On Waatea’s Weekend Political Panel show recently, Hone Harawira lamented the lack of co-operation between Labour, Greens and Māori Party in using MMP to maximise a result to defeat this hard right Government.
Hone is right.
Labour + Greens + Māori Party need to find a common policy platform if they want to win 2026.
The danger of Labour believing they can just win the next election without any actual policy is a real one.
This is the party of the global modern left wing decline defined by incremental change on neoliberal economic structures alongside the immediate and shallow adoption of whatever identity politics dogma is trending.
Labour will enter the next election boldly proclaiming, “The Labour Party of Aotearoa, slightly less cruel than National”, and they’ll probably win with that alone.
Labour on a bad day is a thousand times more preferable than National on a good day and any strategy that sees National out of power is a good one, but the challenges of our times demand more than “We are slightly less cruel than National”, it demands genuine solutions to deeply entrenched problems.
Take the current CGT and Wealth Tax debate inside Labour.
The TRUTH is that they need both taxes.
The TRUTH is that would be bold.
The TRUTH is that a CGT that excludes the family home, will generate extra revenue for the Government to spend BUT that won’t be realised for 3 years, that means Labour implement it, take all the shit for 3 years and have no extra funding to lesson that criticism.
The TRUTH is a wealth tax gives every Kiwi their first $20000 tax free and puts immediate money into the pockets of the poorest and the middle classes all funded from the richest kiwis. It takes the tax yoke off workers and puts it on the mega wealthy.
The reality is Labour just doesn’t have the courage for that and will instead wimp out and put in a CGT that will generate enormous political attacks with very little to show for it.
So.
How do we deal with Labour’s incrementalism?
The MMP Cascade Strategy.
It requires the Greens and the Māori Party to use the leverage they will have at the next election with Labour to negotiate the real change that Labour is too frightened to attempt.
It means the Greens demanding their wealth tax if Labour won’t and it calls on the Māori Party to demand their tax policy with higher corporate taxes and higher taxes on the rich.
If the Greens and Māori Party can use their leverage to demand real changes from Labour, we will have solutions, if however the Greens and Māori Party decide to use that leverage for Identity Politics wins, then the voters will turn their back on the Left for another generation.
We can still force Labour to do what’s right, but it will require the Greens and Māori Party acting in good faith for the true challenges NZ faces, instead of wanting Puberty Blockers to be mandatory at kindergarten or declaring Rawiri’s sneakers as a cultural treasure to be housed in Te Papa.
If Labour doesn’t have the courage, we must hope on Greens and Māori Party leveraging their political advantage in a way that benefits everyone, not just their pet projects.
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The National coalition won the last election on extremism, so I don’t think the left bloc have too much to worry about because they won’t ever be worse than this government has been.
The previous Labour government had a majority and done sweet fuck all instead gave ammunition to the right to use against them with culture wars divide and conquer tactics.
How are you traveling under this lot .35000 FUNDED HOUSES CUT,NEW FERRIES FOE DELIVERY NEXT YEAR SUNK .Unemployment going up ,120 people a day leaving .Poverty rising faster than inflation .Kids being fed pig food for lunch at school .Record homeless living on the street .Squeezed middle now crushed and new bottom feeders .
Hit the nail on the head with every point Gordon…the clusterfucks keep coming in weekly installments on how not to run a country from this clueless coterie of clowns.
Yes …what about the ferries… our main highway link…we keep hearing that they’ll be here in 2029 …but there has been no reporting on a price, a signed contract, or whose supposed to be building them. Where’s the media on this????
the media is owned by the doners and there is no builder or even a drawing to start with .The price will be way more than $3 billion .
You are dreaming if you think a wealth tax will allow the first 20k of income to be tax free. Everywhere wealth taxes have been tried the revenue generated is modest (sometimes negative) that is why so many countries have abandoned them
Total nonsense. We will hang Peter Thiel upside down and shake him until we’ve raised the money with the change from his pockets.
You are dreaming if you think a wealth tax will allow the first 20k of income to be tax free. Everywhere wealth taxes have been tried the revenue generated is modest (sometimes negative) that is why so many countries have abandoned them
The cardinal mind goes straight to edgy, dodgy and degenerate behaviour. It’s that sex sells. It’s anti-Christian at heart. not just anti-Christian but anti-tradition. Failure to redistribute wealth is a failure to show charity to the poor.
We have no victory to take into battle.
Brilliant ideas and analysis. But with Chippy at the helm, David Parker out of it there is a slim chance any of the above ideas will be put into action by Labour. This begs the question WHY are Labour so scared??? Who are they representing, really? That pompous little Chippy is so the wrong person to enact real change he is just Luxor lite and people need to start attacking him for that.
When I think of that coalition in action, an image of rats fighting in a sack comes to mind. For some reason.
As with National, Labour’s problem is potential coalition partners. The Greens are angry womyn and the self-styled TPM are unhinged. What is Labour to do? A coalition with National? At least it would keep out the left and right crazies alike. No Seymour, Winston, Swarbrick or the tedious TPM grandstanders.
