I remember my shock at realising in talks with Labour Party MPs while they were in Office how totally disconnected many of them had come to the people they were governing over.
They were very isolated from the crises that were wrecking Auckland.
The Cost of living Crisis, the Housing Crisis, the Crime Crisis, the pandemic – all conspired to highlight that Labour had great rhetoric but crap follow through.
Over Covid we all sacrificed equally in an unequal society.
Auckland’s problem is that it is punished by the mass immigration programs of both Parties while no one wants to pay for the infrastructure necessary to keep up with that mass immigration.
This creates gridlock.
The one good thing Labour did was half priced public transport.
That’s it.
We didn’t get our fucking light rail, we didn’t get our fucking bike lane over the Harbour Bridge all we got was Leo Malloy as a Mayoral candidate!
While Jacinda sacrificed Auckland for the well being of the country, Aucklanders saw none of the rebuild and took all the sacrifice!
Labour were hit three times in Auckland:
1: – Their working class Auckland voters simply couldn’t be bothered voting and stayed at home. Taking GST off fruit and vegetables as a response to the cost of living crisis FFS!
2: – Their middle class Auckland supporters went to the Greens instead because they were intellectually convinced of their wealth tax.
3: – and the migrant Chinese and Indian communities all went National over crime.
Labour will win Auckland back when they do the following:
- Free Public Transport and massive Public Transport upgrade to electric
- Universal Union membership for all migrant workers so they can’t be exploited
- Greenlight mass building rent to buy apartments only for owner occupiers
- Bring back universal student membership at University to fight for youth issues
- More homeless shelters and wrap around services for the homeless
- Lift Auckland’s per Police population level
- More free public events
- Get the Super fund to directly fund large upgrade to capacity like more hospitals
Auckland matters, no Party can win without winning Auckland.
Auckland sacrificed during Covid, if Labour wants their vote, show Auckland the love!
But Labour didn’t have good rhetoric. They had cookie-cutter turgid talking points, like poorly-animated PowerPoint slides.
And Chippy was/is the face of the Labour problems for Auckland.
If you go to a restaurant and the food is bad, you don’t go back….if you then notice it’s changed hands and under new management, you may give it another try.
Martyn – Short answer…not for the next election.
A summary of NZ Policy since 2008:
Nation – don’t care.
Labour – can’t deliver.
I usually want to argue with you Ada but that’s a pretty nice summary of what we’ve got
Auckland will be red after the next election .Even david and brooke will be gone .The Auckland council have had enough of their mates already and the population of bottom dwellers is growing daily under these bunch of skin head lead parasites .Weasel Browne is really getting carried away with his own self importance and the mayor is getting really tetchy .Businesses that were saved under labour are now going to the wall in record numbers and the economy is going down faster than the cook straight ferries .You think you have seen homelessness and crime wait till this time next year .There will be whole families living on the streets as more are sent to the scrap heap and even those with jobs are becoming homeless in bigger numbers .
And Labour will do what to fix those problems? Would they employ 2000 more police to tackle crime? Would they build more houses this time when they could not last time?
All very well to point out the problems we can all see, how about some answers to take to the Labour part through membership and activism inside the Labour tent (are you a Labour party member and what are you doing in changing the party?) .
The extended lock down (4 months) in Auckland killed any chance without huge contrition and action plans to right their wrong handling.
Labour should have had a minister residing inside Auckland to represent the people during the 2nd Auckland lock down, instead they came acrtoss as PMC grade holier than thou, evangelist preaching from a “podium of truth” in a open for business Wellington. That rankles still and is a huge hurdle that only contrition can sooth the fever off.
Now lets see some action plans that are not slogans. We need housing not “we will build 100,000 homes” and build less than a hundred.
Very well put Gerrit.
Yes…all true….and Labour did their absolute best to financially support all those businesses, and yet the whining from all those cafes and restaurants, ( quite a number who were borderline viable even without Covid), became more and more deafening encouraged by a blood
sport media.
