waffling around being afraid to offend people will not work.
Luxon has absolutely no credibility as a leader. People don’t like him any more now that he’s PM, than they did before the election. He’s gaffe-prone and contemptuous of everyone.
He can be told a fact and immediately does a Trump and whines, ‘It’s not fair’.
Winston is no asset as he proved again today and Seymour and his band of miss-fits are a danger to everyone. Even themselves.
They all embarrass themselves so why is it so hard is for Labour to embarrass them.
By not doing so you reinforce the idea that country boy often states. You are just as badly compromised by big business as they are.
O’Connor doesn’t want Police, he’s just feeding from the trough, hell he probably wouldn’t have held on to Ohairu if anyone more competent and less heinous than Nicola Willis was running against him