How are you traveling under this lot .35000 FUNDED HOUSES CUT,NEW FERRIES FOE DELIVERY NEXT YEAR SUNK .Unemployment going up ,120 people a day leaving .Poverty rising faster than inflation .Kids being fed pig food for lunch at school .Record homeless living on the street .Squeezed middle now crushed and new bottom feeders .
The worst government in our history is this CoC as every marker shows.
Lets put the brake on on day 1, then on day 2 Stop all corporate welfare including working for families and accomodation allowances .Then introduce a 30k tax free thresh hold .Instead of pay accomodation allowance take back the landlord tax cut and use those funds from those two handouts to get first home owners into their own home .When NZ was building roads schools hospitals and houses in the 60s the tax system was more ballanced and personal and businesses were treated the same .NZ needs a complete review or to revisit the one Micheal cullen did in his later years .We can not continue to cut and collect less tax and expect to progress as a country .People say we need to run government as a business or a home .Well the blind can see that if you cut income ,(taxes) or cut sales in your business or your family income they all crash and burn .We have been cutting income (taxes) for decades and spending at record amounts year on year .The result is we are going down the gurgler because of vote buying .Local councils have done the same and the dumb voters keep electing the councilor who says I WILL NOT RAISE RATES .
Hipkins when interviewed on the radio expressed a dream of Labour getting back the Maori seats so there goes any thought of TPM and Labour holding hands especially with the extreme racist policies of TPM like early retirement for Maori. The solid Green supporters are not into bending their policies to suit Labour and even Jacinda knew she was better going with NZF than giving more power to Greens who were left out of most policy making .
A common policy between the three parties can hardly be one third (Greens and TPM) of such a coalition dictating policy to two thirds (Labour) of the coalition, especially on something as central as tax policy.
If that is how it looks, the Right will have a field day in the election campaign.
What you are suggesting is that 15% of the total electorate determines tax policy.
That won’t happen. The major party of the coalition (whether a Left or Right coalition) has to determine overall tax policy, perhaps not every detail, but the major elements. That is what being the major party means, they get to set the central elements of government economic policy.
The problem for Labour is that they know that if they want power they will need policies that the majority of voters want.
The Greens and Te Pati Maori are more activist parties. They know that if they compromise their principles (like James Shaw had to in the climate policy negotiations) they will lose supporters to Labour.
There IS general agreement between all three parties about abandoning neoliberalism.
But when any politician on the left is asked whether they intend to refix our exchange rate, or bring back tariffs or re-nationalise the banks etc they mutter something about kindness.
That is because Labour is not going to return to pre 1984 economic arrangements. The fundamental changes of the last 40 years are at the core of all market economies. Even Trump is not fundamentally unsettling that. Yes, he has gone for a standard 10% tariff, but that level will not significantly change the flow of trade.
New Zealand is not going to back out of our fundamental economic system. Modify it , yes. Destroy it, no.
[The TRUTH is that a CGT that excludes the family home, will generate extra revenue for the Government to spend BUT that won’t be realised for 3 years, that means Labour implement it, take all the shit for 3 years and have no extra funding to lesson that criticism.]
The only benefit to be had from CGT would come about if it exerted downward pressure on property prices; but that would only happen family homes were included, and I cannot see any gevernment taking that particular path. I think that a future government should continue to make interest non deductible. This would hopefully keep persons who fancy themselves as landlords, but would have to borrow to become so, out of the market. Too many people wanting to be landlords just increases the demand for properties and pushes up prices.
We need three taxes
Financial transactions tax –
Wealth Tax
Inheritance tax / capital acquisitions tax.
Then we could get rid of GST which holds the poorest in a noose.
We need to have a proper list of what the Labour party will back track on, they kick up a fuss at the time and then and then once they get in ‘oh well we didn’t quite realise the state of the books’ I am over all that bullshit. a campaign that forces the pathetic labour party to promise what theyt are going to undo what these filthy shits have done.
Labour needs to promote policies that will earn a significant party vote from the electorate as MMP in its current form is a failure as shown by the most ridiculous pretend three headed idiot coalition govt we have destroying the country at the moment. Unfortunately its back to no holds barred FPP politicking.
The problem is Labour may make changes to bring in more tax but then they will waste it on padding the public service like they did before .
Our humanity, function. Taxation is the oil that lubricates.
Is Labour dead but it won’t lie down? Or does it just need a Prince Charming to come along and lift its coffin lid and give it the kiss of life (Martyn?) so it can rise and haunt again! Is it another time to cite the old soothsaying – ‘It’s not the cough that carries them off, It’s the coffin they carry them off in’. Goes with a swing that after the Covid 10 plague! When perhaps the necessary medicine the public received in unequal doses, was too strong for a democracy weakened already by Labour’s neglect of its beliefs, preferring the hypocritic oath to that sterling medical one, the Hippocratic oath.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath
The oath is the earliest expression of medical ethics in the Western world, establishing several principles of medical ethics which remain of paramount significance today.
And interestingly there is still part of it extant, a bit tattered and torn, like our own Waitangi document that we have not had the moral principles to follow willingly.
I think it would be controversial if minor parties, that most didn’t vote for try to for policies onto the larger party in coalition that many more voted for.
There is already controversy that so many of the current government’s policies are ACT’s when only 8 % voted for ACT.
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