Those same people then turned around and voted National, whose policies to fling open the borders early and let everything rip would have been even worse…much worse …not only then, but now, as well.
Auckland’s biggest problem is the cost of housing and Key, English and Joyce’s rapid mass immigration sugar hit policies , on top of opening the property market up to the world, with no capital gains tax, thus having houses bought and sold like casino chips, combined with
having only third world transport systems in place, has set up a 30 year clusterfuck!!
And yet those guys are all in behind the scenes again giving ‘advice’ to the current lot.
N.Z..R.I.P
Good men behind the scenes thank heavens.
Those men were losers then, as they still are now. No wonder National is failing.
Losers? They are successfu!!
At what, you moron? Good heavens.
Spot on Grant, you’d be a moron to think differently.
Until Chippy understands that he is part of the problem & resigns I doubt that Labour will have any electoral improvement.
I agree Bonnie.Labour won’t win back favour as long as Chippie continues as leader.
The problem Labour have is they have no one obvious to replace him.
Nevertheless I’m sure he won’t be the leader of the Labour Party at the next election.
Just as sure your noggin’s in for another slip whack
Yeah 99 change fists Bob the Tug
D and C thanks chaps.
Did they ask any people who didn’t vote Labour why they went that way or were they just looking for comforting lies from their own people? It seems Labour is where it was in the Cunliffe/Shearer era: Divided by its own factions.
As for your proposed hard left policies Martyn, that won’t fly in Auckland, the commercial centre of the country.
And yet here we are, Chippy still preferred over Shrek, that says all we need to know about the right and it’s corruption.
Chippy has to go after the disastrous “Cap’n’s Call” on wealth tax and CGT. Labour needs to once and for all abandon Rogernomics and the neo liberal state–Reserve Bank Act and all the rest–and form an alliance with Greens and Te Pāti Māori for class left social change.
NZ Labour could have gone for broke in 2020 but they chose not to, sticking with the neo Blairist position, which in the end saw Grant Robertson–hardly a marxist firebrand–leave, and David Parker chuck his portfolio on the Cabinet table and almost leave too. Even the bloody IRD pointed out the inequity of the NZ tax system and the negative impact of the well off hogging the wealth.
The good news at the moment is that NZ Labour are not announcing policy just yet–so there is space to roll Chippy and get with a 21st century programme. Pinochet/Thatcher/Reagan are long gone and it is well past time for their embedded policies to go too.
100% We’re so far down the crapper short of a revolution the situation maybe irretrievable. destined to be a dead dump retirement home in the South Pacific.
TM, I agree with everything you say except for the alliance idea. TPM are disappearing down a Separatism rabbit hole and Labour need to be attacking that and winning back the Maori seats. They easily won the Party vote in those seats. The Greens are being overwhelmed by issues their own MPs are causing. The value that Chloe brings is being lost. The career politicians that dominate the Labour caucus won’t change but need to.
Chippy is part of the oligarchy, as all of Labour is, a lost cause.
We have been swept up in the history of our times, unfortunately both of the above are totally ineffective against it:
https://www.monbiot.com/2024/07/03/the-fight-against-oligarchy/
Asking if Labour can win back Auckland, is a similar question to asking if the Democrats can win back America. And for the same reason.
Who will be the next US President?
NAME ODDS PROBABILITY
Donald Trump -139 58%
Joe Biden +203 33%
Kamala Harris +900 10%
Gavin Newsom +1011 9%
https://www.thelines.com/odds/election/
Can a lifelong career politician beat a wealthy maverick businessman, who’s appeal is as an anti-politician, politician?
…..Trump has opened up a lead over Biden among young voters, according to an AtlasIntel poll. The ex-president leads the current president by 15 points among 18-to-29-year-olds, according to the survey conducted by one of the most accurate pollsters in the 2020 election.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/article/2024/jul/03/the-week-that-changed-the-election-how-the-supreme-court-made-trump-nearly-immune-as-president-just-as-biden-fell-flat-on-his-face
….Quite apart from the overall defeat it delivered, last year’s election seemed to spell bad news for the left in one key demographic: the youth. A Guardian Essential poll, taken in August 2023, showed just one-third of voters under 35 were backing Labour and the Greens, against one-half supporting National and ACT. The “youthquake” that in 2017 helped propel Jacinda Ardern to power had been replaced with frustration over a lack of social progress and “an overwhelming sense of exhaustion” among young voters, Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick argued.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/05-06-2024/are-new-zealands-youngest-voters-really-shifting-right
If Labour want to win back Auckland they need to be able to offer young people something.
Housing was Labour’s biggest failure in office.
The Nats have just announced a big housing package, will it deliver?
What if any is Labour’s reply to National’s housing promises?
What alternative housing policy is Labour offering voters?
Will Hipkins keep his lips tightly sealed?
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2407/S00171/coalition-for-more-homes-welcomes-housing-ministers-commitment-to-more-homes.htm
Listening but not hearing
Labour leader Chris Hipkins says it is too soon in the electoral cycle to announce new policies.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/521336/eight-months-on-from-its-election-defeat-labour-is-still-listening
Hipkins squeaks
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/521250/loosening-build-rules-comes-with-big-risks-chris-hipkins
” Until Chippy understands that he is part of the problem & resigns I doubt that Labour will have any electoral improvement. ”
It’s not just Hipkins, it’s their MP’s and the wider party membership that are in denial and thought that being government they didn’t have to anything and get reelected.
The pandemic response initially will be the only thing they will be remembered for, that and their huge landslide win in 2020.
The rest of it was increasing frustration and anger at their inability to really make a difference. Its as if they got into Government and then they thought what do we do now ?
They gave a bloody good impression of being arrogant and out of touch after only a few years.
Labour as it is now will never be able to do the things that are urgently required to stop our long slide to the bottom.
They have no real talent or ideas to advance a program of reform and simply exist as a managerial class liberal party that will not take on the forces that are destroying the country and would rather protect those interests instead of focussing on what the party was formed for in the first place and that was to stand against unregulated capitalism.
Labour is dead and its replacement will struggle to gather the support needed to win an election.
” Until Chippy understands that he is part of the problem & resigns I doubt that Labour will have any electoral improvement. ”
It’s not just Hipkins, it’s their MP’s and the wider party membership that are in denial and thought that being government they didn’t have to do anything and get re elected.
The pandemic response initially will be the only thing they will be remembered for, that and their huge landslide win in 2020.
The rest of it was increasing frustration and anger at their inability to really make a difference. Its as if they got into Government and then they thought what do we do now ?
They gave a bloody good impression of being arrogant and out of touch after only a few years.
Labour as it is now will never be able to do the things that are urgently required to stop our long slide to the bottom.
They have no real talent or ideas to advance a program of reform and simply exist as a managerial class liberal party that will not take on the forces that are destroying the country and would rather protect those interests instead of focussing on what the party was formed for in the first place and that was to stand against unregulated capitalism.
Labour is dead and its replacement will struggle to gather the support needed to win an election.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/uk-election-sir-keir-starmer-on-track-to-replace-rishi-sunak-if-country-votes-to-end-14-years-of-conservative-rule/C5SQWMRULNAJRN237SSCBNX3FM/
New Zealand will go the same way as the UK next election.
In the uk Labour lost when they had a true left wing leader now they have another Blair type person in charge they get back in .The majority do not want hard leftvor right in charge that is why Act and Greens are both also ran parties.
The voters have spoken, you are wrong…again.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/te-arawhiti-ministry-of-justice-and-corrections-propose-new-job-cuts/M3P56JXDI5ENZP2ZOZ34KOLWPI/
Gotta love the National party responsible for massive cuts in this sector…we all suffer.
In the uk Labour lost when they had a true left wing leader now they have another Blair type person in charge they get back in .The majority do not want hard left or right in charge that is why Act and Greens are both also ran parties.
The voters have spoken, you are wrong…again.
I agree Martyn that free stuff is the key to winning back the votes of Auckland.
Free Public Transport. Free Education. Free housing for those in need – as it is a universal human right.
Free Healthcare. Free wraparound services for the poor including free food from government funded foodbanks. Free breakfasts and lunches for schoolchildren.
And a basic income package for Aucklanders in need at the level of the living wage.
Problem is nothing is free someone has to pay.The question is why are these freebies needed .The sick the old and those with mental illness need looking after but the rest need to look after themselves.
Isn’t compulsory unionism against the Bill of Rights of free association? Just as you’re not allowed to prevent someone joining a group (as long as it’s not criminal) you simply can’t ‘force’ people to become a member of some organisation.
Good, then we can totally ignore the taxpayers union and federated farmers union and the business roundtable union.
More National party cuts creating chaos…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/professor-marie-bismark-resigns-after-health-nz-denies-panic-button-at-kapiti-mental-health-clinic/HDZDLGNVEBCDNHD52RQVN2UEFI/
Right across the board everything from insurance to food, petrol, rent, mortgages, whatever has risen at least 25% in 3 years and wages haven’t moved accept for at the bottom and this government wants to reduce the burden and the very hard done by employers. I mean I get that The National Party are brain dead it what’s chippies excuse?
@ MB. You’re going to think of me as you drift off to slumber but what balls and not the round and rolling kind.
Auckland is the sign post to crimes against agriculture. Auckland is where criminals go to do their dirty laundry. It’s where farmer earned money via dodgy sequestered export revenues goes to be spun through the washing machine and what nasty, dirty, lying, misrepresenting soup of sludgy suds the rattly, chrome plated made in Auckland, terminally set on spin cycle little thing it is.
Labour. Labour isn’t that. You know that though which gives me sleepless nights because I have a lot of respect for you Martyn Bradbury so is that respect misplaced or do you really not know what’s been going on, and is still ‘going on’?
It all comes down to money and of who has it and can it be taken from them without arousing suspicion.
If farmers stopped producing their world-first produce for export then Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Timaru, Oamaru and Invercargill would be dead by lunchtime.
That’s why luxon and his infectious disease, the national party, are suddenly and miraculously finding new markets for our wool etc. It’s because the demand has always been there for Christs sake! It’s just that our cunt politicians in cahoots with Big Business and Big Bankers could never ever have the truth come out because if they did the game would be up so to speak, and quite the game it is and although entirely amoral is equally entirely legal. Funny that also.
AO/NZ farmers should do two things. Thing #1 . Nothing. Thing#2. Strike, which is the same thing as thing #1 but different. Thing #3. Request a Royal Commission of Inquiry up and into everything banking and politics spanning the last 88 years, since the formation of the national party.
Wikipedia:
“National formed in 1936 through amalgamation of conservative and liberal parties, Reform and United respectively, and subsequently became New Zealand’s second-oldest extant political party.[9] National’s predecessors had previously formed a coalition against the growing labour movement. National has governed for six periods during the 20th and 21st centuries, and has spent more time in government than any other New Zealand party.[10][11]”
@ Countryboy would be proud of me.
Look, Battlefield Earth is back. Or is it really Countryboy again?
That T Cell is most ridiculous post I have ever read.
Read your own posts Bob the troll, they are the most ridiculous and embarrassing since TDB was established. You offer nothing.
$50 billion was printed during covid it saved business landlords and banks. National are running austerity and taxing the workers to pay the interest bill. That $50 billion gushed to the top it didnt end up with ordinary people . Labour needs to frame their taxes as retrieving this money to balance books and provide services.
WHERE IS THE $50 BILLION?
WHO’S GOT THE $50 BILLION?
Luxon with his quarterly plans looks competent but all they are doing is destroying they are not building anything.
The plan above all good regarding domestic investment and spending but what is the plan for overseas income?
Why wasn’t Hipkins sent on the walk of shame before breakfast.
Have we ever had a successful Labour Government?
Have we ever had a successful National Government?
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